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I Like To Hear And Smell The Countryside, The Land That My Characters Inhabit. I Don’t Want These Characters To Step Off The Page, I Want Them To Step Out Of The Landscape.

-Peter Matthiessen

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I Like To Hear

Peter Matthiessen

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I Like To Hear And Smell The Countryside, The Land That My Characters Inhabit. I Don’t Want These Characters To Step Off The Page, I Want Them To Step Out Of The Landscape.

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I Like To Hear And Smell The Countryside, The Land That My Characters Inhabit. I Don’t Want These Characters To Step Off The Page, I Want Them To Step Out Of The Landscape.

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The Great Stillness In These Landscapes That Once Made Me Restless Seeps Into Me Day By Day, And With It The Unreasonable Feeling That I Have Found What I Was Searching For Without Ever Having Discovered What It Was.

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I Can Watch Elephants (and Elephants Alone) For Hours At A Time, For Sooner Or Later The Elephant Will Do Something Very Strange... There Is Mystery Behind That Masked Gray Visage, And Ancient Life Force, Delicate And Mighty, Awesome And Enchanted, Commanding The Silence Ordinarily Reserved For Mountain Peaks, Great Fires, And The Sea.

In The Clearness Of This Himalayan Air, Mountains Draw Near, And In Such Splendor, Tears Come Quietly To My Eyes And Cool On My Sunburned Cheeks. This Is Not Mere Soft-mindedness, Nor Am I All That Silly With The Altitude. My Head Has Cleared In These Weeks Free Of Intrusions- Mail, Telephones, People And Their Needs- And I Respond To Things Spontaneously, Without Defensive Or Self-conscious Screens. Still, All This Feeling Is Astonishing: Not So Long Ago I Could Say Truthfully That I Had Not Shed A Tear In Twenty Years.

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Meditation Practice

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The Sun Is Roaring, It Fills To Bursting Each Crystal Of Snow. I Flush With Feeling, Moved Beyond My Comprehension, And Once Again, The Warm Tears Freeze Upon My Face. These Rocks And Mountains, All This Matter, The Snow Itself, The Air- The Earth Is Ringing. All Is Moving, Full Of Power, Full Of Light.

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I Meditate For The Last Time On This Mountain That Is Bare, Though Others All Around Are White With Snow. Like The Bare Peak Of The Koan, This One Is Not Different From Myself. I Know This Mountain Because I Am This Mountain, I Can Feel It Breathing At This Moment, As Its Grass Tops Stray Against The Snows. If The Snow Leopard Should Leap From The Rock Above And Manifest Itself Before Me - S-a-a-o! - Then In That Moment Of Pure Fright, Out Of My Wits, I Might Truly Perceive It, And Be Free.

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