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diff --git a/43556-0.txt b/43556-0.txt index 32842ea..a2c87ba 100644 --- a/43556-0.txt +++ b/43556-0.txt @@ -1,37 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of I, Mary MacLane, by Mary MacLane - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: I, Mary MacLane - A Diary of Human Days - -Author: Mary MacLane - -Release Date: August 25, 2013 [EBook #43556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK I, MARY MACLANE *** - - - - -Produced by Marie Bartolo from page images made available -by the Internet Archive: American Libraries - - - - - - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43556 *** [Photograph: Author’s portrait] [Signature: Mary MacLane] @@ -8145,359 +8112,4 @@ punctuation have been preserved as printed in the original. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: I, Mary MacLane - A Diary of Human Days - -Author: Mary MacLane - -Release Date: August 25, 2013 [EBook #43556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK I, MARY MACLANE *** - - - - -Produced by Marie Bartolo from page images made available -by the Internet Archive: American Libraries - - - - - - - - - - [Photograph: Author's portrait] - [Signature: Mary MacLane] - - - - - I, MARY MACLANE - - _A DIARY OF HUMAN DAYS_ - - - BY - MARY MACLANE - AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF MARY MACLANE" - - - [Illustration: Publisher's logo] - - - NEW YORK - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - _Copyright, 1917, by_ - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - - -_All rights reserved, including that of translation into -foreign languages._ - - - - -_To M-- T--_ - - - _these Live Fruits - from the Withered Garden_ - - - - -I, MARY MACLANE - - - - -_A crucible of my own making_ - - - To-day - -It is the edge of a somber July night in this Butte-Montana. - -The sky is overcast. The nearer mountains are gray-melancholy. - -And at this point I meet Me face to face. - -I am Mary MacLane: of no importance to the wide bright world and -dearly and damnably important to Me. - -Face to face I look at Me with some hatred, with despair and with -great intentness. - -I put Me in a crucible of my own making and set it in the flaming -trivial Inferno of my mind. And I assay thus: - -I am rare--I am in some ways exquisite. - -I am pagan within and without. - -I am vain and shallow and false. - -I am a specialized being, deeply myself. - -I am of woman-sex and most things that go with that, with some other -_pointes_. - -I am dynamic but devasted, laid waste in spirit. - -I'm like a leopard and I'm like a poet and I'm like a religieuse and -I'm like an outlaw. - -I have a potent weird sense of humor--a saving and a demoralizing -grace. - -I have brain, cerebration--not powerful but fine and of a remarkable -quality. - -I am scornful-tempered and I am brave. - -I am slender in body and someway fragile and firm-fleshed and sweet. - -I am oddly a fool and a strange complex liar and a spiritual vagabond. - -I am strong, individual in my falseness: wavering, faint, fanciful in -my truth. - -I am eternally self-conscious but sincere in it. - -I am ultra-modern, very old-fashioned: savagely incongruous. - -I am young, but not very young. - -I am wistful--I am infamous. - -In brief, I am a human being. - -I am presciently and analytically egotistic, with some arresting -dead-feeling genius. - -And were I not so tensely tiredly sane I would say that I am mad. - -So assayed I begin to write this book of myself, to show to myself in -detail the woman who is inside me. It may or it mayn't show also a -type, a universal Eve-old woman. If it is so it is not my purport. I -sing only the Ego and the individual. - -So does in secret each man and woman and child who breathes, but is -afraid to sing it aloud. And mostly none knows it is that he does -sing. But it is the only strength of each. A bishop serving truly -and tirelessly the poor of his diocese serves a strong vanity and -ideal of the Ego in himself. A starving sculptor who lives in and for -his own dreams is an Egotist equally with the bishop. And both are -Egotists equally with me. - -Egotist, not egoist, is my word: it and not the idealized one is the -'winged word.' - -It is made of glow and gleam and splendor, that Ego. I would be its -votary. - -So I write me this book of Me--my Soul, my Heart, my sentient Body, -my magic Mind: their potentialities and contradictions. - ---there is a Self in each human one which lives and has its sweet -vain someway-frightful being not in depths and not in surfaces but -Just Beneath The Skin. It is the Self one keeps for oneself alone. -It is the Essence of soul and bones. It is the slyest subtlest thing -in human scope. It is the loneliest: tragically lonely. It is long, -long isolation--beautiful, terrifying, barbarous, shameful, trivial -to points of madness, ever-present, infinitely intriguing to oneself, -passionately hidden: hidden forever and forever-- - -It is my aim to write out that in the pages of this Me-book: no -depths save as they come up and touch that, no surfaces save as they -sink skin-deep. Only the flat unglowing bloody Self Just Beneath My -Skin. - -I shall fail in it, partly because my writing skill is unequal to -some nicenesses in the task, but mostly because I am not very honest -even with myself. - -I'll come someway near it. - - - - -_Half inevitably, half by choice_ - - - To-morrow - -Half inevitably, half by choice, I write this book now. - -I am at a lowering impatient shoulder-shrugging life-point where I -must express myself or lose myself or break. - -And I am quite alone as I live my life. - -And I am unhappy--a scornful unhappiness not of bitter positive grief -which admits of engulfing luxuries of sorrow, but of muffled unrests -and tortures of knowing I fit in nowhere, that I drift--drift--and it -brings an unbearable dread, always more and more dread, into days and -into wakeful nights. - -And writing it turns the brunt of it a little away from me. - -And to write is the thing I most love to do. - -And I myself am the most immediate potent topic I can find in my -knowledge to write on: the biggest, the littlest, the broadest, the -narrowest, the loveliest, the hatefulest, the most colorful, the most -drab, the most mystic, the most obvious, and the one that takes me -farthest as a writer and as a person. - -I write myself when I write the thoughts smouldering in me whether -they be of Death, of Roses, of Christ's Mother, of Ten-penny Nails. - -One's thoughts are one's most crucial adventures. Seriously and -strongly and intently to contemplate doing murder is everyway more -exciting, more romantic, more profoundly tragic than the murder done. - -I unfold myself in accursed and precious written thoughts. I cast the -reflections of my inner selves on the paper from the insolent mirror -of my Mind. - ---my Mind--it is so free-- - -My Soul is not free: God hung a string of curses, like a little -manacling chain, round its neck long and long ago. Always I feel it. -My Heart is not free for it is dead: in a listless way and a trivial -way, dead. And my Body--it is free but has a seeming of something -wasted and useless like a dinner spread out on a table uneaten and -growing cold. - ---but my free Mind-- - -Though I were shut fast in a prison: though I were strapped in an -electric chair: though I were gnawed and decayed by leprosy: I -still could _think_, with thoughts free as gold-drenched outer air, -thoughts delicate-luminous as young dawn, thoughts facile, seductive, -speculative, artful, evil, sly, sublime. - -You might cut off my two hands: but you could not keep me from -remembering the Sad Gray Loveliness of the Sea when the Rain beats, -beats, beats upon it. - -You might admonish me by driving a red-hot spike between my two white -shoulders: but you could not by that influence my Thoughts--you could -not so much as change their current. - -I am intently aware of my Mind from moment to moment--all the passing -life-moments. The awareness is a troubled power, a heavy burden and a -wild enchantment.-- - -Also what I feel I write. - -I am my own law, my own oracle, my own one intimate friend, my own -guide though I guide me to dead-walls, my own mentor, my own foe, my -own lover. - -I am in age one-and-thirty, a smouldering-flamed period which -feels the wings of the Youth-bird beating strong and violent for -flight--half-ready to fly away. - -I am not a charming person. Quite seventy singly-used adjectives -would better fit me. - -But I have some charm of youth, and a charm of sex, and a charm of -intellect and intuition, and some charms of personality. - -I have a perfervid appreciation of those things in other persons. And -my steel has sometime struck fire from their flint. - -But always my steel has turned back drearily yet strongly to itself. - - - - -_A twisted moral_ - - - To-morrow - -If I should meet God to know and speak to the first thing but one I -should ask him would be, 'What was your idea, God, in making me?' - -I can believe he had some Purpose in it. - -I'm in most ways a devilish person. There's sevenfold more evil -than good in me. It is evil of a mixed and menacing kind, the kind -that goes dressed in brave and beauty-tinted clothes and is sane -and sound. While the good in me is ill and forlorn and nervously -afraid--a something of tear-blurred eyes and trembling fingers. - -Yet God has made many things less plausible than me. He has made -sharks in the ocean, and people who hire children to work in their -mills and mines, and poison ivy and zebras-- - ---and he has made besides a Wonder of things: Thin Pink Mountain -Dawns, Young English Poets, Hydrangeas in the sudden Blue of their -first Bloom, human Singing Voices,--more things, always more-- - -When I think of them all a joyous thrill breaks over me like a little -frenzied wave. It is delirium-of-bliss to feel oneself living though -shadows be pitch-black. - -God has a Purpose in making everything, I think. - -I am half-curious about the Purpose that goes with me. He might have -made me for his own amusement. He might have made me to discipline -my Soul with some blights and goads or to punish it for bacchanalian -ease and pleasure in the long-distant centuries-old past. He might -have made me to season or scourge other lives, as I may touch them, -with Mary-Mac-Lane-ness. He might have made me to point a twisted -moral. - -I muse about it with doubts. - -But if I knew my Purpose I belike would not swerve a hair's-breadth -from my own course which is an unhallowedly selfish one. - -If I could myself see a way of truth I would walk in it. I have it in -me to worship. I long to worship. And I am game, wearily and coldly -game: when I start I go on through to the end. - -But I see no way of truth--none for me. And God is eternally absent -and reticent. So I go on in the way where I find myself. And muse -about it. And damn it faintly as I make nothing of it. - - - - -_Everyday and to-morrow_ - - - To-morrow - -Aloofly I live in this Butte in the outward rôle of a family daughter -with no responsibilities. - -This Butte is an incongruous living-place for me. - -And I have not one human friend in it--no kindliness. And Nature in -her perplexingest mood would not of herself have cast me as a family -daughter. Three things have kept me thus for four years past: that -nothing has called me out of it: a slight family pressure like a tiny -needle-point which pierces only if one moves: and to stay thus is -presently the line of least resistance. - -Unless impelled to violent action by a violent reason--like love -or hatred or jealousy or a baby or humiliated pride or rowelling -ambition--a woman follows the physical line of least resistance. I -have followed it these years with outward acquiescence and inward -rages--languid rages which lay me waste. - -The years and acquiescences and rages have built up a mood which -compasses me, drives me, damns me and lifts me up. - -It is a forceful mood, though I am not myself forceful. - -This mood is this book.-- - -I live an immoral life. It is immoral because it is deadly futile. -All my Tissues of body, soul, mind and heart are wasting, decaying, -wearing down, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day: with no -return to me or to my life, nor to anything human or divine. - -It makes me dread my life and myself. - -I do not quite know why. - -But to be an ardent pickpocket or an eager harlot would feel honester. - -My Everyday goes like this: I waken in the morning and lie listless -some minutes with drooping eyelids. I look at a gilt-and-blue bar -of morning light which slants palely in at one window and at a -melting-gold triangle of sun which shows at the other window on the -red brick wall of the house next to this. Then I say 'another day,' -and I kick off bed-covers with one foot and slide out of my narrow -bed, and into blue slippers, and out of a thin nightgown, and into -peignoir or bathrobe. I twist and flatten and gather up my tangled -hair and push some amber pins through it. And I go into a respectable -green-and-gray bathroom and draw a bath and get into it. I splash in -brief swift soapsuds, and go under a sudden heroic icy cold shower, -and dry me with a scourging towel. Then I go back into the blue-white -bed-room and get into clothes, feminine thin under-garments and a -nunlike frock. - -I look in my mirror. Some days I'm a delicately beautiful girl. -Other days I'm a very plain woman. - -One's physical attractiveness is a matter of one's mental chemistry. - -I say to Me in the mirror, 'It's you-and-me, Mary MacLane, and -another wasting damning To-morrow. - - "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow - Creeps in this petty pace from day to day."' - -A haunting decadence is in that To-morrow thought. And always the -To-morrow thought comes out of my morning mirror. I dwell on it -awhile, till my gray eyes and my lips and my teeth and my forehead -are tired of it, and make nothing new of it. - -I jerk the flat scollop of hair at one side of my forehead and -turn away. I open door and windows wider for the blowing-through -of breezes. And I wander down-stairs. It is half-after nine or -half-after ten. I go into the clean empty clock-ticking kitchen -and cook my breakfast. It is a task full of hungry plaisance and -pleasantness. I make a British-feeling breakfast of tea and marmalade -and little squares of toast and pink-and-tan rashers of bacon and two -delightful eggs. Up to the moment of broaching the eggs the morning -has an ancient sameness with other mornings. But eggs, though I've -eaten them every day for quite five-and-twenty years, are always a -fascinating novelty. - -They are delicious in my breakfast. So are the squares of toast and -the bacon-rashers and the tea and marmalade. When I've done with them -I lay down my napkin by my cup, light a cigarette, breathe a puff -or two from it and feel contentedly aware that my brain has gone to -rest in sweet tranquillity with my breakfast. When my brain is in my -head it analyzes the soul out of my body, the gleam out of my gray -eyes, the savor out of my life, the human taste off my tongue. That -post-breakfast moment is the only peace-moment I know in my day and -in my life. - -Having puffed away the cigarette and read bits of a morning paper -I then prove me arrantly middle-class by contemplating washing my -breakfast dishes. - -I am middle-class, quite, from the Soul outward. But it is not -specially apparent--one's tastes and aspirations flit garbledly far -and wide. But a tendency to wash one's dishes after eating one's -breakfast feels conclusively and pleasantly middle-class. Not that I -do always wash them, but always I think of it with the inclination to -do it. - -I sit on the shaded front veranda in the summer noon-day and look -away south at the blue Highlands, ever snow-peaked: or east at the -near towering splendid grim wall of the arid Rockies which separates -this Butte from New York, from London,--the Spain-castles--the -Pyramids--the Isle of Lesbos: or south-west beyond house-tops at some -foothills above which hangs a fairy veil made by melting together a -Lump of Gold and an Apricot and spreading it thin. - -Then restlessly I go into the house and up to my room. I put it in -order--in prim, prim immaculate order. One marked phase of mine -is of some wanton creature--a mænad, a mental Amazon, a she-imp. -But playing opposite to that is another--that of a New-England -spinster steel-riveted to certain neat ferociously-orderly habits. -A stray thread on my blue rug hurts, _hurts_ me until I pick it -up. Dust around my room gives me a nervous pain, a piteous gnawing -grief-of-the-senses, until I've removed it. And my chastened-looking -bed--after I've turned over its tufted mattress and 'made' it, smooth -and white and crisp and soft--how the fibers of me would writhe -should anyone sit on it. But no one sits on it. And I myself sooner -than press one finger-tip down into its perfectness would sell my -body to a Balkan soldier for four dimes: it is that way I feel about -it. My bed _must_ be kept perfect till the moment I slip into it at -night to float under the dream-worlds. - -Then maybe I pull a soft black hat down over my hair and draw on -gloves and go out into the gray-paved streets for a longish walk. -Or maybe the day is humidly hot. Then I don't go but stay in the -blue-white room and mend a bit of torn lingerie or a handkerchief -or a silk stocking or a petticoat. Or I take books and dig out some -Greek--Homer or a Sapphic fragment--very laboriously but marvelling -that I can do it at all: the first things one forgets being the -last things one learned at school. Or I read an English or a French -philosopher, or a translated Tolstoi, or a bit of Balzac novel, or -some bits of Dickens-books with which latter I am long familiar and -long enamored for the restful falseness of their sentiment and the -pungent appetizing charm of their villains. - -And betweenwhiles I think and think. - -Then it's dinnertime and I perhaps change into the other nunlike -dress, and nibble some dinner with no appetite, and talk with the -assembled small family in a vein and tone of life-long insincerity. -When in family-circle-ness I've had to hide my true self as if behind -a hundred black veils since the age of two years. It would be a -poignant effort now to show any of it at the family dinners, which -is the only meeting-time. The one easy way is to be comprehensively -insincere at the dinners where with no appetite I nibble. None -there wants my sincerity, and so in my Soul's accounting now it is -eternally and determinedly No Matter. It is a little bell which -stopped ringing long and long ago. If it rang now it would ring only -No-Matter, No-Matter. - -Then it's night and I go to take the walk I didn't take in the -afternoon. I walk down long lonely streets. Long lonely thoughts -pile into me and through me and wrap me in a nebula that I can feel -around me like a mantle. I walk two or three miles of paved streets -till I'm very tired. I am lithe but fragile from constant involuntary -self-analysis. One may analyze one's life-experience and life-emotion -till physical tissues at times grow frail, gossamer-thin. It is then -as if--at a word, a whispered thought, a beat of the heart--one's -Soul might flutter through the Veil, join light hands with the -death-angel and flee away. - ---but I love my life even while I analyze it bit by bit and so hate -it. I love it in its grating monotones and its moments of glow and -its days of shadow and storm and bitterish lowering passion-- - -I walk back beneath a night sky of dusky velvet-blue decked with -jewels of moon and star and flying bright-edged cloud. The night has -a subdued preciousness, like an illicitly pregnant woman's. It is big -with the bastard-exquisite To-morrow. The night air kisses my lips -and throat. I pull off my gloves to feel it on my hands. It gives me -a charmed and unexciting feeling of being caressed without being -loved. - -I come back to my blue-white room, take off my hat, ruffle my fingers -through my hair, look at Me in the mirror and smile the melancholy -wicked smile which I keep for Me-alone. It's an intimate moment of -greeting--a recognition of my Familiar on coming back to her. Often -when I walk I go without Me, and wander far from Me, and forget Me. - -Then I sit at my flat black desk and write desultorily for two or -three or four hours. Sometimes a letter, sometimes some verses or a -hectic fancy in staid prose. But now mostly this. - -Then I go downstairs to a refrigerator or a cellar-way to find -food--a slice off an affable cold joint, some chaste-looking slices -of bread, a slim innocent onion. And I eat them, not relishingly but -voraciously, reminding myself of a lean foraging furtive coyote. It -is two or three or four in the morning. I smoke a quiet cigarette in -a cool night doorway and count the nervous gray-velvet moths outside -the screen. - -And all the while I think and think. - -Then I come up to my room and sit on the floor by my low bookcase and -read some last-century English poets--the Brownings and Shelley and -the unspeakable John Keats. The Poets make me a space of incalescent -magic and loveliness. They are the beings blest of a flaming Heaven. -In the midst of soddenest earthiness their fiery wings 'pierce the -night.' - -Then I'm thrilledly tired. I close the books and make ready for -my bed in a lyric-feeling languor. A soft soothing unsnapping of -whalebone stays: a muffled rhythmic undoing of metal-and-silk-rubber -garters: a pushing down and sliding out of daytime clothes -and into a thin pale cool silk nightgown: a hurried brushing -of hair: an anointing of hands and throat with faint-scented -cream: a goodnight to Me in the mirror: a last wave of a fateful -thing--my life-essence--casual and determined and contemptuous and -menacing--sweeping down over me in an invisible shower: and I'm -betwixt smooth linen sheets. - -In twenty seconds blest, blest sleep. - -Of such wide littleness is my day made. One day will differ from -another in this or that volcanic molehill. And some days I not only -wash a great many dishes but do a deal of housework neatly and -self-satisfactorily and like a devilish scullery maid. - -And some days as I move in the petty pace thoughts and feelings sweet -or barbarous come and change my world's face in a moment. - -Also a casual human being of rabbitish brain and chipmunkish -sensibility may stray across my path and gently bore me and -accentuate my own paganness. - -But always the same days in restless dubious To-morrowness. - -Always immorally futile. - -And eerily alone. - - - - -_A mathematic dead-wall_ - - - To-morrow - -I'm put to it to decide whether God loves me or hates me when he sets -me down alone. - -There are times when my Loneliness is a charmed and scintillant and -resourceful Loneliness with a strange and ecstatic gleam in it. The -miracle of being a person rushes upon and about and into me 'with -lightning and with music.' - -One loses that in a day of many friendships. - -But oftener are times when the tired, tired heart and the weary, -weary brain beat-beat, beat-beat to anguished torturing self-rhythms. -The spirit of me closes its eyes in turbulent dusks of wondering -and wishing and leans its forehead against a mathematic dead-wall. -And it prays--blind useless unhumble prayers which leave it dry and -destitute, arid, unspeakably lacking. But when it lifts its head -and opens its eyes there are the melting mauves and maroons of a -dead sun across the evening sky, and the small far wistful flames of -always-hopeful stars. - ---they make it matter less whether God loves or hates me, but I still -wish I knew. - - - - -_My neat blue chair_ - - - To-morrow - -I suppose there's nothing quite peculiar to even my inmost self in -what I ponder and what I experience and what I feel. - -My only elemental 'differentness' is that I find it and write it. - -But I used to think at eighteen--those thrice-fired adolescent -moments--that only I suffered, only I reached achingly out into the -mists, only I tasted new-bloomed life-petals intolerably sweet and -bitter on my lips. - -The egotism of youth is merciless, measureless, endlessly vulnerable. -Youth plays on itself as one plays on a little dulcimer, with music -as sweet, but with a crude cruel recklessness which jerks and breaks -the strings. - -I have got by that stage of egotism. But I've entered on another -wilder, more lawless--farther-seeing if less be-visioned. - -While I sit here this midnight in a Neat Blue Chair in this -Butte-Montana for what I know a legion-women of my psychic breed -may be sitting lonely in neat red or neat blue or neat gray or neat -any-colored chairs--in Wichita-Kansas and South Bend-Indiana and -Red Wing-Minnesota and Portland-Maine and Rochester-New York and -Waco-Texas and La Crosse-Wisconsin and Bowling Green-Kentucky: -each feeling Herself set in a wrong niche, caught in a tangle of -little vapidish cross-purpose: each waiting, waiting always--waiting -all her life--not hopeful and passionate like Eighteen but patient -or blasphemous or scornful or volcanic like Early-Thirty: the -waiting-sense giving to each a personal quality big and suggestive -and nurturing--and with it a long-accustomed feeling like a thin -bright blade stuck deep in her breast: each more or less roundly -hating Waco-Texas and Portland-Maine and Red Wing-Minnesota and the -other places: and each beset by hot unquiet humannesses inside her -and an old yearn of sex and the blood warring with myriad minute -tenets dating from civilization's dawn-times. - -But though I am of that psychic breed no little tenets war in me. - -It's as if a prelate and a wood-nymph had fathered and mothered -me: making me of a ridiculous poignant conscience and of no human -traditions. - -I am free of innate conventionalities, free as a wildcat on a -twilight hill. I am free of them as I sit here, quiet-looking in my -plain black dress. The virile Scotch-Canadian curl is brushed and -brushed out of my hair to make it lie smooth and discreet over my -ears and forehead. My feet are shod daintily like a charming girl's. -My nails are pinkly polishedly pointed. My narrow black eyebrows -look nearly patrician in their sereneness. My lips are stilly sad. -My eyelids droop like the sucking dove's. But my gray eyes beneath -the lids--when I raise them to the glass, my own Essence looks out -of