Sherry Chandler » Cat with snow and poet
Cat with snow and poet
Sunday, February 8, 1976
After another day entirely alone in the bleak cold, some sort of breakthrough that has been coming since Christmas happened. I think it had to. I wept torrents of tears—even the cat got up and came and looked down at me (I was in bed by nine), while Tamas licked my eyes frantically. But animals are not enough. I am simply too isolated and starved.
…
I hesitate to offer invitations far ahead, because what if I was at work on a poem suddenly? I feel I have to keep the channels uncluttered—that is my first responsibility.
…
When I am depressed I realize very well that everything I do, such as tending the flowers, talking to the animals, walking with them, is a kind of wall against woe. A substitute, for what? For one person who would focus this beautiful world for me . . . and I think that that will not happen again. I[n] some ways I do not want it to happen. I am beginning a new phase. Perhaps one must always be ready for the inner world to open again. Perhaps one has to dare that. This morning I feel better for having let the woe in, for admitting what I have tried for weeks to refuse to admit—loneliness like starvation.
—May Sarton, The House by the Sea (Norton, 1977)
I had intended to post this quotation from May Sarton last Friday when it actually was February 8, but never having had a good relationship with the calendar, I forgot. Turns out, it’s more appropriate to this week when Kentucky has been hit with lots of snow and ice.
Today a thaw is beginning and the ground is covered with rotting, melting snow. Not a lovely day but the mood is more cheery among the cats. Bertie, half pictured above because he won’t hold still long enough for close-ups, has finally got to go out for a romp, after several days of halting on the doorstep. He got the boo-boo protecting the homestead from an interloping tabby.
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