The Salinas

The Salinas was only a part-time river. The summer sun drove it underground. It was not a fine river at all, but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it—how dangerous it was in a wet winter and how dry it was in a dry summer. You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952)

'the wonders of the world as it continually flashes up in retrospect'

... but enough, let us sleep now, let us ascertain, in the morning, if there is a way of abstracting the interesting paragraphs of material in all this running consciousness stream that can be used as the progressing lightning chapters of a great essay about the wonders of the world as it continually flashes up in retrospect; as, for example, this night I ran cold water into a glass at the sink while everybody was high and immediately was reminded completely and perfectly of the cool exact waters of Pine Brook on a summer afternoon.

—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody (1951-'52)

'I wish God had made me vaster myself'

—Now events of this moment are so mad that of course I can't keep up but worse they're as though they were fond memories that from my peaceful hacienda or Proust-bed I was trying to recall in toto but couldn't because like the real world so vast, so delugingly vast, I wish God had made me vaster myself—I wish I had ten personalities, one hundred golden brains, far more ports than are ports, more energy than the river, but I must struggle to live it all, and on foot, and in these little crepesole shoes.

—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody (1951-'52)

The Original Image of the Creation

Now our Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity, the essential Image, the essential Harmony, the Righteousness of God, becomes a creature, springs up from beneath the foundations of the Creation in an Human Soul and Body in the midst of its ruines. This Jesus is the Original Image of the Creation, of Man, of every Creature, the Root, the Rule, the Actor of all, who virtually, eminently comprehends all in their distinct Ideal Forms within himself. As so many eternal Beauties in his own eternal Beauty, who bringeth them forth from himself, beareth them in himself, as Flowers in their Garden-beds.

—Peter Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedome of the Will (1675)