them, tiredly vivid. It seems made of languor and barbaricness -and despair: and vague guiltiness, and some pure disastrous heathen -religion, and lust: and lurid consciousness of everyday things and -smouldering melancholy and blazing loving hatred of life. - -My gray eyes out-look the wildcat's on a twilight hill. - -But--so far as the Sitting goes--I sit here in my Neat Blue Chair -the same as they all sit in any-colored chairs in their Wichitas and -La Crosses. - - - - -_A lost person_ - - - To-morrow - -I am wandering about, a Lost Person, wandering and lost. - -Not magnificently lost in wide Gothic forest closes, with strong -great blackish green trunks and branches all around overwhelming and -thrilling me. - -Not dramatically lost on desert reefs with breakers riding up like -menacing hosts and joyously drowning me. - -But lost surprisingly in a small clump of shoulder-high hazel-brush. -In it are some wood-ticks, and a few caterpillars, and a few wan -spiders which spin little desultory webs from twig to twig and then -abandon them for other twigs. Underfoot are unexpected wet places at -intervals that my high hard heels sink into exasperatingly. - -I walk round and round and across in the hazel-brush groping and -knowing I'm lost in it but knowing little else of it: knowing no way -out of it. - -The bushes bear green leaves--rather small ones and warped because -the clump is in a half-shaded place back of a hill. And they bear -hazel-nuts, but not very good ones--mostly shell. - - - - -_A thin damnedness_ - - - To-morrow - -I own Two plain black Dresses and none besides. - -And I need no more. - -In which two sentences I touch the crux and the keynote and the thin -damnedness of my life as it is set: of my life, not of myself, for -myself lives naked inside the circle of my life. - -But my outer life is spaced by my Two plain Dresses. My Two Dresses -measure how far removed I presently am from the wide world of things. - -In the world of things a woman is judged not specifically by her -morals: not invariably by her reputation: not absolutely by her -money: not indubitably by her social prestige: only relatively by her -beauty: and as to her brain or lack of it--la-la-la! She is judged in -the matter-world simply, completely, entirely by her clothes. It is -tacitly so agreed and decreed all over the earth--wherever women are -of the female sex and men pursue them. - -It is no injustice to any woman. It is the fairest fiat in the -unwritten code. - -Only a few women, the few specialized breeds, can express the fire -or the humanness in them by play-acting or suffragetting or singing -or painting or writing or trained-nursing or house-keeping. But -there's not one--from a wandering Romany gypsy, red-blooded and -strong-hearted, to an over-guarded overbred British princess--who -doesn't express what she is in the clothes she wears and the way she -wears them. - -Her clothes conceal and reveal, artfully and contradictorily and -endlessly. - -It is all a limitless field. - -No actor could act Hamlet without that perfect Hamletesque black -costume. - -A nun's staid beautiful habit interprets her own meanings within and -without. - -A woman naked may look markedly pure: the same woman clothed -conventionally and demurely may achieve a meanly ghoulishly foul -seeming. - -One either is made or marred by one's habiliments. - -A woman by her raiment's make and manner can express more of her wit, -her ego, her temper, her humor, her plastic pulsating personality -than she could by throwing a bomb, by making a good or bad pudding, -by losing her chastity or by traducing her neighbor. The germ and -shadow and likelihood of each of those acts is in the fashion and -line and detail of her garments. - -A jury thinks it tries a woman for a crime. Some of the twelve good -and true may admit each to himself that they are trying the color of -her eyes or the shape of her chin or the droop of her shoulders. But -it's only her clothes they unwittingly try for murder or theft or -forgery, or whatever has tripped her. It may be an alluringly shabby -little dress that saves her from the gallows. It may be a hat worn at -the wrong angle that is found guilty and sentenced to death. A glove -in her lap, a fluttering veil, a little white handkerchief dropped to -the floor by her chair--those are what the court tries for life or -liberty.-- - -But it is I I tell about, I and my Two plain Dresses. - -In me a smart frock or an unbecoming one makes a surprising -difference. I impress my costume with my mixed temperament and it -retaliates in kind. - -One day I looked a beautiful young creature--one August Saturday in -New York it was--in a tailored gown of embroidered linen. With it I -wore such a good hat: its color was pale olive: its texture was soft -Milan straw: its price was forty dollars. My shoes were gray silk. I -so fancied myself that day that I feared lest my writing talent had -gone away from me. For God takes away the beer if he gives you the -skittles. And in ill-conditioned clothes--some days the weather, the -devil, the soddenness of life get into one's garments and make even -fair ones look ill-conditioned--I am plain-faced, plain all over--so -plain that the villainies of my nature feel doubtful and I half-think -I may be a good woman. - -In a life full of people I would own varied delicate beautiful -clothes since it is by them one is judged, and since I am quite -vain. But no people are in my life. I feel deadlocked. I am caught in -a vise made by my own analytic ratiocination. I am not free to live a -world-life till I've someway expressed Me and learned if not whither -I go at least where I stand. - -So it's Two plain Dresses I own and none besides. - -It may be I shall not ever again need more. - -The Two Dresses are at present of serge and voile. Their identity -changes with change of fashion and with wearing out. They are cut -well and fit me well. But the Two does not change, nor the plainness. -I change only from one Frock to the other and from the other to the -one again. - -I have various other clothes. A woman--whatever her traits and -tempers--garners what she can of handmade under-linens and dainty -nightgowns and silk hose and all such private panoply. They are the -apparel of her sex rather than her individuality. The uncognizant -world is unable to judge her by them. But the woman herself judges -and respects herself by the goodness of her intimate garments. - -My sex is to me a mystic gift. I marvel over it and clothe it -silkenly. - -Also I own a healthful-looking percale house-gown or two in which I -do housework. - -But my passing life, my eerie lonely life, is lived in my Two Dresses -and none besides, and I need no more. - - - - -_A prison of self_ - - - To-morrow - -My Two Dresses tell me the scope of my present Mary-Mac-Lane-ness. - -Every day they tell me things about myself. - -They tell me I'm living in a prison of self, invisible and ascetic -and somberly just. - -They tell me I'm living an outer life narrow and broodingly -companionless and that if I were not self-reliant by long habit a -leprous morbidness would rot me in body and spirit. - -They tell me because of outer solitude an inner fever of emotion and -egotism and a fervid analytic light are on all my phases of self: -mental, physical, psychical and sexual. - -They tell me my way of thought is at once meditative and -cave-womanish. - -They tell me I'm all ways the Unmarried Woman and profoundly -loverless. - -They tell me I'm like a child and like a sequestered savage. - -They tell me I am having no restful unrealities of social life with -chattering women and no monotonous casually bloodthirsty flirtations -with men. - -They tell me I walk daily to the edges of myself and stare into -horrible-sweet egotistic abysses. - -They tell me I'm grave-eyed and coldly melancholy. - -They tell me there's a bereftness in the curves of my breasts and an -unfulfillment in my loose-girt loins. - -They tell me I am barren of sensation and fertile in feeling. - -They tell me God has taken away the beer and also the skittles and -left me only pieces of bread and drinks of water. - - - - -_A winding sheet_ - - - To-morrow - -The least important thing in my life is its tangibleness. - -The only things that matter lastingly are the things that happen -inside me. - -If I do a cruel act and feel no cruelty in my Soul it is nothing. If -I feel cruelty in my Soul though I do no cruel act I'm guilty of a -sort of butchery and my spirit-hands are bloody with it. - -The adventures of my spirit are realer than the outer things that -befall me. - -To dwell on the self that is known only to me--the self that is -intricate and versatile, tinted, demi-tinted, deep-dyed, luminous, -gives me an intimate delectation, a mental inflorescence and -sometimes an exaltation. It is not always so but it can be so. But -always to look back on the mass of outer events that have made my -tangible life darkens my day. - -Introspection throws a witching spell around me, though it may be a -black one. - -But retrospection wraps me in a Winding Sheet. - -When the day is already dark from low-hanging clouds--and often when -the sun is bright, bright, bright--I walk my floor and think of my -scattered life-flotsam with a frown at the eyebrows: a coarse and -heavy and twisted frown. - -To-day was a leaden day. The air held a quality like the infernal -breath of dead people. I leaned elbows on my dull window-sill and -looked off at green and purple mountains. I tried to think of some -reason--some reason tangible or poetic--for living. - -I wore my brocade Chinese coat fastened down the left side with -round flashing glass buttons and embroidered with blue bats and -gardenias: and with it a crinkly crêpe-silk petticoat: and silk -shoes and respectable white silk stockings. I felt righteous because -in the forenoon I had done much housework. I worked thoroughly and -well, swearing and repeating poetry softly to lend me impetus. And -afterward I felt useful and good. - -But having changed from Dutch cap and apron and domesticness to -scented silk and my sad window I grew suddenly frail and vulnerable. -Shadows stormed my wall and scaled it and entered in and sacked my -castle. I lounged away from my window, folded my arms in my loose -blue sleeves and slowly walked my floor. I had no strength within to -combat shadows. - -I picked up two alien shreds, of lint and paper respectively, from -the rug, but inside me undigested and indigestible memories had their -own way. - -They brought close an unsatisfying and dissatisfying vista of Mary -MacLanes. - -There was a stubborn baby in Winnipeg-Canada, as I've heard, a baby -with a white skin, coldly pensive dark-blue eyes, no hair, no voice, -hand-worked muslin frocks and a fat lumpish mien. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a three-year-old child, as I dimly remember, still in -Canada and still stubborn, with a stout keg-like pink-and-white body, -baffling blue eyes, a tiny voice, thick sun-colored curls, cambric -frocks and short white socks and a morose temper. She had one love, -a yellow tortoise-shell kitten which she hugged and hugged with -violence until one day it died surprisingly in her arms. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a seven-year-old child in Minnesota, as I well remember, -still stubborn and still often morose, with a thin bony little body, -conscious gray eyes, a tanned face, weather-beaten hands, untidy -frocks, beautiful fluffy golden hair, a tendency to secretiveness and -lies, a speculative mind, fantastic day-dreams and a free hoydenish -way of life. She had playmates but no loves except an objective love -for quiet greenwoods and sweet meadows and windy hills and hay-filled -barns, and for the surface details of life. She had subjective -hatreds for being fussed over, for being teased and for relatives. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a thirteen-year-old person, as I well remember, in a -windy Montana town, who was neither girl, child nor savage but -was a mixture of the three. She had a devilish contrary will and -temper, the unenlightened inexpressive wholly unattractive face and -features of early adolescence, a self-love that had not the dignity -of egotism and a devouring appetite for reading. She read everything -she happened on--from Voltaire to Nick Carter: from 'Lady Audley's -Secret' to Fox's Book of Martyrs. She read Alexander Pope and Victor -Hugo and John Stuart Mill. She read 'Lena Rivers' by Mary J. Holmes: -also Confucius: and the Brothers Grimm. She had a long-legged lanky -frame, conscious gray eyes, lovely coppery-gold dark hair and a silly -headful of tangled irrational thoughts. She had pathetic impossible -day-dreams. She had few companions and no loves but much hatred for -most things sane, sensible and honest. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was an eighteen-year-old girl in this Butte, as I well -remember, with the outward savagery tamed out of her by studiousness. -She was slim but no longer lanky and owned a white-hot aliveness -and a grace. She had repelling gray eyes and the beautiful coppery -hair, and about her an isolation, a complete aloofness. Her spirit -fed itself on wonderful and exquisite dreams alternated by moods -of young passionate woe, analyzed and torn to shreds: all of it hid -beneath a very quiet surface. She had outwardly a tense markedly -virginal quality but was inwardly insolently demi-vierge. She had no -companions, no friendships. She absorbed herself in digging knowledge -out of her high school text-books, studying and imagining over it, -and wandering in the fascinating highways which it opened to her. She -was at her moment of brain-awakening, soul-awakening, sex-awakening, -life-awakening, world-awakening: it uncurtained windows of magic -old sorrow for her to look from. She had no characteristic -weaknesses--she was strongly and scornfully courageous. It and the -need of self-expression, born of her teeming spirit and life-long -suppression of it, led her to write herself out in a book, which was -published. It was a poetic book and had insight and vision and a riot -of color with youth as its keynote. And it was human and figuratively -and literally full of the devil. The far-and-wide public in England -and America read it, and the newspapers made a loud noise about it -and the lonely girl who wrote it found herself oddly notorious. It -brought money which made her free of Butte and it brought human -things into her life which changed her life forever. And it brought -her no inner or outer excitement or elation. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a girl of six-and-twenty in Boston and in New York who had -half-forgot her long-familiar Ego for several years. She lived and -moved in folly and triviality and falseness. From having had too -few companions she had too many who did her no good and no harm but -helped her waste passing days and dissipate her moods and mental -tissues. She had grown worldly in taste, weak in manner of thought, -fragile in body from a mad irregularity of food and sleep, and in -every attribute uncertain of herself. Her Soul lay sleeping: her -Heart because it felt too keenly worked overtime: nothing engaged her -Mind. But her analytic trend stayed by and with it she pulled to bits -the varied fragmentary things she encountered. She learned New York -town in human sordid enlightening disciplining ways. She learned -people of many kinds in many ways. She learned other young women, -which depressed and exhilarated and perplexed her. She learned men--a -race whose make and motive toward women bears no analysis. She had -not the usual defensive armor of the normal woman, for she was not a -normal woman but certain trends of varying individuals gathered into -one sensitive woman-envelope. She was careless toward men in their -crude sex-rapacity in ways no 'regular' woman would dare or care to -be. No man could wring one tear from her, nor cause a quickening of -her foolish Heart, nor any emotion in her save mirth. And there were -women friends-- There were some friendships whose ill effects she -will never recover from, from having bestowed too much of herself on -them in the headlong newness of knowing and owning friendship after -her long young loneliness. - ---she could not cherish anything sanely. She couldn't stand in her -doorway and watch a pretty bird flying above a green hedge, and -admire it for the gleam of its brilliant wings in the sun, and let -it go. She must needs run out--leaving her door standing open and -tea-and-cakes untasted within--and follow where the bird flew, -through mire and brier, round the world-- - -From the odd notoriety were many letters and experiences and -adventures. She met some famous persons--writers, actors, artists--of -agreeable philosophic plaisances. She saw her book of youth -burlesqued with artistic piquance in the Weber-and-Fields show of -its season (with one Collier, adroitest of comedians, cast as her -long-lost Devil). There was a hasty voyage to the edge of Europe--a -voyage of terrific seasickness lying in her stateroom: a half-glimpse -of Paris all gray and green in the rain: a whole glimpse of London, -mystic, Dickensesque and roundly British in its yellow-brown fog: and -back again within ten days with more berth-ridden seasickness lasting -from Cherbourg to New York harbor: the whole adventure grown from a -Spring morning impulse. There were winters in Florida at sun-flooded -resort towns full of gaudiness and gambling and surprising -winter-resort people. Those were mongrel wastrel years empty of -every realness, every purpose, every vantage: they filled her with a -bastard wisdom. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a girl of seven-and-twenty worn to psychic fragments and -returned on a winter's day in a mood of indifference to this Butte. -It was her first return since she and her book had gone forth eight -years before. She celebrated it by being brought low with a baleful -blood-sucking demon of illness, what is called scarlet fever. Borne -upon by the mountain altitude after sea-levels and getting in the -way of epidemic germs, she had no chance. A strong feverish serpent -wound itself around her, consuming and destroying. There were -tortured dying weeks. She had never been ill before in all her life. -This was the most crucial bodily adventure she had known. It opened -a new and dreadful world. There was no passing of time in those -long, long weeks, no rational thinking, no day, no night, no dark, -no morning, no memory. There was pain, and utter weariness, and a -feeling of being hurried to her grave. There was an air of hurry -in the stillness around, as if she and Death had made a date which -she would be late in keeping unless she were urged on. There was a -doctor, and a crisp white starched nurse, and there were interminable -bitter drugs and tall narrow glasses of monotonous milk. She was -endlessly disturbed by milk and medicine, and by cold spongings -and changings of feverish bed-linens, and anointings with olive -oil, and takings of her temperature, and sprayings of her throat: -when she wanted only to sink down, down, forever and forever to the -underworld. She almost sank. But God capriciously decided he had -other plans for her--insomuch as decreeing she was not to be let -go then. After seven weeks she tiredly rose from her bed and took -stock of herself. Her rôle then was of a horrible yellow skeleton -with negative gray eyes, a wreck of tissue and vitality such as only -scarlet fever can achieve, and her beautiful thick coppery hair -changed to a strange short mouse-colored tangle. She was a long time -recovering. The scarlet demon changed her life and its meanings and -energies and outlooks more effectually than if she had been trapped -by a game-at-law and gaols and courts had had their toll of her. -But after months, a year and a half of months, her health came back -perfect if not vigorous, and her good looks--the few she ever had, -and even the humanizing incongruous curls, though changed, grew long -and covered her head again in a heathen frivol. A so magnificent -mystery is this blood-and-flesh. It grows up again out of its ashes. -Burn all of it but one cell in the scorchingest sickness and so that -bones are still whole it will renew itself from that, perfect as the -sweet-bay. But this mind, less magnificent and less mysterious and -more delicate and dubious, rallies only by aid of the heart beneath -it and the soul beyond it. Her mind came slowly out of darkened -apathy. It lived in a high-walled cloister telling its languid beads -by rote. But as if it sensed the sweet aura of her renewed body it at -last woke strong and cold overnight and was aware again of itself and -the mourning magic of being. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -And after a year or two more it is this Mary MacLane. - -It is I myself. - -I walk my floor in leaden retrospect-days with a feel in my throat of -damned and damning unfulfillment and at my eyebrows the twisted frown. - -In it is dread and anguish and worriment: in it is hideous altering -breaking prepollence of death. - ---if my hair, just my hair, had not come back after that red fever -I'd have decided--not capriciously like God but determinedly like -myself--to have died by my own hand one night. It is no brave -thought and it would have been no brave deed. Though it wants a -lowering courage to leave life when, despite all, one loves its very -textureless _color_, its bodiless air: not to speak of the yellow hot -deathless sunshine that can not reach one in her dark grave-- - -But the look and feel of my hair are the look and feel of positive -life, opposed to death. - -To live up to my hair would keep me brave. - -But the retrospects, which I can't escape, come and wrap me in the -Winding Sheet. - - - - -_The Dover road_ - - - To-morrow - -I lay down at noonday on my green couch and I had a quaint dream. -I have just awakened from it in a flush of languor and comfort. -And the dream is vivid in my mind. I dreamed I was married and it -was pink-and-pearl dawn in my married bed-room. And in the bed one -inch away from mine was not my married husband but 'another man.' -It was no man I can recall having seen. As I look back into the -dream he seems of the nowhere, a stranger. But in the dream he was -no stranger. I had crudely admitted him to my night. And I had just -awakened in the pink-and-white dawn and was sitting silk-gowned and -ruffle-haired in my bed, cross-legged like a tailor with my elbows -on my knees and my chin on my palms, idly contemplating him. And -he was lying in the other narrow bed contemplating me and smiling -a little. He had nice teeth and yellowish hair. The crux of the -dream was the sound 'off-stage' of the approaching footsteps of -monsieur-the-husband. As it always is in the psychology of dreams -the insistent thing in the situation was not the footsteps, nor even -that they were approaching, but the sound: the elusive threat of -their sound. He would presently discover us. Nobody appeared to care: -not 'another man' smiling so tranquilly: not I sitting musingly -overlooking him who had overnight 'enjoyed me': not the husband, -because he never knew it--before he could open the guilty door I -awoke. - -A short-cut gently headlong dream. I was at once married, mixed -adulterantly with an imperfect stranger and awaiting in pleasant mild -anticipation, to match the pink-and-pearl of the summer dawn, the -climax in the approaching sound of my husband's footsteps. It was -humorous and artistic. Unseemly preliminaries were done away with in -that dream. I was given at once the one exciting worthwhile moment -in it. - -Having no data as to what were my husband's temper and tenor, what -he looked like or who he was, I could not in the dream or out of it -surmise what he would say or how he would act when he opened the door. - ---a theme for idling speculation in a summer's day-- - -Also I wonder whence came that dream: so Unexpected: so Irrelevant to -any thought in me: so Artistically Right: so Disgusting: so Dramatic: -so quaintly Vulgar. - -A question: to which the one answer is that unanswerable answer to -all questions, propounded by Mr. F.'s Aunt--'There's milestones on -the Dover road.' - - - - -_The harp of worn strings_ - - - To-morrow - -May I own no unleavened egotism. - -May I own no egotism that is not sensitive and poignant and vibrant: -a harp of Worn Strings. - -The surprising world is full of non-analytic persons of ox-eyed -vision and hen-headed mental caliber whose egotism is a stupendous -impregnable armor: those who burned the Maid of Orleans: those who -crucified the prophet of Nazareth: those who killed John Keats. - -They inherit the earth, which is a Golden-Green earth, but never look -at it. - -They accept this life, which is Intoxicating life, but never feel its -texture with their fingers. - -They gather a Blue iris by a marsh-edge and let it die in their -sweating hands, or let it fall to the ground as they walk, or throw -it away when the Blue petals droop: without looking at it and -breathing it and knowing it: without sensing the tremulous Blue to be -lovelier in its wilting. - -Theirs is the thick fat solidly-fierce egotism of an emperor or an -infant whose main metaphysic concept is that _he_ is alive, and will -remain alive, and must be alive, though all around him bleed drop by -drop to their death. - -I have analyzed mine, and it is not so with me. - -If I say I am enchanting or false or despicable it is because I know -it's true. Not because I say it but because I have tested and proved -it. I feel the textures of my life with the tips of my fingers. I -turn my senses outward and let the old winds blow over them--icy, -balmy, harsh, gentle, scorching, cooling. I suffer for it but I know -those winds: songs of seas and stars and of little pebbles are in -their thunderous-dim wailing: life is in the soft stinging perfume of -their wings. - -No breath of poetry and beauty comes to me that I do not pay for with -the beating ache of my Heart, the nervous tensions of my Body, the -fraying and shredding of my Soul. If any beauty or poet-thing comes -easily and gives me pleasure and not pain, I know I have not yet got -it and that it will come again. - -It will come again: with the pain. - -I can't eat cake and have it. - -I can't make silk purses out of sows' ears. - -Those things I learn nearly perfectly from playing on