Empty Days and the State of Grace

Margarita Sikorskaia

A strange empty day. I did not feel well, lay around, looked at daffodils against the white walls, and twice thought I must be having hallucinations because of their extraordinary scent that goes from room to room. I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever. Today I do feel in a state of grace…

~ May Sarton

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And I’ll dance with you in Vienna,

I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise.

The hyacinth wild on my shoulder

my mouth on the dew of your thighs.

And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook,

with the photographs there and the moss.

And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty,

my cheap violin and my cross.

~ Federico García Lorca, poem, Leonard Cohen, music