Sunday, May 9th

IT’S HARD to settle down there is so much happening all the time. The day began with the oriole singing loudly in the big maple, and I ran down to see him … there is no thrill like that flaming orange and black. Since then I’ve washed the breakfast dishes, made my bed, shelled peas, set the table, got the cushions out for the terrace chairs, picked chives for the new potatoes, parboiled onions, and put the roast (with them) in the oven, and somewhere along the line made a tiny bunch of blue and white pansies, periwinkles, and primroses for the center of the table. It couldn’t be a more perfect day for Anne Thorp and Agnes to be coming for Sunday dinner. Everything shining and perilous, for it will last only a minute. The daffodils are almost over now, the fruit trees just beginning.

Yesterday too, though windy and a little cool, was marvelous … we were able to sit out for a half hour on the terrace. And I felt a great rush of love for Laurie Armstrong, who will not be here forever. She is so valiant and so alive that it is hard to realize that she is entering very old age. Ben, her husband, has been dead twenty years … is that possible? I see his dark eyes and delicate features so clearly, and remember how delightfully he laughed, the laugh of someone thoroughly enjoying his companions. Theirs was a whole marriage, a rare one. It was Judy’s first time here (Laurie’s daughter) and she noticed everything, even the five-pointed star at the center of each primrose (I had never really taken that in till she mentioned it).

Bill had sent money to Foster’s for birthday flowers and with it I have bought a white rhododendron. I am hoping it will hide the ugly dead branches of the yew that had been overpowered by the huge one Anne pruned for me last October and now is left, straggly and bare.

Thanking Bill, I unearthed his last letter, written at Easter. He says,

“Once again, just on schedule, the azalea tree you gave me two years ago has come into blossom. I hope I’ll blossom soon, or is this the grand illusion? ‘Art’ being that carrot on a string in front of the donkey, and on and on we trot. Well, to be a bit more candid, there are minor breakthroughs and temporary elations in the studio to offset the doubts and incipient despair. I do feel as if I were hovering around something that is about to reveal itself. Revelation of course only coming by work, it’s never a strip-tease before a spectator for me.”

Bill is a painter but so often we appear to be feeling the same things about our work; it’s quite astonishing. His phrase “hovering around something that is about to reveal itself”—that is exactly my state these days. And I have always known, as he does, that revelation rises up slowly if one can give it space, and if one keeps at the work, often with no apparent result.