my harp with -the Worn Strings. - - - - -_A strongly-windy Saturday_ - - - To-morrow - -It is a strongly-windy Saturday. - -A thought achieves itself in my roiled-and-placid brain: that one -half of me is Mad, but the other half is doubly Sane and someway -over-Sane, so that in it all I break a little better than even. - - - - -_A someway separate individual_ - - - To-morrow - -This Body I live in is familiar and mysterious. - -It is like a book of poetry to read and read again. - -It has the owned sentientness of bone-and-flesh, and with it tremors -fine as spirit-emotions. - -My Body is more chaste than my Mind, my Heart and my Soul. My Body if -fragile is healthful, and is one with the woman-race: it moves with -the sunlit cosmos. My Mind wanders in sex-chaos and muses on piquant -impure things, enchanting villainies, odd inversions, whatnot. My -Soul--a sweet and an exquisite Thing--its tired wings have borne it -languidly down the dim stairways of many centuries, some leading in -wilful perverted ways. And my Heart is a pagan Heart. Its essence is -flavored with the day and lyric trail of the Sapphic students. - -Bodily I am also pagan in the freedom of my owned sex feelings--as -are all women. Most of them do not know it and those who do hide it -in a tomb-like silence, except the brazen, the headlongly honest and -the artlessly frank. I come under none of those heads. I am myself. I -live and ponder alone. - -And my Body feels consciously aloof and as a someway separate -individual: with inner organs as eternal hopes, smooth skin as -emotion and drops of blood as thoughts--little drops of sparkling red -virile sweet blood for its thoughts. - -I so _love_ my Body as it lives and breathes and moves about, with me -and close to me. It is my so constant companion. It is an attractive -girl, a human being of some charm. I love it for the priceless air -it breathes and the long jewel-days of sunshine it has known: for -the tiny wears and tears of its daily life--the rending of its -magic tissues with each going-up-or-down-stairs, each crossing of -a door-sill. I love it for that it must lie at last pale, pale and -still--still--still--in its grave. - -I love my Body for its woman-complexities of sex. I love it for the -lonely lyric poetry of its cell-adventures. - -I love my Body for this long journey of woe and loveliness which -it goes, from Birthday to Death-day, in wilding passions of subtle -nervousness: each day a day of bodily beauty and intolerableness and -fear and utter mystery: because life _is_, and because I own a white -smooth-skinned Body, and because the strange, strange Air of Everyday -breathes on it--touches it--always! - - - - -_Sincerity and despair_ - - - To-morrow - -I am a true Artist, not as a writer but as a writing-person. - -I try to feel myself literarily a poet--finer-made than a god. But I -fail as a poet-litterateur as I fail as a poet-person. A poet flies -always on wings of fiery gold though it might be waywardly. But often -I walk with my feet in odd gutters, and have some plaisance in them, -and analyze their gutteriness absorbedly and own them as part of my -portion. - ---poet or no poet, it is best to be myself. In heights and murks and -widths and trivial horrors, _myself_-- - -But as an Artist I am in the true. As a painter of words and maker of -paragraphs which picture my phases and emotions, and in my conscious -feeling anent it, I realize the artist _flair_, the artist temper. It -is not a literary but a personal art. - -I have what goes with all artist-matter--long periods of dry-rot when -having nothing ripe to write I write nothing. My Artist-spirit proves -itself, justifies itself in my times of stagnation and reaction. Out -of it something human and sad and lustrous grows in me, something -which is half worldly but awaits its ripe time of expression with -someway-divine scorn. - -I once thought me destined to be a 'writer' in the ordinary sense. -And many good people visioned a writing career for me. It has a vapid -taste, just to recall it. My flawed life has that to felicitate -upon--that I have not spent it in fat lumps of writing, magazine -tales and sex-novels. In the days, and later, when my demi-vierge -book made its success I was besought by publishers to write -others--to go on, to reap and garner. I pushed all that away with a -preoccupied hand, not as part and parcel of my wastrel living but in -my assured Artist-temper. I should feel more true-to-form to earn -my living by making linen roses in a shop, along with rows of pale -women, than by my writing. - -My writing is to me a precious thing--and a rare bird--and a -Babylonish jade. It demands gold in exchange for itself. But though -it is my talent it is not my living. It is too myself, like my -earlobes and my throat, to commercialize by the day. - -But I can not think of me as an Artist without thinking of me as a -Liar. The two are someway related. I am an appalling, an encompassing -Liar. I am a Liar by the clock. My life ticks out silent lies as my -little clock ticks out seconds. It is a phase hard to put my finger -on. I feel it on me the way I feel a headache. I write this book -with seriousness and earnestness. It is all a mood of sincerity and -despair. But except I give it some backgrounding of lies, though -each thing in it is fair fact, I fail as an Artist. - -It is strange about lies--any lies, all lies. They are muscularly -stronger than truths. They come more readily to human tongues. They -fit more easily into the games of this life. And in me they seem -needful to my Artist mind. - -I mean not the lies I may tell but the lies I think. - -I mean not my falseness. That is a different thing, one I feel -someway responsible for. But the thinking lies feel to be a heritage -from ancient evil selves. - -I lie to myself, to the air around me--I blow lies into space from my -quiet lips. And one half of me knows them for lies and the other half -of me _believes_ them. - -Those half-known lies, the _need_ of the lies half-believed, are the -realization of an essential Artist-spirit. - -The oblique belief in them and the recognition of them as lies -proclaim me to myself, as a writing-person: Liar and Artist. - - - - -_It's not death_ - - - To-morrow - -It's not Death I fear, nor Life. - -I horridly fear something this side of Death but out-pacing Life a -little: a nervousness in my Stomach--a very Muddy Street--a Lonely -Hotel Room. - - - - -_A human prerogative_ - - - To-morrow - -It is a quiet deep of night. A bell has just tolled two. - -I am clothed in cool bedroom negligées and a softening sweetness of -cold cream, from head to foot. - -I am tranquil for to-day I had a walk that made me feel Sincere and -Safe. - -It is a comforting feeling: it is like a beef-sandwich. - -It was a long walk south-east of Butte along an outskirting road -where I used often to walk when I was sixteen--a broad gray desert. -It was the same sand and barrenness. It was bare and withered as if a -giant coyote had picked its rocky ribs. - -The day was windy and dusty. The sunshine was thick and sweet and -heavy like floating honey. The dust that blew against the white of my -neck was like ground glass. - -My feet ached as I walked. - -My shoes were Cuban-heeled thick-soled pumps of corded silk, a kind -easy to walk in. But the same feet which once readily bore me seven -miles along that road ache now at three. All of me ached as I walked -along. I cursed desultorily with a smooth whispered flow of curses, -because the circumstances seemed to demand it. But I loved the -walk--even the more for my tired feet and my aching knees and my -irking drooping shoulders and the hot glazed sand against my throat. - -My Soul tasted realness in it. - -Quite close to me, in immense sad beauty, were the deep high heavy -silent somber hills of Montana. To-day the nearer ones were a stately -enchanted Blue: a Blue of all ages: a Blue of infinitude: a Blue with -a feel of life and death in its Blueness. Above it the sky was not -blue but a pale glimmering shimmering silver hung across with gray -silk clouds soft as doves' plumage. - -I sat on a flat rock and looked at all of it and at the desert -around, and at my dusty shoes. - -All of it felt overwhelmingly sincere: at one with the wide worn used -earth. - -My dusty shoes looked to be at one with it and could interpret it. - -I felt my shoes could claim their human prerogative of getting dusty -in any of this world's roads. - -It gave me a feeling of human Sincerity: good-and-evil Safeness. - -It is on me now, along with cold cream and strong memory of Desert -and Sun and Blue. - -It is as good as a beef-sandwich. - -Better: I don't like beef-sandwich. - - - - -_The merciless beauty_ - - - To-morrow - -Sometimes the dusk is full of fire. - -Some dusks I sit by my window looking out and hotly and coldly want a -Lover: hotly with my Body and coldly with my Mind. - -A dusk has just gone. I sat looking out at it. - -A mist of dark cream tinged with heated violet came from nowhere and -hung above the ground. - -Suddenly came on me a sense of bewildering mysterious beauty. - -In it was a feel of rippling warmth that crept into my bone-and-flesh -from forehead to heel, from temples to soles, from crown to toe-tips. - -It crept slow and suffocating like magic chloroform. - -I leaned elbows on window-sill and chin on palms and sunk my gaze -in the violet shades outside and straightway knew I wanted a Lover: -not in delicate moonlit culmination like Juliet in her balcony: not -denyingly like the timid young nun in her cloister assailed unaware -by faint forbidden emotions. - -I wanted a Lover like the jungle leopard leaping through the -Springtime covert at nightfall to find her mate. - -It is a subtle and an obvious feeling, made of a merciless beauty. - -It is the tired urge of sex-tissues and nerve-cells: positive, -furious, fiery as the bloodiest sun. - -It is the same which the heated leopard feels in her sharp immaculate -lust. It is quite the same--but it could not move me as I sat alone -loverless to the knitting of an eyebrow, to a change of posture, a -movement of elbows on the window-sill or of palms beneath my chin. -Nor could it, though the potential Lover had stood outside my window. - -For any woman of any charm the world is full of Lovers: each and -all to be had by the flutter of her finger, the droop of her white -eyelids, the trembling of her pink-bowed lips. The world is full of -them--facile Lovers, craven, potent and pinchbeck. And it's that kind -I want hotly with my Body, coldly with my Mind in dusks of rippling -warmth--rippling, rippling warmth-- - -I want the Lover as the leopard wants hers. But I'm not a leopard: -instead, a woman-person of keen sentientness and wild wistful -imagination. So I wouldn't so much as crook a finger to call a Lover -to me: a curious nervous inertia. - -It's only I _want_ the Lover with frantic blind cosmic ardors -inside me. - -I analyze it in my magic Mind and find I would call no Lover. -I analyze farther and find I'd reject all but an impossible -one-in-ten-thousand. But remains the desire, hot as live embers, -cold as hail. - -Sex is an odd attribute. It has been to me like a blest impediment -and a celestial incumbrance and a radiant curse.-- - -When I was seventeen I stood on a threshold and peered curiously into -a dim-lit strange-scented Room. - -It was unknown to me then. My mind alone bespoke it. As I stood at -its doorway the air it wafted out touched my sense with only the -lightest frayed-cobweb contact, unintelligible and unenlightening. I -had lived an emptily alone girlhood. I was icily virginal. - -At five-and-twenty I crossed the Room's threshold. I breathed -lightly the odd fragrance. I looked curiously around. I touched some -amorous-looking grapes and some love-promising apples that lay about: -I bit into one and burst a grape with my finger and thumb. I gathered -a weak-petaled flower or two. I gauged the Room and its furnishments -and was unthrilled by anything in it. Even bodily it left me -unthrilled. - -Those two memory-mists do not keep me in the now-dusk and in the -strength and terror and fire of top-most youth from wanting a sudden -Lover with all that's in my Body. - -Love has naught to do with it. Love is a flame-winged Bird. I know -it. I know the values of my life and of me. I do not mistake tapers -for torches, ducats for louis d'ors, vicarious nepenthe for dreamless -death. - -In dusk-moments my bone-and-flesh is all of me I'm sure of. It begins -and ends in this earth. It answers the violent summonses of this -earth and its dusks. - -In the just-gone dusk I felt the prickling blood flow to my -finger-ends. A flood-tide, blinding red, surged and seethed and -bubbled and pounded at my heart. - -'I want a Lover--some Lover'--I murmured to the shadows beyond my -window. - -I grew breathless. - -The spirit of my flesh rose like a wind-blown flame. - -A loud cry rang in my nerve-wilderness. - -That moment the variant analysis which always rides with me stopped -dead. - -There came instead sheer feeling--the merciless beauty. - ---a man-person, maybe--the man of happy unanalytic brutality--to be -suddenly there with me: to flash into my shadowy solitude like a -lightning bolt and burst and break me. - ---a quarter-hour of exquisite wildness--restlessness, made of -Star-flame and Lily-petal and Cloud-burst on Mountain-summits and -Sea-waves purple in a Stormy Dawn--an intolerable hunger and ecstasy-- - -But just gone and I sit writing it in the pale cast of thought. - -But breathlessly I recall the breathlessness of it. - - - - -_My shoes_ - - - To-morrow - -I love my Shoes. - -I love them because they so guard my feet. - -I walk many a mile along the stone pavements and into distant odd -streets and on open roads at the outskirts of this Butte. - -And while I walk I think. - -I think things of a great many kinds--potent and magic and mad. -The act of walking starts an engine in my sparkling infernal mind. -And the weight and the sting and the hurt and the fascination of -my walking thoughts bear down on my slim feet as they carry me -along. And the hard-beaten world beneath them feels resentful and -uncomplaisant to my soles. - -And then I look down at my Shoes with their trim tailored vamps and -their walk-worthy soles and instantly my feet feel secure against -evil, smartly protected from my thoughts and from the world's -surface: my thoughts which shoot down on them out of my devilish -brain and the world-hardness beneath them. - -To-day I was walking along the road that leads up the ever-wonderful -Anaconda Hill--a place of stones and sand-wastes and hoists and -scaffoldings and mines with ten thousand digging men thousands -of feet down in their metallic bowels. Close by were melancholy -mulberry-toned mountains at the north-east. They were tragic, -triumphant, grief-stricken, terrifyingly beautiful. Purple clouds -hung around them like mourning veils. I can't look enough at -those--it is as if there weren't enough looking-power in my human -gray eyes. - -Presently I came to a small open space as I walked, a toy desert. A -toy desert is more like a desert than is a real one. The sand in it -is grayer sand. The stones are abrupter. The sun is flatter-looking. -The air is less willing to furnish breath to a human being. The best -that could be said of this one is that it was intolerably desolate. I -looked about and about it. And suddenly I was afraid. Afraid of many -things: afraid of grief-stricken mountains: afraid of my life and -of Me. - -I leaned against a yellow ledge of rock with a subtle sickening -faintish feeling. 'I am afraid,' I said inside me, 'of this world and -this life, and of all things little and large--nerves and Christmas -days and poetry: toy deserts and all. How can I cope with it--I -alone?' - -Then I looked down at my Shoes of black soft dull leather and cloth, -buttoned snugly around my ankles and with tough supple soles fit to -take me to Jericho and back. Thus neatly armored I felt suddenly my -blue-veined feet need fear nothing from sand and stone and hardness -of ground. And if my feet are not afraid--my feet which bear weights -of all-of-me--why should afraidness touch my spirit which is proud? - -There will be always Shoes in the world: stout stylish serviceable -boots, and pale delicate rat-skin pumps, and satin mule-slippers. - -And always I shall have Shoes: in toy deserts I shall have black -strong snug-buttoned ones. - -I looked at them in this toy-desert and straightway I wasn't afraid. - -It has been often like that. - -So I love my Shoes. - - - - -_An eerie quality_ - - - To-morrow - -When I was Ten years old I played marbles 'for keeps,' smoked -little pieces of rattan buggywhip in the hay-scented barn and slid -'belly-buster' down long winter hills on my sled. And I hammered and -sawed ruinously with grownup tools, whistling happily. And I played -with dolls absorbedly for hours on end. - -I was not boyish and not girlish. - -I was not childish except for an oddly hungry child-heart. - -I was myself. - -So long ago and longer I consciously owned an eerie quality which -toppled over the edge of my humanness. - -And still own it. - - - - -_A helliad_ - - - To-morrow - -This noonday as I sat on the veranda two young lads stopped by the -stone coping which borders this front yard, and conversed. One was -eager-looking and about eleven years old. The other was perhaps -thirteen and morose and he had a small rifle which he polished with a -bit of waste, not lifting his gaze as they talked. - -Said the younger boy: 'Say-Frank, I could 'a' had that old shot-gun -off my dad if I'd 'a' went after it to Rocker that time.' - -'Like hell you could,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, you know that Winchester o' Billy O'Rourke's?--he made -six bull's-eyes and one inside ring with it day 'fore yesterday.' - -'Like hell he did,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, Mexicans and Indians can get a guy ev'ry time with a -long-distance rifle without taking aim through the sight.' - -'Like hell they can,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, there's a kid down on South Arizona that's got a Colt -automatic that'll hit without him aiming at all.' - -'Like hell there is,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, you know them little brass machine-guns the militia's -got?--the bores o' them things 're rifled just like this.' - -'Like hell they are,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, my grandfather in Illinois 's got a bullet in him he got -at the battle o' Fredericksburg in the Civil War.' - -'Like hell he has,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, it costs a hundred-thousand dollars to make a Krupp gun -and eighty dollars ev'ry time you fire it.' - -'Like hell it does,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, it ain't a felony to croak a burglar with a gun even if -he's only breakin' into somebody else's house.' - -'Like hell it ain't,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, my mother goes huntin', too--she can shoot rabbits and -ducks on the wing and once she got a deer with that big old .44 o' my -Uncle Walt's.' - -'Like hell she did,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen, will you gimme your gun for my bicycle, both my -catcher's gloves and four dollars when I get paid?' - -'Like hell I will,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen, will you gimme it for my bicycle, my two -catcher's gloves, four dollars when I get paid and my shepherd pup?' - -'Like hell I will,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen,--and my artificial snake?' - -'Like hell,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen,--and my half o' Ernest's camera?' - -'Like hell,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen,--and my last year's shin-guards?' - -'Like hell,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--_listen_,--and my _this_ year's shin-guards?' - -'Like _hell_,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, come right down to it I don't want a .22. If I get a gun -this year it'll be a .32.' - -'Like he--'-- - - * * * * * - -Which point I felt to be the too-note of the helliad, so I rose and -came into the house. - -I felt replete with rhythm and with a sense of surprising human -attitudes remote from my own. - - - - -_Swift go my days_ - - - To-morrow - -Swift, Swift go my days. - -By rights I think time should drag with me, for I am wasting my -portion of life as I live it. - -But my days pass Swift--Swift, Swift. - -They come, they fly away--before I know. - -I'm thinking it is Tuesday: but while I'm thinking--Wednesday has -come: and gone: and Thursday is rushing in. Tuesday, blue-and-gold or -gray-and-silver, with its mornings and nights and bits of food and -openings of doors and thinkings: Wednesday with the same equipment: -Thursday the same. - -Each day comes and goes like a flash of filmed silvered garbled light. - -But there is time in each for me to touch the enchanted Everydayness: -time for the turbulent sly delight of tasting, smelling, feeling the -eternal humors and romances in each small thing near me--my Clock, my -Window, my Jar of Cold Cream, my Two Thumbs. There is time in each -day for it to make me pay a wearing glimmering feverish homage to the -mystic daily godhead. - -My life exacts terrific homages from me. - -I am wearing out--frailly, tiredly, from a desolate uneasy love of -living. - -It is why my days go Swift when by rights time should drag leadenly -in punishment for barbarous futileness. - -There is not time-space enough in any of the days sufficient to love -the virile green and the murderous red and the sweet pale surprising -purple in the sunset above the west desert: nor space to love the -smell of a sudden August rain: nor the flaming delicate Idea of the -poet John Keats. - -While I'm starting to love each of those to its height of -love-worthiness--the to-day is gone: and the to-morrow, which must -see a new love-game started for each Thing, is come. - -But while I say 'is come': it's gone. - -So Swift go my days--oh Swift, Swift! - - - - -_By the blood of dead Americans_ - - - To-morrow - -Since I wrote the beginning of this there has come the war in Europe: -a war full of suffering brave women and dead children: full of -German greed and cruelty and stupidity and of French gameness and -cheerfulness, French splendor of valor. - -It has an effect of some kind on each person who reads so much as its -'headlines.' - -It has the effect on me of making me a jealously patriotic American. - -It makes me think of Lexington and Gettysburg with an odd furious -personal shame. - -We are Americans not by accident but by the blood of dead Americans. -But we assume it is by accident. - -We lie down like a nation of bastards to let the pig-hearted Hun -trample by proxy on our neck. - -It was for America to declare war in the same hour the _Lusitania_ -passengers met murder. - -We were not 'too proud' but afraid. Afraid and not ready. - -Not ready has no right thing to do with it. - -They were not ready at Lexington. - -I long with some passion to exchange my two black dresses for two -white ones with red crosses on the sleeves: to serve my country in a -day of death and honor. - -It too is all the time under my skin though I write along but in this -flawed song of myself. - - - - -_To express me_ - - - To-morrow - -I suppose I'm very lonely. - -It is luck--luck from the stars--not to be beset by clusters of -people, people who do their thinking outside their heads, 'cheerful' -people, people who say 'pardon me': all the damning sorts scattered -about obstructing one's view of the horizons. - -But for want of--other, _other_ people--I am intensely lonely. - -When I was eighteen I thought I must be the most lonely creature in -this world. I analyzed my life then as now and it by itself had set -me apart. But I stood then as it's given Youth to stand--on High -Ground. I was strong to endure loneliness while viciously hating -it. There was unaware a hope-colored bliss in my inexperience which -companioned me. I felt it then without knowing I felt it. I can see -that plainly now. - -Now also I see plainly and feel plainly that I stand on lower ground, -at poorer vantage. As my bodily strength which was then robust is -now slight. The metaphysic life-shadows reach me more easily. They -have a feel of fatally shutting down, fatefully closing in. They are -the mirages on the dun-colored worldly air near me of my own useless -untoward selves. There is no more the hope-colored bliss. - -At eighteen I said to me: 'I'm lonely but some day I may be happily -friendshiped and apprehended and it will be like paradise.' - -Now I say to me: 'I'm lonely by fate and by nature and temperament. I've -known some friendships of vivid alluringness and informingness--they -await me now in the offing. And others. There _is_ paradise in it--an -odd sweet dubious paradise. But what's the use--?' - -It's that what's-the-use, born of the lower vantage-ground and -the closing-in shadows, that chiefly makes me lonely--lonely to a -desperateness and on through to a ruinous calm. - -It is this metaphysic loneliness which breeds in me one constant -reasonless restless urgent motif: to Express me: not of-the-past -except desultorily, not of-the-future save indifferently: but of -my low-toned, low-echoing now. Until I've Expressed me there's no -setting open the gates of my spirit to a passer-by, though the -passer-by should be a poet-in-the-flesh, a god, an angel with a torch. - -Four-and-twenty turbulent moods may break over me in a day, or -four-and-twenty passive ones, or four-and-twenty someway joyous ones. -But like the theme in a fugue this loud tranquil recurrent need to -Express me transcends them all. - -It is a big voracious part-human bird of prey. Of it too I say -what's-the-use. But it is a need without a use, a need scornful of -use. It springs unconceived, unsourced from inside me. It rises from -the ashes of blightingest moods and beats its bruising strong wings -against my face. - -It says: 'Know me, defer to me, Slim-woman. Serve me, follow me, -gather-in all your answers for me. Do this though I undo you, though -I rend you, tear you with my sharp teeth so like a wolf's. When -you've answered me I may let you go. Until then, turn to me. Tell me: -tell me again and again. Utter yourself. Interpret. Unfold.' - -It makes my life-space someway sweet, someway heartbreaking, someway -frightful--strewn with dust of broken stars. - -I live long hours of nervous profound passionate self-communion. I -discover strange lovely age-worn facets of my Soul. I discover the -subtle panting Ego--the wonderful thing that lives and waits in its -garbled radiance just beneath my skin. - -To ask oneself and make answer out of oneself is the most delicious -of this life's mental delectations. I might have missed it but for -those beating bruising wings against my face, now and years ago: for -expressing breeds the last Expressions. - -I might have gone on through years and decades and lumps of months -knowing at best a little of some rare person, a little less or -more of another rare person, a little of a musician's soul in a -nocturne, a little of a dead poet's splendors. But to Me and my own -fine spirit-relationships to those things I could remain, but for my -radiant flawed egotistic interpreting, eternally strange. - -But for it I'd not have the wit to perceive the one human being in -the world I may know with vitalness: my own Self. I should drop into -my grave at last without a good-by to the glowing one who was locked -just inside, whose hand I'd never clasped, whose sad prescient eyes -I'd never looked in, who was then flitting out and on and away. - -It is a being cruel and transfiguring and terrifying: terribly worth -clasping close and breathing with. - -And some days it sleeps, sleeps like the dead: it is delicater than -rose-vapors before the dawn: a sun-blown faëry thing. - -When it sleeps I'm left alone. Then comes a doubtful dreadful quiet, -a hell of dumbness that only God could reach. - -It is as if neither God nor I attempts to cope with it. - - - - -_Bastard lacy valentines_ - - - To-morrow - -The thing I admire most is strength. The thing I most hate is -Weakness, of each and every kind. - -All the reassuring things in the world are in and of the strong deeds -done in it. All the mischief and despair come from human Weakness. - -I would better strongly murder my foe than forgive him Weakly for -my seeming advantage. I would be happier in my mind as a careful -charwoman than as a loose-jointed poet. I would rather have a -farthing's value as a faithful concubine than no value as a slattern -housewife. - -Strength repays itself with strength--and with magnificence. - -Truth is strength nearly always: and _not_ always. - -To cheat strongly in the life-game gets me more than does Weak easy -honesty. By being a strong man Napoleon brought home the bacon. Being -an honest one would have got him not one rasher of the bacon of _his_ -desire. The race is too ridden with 'temperament' to let truth be -its prevailing force. But strength plows its scornful way through -temperament like a steam-shovel. The bacon Napoleon brought home he -took from other people, causing them misery. They were Weak and let -him take it, or they were strong and got killed trying to keep it. -To get killed trying to keep your bacon is to be even stronger than -the Napoleon who lives and takes it from you. Those who sit still and -_let_ Napoleon get their bacon are fit only to be themselves made -into bacon. - -Truth belongs with love, with friendship, with charity, with psychic -lovingkindness: with all the altruistic graces and tendernesses. - -But in the mere grinding livingness of things it is to be strong. I -say to Me, 'Mary MacLane, be strong: whether you're living joyous on -a hill or mournful in a valley, make shift to be strong.' - -In which paragraphs I make an apologetic preamble to Me when about to -dwell on my odd ironic element of Weakness. My Weakness is not an art -nor a science nor a gift nor a trait but is a sort of ruinous trade -touched with all of those, a trade at which I work and lose heavily -from a viewpoint of personal economy. - -In Atlanta-Georgia lives a man with whom I exchange semi-occasional -letters. He is thirty-nine and clever and what is called a business -man. He is a business man not only by circumstance but by nature. -At a glance one would picture him in the setting of an office in -a steel-and-brick building with a roll-top desk, a swivel chair, -a cabinet full of files, a stenographer with an unregenerate -vocabulary, and stationery neatly engraved with his name, his -business, his cable address and his telephone number. The look of the -neat letterhead and the fibrous feel of the bond paper give one the -idea that whoever went into a business venture with him would come -out of it disadvantageously. - -After another glance at himself one would infer that his leisure -hours might be fancifully spent. In hours of ease some business men -follow baseball, others golf, 'tired' ones musical comedy. Others -take up curio collecting or some personal phantasm. In the latter -category is my acquaintance of Atlanta. He affects Mary MacLane and -musings of her in his leisure hours. But what I am to him does not -concern nor much interest me. What he is to me concerns me, for -he--his letters--are a present source of my elaborated Weakness. - -I feel a wave of conscious Weakness washing over me as I write about -it. His letters make a soft buffer, a foolish pretty window, a tinted -veil between me and my too-harsh actualities. - -I met him when I lived in New York. He had read the book I wrote -in the early nineteen-hundreds and at meeting me he conceived a -thinly insistent admiration which someway went to his head. He has -at intervals since then written me letters full of charmed and -salubrious flattery and of appreciation and praise for traits and -gifts and qualities which I do not possess. They appeal and cater -remarkably to my vanity--and are pleasant and unreal and vain and -fatuous and fond and piquant. - -He is a clever man and does not make love to me. A butcher's-boy may -write love-letters--and I'd prefer those of a butcher's-boy to those -of a business man: they would be more sincere and less hopelessly -discreet. But this business man is discerning and intuitive and -writes me no love. His wife--a business man always has a wife--could -not rationally object to what is in the letters, though she would -irrationally and naturally object to the letters themselves. She -is unloving and unloved--they always are--but whatever may be her -caste (I know only that she is tall and blonde and named Bertha) -she doubtless would find something superfluous in the idea of her -husband's letters to me. - -A letter comes from him in Georgia after I have written him a brief -disquieting one with a latent human appeal in it to make him think -the chief thing I need in life is his appreciation, his attitude -toward me, to brace my spirit. Then his comes, written in his small -slanting commercial hand. It is arresting from any angle and well -thought, well couched. - -In it he tells me that my brain, scintillantly brilliant though it -is, needs the dim twilights of other brains such as his to catch the -sparks it throws off. - -Which is a lie. My brain is not scintillantly brilliant and it -'needs' nothing. But the lie is agreeable to read. There is a gentle -caressingness in its untruth which feels someway soothinger than any -flattering fact. - -And he tells me my chief attraction as an individual is my ability -accurately to gauge another individual and to breathe myself -graciously out to it and upon it while pretending to be immersed in -my own ego. - -Which is another lie. Immersed in my own ego is never a pretense -with me, and I have not gauged--in the sense of weighing and -measuring--another individuality except to hate it. But it is -piquantly restful to hear that I am thus benign. - -And he tells me that though several years have passed since he and I -took leave of one another he has never forgotten that last parting -because it was like the passing of a little weir-woman who brushed -him lightly with her garments as she went. - -Which is another lie. My association with him was in brief meetings -at hectic studio tea-fights and two noisy dinners at Churchill's, -at all of which I frowned impatiently at his tiresome conversation. -And his leave-taking with me consisted in his sharpening a -lead-pencil--beautifully he sharpened it--for me to write a telegram -with. It was not until this correspondence that we established an -unreliable intimacy. But to be told I seemed a weir-woman to a -hard-headed business man who could doubtless cheat a client out of -four thousand dollars easily in a half-day's maneuvering is oddly -inspiriting. - -And he tells me he is highly privileged to be permitted to gaze in -at the mezzo-tinted windows of my soul, which are surely curtained -against the passing proletariat. - -Which is another lie. He has never remotely glimpsed my tired Soul in -the firmly false little letters I've written him. As to its being a -privilege if he had: it is the proletariat, it so happens, who have -first chance at those windows, which are not mezzo-tinted but made of -the plainest of plain glass. But the conceit tastes mellow and naïf -and bromidic and appetizing to me, like cream and raspberries in July. - -And he tells me the most delightful thing in the world would be to -live near me and have a season of daily meetings--meetings of astral -selves upon a 'higher plane' whereon we should exchange those flowers -and fruits of the spirit which grow not from the soils but from the -esoteric essences of life:--that sort of thing. - -Which is another lie. No possible man (except a Poet whom I -loved--or perhaps a scientist--) could find me delightful for more -than two consecutive meetings--I develop something like temper--and -I care for no higher planes except in airships. As for esoterics--I -would fainer exchange musings anent over-shoes than over-souls. And -my spirit bears in fertile earthy soil chiefly thistles from which -men gather no figs. But it gives me a warmish feeling, similar to -a hot-water bottle between my shoulders on a winter night, to read -that picturesque palaver written to me in my slim scorn by him in his -springy swivel chair. - -Thus it goes. His letters are made all of softest quaintest lies -which I know to be lies the moment my gray gaze falls on them. All -his premises in regard to me and his deductions from them are roundly -lightly mistaken. But I like that fluent flattery the more because -it is so false. I am too vain a creature to want to cope often with -truths even though they might be uplifting self-lauding truths. My -vain peculiar Weakness demands as well semi-occasional collations of -creamed lies upon which it feeds like a sleek cat on creamed fish. My -humor enters into it, in no obvious way but eerily like a gay ghost. -My humor is a strong influence in me. It is stronger than my pride -and anger and fear and caution and reverence and self-love--stronger -than most things I own. - -And it's for reasons of pastime and vanity and oblique humor I -let letters from the business man come, though not often, into my -solitudes. And I spend hours of inert time-waste conning his fanciful -ideas. And the letters I write him in reply, though brief and -impersonal and done in my best false manner, consume a surprising lot -of time and mental and physical force to write. It is the Weakness in -it which is so devouring: it eats me hungrily and lingers about like -a buzzard, picking my bones. - -A spinelessly Weak game. I hate its Weakness more than I like its -pleasant futility. I hate it and myself in it all the time I'm -dwelling on it. I hate it as I'd hate a little drug habit fastened on -my nerves. - -Its influence is the same but more insidious than a drug would be, -more demoralizing. As feeling fear makes one afraid, feeling more -fear makes one more afraid. - -Still once in a month, once in a two-month, I feel the hankering -itch to be applauded for second-rate qualities I do not own, and I -give way to it: in a particularly Weak way, after my sanest self has -reduced it analytically to shreds, and after saying bosh! with all my -selves. - -After telling Me too that it is a common-tasting game. Life is a -strange music-clangor of gold bells, some silent, some far-echoing. -And the common-tasting thing cracks a bell-edge. - -Then briskly I answer the last letter from Atlanta-Georgia and soon -there comes a fresh sheaf of smooth velvetish lies to pad my way. - -There may come no more if this I write now should find its way to -Atlanta-Georgia. Or if fate or Bertha should intervene. - -But always I know Weakness of me will find ways to work at its losing -trade. - -It is of the dubious inevitable side of human nature--like gold teeth -and tinned salmon and bastard lacy valentines. - - - - -_Sweet fine sweatings of blood_ - - - To-morrow - -Merely from the view-point of outward intellect this book of myself -is oddly difficult to write. - -My most-loved thing to do and my hardest thing to do is to write. - -It is hard to catch and hold with mental fingers one's own emotions -and then doubly hard to write them. A feeling is something without -the words and without even the thought. To put it into the thought -and then into the words is a minuter task than would be the -translating of a François-Villon poem into Choctaw. - -It's a knowing person who realizes her own emotions and a knowinger -who recognizes what is what, who is who, which is which among them. -I look inward at Me and I see an emotion of World-Weariness and -want to write it. I write it as nearly as I can. But when I have -done--it's not World-Weariness that I wrote but its twin-sister, -Boredom-of-the-Moment, which happened to be next the other when I -looked. I am glad to have transcribed Boredom-of-the-Moment. It is -the finer and thinner and more elusive of the two. But how and why -did I fail of World-Weariness? - -But sometime when I aim at Fear or Resentment or Surprise it may be -World-Weariness I'll bring down unexpectedly with a clean wing-shot. - -When I set out to write the Look-in-my-Eyes it may be the -Feel-of-my-Fingers that comes out in my round writing. Another time I -think I'm writing my Bad-Tooth: until I get it written when it turns -out to be my little Eye-Wrinkles. - -Having failed of the thought often I fail of the words. When I have -a particularly M.-Mac-Lane thought to express I review the top tier -of my vocabulary of words to find proper ones for it. They are all -very nice words in that top-tier--neatly washed and dressed and -hair-brushed and tidied-up, like the children in a small private -school: words like Necessary and Irresolute and Crockery and -Inconvenience and Broth and Apprise: good words and useful if one's -thought is radical or risky and wants conserving. I call some of -them to me and question them and consider them and ponder a bit, and -decide they will none of them suit. Then I go to the bottom tier, the -unkemptest of words in the untidiest attire: words like Traipse and -Nab and Glim and Hennery and Chape and Plash. And I at once reject -those as too carelessly bred for my terse thoughts to associate -with. (But for my uncombed ungroomed grimy-faced thoughts I turn to -them.) Then I glance over a tier of mysterious words, spruce but -with indefinable vagabond faces: such as Whelk and Mauger and Frush -and Gnurl and Yare and Hyaline. They are expressive but of a kind -it's well to use with caution, the kind that may trip up thoughts -that would make them their medium and lead to slips 'twixt cups and -lips. So I dismiss them with a mental reservation of one or two to -use if I fail to find right ones among the less mysterious. Then I -turn to a tier that represents the virile middle-class in words, the -lower-case words, the mob and riot words, the words for poets and -anarchists and prophets: such as Adroit and Nightingale and Gallows -and Gutter and Woman and Madrigal and Death. And I say, 'Without -doubt here are my words.' But I use discretion. I know that tier of -words to be of the nature of bombs, of strychnine, of a dynamic force -resistible against all human and wordly substance. They also must be -used cautiously and with a sparing hand. With caution one can handle -a bomb, and sparingly one can eat strychnine, and one can control -any dynamic force by studying its tendencies and keeping out of its -direct road. It behooves one to heed those conditions in broaching -the countermining counter-irritant words if one would avoid blowing -oneself analytically broadcast. - -So I may have found the right sort of words and measured their -possibilities and pitfalls. But again: it's a nerve-racking task -to choose out one word from seven, one from five, one from two. I -see two words which may be the only proper ones out of ten thousand -to bear my thought. The two may be Echo and After-glow, each an -unacknowledged half-sister to the other: meaning respectively -something living and growing and vibrant in my spirit-ears, and -fading and dying and radiant before my spirit-eyes. But because my -spirit-ears may glow bright and hot from what they heard, or my -spirit-eyes may seem to themselves to gaze a moment at a soundless -sound--an Unheard Melody of Keats,--I miss the raylike distinction -and I write After-glow when my true word was Echo. - -But another time I write Echo perfectly and masterfully to my own -delight: having meant After-glow. - -So it is. There's no plain sailing on this analytic sea. And if there -were it would be not worth while. I want nothing, nothing, nothing -that comes easily. What comes easily I distrust, be it love or -language. It afterward proves dead-sea fruit. What I suffer to get I -know to be life-food even if it drugs or pains or poisons me. It is -one lesson I have learned. - -Without doubt it is so with everybody, all around. One sees only -surfaces, husks. Anyone looking casually at this Me sitting writing -might say, 'How easily and smoothly and well she writes. How kind -of God to give her so light a task in life. How complacently go her -working hours.' And I looking casually at--oh--Miss Lily Walker -singing and swaying and glancing sideways in a gorgeous Broadway -chorus--I might say, 'How easy a task in life has _that_ brainless -gazelle. To work with her body and not even with the sweats and -sinews of it like a scrub-woman, and not with the facile shames of -it like a lorette, but with the grace and suppleness and beauty and -suggestions of it, aided by a soprano throat and a soprano face--with -only the effort it wants to fling it all over footlights. And that -pastime gets her her livelihood.' - -But whoever marks me writing as one doing an easy task because I -write along rapidly enough considers nothing of my mental travail -for the thought, my blind grope for the language, my little nervous -anguish of choice among the double-edged and triple-pronged words: -and the neat concise failure of the result. - -And no, I do not thus comment on Miss Lily Walker. I have -an appreciative pleasure in her charm and suppleness and -bird-and-butterfly prettiness. But after a bit of contemplation and -analysis of her surface I deduce the unconscious struggle it may be -for Miss Lily Walker to be supple on nights when she does not feel -supple, the thin agony of being sweet when she does not feel sweet, -the neurotic torture of being seductive _regularly_--by the night: -the more that perchance the struggle always _is_ unconscious. Her -brain being required in her body it's to be assumed there's none in -her head. But I can deduce a nervous red heart beating illogically -somewhere in her being protesting dumbly sometimes against one irking -item, sometimes against another, sometimes against all the items in -Miss Lily Walker's scheme of life, but beating and beating on, like a -little automatic drum wound up tight and tossed into a maelstrom to -beat itself out. - -I'd like--like with breathless eagerness--to read the analyzed being -just beneath Miss Lily Walker's skin. - -Everybody--every human being--is wildly _Real_: radiant and -desolate.-- - -With no amount of temperamental struggling could Miss Lily Walker -analyze a psychic emotion of her own and then find the right -word-combination to write it in. - -With no conceivable effort of mine could I manage to be supple when I -do not feel supple. - -So Miss Lily Walker and I are quits at this game. - -It totals up evenly, all ways around. - -Nobody gets through one Real day--though it be a dayful of Real -lies--without a demoniacal struggle of soul or a heavy blow on the -personal solar plexus. - -And I make not even the intellect side of this book, which is a -Realness to me, without sweet fine sweatings of blood. - - - - -_Instinct--a 'first law'_ - - - To-morrow - -I long to do a Murder. - -Despite my futile way-of-life and my rotting destroying -half-acquiescence in it I have a furious positive Murder in me. - -One near me in my daily life injures me and goes on injuring me in -a way which is scourging and malicious and intensely petty. There -is in it helpless humiliation for me--me self-loving, proud and -determinedly unsuppliant--and it makes maddening Murder rise in me. - -I don't know why I do not do the Murder. I have nothing to lose by -paying the law-penalty: nothing but my life, and my life is stripped -bare--and was always barren by God's decree--of all that makes a -life sacred or lovely or precious. For long years and years, since -child-days, I have been lost. - -I don't know why I do not do the Murder: except that I think of it -and brood over it and turn it round and round smoulderingly in my -Mind. From no choice. I have tried to push the feeling away as a -common thing beneath me. It is beneath me, for I am not little but -someway big. But my Mind will take its toll of all that confronts me. - -The humiliation and the helplessness to combat being humiliated in me -who keep a casual proudness toward people is like a secret hot sword -thrust, and kept freshly thrust, in my flesh. It makes me wild to do -the Murder. But it makes me brood over it till the red act is lost in -red brooding. - -There come also thinkings. - -Murder, any Murder, is in its essence cowardly, a slinking meanness. -And I am not cowardly and I am not mean. I am above malice and -retaliation--all such impoverished impoverishing emotions. A shrug of -my shoulders and they are satisfied. The impulse to hit back after a -bitter wound is not of vengeance. It is instinct--a 'first law.' But -Murder is self-accusingly cowardly and sneakingly human. I can't get -away from that. To take away a person's life is like setting fire to -his house--an officiously stooping act. It's for me to live my life -in aloof self-sufficience. No human malice should reach me in it. -Then it's not for me to reach out of it and stain my good fingers -with unpleasant sticky blood. I am always in a prison of radiance and -gloom. - -But the mere habit of being a human being is breakingly insistent--no -matter how many or how few frocks one owns. Neither of my two dresses -is a protection against humiliation. A thin black serge dress -gives me to myself a melancholy cold inert air: but beneath the -smooth-fitting breast of it comes too often a throbbing frightful to -feel, frightful to know, made of fierce petty anger and abasing hurt. -I hide it and me in my room and twist my hands together and walk my -floor, and a hurricane of helpless bitter trifling woe shakes and -wrenches me. Then Murder enters me. - -What humiliates me is an obvious common thing that to any human one -would mean hurt and more hurt. Though I am determinedly brave I am -sensitive. - -I do not write itself because this is the book of me and not of -people. - -It is a slight, a poor and vivid cruelness. There is the tie of blood -in it which in all ways--from a deep heritage--I respect: and it rubs -an added stinging poison in the wound. - -It is an injury I do not deserve. What I deserve I accept. What I -do not deserve pressed on me to humiliate me makes Murder in me. -Regardless of the other one-- - ---it would be simpler and finer for me to do that Murder than to keep -it in me. So many times in a week the trembling smothering longing -to do that Murder beats, beats in my thin breast. To be so owned by -a thing so small:--it is grief and despair and fury and wild nervous -intolerableness. It strains my flesh--it wrenches my pulse--it blinds -my eyes--it fills my throat-- - ---it would be a simpler and finer thing to do any Murder than to -feel, even once, the strangling damnedness rising, rising at my -throat-- - - - - -_Loose twos_ - - - To-morrow - -I take it for granted God knows all about me. - -If God should read this it would not be news to him. - -But his knowledge of me is not immediate knowledge nor immediately -interesting to him. He knows my Twos-and-Twos but he does not make -Fours of them. - -I am formed of loose Twos which wait for God to make them Fours. - -I can not do it myself. When I've tried the added Twos come out -threes, seventies, nines, twelves--all the mysterious numbers. Never -Fours. - -Long ago I decided not to try but to wait for God. - -I juggle with temperamental and psychic Twos and experiment in -hysteric additions. - -But it's no good my trying to make Fours. - -If God does not take it up I shall be eternal Twos. - -And I seem not greatly to care: whenever that comes home to me I -merely light a carefree cigarette. - - - - -_Knitting or plaiting straw_ - - - To-morrow - -The things I know are jumbled and tangled into an indescribable heap -inside me. - -The things I Don't Know are separated and ranged of their own -volition in long orderly rows in my conscious mentality. - -The things I know glow with tints and gleams and will-o'-wisp lights -and primal colors and waveringly with the blinding gold-purple -lightnings of all-Time. - -The things I Don't Know glow--each one separately--with a small -precise lantern-brightness of its own. - -Also in my wide background are things I don't know and am unaware -of it: the mass of my luminous Ignorance--it shines with an earthy -phosphorescence. - -When I look at the things I know I get an undetailed perspective of -me like a bird's-eye view of London. - -When I look at neat formal rows of things I Don't Know I have a clear -look, as if through an uncurtained window into a bare little room, at -my quietest self sitting knitting or plaiting straw. - -I reckon up and count up and check up lists of big and little things -I Don't Know--like this, rapidly: - -I Don't Know what ink is made of, nor how to fire a Maxim gun: -I don't know how to make a will: I don't know how to cook a -prairie-chicken, nor what to feed