Friday, October 17, 2008

Daffodils in the wind: Returning to May Sarton


The Pink Cowboy has found his way back to the Princess of Solace and Flowers, the ever perceptive poet and writer May Sarton. The Belgian American had the uncanny talent to look at her life with the serenity and wisdom of a Zen monk. When I read May Sarton's diaries I feel suspended in time, contemplating life in a multicolored English garden. Her loneliness is for some strange reason a delight of the senses. She is the original constant gardener. May rubbed elbows with the most extrordinary authors of the 20th century including Virginia Woolfe. The Pink Cowboy is not only impressed but touched by her candor. Her losses in life are akin to mine. Love unfulfilled, disdain for injustice. At the moment The Pink Cowboy is indulging in one of her most savory journals May Sarton at 70. These journals remind me no to cut myself off from the literary jouney. I have been highly critical of my own work to the point of verbal paralysis. Journals have the innate capacity to convert the commonplace daily routine into a flowing excercise in writing. I have been
keeping journals on and off for the past 20 years. I hate the fact that I have to carry them around (they are numerous and heavy) every time I move. But those words imbedded in them are the blood of my soul, bled durin times of duress and confussion. Sanctified, somehow, by hope of a better day when my dreams will turn into my reality. May Sarton infuses the mind with words that provoke gentle and profound reflexion. She articulates loniliness in such a way it ceases to be dire and abysmal. May Sarton's loniliness is redeeming, dignified, necessary to understand the ebb and flow of life. Solitude is a crown wore by the anointed human being that has passion in his heart and fire in his belly. The Pink Cowboy celebrates her embracing arms of poetry and flowers.