back to the usual programming

I just finished reading  A Journal of Solitude by May Sarton. It was published in 1973. But it still holds up today. It is not a book I would recommend to everyone. But I really enjoyed reading it, and think many of you may too. It was written the year she turns 60. I too turn 60 this year (in May when my books comes out!). She spends the year, mostly solitary, at her home in Nelson, New Hampshire. May was a prickly person. She was prone to episodic rages and outburst that eventually alienated most of her close friends and associates. She was aware of her shortcomings, though she couldn’t control them. She was an avid gardener, a prolific writer, an ardent lover of animals, a keen observer of nature, and dedicated reader and life long learner. The journal lets us see into her rich inner life. An inner life that she absolutely needed to maintain equilibrium and to make sense of the word. She could only access that inner life though solitude and contemplation. So when the outside world crashed in on her, like a tsuanami wave, which it often did, the results were often explosive and damaging. It is not a voyeuristic book–we never witness the specifics of these damaging outburst, we only see her struggle with the fall out. But what I loved most about reading the journal, was May’s love of nature and animals. She wrote (and published ) 53 books–17 of them books of poetry. So when she is in communion with the natural world, which is almost daily, she is able to express it with the language of poet. If any of that sounds interesting, I recommend giving it a go.

a tsunami of dried nature bits