a pet weasel, nor who invented the -snarling-iron, nor what it is. - -I Don't Know what food people eat in the Himalaya Mountains, nor how -Lord Cornwallis felt when he surrendered: I don't know the color of -a chicken's gizzard, nor of sand, nor of fish-scales, nor of mice: I -don't know whether an English cabinet minister needs strength of mind -or strength of will, or both, or neither. - -I Don't Know how I hurt the true heart of my friend: I don't know -astronomy nor solid geometry: I don't know what I think with: I -don't know what ooze leather is, nor who pitched for the Tigers in -nineteen-nine. - -I Don't Know a good horse from a bad horse: I don't know why a bat -sleeps head downward, nor what wasps live on: I don't know how to -open oysters, nor how to milk a cow: I don't know the Latin for -'whiskey.' - -I Don't Know whether friendship is a selfish or an unselfish thing, -nor who discovered the medlar apple: I don't know what is a jab, -fistically speaking, nor a punch, nor a hook, nor a wallop, nor the -fighting weight of Packey McFarland: I don't know whether a moth -'marries' or whether her eggs are impregnated like a fish's: I don't -know why a clasp knife is called a jack knife, nor what to do for an -aching foot. - -I Don't Know how glass is blown: I don't know whether coal is -vegetable or mineral: I don't know the chemical composition of the -sunset vapors, nor how to play euchre: I don't know how many guns an -armored cruiser carries, nor whether a gorilla meditates: I don't -know whether I hate or greatly admire Catherine and Marie de Medici: -I don't know a winch from a windlass. - -I Don't Know where is the cinnamon bear's native haunt: I don't know -how flint is mined, nor if wire is made of steel: I don't know who -was the better man--William Wordsworth or the Duke of Wellington: I -don't know the advantages of tariff revision downward: I don't know -where ex-President Taft will go when he dies. - -I Don't Know whether I feel more comfortable with or without my -stays: I don't know the origin of the word 'dogged': I don't know -whether a 'full house' is better than 'two pairs,' nor whether a -right merry heart to-day is better than a wrong contented mind -to-morrow: I don't know whether rabbit-pie is made of cats in Paris, -nor how many sails has a sloop: I don't know what makes a dead body -rot. - -I Don't Know how to sharpen a carving knife, nor how to roll a -cigarette: I don't know the real English meaning of the French noun -'élancement': I don't know whether my sex is a matter of my genital -organs or of my mental inwards: I don't know how to determine the -contents of a circle in square inches, nor how to pronounce 'zebra.' - -I Don't Know whether Edgar Allan Poe is big or little: I don't know -how many soldiers fell at Shiloh: I don't know whether temperament -or nature or circumstance makes one woman a happy kindhearted whore -and another an unhappy cruel-hearted nun: I don't know how to grow -artichokes: I don't know what brimstone is, nor how to play the -accordion: I don't know what quality in me forms my handwriting. - -I Don't Know what-like was my Soul in the Stone Age: I don't know -whether cheese is good or bad for my health: I don't know what -becomes of discarded hairpins, nor a tooth-brush's ultimate destiny: -I don't know the 'Fra Diavolo' opera, nor whether anyone ever uses -the word 'thwack.' - -I Don't Know whether my heart breaks from within or without: I don't -know whether 'good old Marie Lloyd' of the London 'halls' has a brain -like G. K. Chesterton or a dexterous individuality like a juggler: -I don't know whether I feel spiritual bliss in my knees or in my -spirit: I don't know why I breathe and go on breathing. - -I Don't Know what became of the ten lost tribes of Israel: I don't -know how to say how-do-you-do to a king: I don't know the exact -meaning of my terror and despair: I don't know why I love--why I ever -love-- - -I Don't Know whether laws of chance govern a spinning roulette -wheel and ivory ball or whether chance is beyond law: I don't -know what kind of missile a Krupp gun shoots: I don't know how a -ground-and-lofty tumbler turns a triple air-summersault: I don't -know whether I really am the way I look in the mirror: I don't know -whether the Russian language has Romanic roots: I don't know what is -the wild power in poetry. - -I Don't Know whether lust is a human coarseness or a human fineness: -I don't know why death holds a so sweet lure since it would take away -my Body: I don't know that I wouldn't deny my Christ, if I had one, -three times before a given cockcrow: I don't know on the other hand -that I would: I don't know whether honor is a reality in human beings -or a pose: I don't know that I mayn't be able to think with my Body -when it is in its coffin. - -I Don't Know what makes each day a Day of dark Gold and life -mournfully precious: I don't know where is God: I don't know how they -make tea in Ireland: I don't know how to pronounce the word 'girl': -I don't know how to make lace: I don't know whether I hear a sound -or feel it, nor why a spool of thread looks exactly like a Spool of -Thread. - -I Don't Know--I Don't Know--I Don't Know, rapidly, to the end of the -mystic common-place infinitudes. - ---those give me a clear look, as if through an uncurtained window -into a bare little room, at my quietest self sitting knitting or -plaiting straw-- - - - - -_A life-long lonely word_ - - - To-morrow - -Fleeting times I wonder if it is my defect or others' that no human -family tie holds and warms me. - -There is none. I think about it with wistfulness. - -The only tie-of-blood feeling that clings to me is of my warming and -keeping-alive. And it is very feeble. It grows more feeble. - -It is a trivial matter as I look at it universally. - -But as I look at it earthlily: there would be an abnormalness, a -lostness in one when the mother who bore her got from it at best but -a small cool dislike. - -It makes me feel humanly lost. - -'Lost' is the shuddering life-long lonely word that brushes against -me some nights and noons. - - - - -_Their voices_ - - - To-morrow - -Every day at half-past ten and half-past two I hear the high -shrill sweet choric Voices of hundreds of children shaking the thin -clear air. - -A public school is but a block from here. The children rush out of -it, a hilarious noisy crowd, for a few mid-morning and mid-afternoon -minutes. So those minutes, from hearing their Voices day after day, -and day after day, have become lyric to my inner-listening. - -Their Voices stir me, rouse me, speak to me with old very joyous, -very woful meanings. - -The children fairly leap out of the school-building through doors -and down fire-escape stairways. And their Voices are at once hurled -skyward, clamorous and chaotic. - -The Sound they make is a roundly common sound yet 'winged.' It is an -untrammeled Sound, uncultivated, only a little civilized. - -It is world-music. - -In it is the note beyond culture, higher than civilization, and -older. It is brave as voices of the shrilling winds and warmer, -viriler. It is liltinger than bird-songs and lustier than roarings of -mountain cataracts. - -Music of the world!-- - -A little door inside me opens to those Voices. - -My little door opens at the first shriek of the first child out of -doors, and I hear not only the hundreds of vivid piercing Voices but -more--their far-off echoes. - -They are the Voices of children, children light-held in crude cold -innocence. The eyes of the children are clear--their impulses and -instincts rule their little lives. They are yet untouched by the -tiredness and terror and shame and sorrow of being human beings. - -So the Sound of their Voices sweeps out resistless and regardless -as the sea or the sun which makes nothing of its own strength or -weakness. And through my little spirit-door I hear them, the poignant -common little sweet Voices, echoing, flying away, farther and -farther: along the roads: over plains and hills: through valleys long -worldly distances from here: through streets: through stone buildings -and dingy courts: through big rich houses: through homes of comfort -and homes of misery and homes of desolate smugness: into lifeless -social foyers: into learned places: into law-courts and cabinet-rooms -of nations: into graveyards and churches and down into dead-vaults: -into theatres: into clinics: into shops: into factories: into dives -and stews and brothels and at lustful doorsteps: into hotels and -on sport-courses: into market-places and across battle-fields, -round monuments and in towers and in forts and in prisons and in -dungeons:--there along fly their Voices. - -It is a brave, brave Sound, and an insistent: nothing stops it. - -It is triumph. - -The noise of the noisiest battle dies away in time. The pounding of -ocean-surf on the rocks and of electric thunder in the clouds are -lasting only with this earth. But brave wild Voices of children fly -on and on, outlasting a million earths, silencing aeons of thunder, -floating strongly back of the stars. The voices of men--wizards, -monks, artisans, thieves--echo no farther than their talking -conceits: even of poets except as they catch up into their sonance -something to interpret a cool gay clamor of child-Voices. The voices -of women--singing women, lovely women, angelic honest women--die with -their bodies: even of mothers of the children except as they follow -with their own echo, by dream and shadow, the thronging child-Voices -as they go. - -For the Sound of the child-Voices is more potent than wizards'--it is -not cramped into thought-forms: more devotional than monks' because -super-conscious; more menacing than thieves' because absolute. And -it echoes, echoes, echoes in the market-place full-tongued, ringing, -rising like the northern gale when all the other voices are long -dead-silenced: and after. - -Music of the world. - -This moment I hear it for it is half-after two of a bright gold -day. The air is emotional, nectareal, and mellow and yellow and -hot-sparkling. The Voices pierce it like a storm of fine steel -arrows. I at once set open my spirit-door and through it come the -sweet shrill chorus and the marvel echo beginning and swelling and -starting away. It wakes vision so that I see--quick, evil, terribly -human, in the dazzlingest daytime colors--all those Places where the -Voices go. - -I go to a window and watch the children running about beneath the -high tide of their Voices. And they and the school-building and the -streets and stone walls show in duller colors than the Places where -their Echo goes. - ---small girls with clipped hair and bloused cotton frocks, taller -girls throwing a basket-ball, thin-legged little girls playing -hop-scotch, groups of varied sizes with rainbow ribbons in their -hair, confused masses of knitted sweaters and fat white-stockinged -legs and shiny leather belts and ankle-strapped shoes, and -little young shoulders and knees and waistlines--restless and -kaleidoscopic-- - ---and confused boy-groups--little fellows in suits misnamed -Oliver-Twist, larger boys of serge-Norfolk persuasion, types of -the generic knickerbocker at once motley and monotonous--all with -the strong sturdy calves of their legs clad in a time-honored kind -of black ribbed stockings, all with the same breed of ties and -collars and short-cropped hair, all with the tacit air of confessing -themselves the most serenely cruel of all animals-- - -A careless conscienceless happy mob. - -It is the Sound of their Voices that invests them with the terrifying -Power, the long world-sweeping Force as of spirit and matter merged, -the human radioactivity not evil and not good, stronger than all evil -and all good. - -Those children I look at must cease to be children, and must lose -their Voices and grow into monks and thieves and singing women--must -turn into persons--'Romans, countrymen and lovers.' - -But will come after those another chorus: the same chorus: the same -Voices. - -The brief yellow mellow minutes have passed and the last shout has -been silenced and the hundreds of children, Rainbow Hair-Ribbons and -Black Ribbed Legs, are again gathered into the McKinley School. - -And my little door is shut again: that door opens but for those -Voices. - -The Voices: their echo flying everywhere flies here into my -still room: and it stirs me, rouses me, speaks to me with the old -joyous woe. - -Music of the world. - - - - -_My damns_ - - - To-morrow - -I bear the detailed infliction of being a person with a tired mixture -of patience and indifference and scorn. - -I say on Monday, Damn the ache in my left foot: on Tuesday, Damn -that rattling window--I hate it: on Wednesday, Damn this yellow -garter--it's too tight: on Thursday, Damn my futile life: on Friday, -Damn the solitude: on Saturday, Damn these thoughts: on Sunday, Damn -my two dresses. - -But I pronounce each day's Damn in a half-perfunctory half-preoccupied -tone, more from duty and fitness than from conviction. I intently -mean each Damn, but the scornful indifferent patience which is my -spirit-essence leavens each one. I swear at my life's perversities -with only a fatigued contempt due partly to bodily fragileness but -mostly to a cold continently reckless mood which is clasped on me -like a strong stupefied devil-fish. In this mood I should murmur the -same gelded Damn if I found myself penniless and foodless in strange -streets: if I became suddenly deaf: if my Body were being lashed with -whips or raped by a Mexican bandit. I should murmur the same worn -Damn if I were this moment on a gallows with the rope around my neck -and life were dearly madly precious. - -I mark that with my musing regrets. I remember in the strong young -furies of eighteen each new day of my life was filled with passionate -poetic blasphemy, protests and rebellions of youth. Those were not -tired, not acquiescent, not indifferent to slings-and-arrows, but -firey-blooded quick-pulsed breathless brave young Damns. - -There is splendor in being brave in a fighting attitude, but in being -brave through indifference there is no splendor. - -But it is only toward calamity and adversity and worldly untowardness -that I feel indifferent. Fighting blood is stirred in me if not -against the hated things then for the loved things. I could fight -and I could die, and love it, to save poet-lusters, poet-fineness, -poet-beauty from the world's flat griefs. In that, which I feel warm -and real and sparkling in my blood, in some splendor for me. - ---and also I could die for my country: and there is fighting hatred -stirred in me against its foes-- - -But in poetry there is nothing that evokes a lusty curse against its -vulgar adversaries. Poetry floats too high upon its dazzling wings. I -get delicately drunk from watching it till I can see the wings' Gold -Shadow touch its foes and magically split them into dust-atoms. - -So then the morale of my Damns remains perfunctory. - -But they are apt and useful. They fit into the nervous rhythms of my -life. They mark time in my spirit's flawed action. I begin each day -with a Damn of sorts. I end each day with a Damn of sorts. At midday -sometimes it's, 'Damn the terrifying ignorance of people.' In the -dusk a deep-felt Damn of the blood. In the night another. And at my -late eating time a negligible Damn. - -A wonderful word, Damn. It means enough and not too much. It means -everything in life, and roundly nothing. - -Without Damn my day would lack tone. Damn richly justifies each -pronouncement of itself in word-value, substance-value and musical -resonance. It harms nobody and it helps me. It destroys nothing and -it strengthens me. It damages my annoyances and mends me somewhat. - -But--perfunctory, desultory, tiredly insolent, it would be thrilling -to think the hot fire would sometime be back in my Damns. Better that -than Youth's faith in my dreams. Better that than the _jeune-fille_ -beauty in my hair. Better than even Youth's ichor in my veins: -Youth's fire in my Damns-- - -But there is dearness in this mood, which is indifferent and scornful -and slightingly patient, though it wants splendor. Let my Damns be -always brave, always contemptuous of disaster to me, and they will be -first-water value though their kind alter never-so. - - - - -_To God, care of the whistling winds_ - - - To-morrow - -This morning came a letter from a half-forgot friend in London. She -is in vaudeville and has been booked for two months in the Music -Halls. Her letter is of a tenor productive of a letter in turn. But I -am somehow not free to write letters to friends while I'm living in -my two plain dresses. So I wrote this letter to God instead: - - 19th November. - -Dear God: - -I know you won't answer this letter. I'm not sure you will get it. -But I have the feeling to write you a letter, though it should only -blow down the whistling winds. - -I haven't a thing to ask of you: no prayer to make. I am not -suppliant nor humble nor contrite. Nor would I justify myself as a -person in your eyes. I scorn to try to justify myself. What I am I -am. If I am a bad actor I take the results of it without plaint. -I comment on it--why not?--since cats may look at kings and each -person inherits four-and-twenty hours a day. But I am bewildered and -distraught and sad. - -The best you do for me, God, when I think of you--you personally--is -to make me bewildered and distraught and sad. - -But I've imagined I could put myself to you as a proposition to take -or to leave as you like: on my terms since I do not know yours. - -There are some verses--the Rubaiyat--in which you are upbraided as if -you might be the dealer in some gambling game who had the long end of -all the wagers and still so protected his money that _he_ could not -lose however the cards turned.--'from his helpless creature be repaid -pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allayed.'--'thou who didst with -pitfall and with gin beset the Road I was to wander in--.' - -But to me that seems a cheap attitude toward you, God. I admit you -are fair. If I thought you weren't my mind would not vex itself with -you at all. I can not make you out a crooked dealer nor one who lends -out bad money and demands good money in repayment. - -But you are reticent and cold-tempered and uninterested. So it seems. -The necklace which you gave me so long ago, made of little curses, I -wear always round my spirit-neck. It serves some purpose, perhaps, -and it answers as a keepsake: so at least I may not forget you -whether or not you forget me. I don't ask any more of your attention -nor anything more of you than I would be willing to give you in -return. But I wish you would be willing to exchange attention with -me. I am lonely. I am terrified. I am frightfully overshadowed by -myself and my odd aloofness and my thronging solitary emotions and my -menacing trivialities. I am always fearing not that I may be wicked -or immoral or allied with evils--I don't really care a tinker's curse -about that--but that I may be growing petty and trivial and weak. It -is horrible, horrible to feel that I may be a weakling--you, God, may -not know how horrible to me. It is like black annihilation for all -eternity when my Soul longs frantically, desperately to live. I feel -weakness to be the only immoralness--hateful and vile in whatever -aspect. I want to be strong to endure and to live in noonday lights -and to overcome my poorness. I want, though I'm far from it, to be -brave and big. What I admire you for, though you're so far off and -strange and inexplicable, is that you are strong. You are Strength, -you are Light, you are the Solution and the Absolute. You'd hardly -know what weakness is if it did not so crop out in this human race -you made. This human race is a faërily beautiful thing: star-flaming -poets have sung in it: lovely youth has breathed upon it: happy wild -hearts have informed it. But the odd keynote of it all is weakness. -And I have felt me tuned overmuch by that keynote. - ---but I won't be weak, I won't be, I won't be, God! Whether -you pay attention or not, whether I breathe only futileness, I -will be strong, strong, strong in myself--strong if only in my -falseness--strong and strong again-- - -This would be your chance with me if you cared to take it: because -I own now just my plain two dresses. When I grow out of this quiet -mood--(if ever I do: I begin to doubt it)--I shall have more dresses, -and then I shall think about them, God, and the phases of life -they'll build up around me, and not about you. It's not that pretty -frocks would take my attention away from you if you once claimed it. -Once you claimed my attention it would be yours forever. But pretty -frocks would mean I am again walking in paved peopled roads. Being -there without your attention I shall go where my garments may lead me -forgetful of you. One's life is of the flavor of one's clothes: 'the -wine must taste of its own grapes.' - -Now feels like a fitting time for you to be personal with me, to give -me a sign that you know I'm here. I know I am blind and ignorant -about that. You may know a time that shall be more fitting, a time -when my still mood and two dresses are long gone and my life is made -of fluff and lightness so your sign will crash into it like a black -two-ton meteor. I only tell you how it seems. If you should come -now and speak to me I should feel suddenly glad. To-day feels such -a day-of-God. The sky is all wet silver and the air a thin cloud -of gold. I sit writing you by my window, often looking out with -my forehead resting against the cool pane. There is an ache in my -forehead, in my insteps, in my backbone and in my spirit. By stopping -in here a moment you would gladden me. If you could give me, or show -me--where it perhaps had always been--one true thing to have always -in my life I should cling to it and ask nothing of it but that it -remain true. If you'd make me one far-off promise of a dawn to come -after this tired darkness I would take your word for it and would -walk toward your dawn in a straight road from which I should not ever -turn aside. In me is a small torch glowing though set in chaos. By -its light I should keep in the road leading to your dawn. I should -keep in it at any sacrifice to my merely human self: any sacrifice, -believe me. - -It isn't a bargain I would make with you. I don't like the thought of -a bargain with you. I would rather take the chance and lose honestly: -not in everything but in this matter with you. You show me the road -and I take it for the sole reason that it's a true one. I should -expect myself to pay the tolls--heavy ones since I'm innately a liar, -a someway bad lot. I know, the same as I know one and one make two, -that I've only to be square in the human business of living to get -back a square deal, though I'll get badly battered, with it. But it -isn't what I mean. Something inside me hungers for answeringness--a -Gleam--to make me know the worldly squareness and the battering are -worth while beyond themselves: but a detail in the game. - -You mightn't guess it but I am diffident about broaching this much -that may sound like a plea, so I'll say no more of it. - -But before I close the letter I want to tell you that I'm not wanting -in gratitude for the terrible beauty of this world. I feel with -ecstasy the burning loveliness of the life you give the human race. - -I want to tell you thank-you for some things in it. But all that they -mean I can not tell in words. - -Only yesterday a light at sundown lingered on the hill-tops and on -the desert back of the School of Mines in tints of Olive and Copper -and Ochre and Rose so delicate, so radiant, so dumbly forlorn that -I closed my eyes against it all as I walked along the sand: its -aliveness, its realness, its flawless golden dreadful peace tortured -and twisted and too-keenly interpreted me. - -And one summer day in Central Park in New York I saw a little -Yellow-Yellow Butterfly fluttering above a small plot of brilliant -Green-Green Grass in the afternoon sunshine. To you, God, used to the -purpling splendor of untold worlds that mightn't seem noteworthy. -But to me--because I am half-sister to so many trivialities the -Yellow-Yellow of those little wings and the sweet bright Green of -the clipped velvet Grass beneath the sun suddenly fiercely entered -in and beat-beat hard on my imagination. O the glare and the flare -of that fairy prettiness! I shall never forget that picture though -I should one day see those worlds. It made me think wildly of -you, God, at the time--and ever since. It is there yet in Central -Park, that particular plot of Grass, and if not that Yellow-Yellow -Butterfly--happily, happily Yellow it was--then another! - -And to-day and often other days I read this-- - - '_Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter_'-- - ---magic words: potent hushed wizardry of beauty. It opens the -doors of all the Inner Rooms and more blest, more precious, of the -celestial brain of him who wrote it. In making the glimmering Purple -of all your worlds, God, you have not surpassed the thing you made in -the regal wistful glory of John Keats. - -And two nights ago I went close to my glass and looked deep into my -own dark gray eyes, and they were beautiful. Their color is the gray -not of peace but of stormy sky and clouded sea. Their expression is -alien and melancholy and they are never without circlings of fatigue -or stress. And when I meet their glance they mostly accuse and -condemn and confound me. But two nights ago they grew wide and deep -and breathless-looking at realizing me human and alive. And presently -I saw, back of their gray iris--my Soul: like a naked girl: like a -willow in the wind: like a drowning star at daybreak: an inherent -inexpressible grace--my Soul of many ages. - -And this moment another little memory, God, of a tropic marsh -a little way back from the sea on the island in the bay at -St. Augustine, as it looked in the wane of one sun-flooded February -day. In the marsh were tall waving feathery salt-marsh grasses, -and little pools of murky water. And there were snail-shells and -ancient barnacles and smooth beach pebbles. And bordering the pools -were reeds and flags and tiny wax-petaled death-white lilies. By a -mound of wet moss was a slim wild blue heron standing on one leg and -staring about and preening its blue feathers. And over all the scene -was a Pink-Pink Flush. The curving quivering tops of the long grass -were Pink with it. The pools were dull Pink mirrors. The barnacles, -the pebbles, the death-white lilies were as if a thin bloody veil -had been flung down on them. Pink touched the heron's wings, its -beak, its head, its glittering beady eyes and spindly leg. The -sinking sun shot a Pink broadside of dream-dust all over the marsh: -it lingered and hung and floated. Almost I could have reached out my -two hands and gathered a bouquet of Pink Flush. The stillness, which -was intense, was Pink stillness. O but it was pleasant, pleasant, -pleasant, God--it wrapped me in a scarf of Pink sweetness: it filled -my throat with Pink honey: it laid on me a gentle eager quiet -covetous Pink spell. - -Nobody knows how you do it, God. But it is all--Sunset Tint, -Yellow-Yellow Moth, Conscious Soul, Poet-Flame--maddening and -precious and terrifying and transfiguring to me who live among it. I -cherish it as a lonely one may who loves it with passion and is never -happy in it. And for it all I thank you, God. - - Yours very sincerely, - Mary MacLane. - -I wrote the Letter on my long-unused monogram note-paper to please my -whim, and put it in the envelope and addressed it to God, care of the -Whistling Winds. He may receive it--what do I know?