Begin Here, New York 2023
“Begin here,” May Sarton wrote at her desk in 1970. “It is raining. I look out on the maple, where a few leaves have turned yellow, and listen to Punch, the parrot, talking to himself and to the rain ticking gently against the windows. I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my ‘real’ life again at last. That is what is strange — that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and ‘the house and I resume old conversations.’” She continued on: “I have written every poem, every novel for the same purpose — to find out what I think, to know where I stand.”
Various torn-out notebook papers, typewriter ink.