Wednesday, December 10th

TOO MUCH happening! I have been out to Minnesota and back, had Judy here for a few days before Thanksgiving, and now am deep into Christmas … I’ve baked cookies every afternoon for a week.

Before I forget, this from Janwillem van de Wetering’s A Glimpse of Nothingness (Houghton Mifflin, 1975):

You meet someone.

The other.

You meet the other.

You are polite. The other is polite.

You eat each other a little.

After his departure you are slightly damaged.

And what do you do then?

Do you repair the damage and do you become again what you were?

Or do you go on as you are?

Damaged, but lighter.

There have been quite a few encounters here lately—people I had put off because of the book. They have been interesting, but I feel the effort more and more, feel empty when such a guest has left. I am hungry now for a period of retreat, for myself, for poetry. I look forward to the drive to North Parsonsfield to see the farm Anne and Barbara will move into in two years—to be passive and see trees and poor little houses. I have long felt that one of the great appeals of New England, what tugs the heart, is the dignity of poverty in the rural areas.

I felt it very much when I looked at a house deep in the interior in Wells … a house that might be the one Lee is looking for. For the first time I knew a pang of acute nostalgia for “the sweet especial rural scene,” for Nelson. The land around this Merrifield place is among the most beautiful pieces I have ever seen, rolling open fields with here and there a grove of great trees, white pines, and around the house huge old maples, an ash, and a lovely elm. It is spacious and varied, and all of a sudden over a small rise one comes upon a small deep pond, steep banks, a secret place, surrounded by pine—a trout pond, the agent said. The house is not so beautiful as mine in Nelson, but it is in apple-pie order—one could move right in! But Lee is going through such pain and anxiety (the grafted bone in her shin is not healing properly; the retraining of the knee muscles is agony) that I doubt if she can get into the frame of mind of hope and conviction necessary to make such a big decision. I got agitated and upset by taking even as much responsibility as trying to persuade her.

We had a southwest storm last night, warm, floods of rain, high wind … the seas are turbulent this morning, and soon I shall walk down with Tamas and take a deep draught of that crashing of waves on rocks. Mrs. Horton (I met her the other day at the first meeting of the board of Elderhostel at Durham) lives in Randolph and she—such a delightful woman!—said that she loves the mountains more than the sea, because the sea is “always in motion” and the mountains are still. I do not think of the sea as motion so much as a great openness.