--only _he_ knows, -and is reticent. - -I only know he'll not answer it. - - - - -_A working diaphragm_ - - - To-morrow - -I am not Respectable nor Refined nor in Good Taste. - -I take a delicate M.-Mac-Lane pleasure in those facts. - -I doubt if they are anyway peculiar to me, but they feel like a -someway delicious clandestine circumstance: something to enjoy all to -myself. - -It is difficult to imagine any woman really Respectable on her inner -side, the side that is turned toward herself alone. And it's certain -no woman is Refined: it feels not possible. (There are yet inland -places where the word is used in its smug sense and believed in.) And -no woman but a dead woman in her coffin is in complete Good Taste. -Every live woman has for instance a working diaphragm: and in a -diaphragm there is, in the final analysis, simply no taste at all. - -(As for men--except poets--I mean _poets_: and perhaps scientists--they -are so ungenuine: a race of discreet cautious puppets: wooden dolls -who move as their strings are pulled: with nothing so real about them -inside as even outside--what use to dwell upon them?) - -Nearly all women are perplexingly interesting as human beings. And I -am quite the most interesting human being I know: and with it the -most appealing, the most sincere--in my own false fashion, and the -most bespeaking. - -It is much due to knowing and feeling me to be not Respectable nor -Refined nor in Good Taste: particularly to being not in Good Taste. - -One autumn evening in Boston I went to dine with a man in his -apartment in Beacon Street. He is a mining engineer whom I have -known since we were both children. He had bidden me to dinner in his -off-hand engineering way, but when I arrived at his diggings he was -not there. He did not come. Instead there was a dinner waiting, a -Japanese boy to serve it, and a strange man who had happened in. The -strange man had iron-gray hair, a brow like Apollo, a jowl like Bill -Sikes and much conversation. He said that he was newly from China, -South Africa and Egypt and that in his life he had been married -seven times with book and bell. Together we ate the dinner, talking -pleasantly in the light of colored Chinese lamp-shades. There were -little birds to eat and Chinese wine to drink--_sam shu_ distilled -virilely from rice: always a little of it is too much. After the -dinner we were standing by a teakwood sideboard and the strange man -was holding me tightly in his arms against a large smooth evening -panel of shirt-front, and he was kissing my mouth with a great -deal of ardor. I did not like it. I thought of all the women he had -married and wondered if they had liked it. And I mused in my placid -brain, 'As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives.' It -was the only thought in my mind as I waited boredly for him to have -done. (It's no good struggling.) And that incident I know was not -Respectable. - -And one summer day I was riding horseback up a steep gorge in these -Montana hills. It was hot dusty riding. I came to a mountain stream -with a beautiful little white-and-blue cascade tumbling over a high -rock upon smooth pebbles below. I got down from my horse, took off -my dusty khaki suit and all my clothes and stood under the fall of -the little tumbling cascade, whitely naked, without so much as a -figleaf's covering. It was delectable and pagan, what with my quaint -thoughts as I stood crouched beneath the sparkling splash. And I know -there was nothing Refined in it. - -And one evening between nine and ten, a week ago. I was walking -across the broad desert valley east of this Butte. It is late -November and the night was stormy. A strong high gale swept the -Flat. Presently it rained. I was on my way back with a mile or two -to go. It rained harder. Heavy sheets of black water whipped and -whirled down on me and wrapped me in their wet wings. I love all -weather when it is mild and more when it is rough except when it -bears down too hard: then I feel indifferent to it. As I moved along -the dark road not hurrying and not loitering I was saying inside -me, 'Why am I going to any shelter out of this heavy wet rain? Why -am I not a houseless beggar-woman with nothing gentler in all my -life than this November storm? It is not because I deserve gentler -things--' And with a sudden heavy shudder I whispered, 'I wish I -were a beggar-woman! I wish I had no roof to cover me in this cold -night-blackness. It would be honest: I should be stripped to my -deserts. And I wish it were so--this drenching rain, this strangling -wind--nothing but this--shelter, money, comfort, self-satisfaction, -however seemingly earned, are dishonest--thieved. I ought to -be--ragged beggar--bleared eyes--dirty petticoats--a foul ratty hole -to creep into--hunger--bodily misery--all the portion of outcasts-- -As God may hear me--I'd eagerly tremblingly change lives this moment -with a beggar-woman. I would--I would--!' It is a piece of clear -inside truth about myself. And I know it proves me to be in poor -Taste. - -It is a matter of attitude. Each of those incidents might happen to -any woman--except perhaps the last. I have known but one girl who -agreed with me in such a feeling. And not quite that feeling. She -had married a lot of money with a horrible old gentleman and had -wearied of both. But the other two episodes could readily belong to -any woman of _esprit_ who might be on the outside both Respectable -and Refined: even a woman lawyer. - -But my attitude in the incident of the strange iron-gray man, -though in a bored way I could have viciously knifed him, was not a -Respectable attitude. I was bored and fanciful when doubtless I ought -to have been breathlessly angry. But my breathless anger is too rare -and beautiful an emotion to waste on ridiculous strange iron-gray men. - -In the incident of the sparkling cascade my attitude was shameless: -something of the sort. It is never reprehensible for a woman to -take a cold shower-bath in solitude and health. But my spirit rose -and rejoiced at my bodily nakedness and then grew nymph-like and -figleafless on its own account. My sex exploited itself in mental -visions, like of Leda and the Swan or of myself as a slim villainous -Scotch Aphrodite conceived by a bold surprising Titian. And doubtless -I ought to have felt timorous in the vast sunlit mountainside, or -like a sexless child (or merely 'hygienic' like William Muldoon and -Bernarr McFadden). But the quick charm of the situation and the -heavenly anguish of the icy water, and my lovely Body, and my odd -moralless musings were too intriguing to expend themselves banalely. - -The wet night road and the beggar-woman wish: it is drearily real -to me. Though I wear two plain dainty dresses, in a house--in me, -beating, beating, pounding down is a cold wild heavy rain: and under -my feet a long lonely muddy road. If they belong to me--well. I love -Me the more for feeling them. - -And I feel them because I am not yet dead and in my coffin, but alive -and with a working diaphragm: which diaphragms are in not Good Taste. - - - - -_Lot's wife_ - - - To-morrow - -To-day in the afternoon I briskly manicured my fingernails, sitting -by my gold-and-blue window, and I mused upon Lot's Wife. - -So many persons and incidents and events and adventures and episodes -there are to muse upon, in this mixed world, dating from when it -began till now. There's something to charm any mood. Let me leave the -doors of my mind open and anything at all may float in like an errant -butterfly on a summer's day. - -It is an entertaining world, by and large: a limitless vaudeville. - -Lot's Wife is to me a fantasy from the antique, a bit of archaic -frivol to beguile me. - -When first I heard of her, from an acrid aunt of caustic humor who -told me the tale tersely in explanation of a biblical print, I was -seven years old. From that day to this my meditative thoughts have -from time to time flitted backward to dwell interestedly upon Lot's -Wife. Later when I went to an Episcopal Sunday-school I was pleased -to find this adjuration in according-to-St.-Luke: 'Remember Lot's -Wife.' There seemed no special meaning attached to it. It seemed like -Remember Lot's Wife in any way you like--as it might be with a card -on her birthday, a useless gift at Christmas, in your prayers, or in -retributive patriotism like Remember the Alamo, Remember the Maine. - -But I remember her because I like her. - -There's no name given for Lot's Wife in the brief biblical narrative, -so I long ago named her Bella as expressive of the temperament and -character that have grown around her image in my thoughts. Poor -Bella, I ruminated as I tinted and polished my nails. Her life in -Sodom was not entirely satisfying to her. Sodom was a town completely -given over to pleasure of the physical and outward sorts. The -dwellers lived in and for their physical senses alone. And Bella had -it in her to care for the foods of the spirit. Not that she longed -for them--she was not so conscious of herself--but she had it in her -to care for them had they been given her. Still, Sodom and its ways -were the best she knew and she had known them all her life. The roots -of her temperament had shot down into the Sodomesque substrata. She -fondly loved the place. - -Sodom was a prototype for Babylon or Pompeii, worshiping the hotness -of the sun in moralless plaisance, with fêtes and drinkings of wine -from gold and silver cups, and bathings in warm scented marble-lined -pools, and anointings with oils of olive and palm, and dwellings -among flowers of thin bright petals and birds of vivid plumage and -fountains of crystal and rainbow, and caterings to the sparkle and -froth of human emotions, and browsings amid loves and lights o' love. -Can Bella be wondered at for growing fond of it all, having known -nothing substantialer? And can she rightly be blamed for hating the -thought of leaving it for dry sage-brush wilds in the mountains? She -did hate and dread that thought with all her soul from the moment -it was made known to her that Sodom for its sins was booked for -destruction. She had perhaps a fortnight in which to dread it, and a -fortnight if given over to dread is long enough to damage stronger -spirits than hers. - -Bella was slender and svelte, with long straight soft beautiful -silken pale red hair and white-lidded eyes of grayish green. She -was thirty-eight--a young thirty-eight. There's an old thirty-eight -which applies to greedy school-teachers, gangrenous woman -government-clerks, fading hard-hearted stenographers, over-righteous -woman doctors; to all whose virtue is ever indecently on guard. But -there's a glory-tinted sun-kissed young thirty-eight which applies -to sensitive high-strung generously-emotional women like Bella Lot. -She had smooth hands with supple tapering fingers, an irregular -expressive-lipped mouth like a pimpernel-bloom, firm slim feet -and the quivering suggestive white knees of a wood-nymph. From any -angle-of-view can she be blamed for hating to take that equipment -away from the city-de-luxe which was its so proper setting and hiding -it in the sage-brush? - -Furthermore Bella had a lover in Sodom. It is beyond a sane effort -of the imagination that she could have loved that unpleasing old man -Lot. The best and worst that can be said of him is that he was a fit -addition to the company of the old Patriarchs who were for the most -part an exceeding craven crew. The martyrs, the sages and especially -the prophets had their splendors. But the lean old patriarchs--The -sporting blood of all of them--in the sense of merest simplest -courage--from Adam down, would hardly aggregate one drop. There are -any number of reasons--as many as Bella had charms--to account for -Lot's having married her. But what she could have seen in him to make -her wish or even willing to be married to him is a deep mystery to -me. It may have been his family. I believe Bella lacked family: she -was just a person. And was he not nephew to Abraham? But even being -niece-in-law to Abraham himself seems insufficient compensation for -being Lot's Wife. - -The Lots had two young daughters, one fifteen and one seventeen, it -might be. I do not know their names--call them Ethel and Agnes. But -they were of a recalcitrant temper and absorbed in their own racy -pastimes among the younger youth of Sodom and they had no need of -their mother. Besides, they 'took after' their father. So Bella was -fain to turn outward in search of nurturing matter whereon to feed -her humanness. Had it been expected of her to play fair with the -patriarch she would have played fair. But it was not expected of her -by anyone in Sodom--far from it, and least of all by the patriarch. -She was eight-and-thirty, and Lot--_he_ was doubtless eight or nine -hundred years old, after the surprising long-lived fashion of the -period. - -So Bella found a lover ready and awaiting her. She would have found -a lover in the circumstances even without caring to. But she quite -cared to, I think. Everything points that way, and when one remembers -that good old man her husband one can not censure her but only pity -her. Be it as it may she had one--one as real as anything could be in -that town of sparkling froth. - -Of the lover's identity--little is known, as the historians say. My -fancy as I filed my fingernails failed me on the point. Suffice it -to state that ever and anon as time passed in Sodom the gray-green -eyes of Bella were gazed into with fondness, affection, adoration -and desire: the white eyelids of Bella had showers of light kisses -bestowed on them, soft-falling as rose-petals shaken loose in summer -winds: the tapering white hands of Bella were caressed and caressing -with the oddly intense tenderness of physical love: the pale red hair -of Bella was ruffled and fluffed and disarrayed by the fingers of -love: the red-pimpernel mouth of Bella was touched, bruised, clung -to by the lips of love: the svelte whiteness and nymph-knees of -Bella glowed as she broached love's arms:--and all went much merrier -than marriage bells. In short, Bella paid herself with usury for the -deadliness of being Lot's Wife. - -And there we have the crux of Bella's dread of leaving Sodom and its -tempered sweetness for the arid sage-brush hills and the respectively -cold and hectic companionship of the good old patriarch and the -recalcitrant daughters. - -It can not be claimed for Bella that any white poetic fires gleamed -across her soul, that any limning beauty shone palely from within -her. The air of Sodom was not conducive to suchlike matters and Bella -was no finer than her breeding and generation. But she was gentle and -wistful and kind of heart. She was lovely to look at and ingenuously -lovable in her clinging affection and disarming naturalness. She was -all one could want to imagine in the word charming. - -Came the night set for destruction and the Lot family fled -according to schedule. They fled away in the early damps of an -autumn evening through the outer city gates and along a rough road -faintly lit by a dying moon. They had three separate reasons for -fleeing. Lot fled because he was a patriarch and was given to doing -craven Old-Testamentish things of that sort: Bella fled because -she was Lot's Wife and obliged to act out the rôle: and Ethel and -Agnes fled because they had true patriarchal blood in their veins -and had therefore no marked inclination to remain in Sodom to be -annihilated--'safety first' was one of their watchwords. They fled in -the van. Lot came after them, being less swift of foot. Bella lagged -behind. She didn't want to go. Every way she looked at it she didn't -want to go. She hated that flight for a thousand reasons. - -The ghastly moon shed a terror on her with its dim rays. The ground -was hard and rutted with frosty mud and bruised her slender feet -through her white buckskin sandals. - -She wore a loose _ninon_ gown of white silk and linen with a -gold girdle around her narrow loins and a gold clasp at the left -shoulder. Binding her long hair, so palely red in the moon, was a -white-and-gold fillet. In one hand she carried a gold-and-enamel -link bracelet, a gift but that afternoon from the lover. Suddenly -she stopped and cried to herself, 'I'm too lovely for this fate--I'm -too lovely and beloved--the cruelty of God--: I'll not go on!' She -thought of the gleams and colorings of Sodom. She quickly reckoned -the cost and decided to pay it. She was a rare good sport, and a -quaint. She looked back at the doomed city blazing in brimstone--'But -his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of -salt.'-- - -As I put away my chamois-skin buffer and glass paste-jar through my -mind floated the pensive burden of a by-gone French song-- - - '_Oh, the poor, oh, the poor, oh, the poor--dear--girl_'-- - -She must have made a beautiful statue, all in glistening salt. - -I wish I had a glistening little salty replica of it to set on my -desk: a so unusual, a so dainty conceit, Lot's Wife! - - - - -_My echoing footsteps_ - - - To-morrow - -While I live so still in this life-space, while I muse and meditate -and analyze everything I touch, while I walk, while I work, while -I change from one plain frock to the other: in quiet hours roiled -tumbling storms of vicarious unhopeful Passion whirl, whirl in me: -Passion of Soul, Passion of Mind, Passion of living, Passion of this -mixed world: in terror, in wild unease, in reasonless mournful joy. - -I never knew real Passion, Passion-meanings, till I reached thirty. -It is now I'm at life's storm-center, youth's climax, the high-pulsed -orgasmic moment of being alive. - -At twenty the woman's chrysalis soul and aching pulses awaken in -crude chaste Spring-cold beauty. At forty her fires either have -subsided to dim-glowing coals or leaped to too-positive, too-searing, -too-obvious flames--her bones and the filigrees of her spirit may be -alike dry, brittle-ish. But at thirty her Spring has but changed to -midsummer. Poesy still waits upon her Passions. - -My Spring has changed, bloomed, burst to midsummer. - -Soft electrical heat-currents of being swing and sweep around me. -They touch me and enter my veins. But the liquid essences of youth -still quell and compass them. I am at youth's climax--a half-sullen, -half-smouldering youth which still is youth. - -My rose of life is fragrant and aglow. Its sweet pink petals are -uncurled and conscious in the wavering light. - -Winds flutter and stir and rumple and twist those petals-- - -To-day is a To-morrow of countless unrests. Large and little -Passions beat at me all the blue-and-copper day. I walked my floor -with irregular lagging steps. I felt menacing, dangerous to myself, -dynamic as nitro-glycerine: and smoothly drearily sane as a bar of -white soap. I stood at my window and looked long at the circling -range of mountains which skirt this Butte. Nothing else I have looked -at, of sea or plain or hill, affected me like that chain of barren -peaks. They are arid splendor and pale purple witchery and grief and -lasting sadness and deathlike beauty and woe and wonder. Their color -quietly stormed my eyes and blurred them with tears. - -It was a mood in which any color or gleam or thought or strain of -music or note of sad world-laughter or any un-sane loveliness of -poetry could enchant or flay or transport me to my frayed last nerve. - -There is terror in facing death on battlefields, on sinking ships, -in black ice-floes, in blazing buildings. But to me no death, for I -fear no death, could be so dreadfully pregnant with in-turning woe -and frenzy and all intolerable feeling as facing starkly my futile -life. - -My life is a vast stone bastile of many little Rooms in which I am a -prisoner. I am locked there in solitude on bread and water and let to -roam in it at will. And each Room is tenanted by invisible garbled -furies and dubious ecstasies. I run with echoing footsteps from Room -to Room to escape them: but each Room is more unhabitable than the -last. There are scores of little Rooms, each with its ghosts, each -different. - -In one Room silent voices in the air accuse my tired Spirit of wanton -vacillations and barren lack of purpose and utter waste, waste, waste -of itself. And they threaten death and destruction. I know that -accusation and I hate it: I hate it the more for that it's wholly -just. To escape it I run from that Room along a dim passage into -another one. In it unseen fingers clutch my Heart. In their touch -also is an accusation: of selfishness and waste and want of something -to beat for: and in their touch is the savor of wild wishes and human -longings and passionate prayers for something warm and simple and -real to rest against: and in their pressing clutching turbulent touch -is a tormenting half-promise, chance-promise, no-promise: and the -hovering inevitable threat of death and destruction. That too I know -and hate and half-love: and I can't bear it. So I run out of that -Room along a passage and into another. I hear my footsteps echoing as -I run. - ---as a child when I ran in the early night through a dark leaf-lined -tunnel-like driveway the sound of my own flying footsteps on the -hardened gravel was the only thing that frightened me. I quite -believed there were bears in the brushwood on either side, but -fear of them never struck to the core of my child-being like the -unknown thing in my echoing steps. And it is fear I feel now from -the ghost-sound of my ghost-footsteps running, running away from the -little Rooms. It is realer to me now than were my child footsteps to -my child-self long ago: it is more definite than my hand which writes -this: it is hideous-- - -Out of a dim passage I run into another little Room. In it some gray -filmy threads, like strands of loose cobwebs caught on ceilings, -float about. They sweep gently against my cheeks and hands and -neck, and cling and twine and lightly hold with the half-felt -feeling peculiar to bits of cobwebs on the skin. And it torments my -woman-flesh with calefacient thrills fierce and goading and sweet. -There also is the accusation, now against my Body; for tissues and -strength wasted: for useless fires meant to warm human seeds to life, -meant to make me fruitful, meant to make me bear dear race-burdens: -accusation for the cosmic waste of hot objectless desire, for the -subtle guilt of a Lesbian tendency, for an unleashed over-positive -sex-fancy. With it too is the lowering promise of death and -destruction. It also is just. But out of my borne-along helplessness -in it comes no culpable emotion because of cobweb thrills and their -arraignment but only a wearing wearying despair. I rush out of that -Room in shrugging impatience, with only scorn for a threat of death, -for a threat of destruction--but with a wild fear of my own flying -steps. I hurry and hurry on from door to door: but it's no good. In -some other Room my brain is anathematized from frowning walls as an -impish demoniac power which I use with no good intent and therefore -with bad intent: and again I shrink and run away. In another Room are -all the lies I have ever told: I have told legions--my own peculiar -lies, gentler on me than truths: they dart around me in the Room like -black heavy-winged moths, clouds of them fluttering at my forehead. -They drive me out shivering. In another Room four times when I was -a not-good-sport confront me in a row like pictures and sting me -and make me hide my eyes: I'd rather be a leper, a beast, a maniac -than a not-good-sport (for my own precious reasons)--and I rush away -again. In some other Room-- - ---the same galling torment in all the Rooms. Wherever I run with the -echo-echo of steps there are Accusing voices and half-formed Prayer -and uncertain Yearning and violent yet dumb and inexpectant Protest -and the unfailing Threat of death and destruction: not earth-death -but universe-death: death and death and death everywhere coming on -and on: myself knowing the just note in it all and from it grown numb -with some cold and restless terror. Also I know no door I run through -with my panic-feet will ever set me free of the bastile except a -death door: the earthly death of this tired life-- - -But it's from this maelstrom that the flashing burning sparkling mad -magic of being alive leaps out brilliant and barbarous--and throbbing -and splendid and sweet. A merely human hunger comes back on me. Then -I want all I ever wanted with a hundredfold more voltage of wanting -than I have ever yet known. - -I am all unhopeful, all unpeaceful, all a desperate Languor and a -tragic Futileness: I am an unspeakably untoward thing. - -And already I have been seared and scarred trivially from standing -foolishly near some foolish human melting-pots. - -No matter for any of it. I want to plunge headlong into life--not -imitation life which is all I've yet known, but honest worldly -life at its biggest and humanest and cruelest and damnedest: to be -blistered and scorched by it if it be so ordered--so that only it's -_realness_--from the outside of my skin to the deeps of my spirit. - -It is not happiness I want--nothing like it: its like never existed -since this world began. - -I want to feel one big hot red bloody Kiss-of-Life placed square and -strong on my mouth and shot straight