[Taken in New Zealand earlier this year.]
"...as time goes on we not only remember specific things in relation to the people we have loved; their lives get built into our lives and finally the transference is complete. We are what we are because of them. When I am getting very dogmatic, I sometimes hear Jean-Do's amused voice saying very gently, 'Pourquoi avoir raison?' 'Why have to be right?' I am more aware now than I was during his life of how much Quig's friendship, his very existence even apart from our own relationship, did to help me forge out the position of these last years about my work. It is good for a professional to be reminded that her professionalism is only a husk, that the real person must remain an amateur, a lover of the work. Whatever we do well is done spontaneously for its own sake, in just the way Quig suddenly decided that he had to get up to the schoolhouse room and paint, or, equally spontaneously, had to make muffins! I am, I think, more of a poet than I was before I knew him, if to be a poet means allowing life to flow through one another rather than forcing it to a mold the will has shaped; if it means learning to let the day shape the work, not the work, the day, and so live toward essence as naturally as a bird or a flower."
~May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep
"live toward essence"...i love that. my new mantra. Linda
Posted by: Linda E | June 24, 2009 at 04:52 AM