...the best back-yard in the world does not compensate for lack of unsupervised meadows, hollows & thickets—ponds, dells and unknown dusty roads.
The mediocre mind is eager to accept the impossible supernatural things, but scoffs at the most ordinary natural phenomena.
Fred, C&B& I to visit some of the caves for which that country is noted. Very beautiful and fantastic – (climbing stairs on last one, but thru solid rock – exhausted, singing Volga Boatman Song).
P.M. With W.W. to a bog he had told me about to find pitcher-plants. A rarely beautiful place, a new experience for me. The thick heavy moss was like springs under the feet...
I sit here by the windows of my little attic, almost too full of happiness to write about it – a warm moist breeze comes in at times, bringing with it a multitude of sounds –
That rhapsodic summer of 1915 – it was then that my art career began to bloom.
That rhapsodic summer of 1915 – it was then that my art career began to bloom.
Awake at 5:00 – weird yellow salmon cloud rhythms in sky– To Three trees — Sun boils forth yellow in a streaked drab sky – Meadowlarks silvery notes ascend with the light – remote cawing of crow; wind in a clattering poplar– roosters crowing from blue hazy distances, cows lowing– Silver haze all morning – Noon– wind from east – dappled sky– Afternoon dark, cool wind – evening sunburst – copious song of catbird– earth lit up with lurid yellow light from above – Robin sings lustily— At morning fierce wind-whistle in upper air—
I wish it were possible to do significant work without getting so “wrought-up”—In doing a subject like this in which memory and emotion play equal parts, nothing seems to go right, and I must start again and again; I finally reach a point when in a rage, I destroy all I have done so far,—and at that moment, unknown to myself, I have solved it.
I feel more and more unhappy that I am failing to paint the fresh late Spring season. The magic time of Summer Solstice is fast approaching—I must somehow do something of this great moment when the sun and earth meet in their greatest intimacy—a truly mystical event.