"I have
written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems
to find out what I felt about something" - May Sarton, Journal
Of A Solitude, Norton 1973.
A quote from my
new love. except for Henry Miller and Richard Brautigan, all the
writers I love are women: Anais Nin, Colette, Annie Dillard, Edna
O'Brien Joyce Carrol Oates, Ursula LeGuin, Nikki Giovani - These I
love for their work I do not "study" them, I do not try to
"know" them but I love their work. There are others I read
and enjoy but these are the ones I love as surely as if I'd given
birth to them or made love with them - my literary lovers.
Anais is my
saint. She has had the most influence on me. Through her I met Miller
and Durrell and others and then through them more. My first lover
introduced me to Anais.
Miller, Henry is
the only male author whose work aroused in me a love. Not only for
the work but for the man, for the courage of the man behind the work.
Picasso - The
ultimate creator, the man who knew more about giving birth than any
woman. I have tears over Duncan’s photographs of him; I stand in
awe and quiet hysteria before his work in New York City. I think to
understand him is to understand art. One must not be too serious, too
reverent, but rather take fist fulls of flesh and guzzles of wine.
Art is like a dog if you approach it with fear you get nothing.
I wonder is it
healthy to love people who are dead as if they were living?
The cat
wanders around the house whining in his Siamese language. He is
restless for the fish in the pan. He is up on the counter and almost
into the frying pan before I can catch him. He is rambling
incoherently now, but when I ask him if he wants a piece he calms
down enough to remind me that it needs rinsing in cold water so that
he won't scorch his tongue. After lunch he gets me to open the door
for him, he won't be back again until he's lonely or hungry...
I need a
home. I need my books around me, my typewriter fixed and a desk to
put it on. I need my easel in plain view with a clean blank canvass
set up on it - after looking at it long enough it's blankness will
annoy me to the point where I must attack it violently with colour.
A place to be, to work, to explore myself and my world. A laboratory
to experiment freely without people running or phones ringing, door
knockings or T.V.ing. A place to be bold with a woman, a place to
hide away from those days that make me fall apart. I want my own
kitchen table to write on and to be able to breakfast out in the
sunshine with my own friend who has come to visit.
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