I have begun work on the four beauties I posted a picture of yesterday, and now two of them are covered in an assortment of papers that speak to the name I have given each of them.  Besides the fact that I already have some repair work to do on these first layers, I am excited to be breathing life into these creations, one of whom is, of course, named May.  What would she think of an artist living in southern California creating a work of art with a mannequin in her honor? 

I decided to flip through Journal of a Solitude this morning and see what grabbed me, and after a few stops here and there to see which passages I've underlined, I came upon this one:

"There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance withing it a precarious business."

I am barely into the new year and already see that this challenge is going to be one of my main journeys this year, as I feel I am in the midst of a radical outward to inward shift.  This is not to say I no longer enjoy my time with friends or that I will start severing connections with my community.  May Sarton writes extensively of visitors, guests, travels, speaking engagements, friend and neighbors, and always with a certain level of tension and angst.  I relate so well to her deep need for the connections she has in her life, how she knows her house cannot become a home without sharing the space with those she loves most.  Yet as an artist, the time she takes to maintain and nurture these relationships takes away from the time she needed as a writer.  Her ability to dive deep into her creative process, not to mention create lesson plans for her classes and meet deadlines for her publishers, was compromised by social obligations on a regular basis.

I'm not sure that I need so much more alone time – I have enough to spare in many ways – but there is a certain kind of jagged edge to the extoverted area of my life that I long to wear down and soften.  Perhaps I ought to imagine it as a piece of wood that I am trying to level one strip at a time, that this is an issue that needs to be handled gently and patiently.  On the very last page of Journal of a Solitude, Sarton writes, "…perhaps we write toward what we will become from where we are.  The book is less and more than I had imagined it might be."  I cannot help but believe that she was writing about the struggles she had creating a journal of a solitude.  So much of what she writes in this book is about walking that tightrope between inward and outward, the perils of each, the joy in both, and the energy that sparks when the two clash together.  This is the artist's journey, the push and pull that feeds our work and drives us to be better, write more and love with all of our hearts.