After the Stroke

by May Sarton

  Friday, January 16

  How I enjoy the daily drive to town! Every morning after three hours at my desk I set out, feeling like a truant from school. The road out is perilous these days because deep ruts of snow froze and have not melted even after a couple of days of thaw, but I look at the trees and the squirrels darting across the road, and the black shining of the brook that crosses under it at one point—where marsh marigolds grow in the spring. It is altogether a black-and-white landscape in the winter woods.

  What I wait for eagerly is crossing the causeway and bridge into York, and looking for the flock of two exotic geese and three ducks who seem to be a family and are always together. Today they were swimming quite far off on the high tide. And the charming small buffleheads were diving nearby, such stout black and white fellows.

  I complain about the mail and all it demands but it is always exciting to open the big box at the post office and see what is there. Today Doris Grumbach’s The Magician’s Girl which I shall start tonight, and a marvelous plush-covered hot water bottle from Maggie. I rested with it on my stomach—how comforting. The mail itself brought news that Sister Jean has survived major surgery. I’m glad that I sent flowers yesterday. She says Journal of a Solitude has helped her through the long wait. A dear letter from Blue Jenkins in Greenfield, happy because they have a woman minister and Blue was delighted by her first meeting with her. I felt quite lifted up. Three or four brief notes of praise about my work. I steel myself these days not to answer.

  Today, because my desk is at last a little less of a chaos, I can rejoice in the rich life I live, in all that comes to me, instead of feeling like a camel on whom heavier and heavier loads are placed as she plods through the desert.

  Last night I heard three times the strange melodious hoot of a mating owl. How can any female owl resist him?

  Then, at six, early dawn, Venus was again brilliant in the orange sky. Again I looked down on the snow-covered lawn and saw how much life came and went across it that night. When Tamas was alive he never barked. Was he unaware? But the other evening the United Parcel man was gasping when I opened the porch door, “A deer just rose up in front of me,” he explained, as though he had seen a ghost.

  Sunday, January 18

  It is snowing hard and I feel sleepy and succeeded only in clearing off a part of my desk—letters thrown away that have been here for months. A little respite from pressure—in fact a holiday.

  Yesterday Nancy and I went to a movie for the first time in six months, Crimes of the Heart, and as we always do, to Luka’s, the Greek restaurant in Portsmouth, for dinner afterwards.

  Crimes of the Heart is the most beautifully photographed and directed movie I have seen in a long time. Extreme sensitivity to interior light, the light on the faces of the three famous actresses who play the sisters. I was a little disappointed in the text, written by the author of the play which was on Broadway last year. Nancy and I had the same chauvinistic reaction of being glad we are not Southern born and bred! Oh dear. The clamor of voices for one thing, like sharp bird voices, put me on edge. It made me long for Chekhov, for something subtler, less obviously dramatic—but in these days no doubt there would be no audience if it were Chekhov.

  Wednesday, January 21

  Where has time gone? I feel I have been riding white water, Time a wild river over rocks. We have had another big storm, this one shedding four or five inches of fluffy light snow. So there are mountains of it piled up by the plow. It was two below zero at Nancy’s this morning, she tells me, and must have been about that here. So Pierrot is not only an aesthetic pleasure, but very useful at my feet as a hot water bottle.

  The cold and the excitement of these storms made me feel rather tired. Will the car start?

  These last nights I have read Doris Grumbach’s The Magician’s Girl. A fascinating, puzzling novel which is ostensibly the story of three Barnard students in college and for years afterward, “the usual thing” one might think, but it seems to be really about monsters, why they fascinate. One of the women, Liz, is based on Arbus obviously. Minna is somewhat autobiographical, I gather, and through her New York City in the thirties is charmingly evoked. The third, Maud, whose strange self dominates the book, is a very ugly, very fat poet, a genius the reader gathers. Her passion appears to be words, not feelings or ideas, an interesting conception of the poet which did not really convince me—nor did her suicide. The last section of the book is Minna’s teaching at the University of Iowa at sixty, falling in love with a young student called Lowell. Shades of Colette! I found this more convincing and more moving than anything else in the book. I think it is the most original of Grumbach’s novels.