into me to the back wall of my -Heart. - - * * * * * - -I write this book for my own reading. - -It is my postulate to myself. - -As I read it it makes me clench my teeth savagely: and coldly -tranquilly close my eyelids: it makes me love and loathe Me, Soul and -bones. - -Clench and close as I will the winds flutter and stir and crumple and -twist my petals as _they_ will:--as I sit here tiredly, tiredly sane. - - - - -_A comfortably vicious person_ - - - To-morrow - -The blue-and-copper of yesterday is dead and buried this To-morrow in -a maroon twilight. - -I this moment saw darkly from my window the somber hills in their -heavy spell of pale-purple and grief and splendor and sadness and -beauty and wonder and woe. - -But their color brings no tears to my wicked gray eyes. - -The passion-edged mood is burnt out. - -Gone, gone, gone. - -I listlessly change into the other black dress for listless -dinnertime and all my thought is that my abdomen is beautifully flat -and that I must purchase a new petticoat. - -I rub a little rouge on my pale mouth and I idlingly recall a clever -and filthy story I once heard. - -I laugh languidly at it and feel myself a comfortably vicious person. - -I pronounce a damn on the familiar ache in my beloved left foot and -turn away from myself. - -I stick out the tip of my forked-feeling tongue at the bastard -clock on the stairs. I note the hour on it with a fainness in my -spirit-gizzard to dedicate Me from that time forth to a big blue god -of Nastiness: Nastiness so restful, humorous, appetizing, reckless, -sure-of-itself. - ---these hellish To-morrows creeping in their petty pace: they bring -in weak-kneed niceness, and they bring in doubts, and they bring in -meditation and imagery and all-around humanness, till I'm a mere -heavy-heeled dubious complicated jade. - - - - -_In my black dress and my still room_ - - - To-morrow - -I have fits of Laughter all to myself. - -The world is full of funny things. All to myself I Laugh at them. I -lounge at my desk in the small night hours, and I finger a pencil or -a box or a rubber or a knife and rest my chin on my hand, and sit on -my right foot, and Laugh intermittently at this or that. - -Ha! ha! ha! I say inwardly: with all my Heart: relishingly. - -I laugh at the thought of a mouse I once encountered lying dead--so -neat, so virtuous--though soft and o'er-long dead--with its tail -folded around it--in a porcelain tea-pot: a strong inimical anomaly -to all who viewed it. It had a look of a saint in effigy in a whited -sepulcher. Looked at as a mouse it seemed out of place. Looked at as -a saint it was perfect. - -I Laugh at the recollection of a lady I once met who had thick -black furry eyebrows incongruous to her face, which she took off -at night and laid on her bureau. They were at once 'detached' and -detachable: itself a subtle phenomenon. She referred to her mind as -her 'intellects' and talked with a quaint bogus learnedness, and in -remarkable grammar, of the Swedenborgian doctrines. Looked at as a -person she was inadequate. Looked at as a conundrum she was gifted -and profound. - -I Laugh at that extraordinary tailor in the Mother Goose rhyme--him -'whose name was Stout,' who cut off the petticoats of the little old -woman 'round about,' herself having recklessly fallen asleep on the -public highway. The tale leaves me the impression that such were the -straitly economic ideas of the tailor that he obtained all his cloth -by wandering about with his shears until he happened upon persons -slumbering thus publicly and vulnerably. Looked at in any light that -tailor is ever surprising, ever original, ever rarely delectable. - -I Laugh at William Jennings Bryan. - -How William Jennings Bryan may look to the country and world-at-large -I have never much considered. - -It is all in the angle of view: St. Simeon Stilites may seem -rousingly funny to some: Old King Cole may have been a frosty dullard -to those who knew him best. - -To me William Jennings Bryan means bits of my relishingest brand of -gay mournful Laughter. - -The ensemble and detail of William Jennings Bryan and his career -as a public man, viewed impersonally--as one looks at the moon--is -something hectic as hell's-bells. - -I remember William Jennings Bryan when his star first rose. It -was before Theodore Roosevelt was more than a name: before the -battleship _Maine_ was sunk at Havana: before Lanky Bob wrested the -heavyweight title from Gentleman Jim at Carson: before aëroplanes -were and automobiles were more than rare thin-wheeled restless -buggies: before the song 'My Gal She's a High-born Lady' had yet -waned: before one Carrie Nation had hewn her way to fame with a -hatchet. I was a short-skirted little girl devouringly reading and -observing everything, and I took note of all those. So I took note -of William Jennings Bryan nominated for president by the Democratic -convention in eighteen-ninety-six. The zealous Democratic newspapers -referred to him, though he was then thirty-six, as the Boy Orator -of the Platte. Looked at as a grown man, advocating free coinage -of silver at sixteen-to-one--a daring dashing Democrat, he was a -plausible thing and even romantic. Looked at as a Boy Orator he -turned at once into a bald and aged lad oddly flavored with an -essence of Dare-devil Dick, of the boy on the burning deck, of a kind -of political Fauntleroy madly matured. - -Long years later with the top of his hair and his waistline buried -deep in his past he became Secretary of State: and at the same time a -Chautauqua Circuit lecturer--entertaining placid satisfied audiences -alternately with a troupe of Swiss Yodlers. Of all things, yodlers. -Politics makes strange bedfellows and always did. But never before -has the American Department of State combined and vied with the -yodler's art to entertain and instruct. Looked at as a monologist he -might pass if sufficiently interpolated with ah-le-ee! and ah-le-o-o! -Looked at as Secretary of State he is grilling and gruelling to the -senses: a frightful figure quite surpassing a mouse softly dead in a -tea-pot, a pair of detachable fuzzy Swedenborg-addicted eyebrows, a -presumptuously economical tailor. - -And he entertained the foreign ministers at a state dinner, did -this unusual man, and he gave them to drink--what but grape-juice, -grape-juice in its virginity. Plain water might have seemed the -crystalline expression of a rigid puritanic spirit. Budweiser Beer, -bitter and bourgeois, might have been possible though surprising. -But grape-juice, served to seasoned Latin Titles and Graybeards and -Gold-Braid, long tamely familiar with the Widow Clicquot: that in -truth seems, after all the years, boyishly oratorical, wildly and -darkly Nebraskan. Looked at as an appetizing wash for a children's -white-collared and pink-sashed party, or for anybody on a summer -afternoon, grape-juice is satisfactory. In the careless hands of -William Jennings Bryan with his soul so unscrupulously at peace, the -virgin grape-juice becomes a vitriolic thing: a defluent purple river -crushing one's helpless spirit among its rocks and rapids. - ---a terrible American, William Jennings Bryan. He is for 'peace -at any price.' There were some, long and long ago, who suffered -and endured one starveling winter in camp at Valley Forge that -William Jennings Bryan might wax Nebraskanly fat: and _he_ is -valiantly for peace: at any price-- - -For that my Laughter is tinged with fulfilling hatred. - -Rich hot-livered Laughter must have in it essential love or hatred. - -To William Jennings Bryan everything he has done in his political -career must seem all right. - -It _is_ all right, undoubtedly. Just that. - ---that Silver-tongued Boy Orator - -those Yodlers - -that Peerless Leader - -that Grape-juice-- - -They come breaking into my melancholy night-hours with an odd -high-seasoned abruptness. - -I wonder what God thinks of him. - -It might be God thinks well of him. - -But I--in my black dress and my still room--I say inwardly and -willy-nilly, and with all my Heart and relishingly: - -Ha! ha! ha! - - - - -_Their little shoes_ - - - To-morrow - -Often in windy autumn nights I lie awake in my shadowy bed and think -of the children, the Drab-eyed thousands of children in this America -who work in coal mines and factories. - -Whenever I'm wakeful and the night is windy and my room is dark and I -lie in aloneness--a long aloneness: centuries--then shadows come from -far-off world-wildnesses and float and flutter dimly unhappy around -my bed. They tell me tales of shame and tame petty hopelessness and -trifling despair. - -And the one that comes oftenest is the one that tells of those -Drab-Eyed children distances from here, but very immediate, who work -in coal mines and factories. I read about them in magazines and -newspapers, but they aren't then one one-hundredth so real as when -their shadow floats as close to me in the windy autumn night. - -Once in Pennsylvania I saw a group of children, very Drab in the Eyes -and very thin in the necks and legs, who worked in a mill. Their look -made its imprint in my memory and more in my flesh. And it comes back -as if it were the only thing that mattered as I lie wakeful in the -windy night. - -The children--unconscious and smiling their small decayed -smiles--they are living and being crushed between greed and need as -between two murderous millstones. Their frail flesh and their little -brittle bones, their voices and their pinched insides, the sweet -vague childish looks which belong in their faces are squeezed and -crunched by two millstones--squeezed, squeezed till their scrawny -fledgeling bodies are dry, breathless, and are gasping, strangling, -striving frightfully for life: and still are slowly, all too slowly, -dying between two millstones. - -If it were their own greed or their own need--but it's the greed of -fat people and the need of their own warped gaunt parents. Betwixt -the two the children meet homelike hideous ruin. Placidly they are -cheated and blighted and blasted, placidly and with the utmost -domesticness. - -The most darkling-luminous thing about the Drab-Eyed children is -that they never weep. They talk among themselves and smile their -little dreadful decayed smiles, but they don't weep. When they walk -it's with a middle-aged gait: when they eat their noontime food it's -as grown people do, with half-conscious economic and gastronomic -consideration. They count their Tuesdays and Wednesdays with -calculation as work-days, which should be childishly wind-sweptly -free. Which is all of less weight than the heavy fact that they never -weep. - -They reckon themselves fairly fortunate with their bits of silver -in yellow envelopes every Saturday. They are permitted to keep a -bit of it, each child a bit for herself or himself, so that on -Sunday afternoons they lose themselves for precious hours watching -Charlie Chaplin. Many pink-faced inconsequent children whose parents -nurture them and guard them and eternally misunderstand them are less -worldlily lucky. But the pink-faced children often weep--loudly, -foolishly like puppies and snarling furry cubs--and wet sweet salt -tears of proper childishness are round and bright on their cheeks -and lashes. It's a sun-washed blestness for them: they're impelled -and allowed to weep. But the Drab Eyes shed no tears--they know no -reason why they should. There's no impulse for soft liquid grief in -the murderous philosophy of two grinding millstones. And there's no -time--the lives of the work-children move on fast. Their very shoes -are ground between the millstones. - ---their little shoes are heartbreaking. The millstones grind many -things along with little-little shoes of children: germs of potent -splendid humanness that might grow bigly American in heroic ways or -in sane round honesty: germs that might grow into brave barbaric -beauty or warm wistful sweetness: germs that would grow into lips -blooming tender and fragrant as jonquils or into minds swimming -with lyrics:--what is strongly lasting and glorified in the forlorn -divine human thing--crumpled--twisted forever when millstones grind -children's little poor shoes-- - -The young Drab Eyes are endlessly betrayed: their very color thieved. -There's no reason why they should weep. - -But there's a far-blown sound as if ten thousand bad and good worldly -eyes were weeping in their stead: with a note in it careless, -compassionate and jadedly menacing. - -I seem to hear it in the wakeful windy night. And I hear no -world-music pouring out of small throats of work-children shrill with -woe-and-joy. The sound they make is a dumb sound, for they never -weep: a ghost-wail of partly-dead children borne lowly across this -mixed world on a stale hellish breeze. - - - - -_The sleep of the dead_ - - - To-morrow - -When I'm dead I want to Rest awhile in my grave: for I'm Tired, Tired -always. - -My Soul must go on as it has gone on up to now. - -It has a long way to go, and it has come a long way. - -My Soul first started on its journey somewhere in Asia before the -dawn of this civilization. And it has gone on since through the -centuries and through strange phases of Body, terrors of flesh and -blood, suffering long. But it has gone someway on, each space of the -journey taking it nearer to the journey's-End. - -It is the dim-felt memory of those journeys that heaps the Tiredness -on me now. Not only is my spirit Tired. Through my spirit my hands -are Tired: my knees are Tired: my drooping shoulders: my thin feet: -my sensitive backbone. When I lift my hand in the sunshine the weight -of the yellow honeyed air bears down and down on it because I'm so -Tired. When I start to walk on stone pavements the ache of them is in -my feet before I set a foot on them because I'm so Tired. The pulse -in my veins Tires my blood as it beats. My low voice, though I speak -but rarely--it Tires my throat. My breath Tires my chest. The weight -of my hair Tires my forehead and temples. My plain frocks Tire my -Body to wear. My swift trenchant thoughts Tire my Mind. - -It is not the Tiredness of effort though I strive to the limits of my -strength every day. - -It is not pain, Restful pain. It is Tired Tiredness. - -So when I'm dead I want to Rest awhile in my grave. It _would_ Rest -me. - -In the Episcopal Church they use a ritual of poetic beauty, full of -Restful things. One of them is the sleep of the dead. The crucified -Nazarene slept three days. But all others of us when we go down -into our graves are to sleep until a Judgment Day. 'Judgment Day' -is preposterous and evilly crude: there's no judgment till each can -judge himself simply and cruelly in the morning light. But the sleep -of the dead-- - ---the sleep of the dead. Its sound by itself without the thought is -Restful-- - -And the thought is Restful. - -I imagine me wrapped in a shroud of soft thin wool cloth of a pale -color, laid in a plain wood coffin: and my eyelids are closed, and my -Tired feet are dead feet, and my hands are folded on my breast. And -the coffin is nine feet down in the ground and the earth covers it. -Upon that some green sod: and above, the ancient blue deep sheltering -sky: and the clouds and the winds and the suns and moons, and the -days and nights and circling horizons--those above my grave. - -And my Body laid at its length, eyes closed, hands folded, down there -Resting: my Soul not yet gone but laid beside my Body in the coffin -Resting. - ---might we lie like that--Resting, Resting, for weeks, months, ages-- - -Year after long year, Resting. - - - - -_Stickily mad_ - - - To-morrow - -It is damn-the-Smell-of-Turpentine! - -Here I happen on a damn in me which is not desultory but bloodily -strong and alive and alone. - -The wood in my blue-white room has been newly painted. For a day -and a night I intermittently encounter and go to bed in a spirit of -Turpentine. It bears a cruel obscure abortive message to my nerves. - -I lie wakeful in the dark and try to reason out a logicalness or -poetry in a thing so artfully pestilential. But I am hysterically -lost in it and my heart beats hysterically in it. - -I remember the inexpressible ingenuity of man: of white man as -against bone-brained savage races. Every invented usefulness feels -like divine witchcraft. A pen and a bottle of perfume and a door-knob -and a granite kettle and an electric light: I have the use of each -since white man is so ingenious. Were I a red Indian I should have -only the awkward barbarous stupid tools my race had used a thousand -years. I contrast the two as I lie wakeful, with a sense of richness -and of detailed repletion and of material blestness. - -But at once comes the Smell of Turpentine and announces itself -something outside that and _different_, something stronger, something -masterfuler than ingenuity and savagery together. It tortures my -nerves: it burns my eyes: it lames my flesh: it jerks and flays and -garbles my inner body. The ingenuity of man has produced opium and -cocaine which would combat and hide it all behind a heavy curtain of -stupor, with effects equally damaging if less grievously subtle. - -The Smell of Turpentine is a thing to bear since all its -counter-things bring only solider evil. - -The paint was put on the wood by a dirty little man whom I briefly -inspected as something removed from my range of life. In return he -covertly eyed me. I expected my wakeful hours would be punished -by strong new paint and be-visioned by dirty little men. But it -is all sheer Turpentine with a power suggesting nothing human nor -super-natural nor divine. Just itself: a goblin virulence. - -In all my Soul and bones and Mary-Mac-Laneness it is damn-the-Smell- -of-Turpentine as a bastard murderous hurt. - -I have an odd feeling God has no more power over it than have I. - -It half-calls for a _different_ Turpentine God. - -I am shakily mad tonight, I believe, from a so slight sticky matter. - - - - -_God compensates me_ - - - To-morrow - -It's a Sunday midnight and I've just eaten a Cold Boiled Potato. - -I shall never be able to write one-tenth of my fondness for a Cold -Boiled Potato. - -A Cold Boiled Potato is always an unpremeditated episode which is its -chief charm. - -It's nice to happen on a book of poetry on a window-sill. It's nice -to surprise a square of chocolate in a glove box. It's nice to come -upon a little yellow apple in ambush. It's nice to get an unexpected -letter from Jane Gillmore. It's nice to unearth a reserve fund of -silk stockings under a sofa pillow. And especially it's nice to find -a Cold Boiled Potato on a pantry shelf at midnight. - -I like caviare at luncheon. And I like venison at dinner, dark and -bloody and rich. And I like champagne bubbling passionately in a -hollow-stemmed glass on New Year's day. And I like terrapin turtle. -And I like French-Canadian game-pie. And artichokes and grapes and -baby onions. And none of them has the odd gnome-ish charm of a Cold -Boiled Potato at midnight. - -I can imagine no circumstance in which a Cold Boiled Potato would not -take precedent with me at midnight. If I had a broken arm: if I had a -husband lying dead in the next room: if I were facing abrupt worldly -disaster: if there were a burglar in the house: if I'd had a dayful -of depression: if God and opportunity were knocking and clamoring at -my door: I should disregard each and all some minutes at midnight if -I had also a Cold Boiled Potato. - -I love to read Keats's Nightingale in my hushed life. I love to -remember Caruso at the Metropolitan singing Celeste Aïda. I love to -watch the bewitching blonde Blanche Sweet in a moving picture. I love -to feel the summer moonlight on my eyelids. And it's disarmingly -contented I am with a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. - -Content is my rarest emotion and I get it at midnight out of a Cold -Boiled Potato. - -Some things in life thrill me. Some drive me garbledly mad. Some -uplift me. Some debauch me. Some strengthen and enlighten me. Some -hurt, hurt, hurt. But I'm not thrilled nor maddened nor uplifted nor -debauched nor strengthened nor enlightened nor hurt, but only fed-up -and fattened in spirit by a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. - -I stand in the pantry door leaning against the jamb, with a tiny -glass salt-shaker in one hand and the sweet dark pink Cold Boiled -Potato in the other. And I sprinkle it with salt and I nibble, -nibble, nibble. And I say aloud, 'Gee, it's good!' - -I liked Cold Boiled Potato at four-and-twenty. I liked it at -seventeen. I liked it at twelve. At three I climbed on cake-boxes in -search of one. And now in the deep bloom of being myself I am made -roundly replete at midnight with a Cold Boiled Potato. - -A Cold Boiled Potato--it tastes of chestnuts at midnight, the first -frost-kissed chestnuts in the woods: and it tastes of rain-water and -of salt and of roses: it tastes of young willow-bark and of earth -and of grass-stems: it tastes of the sun and the wind and of some -nameless relishingness born of the summer hillside that grew it: it -tastes at midnight so _like_ a Cold Boiled Potato. - -A precious peach-colored orchid, an antique spider-web-like lace -handkerchief, a delicate purple butterfly, an emerald bracelet: I'd -strive for each of those in an eagerly casual way. But it's like an -ogre at midnight I pounce on a Cold Boiled Potato. - -A Cold Boiled Potato reminds me of the Dickens books in which so much -food is eaten cold and tastes so savory--even the 'wilderness of cold -potatoes' portioned to the Marchioness by Sally Brass. And it reminds -me of the Rip Van Winkle play--'give this fellow a cold potato -and let him go.' And it reminds me of Hamlet--funeral baked meats -might include it. And it reminds me of Robin Hood's merry men, and -Huckleberry Finn, and the Canterbury Pilgrims, and the Prodigal Son, -and all the picturesque wayfarers. It reminds me of the poor as a -colorful race wrapped around with hungry romance. It reminds me that -life is full of life--rich and fruitful and evolutionary and cosmic: -few things feel so cosmic as a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. -It makes me want as I nibble to plant a field of potatoes on a -southern-exposed hill and hoe them and dig them all by myself: and -give all but one to the poor and Boil that to eat Cold at midnight. - -I have to be very hungry to crave a Cold Boiled Potato, but being -hungry no possible morsel of food can so interest me at midnight. The -same potato hot is domestic and tasteless. The same potato at ten -in the evening lukewarm within and sodden with memories of dinner, -is a repellent item. At midnight it is all unexpected magnetism. At -midnight my whole being is profoundly courteous, wooingly cordial -toward a Cold Boiled Potato. - -If I had only what I deserved my portion might well be a Cold Boiled -Potato. Intrinsically it is rated low and I know me to be a sort -of jezebel. But I'd wonder each midnight if whoever metes out the -deserts in this surprising universe knew with what gust I rise at -it--_would_ I get it. - -Nor am I satisfied like the meek and lowly with my midnight supper of -Cold Boiled Potato: damn the meek and lowly. It's a satanic delight -I take in it. It's a sly private orgie I make of it: a pirate's -banquet, a thieves' picnic, a pagan rite, a heathen revelry, a -conceit all and unhallowedly my own. My thoughts as I nibble are set -mostly on my villainies. No food I eat brings me so broad a license -of feeling--a sense of freedom--as a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. - -On a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight I am lightly valorous: call me -a trickster and I'll call you a rotter: call me a liar and I'll -call you a traitor: call me a coward and I'll call you another: not -pugnaciously but gayly and serenely. - -I am then in my most bespeaking mood. Anyone who met me standing -nibbling in a pantry doorway at midnight would be charmed. I would -talk with a dainty ribaldry and offer to share the feast. - -For shadow-things piled too near God compensates me in unexpected -midnights with a Cold Boiled Potato: along with it a pantry doorway -to stand in and a little glass salt-shaker to hold in my other hand. - - - - -_The strange braveness_ - - - To-morrow - -If God has human feelings he must often have a burning at the eyes -and a fullness at the throat at the strange Braveness of human -people: their Braveness as they go on in the daily life, with aching -dumbish minds and disgruntled bereft bodies and flattened pinched -gnawed hearts. - -The easy human slattern way would be to sink beneath the burden. - -Instead, people: I and Another and all others--seamstresses and -monotonous clerks and lawyers and housewives: sit upright in chairs -and talk into telephones and walk fast and eat breakfasts and brush -hair: all the while marooned in a morass of small wild unexciting -tasteless Pain. - -Of others--what do I know? - -But I might say, 'Look, God, I am not fallen on the ground, from this -and that--utterly lost and down. But sitting, drooping but strong, in -a chair, mending a lamp-shade--neat, orderly and at-it in my misery.' - - - - -_Just beneath my skin_ - - - To-morrow - -This I write is a strange thing. - -So close to fact: so far from it. - -So close to truth: so surrounded by lies. - -It does not contain lies but is someway surrounded by a mist of lies. - -A strange thing about it is that it _is_ expressing the Self Just -Beneath My Skin. - -That Self is someways trivial and outlandish and mentally nervous, -flightly, silly--silly to a verge of tragicness. I know that to be -true from a long acquaintance with me. It is oddly intriguing to read -over some chapters and find it _shown_. - -Some unconscious exact photography aids my writing talent. - -Some chapters are bewilderingly and mysteriously true to life. - -My everyday self that casually speaks to this or that person is -nothing like this book. My absorbed self that writes a letter to -an intimate acquaintance is not like this book. My heartfelt self -that deeply loves a friend, and gives of its depths, and thrills -answeringly to other depths, is not like this book. - -This book is my mere Hidden Self--just under the skin but hid away -closer than the Thousand Mysteries: never shown to any other person -in any conversation or any association: never would be shown: never -could be. - -How Another, any Other, would come out: what Another would show: -photographed Beneath the Skin--what do I know? - -Perchance ten