“Her face haunted me: the sweep of her long lashes, her timid enchanting smile; and then a change of expression I could produce at will, a sudden shift, a bruised look, a quick change to terror, to tears. The strength of the temptation alarmed me. The black descending arm of the executioner; my hands seizing her wrists . . . I was afraid the dream might turn out to be real . . . Something in her demanded victimization and terror, so she corrupted my dreams, led me into dark places I had no wish to explore. It was no longer clear to me which of us was the victim. Perhaps we were victims of one another.”

“Dreamy and vacant she looked–”

“There were tall roses in the garden that Pearl suspected of disliking her. Once she was positive that a curtain blowing in the window had been sent to murder her. It was too depressing, her flickering world. […] Sometimes she would wake in the night to see fifty birds, dead, but rigid in the attitudes of life, scattered on the blanket of her bed. With a groan, they would rise and be gone. She sweated. She shook. Her eyes filmed with things galloping, burrowing, flying, nesting there. And love seemed to be a kingdom from which she had been banished. The appearances of things were like scabs upon her soul, a crust which kept her soul from light.”

The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.