  I presume that most novelists draw their characters up from the subconscious, not often as portraits of real people, though that does happen, but emerging from the subconscious where the seeds have been sown and then are fertilized and rise to the surface. Grumbach almost always uses famous, real people whom she has not known personally: MacDowell, the ladies of Llangollen, Marilyn Monroe and now Arbus. It is these mythical “real” famous people who fertilize her imagination. I find this strange. Feeding on an aura as it were.

  Doris Grumbach is a very physical author. It is sexuality rather than sensuality which pervades her work and in this she differs from Colette. She handles it with great skill in the love affair between Minna and Lowell. The image of Minna at sixty as Lowell sees her as a peony fully open stays with me.

  Brad Daziel comes for lunch to discuss his dream of putting together a “portable” Sarton. The preface will be his long essay (Puckerbrush Review, VII, 2) on my correspondents—a really splendid job.

  Friday, January 23

  Yesterday a somber, dark sky and the suspense before a big storm. As often happens, it was not as bad, here anyway, as expected, but the very high wind all night was nerve wracking. I expected the electric lights to go off and had candles and pails of water ready as when that happens everything stops: heat, light, pump for water, etc. Pierrot became wildly excited by the wind, once playing with a belt-end hung over a chair. He leaped into the air like a ballet dancer and did a pirouette. It was adorable.

  A small incident at the hairdresser’s has given me something to try to understand. I was there for a permanent. While Donna was securing my hair into curlers, an old lady who was waiting to be picked up came and stood beside us and talked cheerfully about herself and her daughters, and Donna responded. It was as though I did not exist, was an animal being groomed. And finally I said gently, “I’m a human being. I come here to rest.” So the old lady said, “Oh!” and moved away. Donna apologized but in a tone of voice that told me she was angry. She went on working in dead silence. Then I suggested that maybe the way to handle it might be to introduce me to the other client. She apologized again. Then Chuck, the owner, said sharply, “Don’t apologize, Donna, for what is not your fault.”

  So I felt like a criminal, a misbehaving child. I felt tears coming and bent my head far down, farther and farther, to hide myself away. I hunched my shoulders, trying to become as small as possible—feeling, I suppose, like a turtle, but I have no shell. Tears flowed down my cheeks. I wanted to run away but in the middle of a permanent that was not possible.

  What is this vulnerability? It had nothing to do with who I am—but simply that as a human being one is hurt if treated as though one did not exist. And if this happens at the hairdresser where, of all places, except a psychiatrist’s office, one should feel safe and sheltered, it becomes acutely painful.

  I consider Donna a friend. I am very fond of her, a maternal young woman, tender with her many elderly customers. We did not talk about the incident but resumed our usual conversation after Chuck had left and we were alone. But I have thought quite a lot about it.

  Sunday, January 25

  On this glittering January day, glare ice on the road in, Susan Sherman is driving up from New York City to take me to lunch at the Whistling Oyster. I feel excited after these last days pent-up
by the two storms, longing to “get out”—so it is a fine prospect.

  I have had three letters lately that have helped me grow a slightly tougher skin. One from a Sister in Boston who enclosed an interview in the Globe which was inept and made me feel naked before the world, as no doubt I am. She says, quoting from the interview:

  Regarding your comments about being “a good writer who happens to be a lesbian,” I think that the goodness which is in our hearts and souls is what counts and not whether we are gay, straight, bisexual or God knows what. Furthermore, I could never imagine in my wildest imagination that God would label us!

