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People have maladies of all kinds, she says, and if they have any sense, they don’t waste time whining about them. “We all have our burdens to bear,”
“The most important qualities a human can possess are an iron will and a persevering spirit,”
“Use it up—wear it out—make it do! Or do without.”
“It’s strange, don’t you think—to name your child after a living person you’ve chosen never to see again?” “Not so strange,” he says. “There’s this great line from The House of the Seven Gables: ‘The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease.’ Your father must have felt he had to forge his own path, even if it meant cutting ties to his family. It’s brave to resist the pull of the familiar. To be selfish about your own needs. I
FLOWERS FADE, FREEZE in an early frost, wither on the vine. Trees burst into flame and burn themselves out. Leaves crumble to ash.
I miss the thick, star-sprayed blackness of Hathorn Point at night, the soft glow of gaslight, the moments of absolute quiet, the view of our yellow fields and the cove and the sea in the distance, the horizon line beyond.
“People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find …”
“Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”
I think about all the ways I’ve been perceived by others over the years: as a burden, a dutiful daughter, a girlfriend, a spiteful wretch, an invalid … This is my letter to the World that never wrote to Me. “You showed what no one else could see,” I tell him.
What she wants most—what she truly yearns for—is what any of us want: to be seen. And look. She is.
As David Michaelis writes in Wondrous Strange: The Wyeth Tradition, “The down-to-earth naturalism of Wyeth’s paintings is deceptive. In his work, all is not as it seems.” Andrew Wyeth’s paintings always have an undercurrent of wonder and mystery; he was fascinated with the darker aspects of human experience.
