Polly Thayer’s painted Sarton
I am here alone for the first time in weeks to take up my ‘real’ life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is happening or what has happened….I hope to break through into the rough, rocky depths, to the matrix itself. There is violence there and anger never resolved. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there….Outside it is a milky world, snow driving past the windows incessantly in horizontal waves. Drifts pile up under the high wind. But I find I am truly in Heaven. There are charming ‘February’ daffodils out in a pale green pot on my desk, tulips on the mantel, a subtle apricot color veined in yellow with dark purple hearts. I have lighted a fire in here because the wind creeps in and I feel a chill. I have Beethoven sonatas (Pastoral and Les Adieux) on the record player. And now to work! – May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