  The second is from a woman in upstate New York. She had discussed As We Are Now at a group. She says, “We have read about forty to forty-five books and I can’t remember any besides yours that was totally enjoyed and appreciated.” That was good to read but what interested me even more was what she told me of her own reaction to my books:

  I wish to share two aspects of your life that speak to me and give me hope. The first is the acceptability (at least in some circles) of a female Muse for a woman.… I have been inspired by several women over the years … but never able to fully explore what those feelings meant due to their “unacceptability.” Now thanks to your openness on the subject I can begin to look and to not be afraid of whatever feelings and Muses may arise in the future.

  The second point I have found hopeful came to me as I was reading At Seventy this week. You said you are more yourself than ever. For that I rejoice, both for you and for me and all of us who need to be reminded that growth is possible through all of one’s life. You have been able to grow because you remained open to others, and to yourself. When I am tempted to close myself up (which is often) I have you to inspire and remind me that there is little growth without pain.

  The third letter—I’ve lost the address:

  I could not, for some time, figure out why you and your work are considered “obscure.” Finally it dawned on me that your interior freedom terrifies people. It is very hard to read your novels just for entertainment—put them down and say “nice story, now I’ll get back to real life.” You touch our real lives, understand the interior life too well for comfort, and force us to think.… You are courageous and therefore frightening.

  Tuesday, January 27

  Sea smoke today, so it looks as though the turbulent silver ocean were boiling—because it is warmer than the zero air. Another charm of this brilliant dry cold weather is that when I sit up in the night to stroke Pierrot, down at the foot of the bed, his fur sparkles, rivulets of fire under my hand.

  Yesterday there was a ton of mail so I never got to describe the delicious time Susan and I had at the Whistling Oyster. A bright cold day at Perkins Cove at its most glamorous with the bridge up. Susan remarked how like it is to a famous Van Gogh painting of a wooden bridge up like this one. Absorbed in talking and eating oysters, it took me some time to take in that ours was the only table with a bunch of tulips on it—and of course Susan had had them sent over from Foster’s to greet us! She ordered a bottle of St. Émilion and as we talked and talked—really the first time we could talk in peace—we drank it all. But the splendid lunch was not all—at the very end I was presented with a small round chocolate cake, surrounded by strawberries to take home with me. Amazing kindness and thoughtfulness.

  In the mail yesterday a letter from Juliette, such a delight to hear from her after quite a lapse. Her letters always bring me life, but what a hard winter it is in London! Her pipes had frozen one day.

  I can’t get the horror of Jesse Helms being ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate out of my head. He surely does not represent the majority of Republicans, nor anyone except the extreme right. It is the ignorance that terrifies me.

  There is a fascinating piece in this week’s Manchester Guardian Weekly (January 25, 1987) by Marion Kumar called “Why Americans Are Different.” She begins:

  Once again, Europe watches in stunned amazement as yet another American political web of intrigue unfolds. We can empathise with neither the actions nor motivations of the principals involved nor with the responses of the American people. We are learning, once more, that Americans are different; we really don’t understand them at all.

  Ask a US citizen what makes an American what he is, and he will very probably talk about liberty, democracy, and “the American way.” Probe a little more and it is likely to emerge that he firmly believes that only Americans have real democracy and are truly free. Moreover, he is suspicious of anything a little foreign and unfamiliar. To be “un-American” is not only second-rate; it is potentially evil.

  That, of course, is how Jesse Helms behaves.

  Thursday, January 29

  A delightful photo of the Carmelite Sisters and me when I was there in October came yesterday from Jean Alice, the prioress, and the day before a long letter from Sister Leslie, a generous letter as I had been rather critical of some essays she had sent me ages ago. It made me homesick for those radiant October days when I was the guest of the monastery, wrapped in a cocoon of tender loving care, like “a child of the house” as my mother always called my friends when they came to stay. I was homesick for the ordered silence, the pattern of the Carmelite “charism,” as Leslie calls it.

  And I was moved today to read her quote from Emily Dickinson, “We both believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour which keeps Believing nimble.”

