Read Online Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing by May Sarton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: May Sarton
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what had better be left like the compost heap, to its own slow burning and self-renewal.
What had been so disturbing during the night had been to endure the wake of the great wave of memories on which she had been transported, opening up all those boxes … the appalling complex of people who had entered deeply into her life, who had influenced, and changed, and enriched her. And it was absolutely untrue, she had discovered, to believe that age would diminish her power both to attract and to be attracted, to rush in to the collision with a new consciousness, to feel herself opening up like a sea anemone in the rich flood of feeling for a new person. Old, young, male, female—her capacity to be touched, to be involved, to care was, she realized, that still of a young girl. How did one keep growing otherwise? What was life all about otherwise? What separates us from animals except just this—that we can be moved by each other, and not primarily for sexual purposes? Granted, of course, that any deep collision, any relationship which profoundly affects one comes from the whole person, and can almost instantaneously shift from one phase to another, so that sex is never wholly absent and may come into play. Yes, that was the rub …, for then there is conflict. Someone gets hurt. And it was no use remembering that often she had been the hurt one: the fact remained that she had inevitably hurt others. “But I regret nothing,” she said aloud and firmly. For it hurts to be alive, and that’s a fact, but who can regret being alive and being for others, life-enhancing? We shall be dead a long time. Quite deliberately Hilary stuffed the letters into a drawer and bent her head toward the much-crossed-out worksheet of the poem she thought she might just possibly take by surprise and bring to an end on this morning of superior tension.
After a time, and when she had murmured some lines aloud, she shot a sheet of paper onto the typewriter and tapped out with one finger what she had in her mind, tore it out, and began to scribble changes and queries into the margins. She became wholly absorbed, was not aware of the crick in her shoulder, nor of the French clock chiming eleven and then twelve. At twelve she laid the sheets aside. It had been a wild hope that she could solve the puzzle in two hours. Still, she had made a start. There was now one really good line, an armature for the whole poem.… Yes.
“Good Heavens! The mail!” For once, because she was orbiting outside her usual routine, she had forgotten this daily blessing and curse. Usually she was standing at the mailbox when the postman drove up. Sometimes Mr. Willoughby was the only human being she spoke to during a whole day, and sometimes he brought a piece of fish with him for Sirenica, the shameless flirt, who had laid a spell on him with her blue eyes. But today of course he had long since come and gone; Sirenica was sitting beside the mailbox washing her face. Hilary reached in and found the usual packet of journals and letters. The very sight of it exhausted her, yet there was (she could not deny) always the same stab of expectation and of hope.… What surprise, what unexpected joy might be lurking among all the bills and requests for attention? And of course there was The New York Times .
As always, when Hilary came out from the burrow of her work room, she saw everything with a rinsed eye. Now she sat down in the rocker in the kitchen and was dazzled by the beauty of a long slanting slab of sunlight on the white plaster wall. One might, she supposed, sit and take it in for half an hour, but say it? Next to impossible. These moments of vision when quite simple things became extraordinary were what she always meant to “get down,” but the impulse wavered, or got pushed aside. Hilary had always imagined that one of the blessings of old age would be that one might live by and for these essentials … the light on a wall. Instead one dragged around this great complex
What had been so disturbing during the night had been to endure the wake of the great wave of memories on which she had been transported, opening up all those boxes … the appalling complex of people who had entered deeply into her life, who had influenced, and changed, and enriched her. And it was absolutely untrue, she had discovered, to believe that age would diminish her power both to attract and to be attracted, to rush in to the collision with a new consciousness, to feel herself opening up like a sea anemone in the rich flood of feeling for a new person. Old, young, male, female—her capacity to be touched, to be involved, to care was, she realized, that still of a young girl. How did one keep growing otherwise? What was life all about otherwise? What separates us from animals except just this—that we can be moved by each other, and not primarily for sexual purposes? Granted, of course, that any deep collision, any relationship which profoundly affects one comes from the whole person, and can almost instantaneously shift from one phase to another, so that sex is never wholly absent and may come into play. Yes, that was the rub …, for then there is conflict. Someone gets hurt. And it was no use remembering that often she had been the hurt one: the fact remained that she had inevitably hurt others. “But I regret nothing,” she said aloud and firmly. For it hurts to be alive, and that’s a fact, but who can regret being alive and being for others, life-enhancing? We shall be dead a long time. Quite deliberately Hilary stuffed the letters into a drawer and bent her head toward the much-crossed-out worksheet of the poem she thought she might just possibly take by surprise and bring to an end on this morning of superior tension.
After a time, and when she had murmured some lines aloud, she shot a sheet of paper onto the typewriter and tapped out with one finger what she had in her mind, tore it out, and began to scribble changes and queries into the margins. She became wholly absorbed, was not aware of the crick in her shoulder, nor of the French clock chiming eleven and then twelve. At twelve she laid the sheets aside. It had been a wild hope that she could solve the puzzle in two hours. Still, she had made a start. There was now one really good line, an armature for the whole poem.… Yes.
“Good Heavens! The mail!” For once, because she was orbiting outside her usual routine, she had forgotten this daily blessing and curse. Usually she was standing at the mailbox when the postman drove up. Sometimes Mr. Willoughby was the only human being she spoke to during a whole day, and sometimes he brought a piece of fish with him for Sirenica, the shameless flirt, who had laid a spell on him with her blue eyes. But today of course he had long since come and gone; Sirenica was sitting beside the mailbox washing her face. Hilary reached in and found the usual packet of journals and letters. The very sight of it exhausted her, yet there was (she could not deny) always the same stab of expectation and of hope.… What surprise, what unexpected joy might be lurking among all the bills and requests for attention? And of course there was The New York Times .
As always, when Hilary came out from the burrow of her work room, she saw everything with a rinsed eye. Now she sat down in the rocker in the kitchen and was dazzled by the beauty of a long slanting slab of sunlight on the white plaster wall. One might, she supposed, sit and take it in for half an hour, but say it? Next to impossible. These moments of vision when quite simple things became extraordinary were what she always meant to “get down,” but the impulse wavered, or got pushed aside. Hilary had always imagined that one of the blessings of old age would be that one might live by and for these essentials … the light on a wall. Instead one dragged around this great complex
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