When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if […]
Charlie Chaplin — The Vale of Soul-Making
Edmond Jabès — The Vale of Soul-Making
It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to lose it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You […]
Anna Kamieńska — The Vale of Soul-Making
Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving.
— Anna Kamieńska, from “In That Great River: A Notebook,” Poetry. Originally Published: June 1, 2010
Charles Bukowski — The Vale of Soul-Making
writing has been my fountain of youth my whore, my love, my gamble. The gods have spoiled me.
— Charles Bukowski, from “only one Cervantes,” The Last Night of the Earth Poems. (Ecco May 31, 2002
Kenneth Rexroth — The Vale of Soul-Making
…I lie alone in an alien Bed in a strange house and morning More cruel than any midnight Pours its brightness through the window – Cherry branches with the flowers Fading, and behind them the gold Stately baubles of the maple, And behind them the pure immense April sky and a white frayed cloud, And […]
Pablo Neruda — The Vale of Soul-Making
Almost Out Of The Sky Almost out of the sky, half of the moon anchors between two mountains. Turning, wandering night, the digger of eyes. Let’s see how many stars are smashed in the pool. It makes a cross of mourning between my eyes, and runs away. Forge of blue metals, nights of stilled combats, […]
W.G. Sebald — The Vale of Soul-Making
I feel, almost physically, the current of time slowing down in the gravitational field of oblivion. It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as […]
Michel de Certeau — The Vale of Soul-Making
To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper. The moving about that the city mutliplies and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a place – an experience that is, to be sure, broken up into countless tiny […]
William S. Burroughs — The Vale of Soul-Making
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.
― William S. Burroughs, Queer. (Viking Press November 1985)
James Baldwin — The Vale of Soul-Making
So what can we really do for each other except—just love each other and be each other’s witness? And haven’t we got the right to hope—for more? So that we can really stretch into whoever we really are? Don’t you think so?
—James Baldwin, Another Country (Dial Press, 1962)
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