  I am now reading the biography of Krishnamurti which I ordered on an impulse because a review in the Times said that he did not want followers or any religious Ashram around him. Religious certitude too often creates a closed mind, foments a sense of superiority, excludes rather than includes, opens the path not to love but to hatred as is quite clear in the attitudes and behavior of the fundamentalists here in the U.S.A.

  What moved me so deeply among the Carmelites was their open-mindedness, their total devotion to seeking the Truth even when it might be revolutionary in regard to Catholic dogma. They were never hortatory. They do not “have the Word” against all others, they “live the Word” towards communion with all others.

  There are numerous pine siskins at the feeders now, such a delight. Also the downy woodpecker and, alas, coveys of huge ravenous gray squirrels. But in the bitter cold, below zero at night, I haven’t the heart to chase them off.

  Sunday, February 1

  I am immersed these evenings in a book as fresh and thirst-quenching as a glass of spring water, A Maine Hamlet by Lura Beam. It has been reprinted by a Maine publisher, Lance Tapley of Augusta, who is rescuing this remarkable writer from oblivion. Such lucid prose and such credible truth on every page. It is good that people understand that even today a Maine hamlet is not all Beans! In fact much of what it describes reminded me of North Parsonsfield and of Anne and Barbara.

  On Friday, when another storm was expected with perhaps ten inches of snow, I dashed into Portsmouth to do errands and be well-stocked. The instinct to batten down and prepare for the worst is strong!

  I bought the ingredients for a chicken stew, made for a change with white turnips, cabbage, onions and carrots. I got the car, which was covered in salt, washed and then stopped by the greenhouse. What bliss to walk into that green smell of things growing and to see rows and rows of primroses, a rainbow of colors, and cyclamen, a few azaleas, African violets galore and, surprise! two or three cinerarias. Of course I had to have the blue and white one, one small brilliant red cyclamen, and two primroses, one blue, one a tiny bouquet, a nest of brilliant red flowers with yellow centers. Oh yes, and in my wild extravagance a tiny pot of purple crocus still in bud. They have come out overnight.

  The excitement of spring plants when the snow is deep outside and wind chill minus thirty! But we only got about three inches this time and valiant Diane came yesterday, managed to pry open the cellar door and take two weeks’ rubbish away.

  The porch roof is leaking again, plop-plop, into a pail. Nothing to be done till spring.
/>   Monday, February 2

  Rowan Tree Press kindly sent me Robert Francis’s Travelling in Amherst: A Poet’s Journal, for Christmas. I only discovered it when I was tidying up the other day and read it all through the night. Pure pleasure. I’m going to lend it to Judy Burrowes who comes bringing sandwiches for lunch tomorrow—if it does not snow! She is a good poet but like all good poets gets a lot of rejections. So did Robert Francis. Most people have no idea how hard it is to get poems published.

  In 1931 Francis writes: “When a poem and I embrace, I have a peculiar impulse to pray, ‘Don’t let me die, dear God, till this is over.’ The writing of poetry suddenly makes my life of high value to me!”

  The last entry, June 28, 1954: “Nothing can cure a poet’s malaise except to write new poems. He can’t live emotionally in his past.”

  The worst thing for me during the months of illness was the absence of poetry—not to be able to write about Bramble after her death hurt.

  Today again I am buried under the outside world piling in on me. A letter from a woman asks me to read her manuscript, a novel, and help get it published. One from a boy asking if I would sign one of my books for his mother if he sends it to me—at least he has the grace to ask! Two books of poems the authors hope I’ll comment on for publicity purposes. Three gift books which must be thanked for. A long letter from a patronizing woman who assures me that the journals will live, not the novels or poems. A letter from the poet Roger Finch in Japan—which I must and want to answer. A mailgram from an old friend who has just heard of my stroke and begs me to call him.

  A wonderful letter from Dorothy Bryant telling me, in answer to my letter about her great new novel Madame Psyche, that every character in it is pure invention, plus all the hard work she did about the history taking place in San Francisco from the fire, through labor wars among the fruit pickers, to what an insane asylum was like.