*except of course I have heard of her – she is May Sarton, whose slim novel Joanna and Ulysses is a permanent member of my favorite books’ bookshelf. It’s powerful, painful, wonderful and informative, telling the story of a part of 20th c. history which which I was, personally, unaware. I love learning sh*t. The following is an excerpt from Sarton’s journal of the year she turned 60, and it fits my current situation perfectly (I’m in recovery from ambulatory surgery), after which excerpt I have linked her wiki page. She was, along with being a novelist, a poet and memoirist/journal writer. It is so essential to living, I believe, to take days off – to vacate, to stop doing and producing and scrolling and all that jazz. To be still even if meditation isn’t on our personal dance card of how to spend part of an hour, or a day. Enjoy, and yes, check out J & U, it’s that good; tender hearts, beware, however – Ulysses is a donkey, and – well… I will say no more. <3
[18th January 1971]
“A strange empty day. I did not feel well, lay around, looked at daffodils against the white walls, and twice thought I must be having hallucinations because of their extraordinary scent that goes from room to room. I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever. Tonight I do feel in a state of grace, limbered up, less strained. Before supper I was able to begin to sort out poems of the last two years … there is quite a bunch. For my sixtieth birthday I intend to publish sixty new poems and, as I see it now, it will be a book of chiefly love poems. Sixty at Sixty, I call it, for fun.”