[Image: one of the myriad dreams depicted in Roz Chast’s graphic novel (for lack of a better term), I Must Be Dreaming.]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Sometimes one sees the world in a way one is not aware of at other times. We’re never really seeing the world, we’re only seeing a moment’s take on the world. This is true of images. Images are a way of seeing the world which you didn’t notice before, and something you cannot make by an act of will; it’s something that is suddenly revealed to you. The world has layers, and you start seeing that these layers happen all at once; they’re all together. I think that’s what is startling about images. At the moment of seeing, they seem so obvious. Why didn’t I see that before? Mandelstam wrote wonderfully about images. He said that an image is not an act of will. A real image is something that occurs to you. He said an image is like running across a river on a bridge of boats, and when you get to the other side, you look back and see that all the boats have moved or drifted and are in different places, and you realize it would be impossible to do all over again. That’s always seemed like a great image right there.

(W.S. Merwin [source])

…and:

There was also another reason why it was now possible to paint. It was because there was one central fact that made it seem worthwhile going on, whatever the objective value of the pictures to other people. It was that I had discovered in the painting a bit of experience that made all other occupations unimportant by comparison. It was the discovery that when painting something from nature there occurred, at least sometimes, a fusion into a never-before-known wholeness; not only were the object and oneself no longer felt to be separate, but neither were thought and sensation and feeling and action towards it, the movement of one’s hand together with the feeling of delight in the “thusness“ of the thing, they all seemed fused into a wholeness of being which was different than anything else that had ever happened to me.

(Marion Milner [source])

…and (in slightly different form):

If we are honest, many of us consider ourselves to be rather lazy, still haunted by those school reports that said “Must try harder!” So it might surprise you if I suggest that much of what we do comes unstuck not because we don’t try hard enough, but because we try too hard, or at least try too hard in the wrong sort of way. We aim too high, too quickly, being prematurely concerned with correctness and results at the expense of practice and process. Since in the short term this offers little chance of success — and it is hard to sustain something we do not feel any good at — we soon feel disheartened and give up before we have really started…

Where does this perfectionist task-master come from? I suspect it is the highly toxic combination of a lack of confidence and a subtle sense of unworthiness. Playing inside our heads is a running commentary continually telling us that we cannot think what we think, or do what we do, because it is either wrong or not good enough: a voice amplified by moral teachings that places all the emphasis on guilt and sin. So instead of wholeheartedly embracing things, as is our birthright, we snatch at life in a sort of smash-and-grab raid before those in authority deem us impostors and ask us to leave, preferably by the back door.

(Manjusvara [source])

From elsewhere:

Every proof the writer thinks up in support of the story’s larger elements will have its own implications and exert its own subtle pressure on the story. The old slave he invented in support of [Helen of Troy’s] character, if she’s to do the work required of her (motivate Helen), must be a vivid and interesting character; otherwise we cannot understand why her influence should be so powerful. But once a vivid and interesting character has been introduced, he or she cannot simply be dropped, forgotten henceforward. Once the character is gone—hanged, let us say—we miss the character; or, to put it another way, we expect the character’s return, at least in Helen’s memory. It will not be sufficient, the writer will find, simply to mention the old slave’s name from time to time. Though her work for the story is done, she must come back, at least briefly, and the question is: What is she to do when she comes back? She can’t just stand there. Forced by the necessity of his story to bring her back and provide her with some action, however brief, the writer is forced to think up some further meaning for the character… It is partly in this way that the fictional process forces the writer to say more than he thought he could; that is, to make discoveries.

(John Gardner [source])

…and:

Listen, God love everything you love—and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

Yeah? I say.

Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least suspect.

(Alice Walker [source])

…and:

On the Fifth Day

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.
Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.
The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.
Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,
while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.
The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking
of rivers, of boulders and air.
Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.
Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.
They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

(Jane Hirshfield [source])