Word Juices

Has it really been a month since my last blog post? For shame, me! For shame the muse that has evidently left me! I've spent most of today reading some of my favorite writers so that I could get my juices flowing again.

Word Juices: They flow at inspiration gained from the likes of Clive Staples Lewis, whose masterpiece that he spent most of his life thinking about, Till We Have Faces, is the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, beautifully retold to make even a grown-up feel like she's reading a bedtime story. The title page inside the edition I'm holding has this enigmatic quote under Lewis' name: "Love is too young to know what conscience is." I'm still wrapping my brain around all the different things that could mean.

The second great writer, Wystan Hugh Auden, wrote a number of poems that I've read and loved for a while. I'm not a big reader of poetry, but his stuff inspires me to action...

Leap Before You Look (W. H. Auden)

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear;
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.