Readings: The Inside-Out

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Below are three brief excerpts from three books that I’ve been reading in the past few days. Each of these excerpts struck me as interesting, even instructive. They may, or may not, be thematically related. Think about them and see what you decide:

But my mind is asleep, I can tell.
If it could stay wide-awake from this moment on, we would soon arrive at the truth, which may even now surround us with its weeping angels.*
xxxxx~ Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, “The Impossible” (tr. Paul Schmidt)


The form of the horse exemplifies what is best in the human being. I have a horse within me who rarely reveals himself. But when I see another horse, then mine expresses himself. His form speaks.
xxxxx~ Clarice Lispector, Soulstorm, “Dry Point of Horses”


One must destroy that intermediate, uneasy part of the soul…in order to expose the vegetative part directly to the fiery inspiration that comes from beyond the heavens. Strip oneself of everything above vegetative life. Bare vegetative life and turn it violently toward the heavenly light. Destroy everything in the soul not attached to the light. Expose naked to the heavenly light the part of the soul that is practically inert matter. The perfection offered to us in the direct union of the divine spirit with inert matter. Inert matter seen as thinking is a perfect image of perfection.
xxxxx~ Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks

Weeping angels, equine form, mud thinking: in each case, attention is being paid by the subject to transcendent interior states—or to the desire to achieve same—states that normally we ignore, distracted as we are by ego trips and daydreams. Purified, such attention is true prayer, in and of itself.
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*--Mais je m’aperçois que mon esprit dort.
S’il était bien éveillé toujours à partir de ce moment, nous serions bientôt à la vérité, qui peut-être nous entoure avec ses anges pleurant!
~ Arthur Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer, “L’Impossible”
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