times more trivial and inconsequent and mad than Me. - -If Another thinks Me someway mad, let him look at Himself Just -Beneath the Skin. - -Perchance Another every day as he thanks a janitor for holding open a -door, would much prefer to drive a long rusty brad-nail deep into the -janitor's skull. - -Perchance Another has a brain like Goethe, a Soul like a -humming-bird, a Heart like a little round nutmeg. - -What do I know? - -I know what I am. - -Another may know what he is. - -But I can't tell Me to Another and Another can't tell Himself to Me. - -I can tell Me to myself and write it. - -Another if he reads will see Me: but not as I see Me. Instead, -through many veil-curtains and glasses, very darkly. - - - - -_God's kindly caprice_ - - - To-morrow - -For twenty-five cents and one hour and twelve minutes one may get -in this present detailed world a bit of unforgettable complete -enchantment. - -So I found to-day in a moving-picture theater. A Carmen, the real -Carmen of Prosper Mérimée glowed, vibrated, lived and died with -passion on a white screen. - -Of all prose writers I know Prosper Mérimée is the one--(intimate -and sensitively alive as if I had lain against his shoulder as I -read 'La Guzla' and 'Venus d'Ille'--he melts into my veins--)whom I -would most eagerly see interpreted. Of all fiction characters--if she -is fiction--the poignant Carmen is the one I would most eagerly see -realized. - -Carmen is one of those fictions which are truer to life than life is. -Such fiction-things are all around, touching everybody: the spoken -truths which grow false at being spoken: the thought lies which turn -to truths the moment they touch words. - -I have heard Carmen sung and seen her filmed by the lustrous Farrar, -and I have seen her play-acted by some lesser lights. But Bizet's -opera, a sparkling music-storm, creates a sonant objective Carmen, -a beautiful bloody lyric, remote from Mérimée who made a Carmen -intensely peculiar to his own subjective art. And the stage-Carmen -has always been a stage-Carmen waiting in dusty, draughty wings -for her cues. It remained for the cinematograph, which is a true -literal mirror of human expression, to make Carmen burst into violent -physical life. - -But it was less the scopes of the films which made Carmen animate -than it was the virile woman who played her. It was acting--but -acting in the sense of losing and sinking and saturating and -dissolving herself in another woman's temperament: and by it she -achieved some strong sword, keen shadings of the Carmen character--to -the hair's-breadth. - -And she _looked_ like Carmen. It was not important to the vigorous -fire of her acting but it made bewitchment in the portrait. No one -I have before seen play Carmen fitted the elusive points of her -description. - - 'Her eyes were set obliquely in her head but they were - magnificent and large. Her lips, a little full but beautifully - shaped, revealed a set of teeth as white as newly-skinned - almonds. Her hair was black with blue lights on it like a - raven's wing, long and glossy. To every blemish she united some - advantage which was perhaps all the more evident by contrast. - There was something strange and wild about her beauty. Her face - surprised you at first sight but nobody could forget it. Her - eyes especially had an expression of mingled sensuality and - fierceness which I had never seen in any human glance. Gypsy's - eye, wolf's eye'-- - -This (from the English translation of the story by Lady Mary Loyd) -fitted to a charm the pictured vision of the foreign-looking -woman--her name is Theda Bara--who flung a throbbing Carmen across -the screen with indescribable heat and color and luster. It was -comparable only to the muscular force of the original which that -Mérimée rubs nervously and heavily into one's thoughts. I felt it -someway satisfyingly unbelievable--an illusion more actual than -actuality: a dream which outbore fact. - -I suppose there's no other character like Carmen for flaming -roundness in all fiction: filled with her treacheries yet purely true -to herself, without fear, utterly game: fierce, coarse, ruthless and -reckless yet wrapped in a maddening unwitting pathos: strong and bold -and cruelly poised yet capable of sudden complete surrender: ignorant -and abandoned and criminal in every instinct yet beyond every -littleness, every pettiness: sensual yet contemptuous and indifferent -in it, a woman of essential chastity. Carmen is the one criminal -conception in whom there is no vulgar evil, no personal maculateness -though wrecking all the wildness of her temper in her tempestuous -days'-journeys. She is a romantic murderous appeal to human -superjudgment. It was this isolate quality of her which Theda Bara -gave out with mystic masterful art. She gauged the personal odors -and blood-pressures of Carmen. She slipped into Carmen's skin and -first sucked in and then breathed out the irresistible menacingness -and arresting ruination of her beautiful diabolic spirit. A little -feverish artistic thrill ran in my veins as I sat in the dark -watching. - - 'She had thrown her mantilla back,' says Don José in the - translated tale, 'to show her shoulders and a great bunch of - acacias that was thrust into her chemise. She had another acacia - bloom in the corner of her mouth and she walked along swaying - her hips like a filly from the Cordova stud farm. In my country - anyone who had seen a woman dressed in that fashion would - have crossed himself. In Seville every man paid her some bold - compliment on her appearance. She had an answer to each and all - with her hand on her hip--"Come, my love," she began again, "make - me seven ells of lace for my mantilla, my pet pin-maker." And - taking the acacia blossom out of her mouth she flipped it at me - with her thumb so that it hit me just between the eyes. I tell - you, sir, I felt as if a bullet had struck me.' - -This first meeting of Carmen with the dragoon was pictured in a -brilliant hot-looking plaza as if before the cigarette factory in -Seville. This woman in throwing the flower at the soldier expressed -wonderfully in one fleet moment, by hand and lip and eye, the savage -sordid poetry and passionate freedom--that unearthly fragrance--which -_is_ Carmen. - -The film version followed the scenes of the opera rather than the -story, which took nothing from the headlong truth of the central -figure. - -But no picturing can equal the star-clarity of Mérimée's prose in -Carmen's death-scene--a thing of a piercing pathos comparable to -nothing I know in writing. - - 'After we had gone a little distance I said to her, "So, my - Carmen, you are quite ready to follow me, isn't it so?" - - She answered, "Yes, I'll follow you to the death--but I won't - live with you any more." - - We had reached a lonely gorge. I stopped my horse. - - "Is this the place?" she said. - - And with a spring she reached the ground. She took off her - mantilla and threw it at her feet, and stood motionless with one - hand on her hip, looking at me steadily. - - "You mean to kill me, I see that well," she said. "It is fate. - But you'll never make me give in." - - I said to her: "Be rational, I implore you; listen to me. All - the past is forgotten. Yet you know it is you who have been my - ruin--it is because of you that I am a robber and a murderer. - Carmen, my Carmen, let me save you, and save myself with you." - - "José," she answered, "what you ask is impossible. I don't love - you any more. You love me still and that is why you want to kill - me. If I liked I might tell you some other lie, but I don't - choose to give myself the trouble. Everything is over between us - two. You are my rom and you have the right to kill your romi, - but Carmen will always be free. A calli she was born and a calli - she'll die." - - "Then you love Lucas?" I asked. - - "Yes, I have loved him--as I loved you--for an instant--less than - I loved you, perhaps. And now I don't love anything. And I hate - myself for ever having loved you." - - I cast myself at her feet, I seized her hands, I watered them - with tears, I reminded her of all the happy moments we had spent - together, I offered to continue my brigand's life, if that would - please her. Everything, sir, everything--I offered her everything - if she would only love me again. - - She said: "Love you again? That's not possible. Live with you? I - will not do it." - - I was wild with fury. I drew my knife. I would have had her look - frightened and sue for mercy--but that woman was a demon. I - cried: "For the last time I ask you, Will you stay with me?" - - "No! No! No!" she said and she stamped her foot. Then she - pulled a ring I had given her off her finger and cast it into - the brushwood. I struck her twice over--I had taken Garcia's - knife because I had broken my own. At the second thrust she - fell without a sound. It seems to me that I can still see her - great black eyes staring at me. Then they grew dim and the - lids closed.--For a good hour I lay there prostrate beside the - corpse.'-- - -No play-acting could make the scene so pregnant and palpitant with -human-stuff and alive in vision as that translucent jewel-prose -of Mérimée. But so close as one art may counterfeit another, by -drinking-up the fiery spirit essence which informs it, so close -did this actor-woman compass and consummate the strong delicious -unafraidness of Carmen's death-hour. - -The scene was staged as in the opera--a court outside the -bull-fighting arena, with Carmen richly bejeweled and dressed in -the lacy smart-lady clothes of the Toreador's mistress. But that -was nothing. The gypsy wildness of the written scene was in every -insolently splendid bodily movement and each fateful loveliness of -eyes and lips of the fulfilling Theda Bara. - -I can still see the dark drooping-lidded dying eyes. I sensed Carmen -in conscious chambers of my Mind. I felt her in my throat. It was -Carmen herself living and breathing near me, the fearsomely adorable -Carmen who has haunted the edge of my thoughts since I first read her. - -There are some odd crudenesses in Theda Bara's acting which had the -effect of making her un-stagey, unobvious. They made her humanly -vibrant. And they added a devilish wistfulness to her Carmen and a -surprising feel of genuineness to the whole masque. - -The actor's art brings out the romance which is in human -bone-and-flesh. And Theda Bara seems someway a master of its physical -and spiritual subtleties. She expressed the swift emotion of Carmen -by ringing slightest possible changes on her own virile and mobile -body: insolence by kimboing an elbow: cruelty by the twitch of a -wrist: sensual feeling by moving a knee and an ankle: murder in the -twisting of her waistline: a fleet repressed animal tenderness by a -posture of shoulder and breast: a heartbreak of mirth in her careless -vivid lips: the desperate bravery of that death by the tilt of her -potent chin: the hurricane-freedom of Carmen's soul by lifting her -face and her arms in the night wind. She worked with an exquisite -muscular sincerity, as if she strongly gave her best of brain and -blood and mettle to the part. - -I looked at photographs of her which decorated the lobby of the -theater. She looks a beautiful and earnest-seeming girl of a mental -rather than a physical caste, with melancholy dark eyes, a childlike -mouth-profile and the slim patrician hands of a Bourbon duchess. She -will live in my warmed memory as the star of all the Carmens. - -A flood of life and color goes into the staging of a Carmen film: a -throng of attractive faces and bodies of people, women and men and -lovely children, move through it in a pulsating gay pageant: flowers -and Spanish prettinesses of costume and country-side and street -and café are all over it, bright as life: and sweet winds blow in -it and leaves and grasses wave and flutter, and the sunshine melts -and mellows the air--all as if one saw it thrice-enlarged through -windows. It is not poetry--it is not in itself any art, but a dear -delectable counterfeit of it, a miracle-_taste_ of the outer-looking -madly-peopled world. - -For me it meant my long-adored Mérimée given sudden brief life, the -haunting Carmen turned into flesh: a spell of silent human-music -which glowed and burned upon me like gentle fire. - -Often is God thus capriciously kind to me. - - - - -_A fascinating creature_ - - - To-morrow - -I am a fascinating creature. - -I move in no stultifying ruts. There's no real yoke of custom on -my shoulders. My round white breasts beneath their black serge are -concurrent with nothing settled or subservient or discreet. - -My Mind goes in no grooves made by other minds. It lives like a witch -in a forest, weaving its spells, revelling in smooth vivid adventure. -When I look at a round gray stone by a roadside I look at it not as -a young woman, not as a person, not as an artist, nor a geologist, -nor an economist, but as Me--as Mary MacLane--and as if there had not -before been a round gray stone by a roadside since the world began. -When I look at a chair with my somber eyes I say to the chair, 'What -other persons may see when they look at you, chair, I don't know--how -could I know? But I well know what I see and that what I see is -uninfluenced by other eyes that may have looked at you, were they -Aristotle's or Galileo's or an archangel's.' There may be equally -egotistic viewpoints--in Waco-Texas, or Japan, or Glasgow-Scotland or -the Orkney Islands, where not? I don't know--I don't care. What is it -to me? I know my own virile vision and that it thrills and informs -and translates me as if crackling bright-jagged lightnings broke -along my sky.-- - -It is a night of whispering breezes and little restless clouds, an -endearing night. It makes solitude a delectation. I walked out in it, -in the glimmering moonlight past buildings and houses and mines and -mounds. My thoughts as I walked were all of Me: how fascinating is Me. - -I came in at midnight and met Me in my mirror. I pushed my -three-cornered hat backward off my head, slipped out of my loose coat -and dropped my squeezed gloves. I sank fatiguedly into a little chair -before the mirror, tipped the chair forward on its front legs, rested -my elbows on the bureau and my chin in my hands and looked absorbedly -at myself. Lovingly, tenderly, discerningly, marveling and absorbed -and deeply fascinated I looked at Me in the mirror. 'You enchanted -one!' said I, 'You Witch-o'-the-world! you Mary MacLane!--who you -are _I_ don't know--what you are I but partly know. You're my -Companion, my Familiar, my Lover, my wilding Sweetheart--I love you! -I know that--that's enough. I love your garbled temper, your aching -thoughts, your troubled Heart, your wasted spirit. I know much, much, -much of you and love you! I love your beauty-sense and your proud -scornful secret super-sensitiveness. I love your Eyes and your Lips -and your bodily Fire and Ice'-- - ---to _know_ oneself: apart from all the world! - -One looking at me sees a cold-poised young woman, reserved and aloof, -slightly diffusing insolence and inspiring misgivings. - -But I looking at Me see a woman standing high on flame-washed -battlements of her life in whom burn and beat the spirits and -lights and star-discords of uncounted tired lustrous ages. I see me -forlorn and radiant, drab and brilliant. I see me wrapped in a fiery -potentiality of pain and beauty and love and sorrow. I hear wild -voices in Me like horrid-sweet wailing of ghost-violins, muted but -crying loudly in frightful reasonless vital joy and in unspeakable -terror and sadness. I see Me ragged-clothed, bleeding, with -disordered tangled hair and bloodshot eyes, with coarse soiled hands, -broken-nailed, like a criminal's: a woman of woes. And I see Me -wistful in quiet pure garments like one seeking light. I see Me old -as old sin and young as new Spring days. I see Me un-sanely sensitive -and hardened over--closed in worldly cases: guarded antagonism round -my thoughts, protecting indifference round my Heart, dead silence -round my Soul. I see Me with brains to know, with prescient mind to -grasp, with mobile sense to feel. I see Me all futile, all hopeless, -all miserable. I see Me all poetry. I see Me all wonder, mystery and -beauty. I see Me!-- - ---much more than that, _this_ Me sitting here! my deep gray wanton -dark eyes: my lips--like pink flowers--with the inscrutable -expression: my white fingers--slim, strong, glossy-nailed, silken at -the tips. My glass gives Me back to Me, sitting by it, languid of -Body, tense of spirit and Mind, bathed in witcheries of Self-- - -I love my Mary MacLane! Ah--I love her! - -It is good--since I can't find God, since I can't find way-of-truth -however I grope about. - -Every human friendship I form throws me back more completely on -myself. - -Whom then shall I love but myself? - -I know my own human enchantments and that they never fail me. - -I'll know them more! I'll love them more!--I'll love them in sane -madness lest mad madness overtake and destroy Me, Soul and bones. - - - - -_No resonance_ - - - To-morrow - -My life, myself, I know are nothing noble, nothing constructive. - -There is no resonance in this analysis, but all Dissonance. - -Something lives, lives muscularly in me that constantly betrays -me, destroys me against all my own convictions, against all my own -knowledge, against all my own desire. - -It may be true of Everybody. - -I don't know. I think about it but get nowhere. - -It seems someway unlike God to make each person a something all of -cross-purpose. - -But I doubt that I am different from Everybody. - -I doubt if I am anyway abnormal. - -I am very sane. - -A match-flame burns me the same as it burns Everybody: pins prick me -and hurt. - -Yet I look in myself and see, through harmonic details, the massed -Dissonance. - -I am dying in a pit. - - - - -_Black-browed Wednesdays_ - - - To-morrow - -All my life I've liked the Back of a magazine. - -Some black-browed Wednesday I purchase a magazine, a fifteen-cent -one, and read it through. I read the stories and they deeply -engage or lightly interest me. I read the 'special articles' and -if they tell about flying machines or wild birds or hospitals or -woman-prisoners in penitentiaries they charm or absorb my thoughts. -I look at the illustrations and try to decide whether they are art -or science or mechanism. I read the verse and if it's poetry it -exhilarates me as if closed shutters were opened to let Day into a -gloomy Room. - -Then I read the advertisements in the Back and they do all of those -things to me in comforting life-giving oxygen-furnishing ways. Each -advertisement is a short story with an eerie little 'plot' in it: -each is a special article full of purpose: each is fruitful poetry: -and in my two hands I all-but have and hold those wonderful Things -they exploit. - -They make me feel it's my birthday and I'm presented a wealth of -lavish gifts. - -They make me feel it's all a world of playthings. - -They make me feel like a baby with a rattle, a ball and a hoop of -bells. - -I like _everything_ in the Back of a magazine. - -I like the Revolvers, handsome plausible short-barreled Revolvers -with pictures of ordinary people in dim-lit midnight bedrooms, and -ordinary expected-looking burglars climbing in windows--Revolvers -of ten shots and of six, and of different calibers, and all of them -gleamingly mystically desirable: I like the Soaps, smooth amorous -appetizing Soaps, some in luxurious Paris packets, and others -spread out in blue water and rosy foam, splashed in by athletic -Archimedesque young men and fat creamy babies and slim beautiful -ladies--Mary Garden Soap of pungent delicious scent, tar Soap for the -long lovely hair of girls, austere Ivory Soap--It floats: I like the -Rubber Heels of resilient charm so tellingly pictured and described -that at once I desire them beneath my spirit-heels--springy and -solid and thick and firm: I like the Tooth-pastes and Tooth-powders -and Tooth-lotions in tubes and tins and bottles, each bearing -beneficent messages to the human white teeth of this world--one -unfailing kind coming lyrically out like a ribbon and lying flat -on the brush: I like the foods--of miraculous spotless purity and -enticement--Biscuits and Chocolate and Figs, and _Foie-gras_ in -thick glossy little pots, so richly pictured and sung that merely -to let my thoughts graze in their pasturage fattens my Heart: I -like the men's very thin Watches, and men's Garters--no metal can -touch you--, and men's fluffy-lathered shaving sticks, and men's -trim smart flawless tailored Suits, in none of which I have use or -interest until I find them in the Back of a magazine--where at once -they grow charming and romantic: I like the jars and boxes and tubes -and glasses of Cold Cream, Cold Cream fit for skins of goddesses, fit -for elves to feed on--a soft satiny scented snow-white elysium of -wax and vaseline and almond paste, pictured in forty alluring shapes -till it feels pleasantly ecstatic just to be living in the same world -with bewitching vases of Cold Cream, Cold Cream, Cold Cream--always -bewitching and lovely but never so notably and festively as in the -Back of a magazine: and I like the Pencils: and Book-cases: and -Silver: and Jewels: and Glass: and Gloves: and Shoes--beautiful -Shoes: and Fountain-pens: and Leather things: and Paint--silkish -salubrious Paints, house-Paints, and the panegyrics with them--they -make me long to own a spirit-house and paint it liberally: and Rugs: -and Varnish: and Clothes--wonderful Clothes: and Bungalows: and -Phonographs--his master's voice: and Paper--fine-wrought Paper to -write on--bond and linen and hand-pressed, pale-tinted--a vast virgin -treasure: and Oranges: and Cigarettes--a shilling in London a quarter -here: and Water-Bottles of powdery rubber: and Stockings--patrician -Stockings which take me into realms of silk-looms and delicate dyes -and slim ankles: and Candle-Shades: and Candle-Sticks: and countless -Cosmetics--Cosmetics of tender colors for the outer women: and -Sealingwax indescribably useless and attractive: and Tennis-Racquets: -and Ivory--smooth Vantine Ivory toys and trinkets polished softly -bright as moonlight--and their lily-worded descriptions like -restrained sonnets: and Washing Powders--let the Gold Dust twins do -your work: and Shower-baths: and Evans' Ale: and Flying Boats: and -Umbrellas: and Cameras--if it isn't an Eastman it isn't a kodak: and -boxes of Candy--sweet wilderness of chocolates--their very makers' -names have a melting gust--Allegretti, Huyler, Clarence Crane, -Maillard--cloying courtiers all: and Diamond Dyes--a child can use -them: and Veranda Screens--she can look out but he can't look in: -and Cedar Chests: and Chartreuse from Carthusian monasteries: and -Perfumes--Perfumes in their maddening-sweet pride, Perfumes from -Paris, Perfumes bottled in thick crystal, enchantingly costly--each -American dollar added to their price-by-the-ounce making them -fragranter to my thoughts: and boxes of benevolent Matches, and -captivating Brooms, and fascinating Scouring-powders--a Dutch girl -on the can chasing dirt--all three luscious tempting things in the -Back of a magazine: and Automobiles--ask the man who owns one: and -Rifles--simple and formidable and fine: and restful Rat-poison--they -die in the open air seeking water: and sacks of Flour--eventually -why not now--flour unusual and piquant in the Back of a magazine, -flour novel and endearing: and Type-writers: and Mushrooms: and -Monkey-Wrenches: and Rosaries: and Rock-salt-- - -the Back, the Back, the Back of a magazine-- - -There's no sadness and no terror in the Back of a magazine. - -And it is for Everybody, Everybody. - -A million people read a story in the middle of the magazine and half -the million readily miss its point. But a single tin of Talcum Powder -in the Back--the whole million note that and miss nothing in it: it -gets to them both on and under their skin. - -Some of the million read a ten-line poem in _vers libre_ in the front -of the magazine--and nine-tenths of their number are hard-put to it: -the mentalities of this human race being mostly shops shut down. -It is something pregnant and prophetic to a poet, merely musical -to a plain prose writer, arrant folly to a telephone girl, amusing -nonsense to a butcher, a comic fantasy to a milliner, a form of -insanity to a plumber, an unknown tongue to a milk-man, a kind of -sin to a Baptist minister. But to each of those a Can of Soup in the -Back of the same magazine has easily, exactly the same ox-tail-ish -meanings: it reaches them where they live. - -A thousand persons agree with an article about atavism in -orang-outangs and ten thousand more quite refute it. But they all -harmoniously commit suicide with the same make of Revolver--hammer -the hammer--or get rousing drunk to the same degree with the same -brand of high-powered whiskey--Wilson, that's all. - -A countess, a courtesan and a convict-woman summarily pass over the -front and middle of the magazine as containing nothing to their -purpose. But like jungle denizens at their drinking pool the three -of them meet hostilely on the common ground of a popular Cigarette -featured in the Back--a blend to suit every taste--wherewith they -unwittingly smoke away half their generic differentiations. The -Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady anoint themselves nightly into a -state of shining invisible kinship from separated twin jars of the -same bewitching Cold Cream. - -I'm not sure myself and Miss Lily Walker of the Broadway chorus -regard similarly a beauteous box of Rice Powder: she perchance would -at once dash madly into it and powder herself o'er with it, whereas -I would fain ponder about it awhile as a tiny be-violeted adventure. -But pondering or powdering, equally exciting to each of us is its -delicate pale lilac blazonment in the Back of a magazine. - -The front of the magazine may mean little to you and the middle -of the magazine may mean nothing to me: the Back of it none of us -escapes. - -It is for Everybody, Everybody. - -Even Senegambians: they can look at the pictures and marvel over them. - -I can there meet a Senegambian on the common ground of it might be a -delicate transparent oval of Pears' Soap, pretty as a jewel of price: -perchance we would each unconsciously feel we wouldn't be happy till -we got it. - -It's only as playthings I want the Things in the Back of a magazine. - -To me they are toys, lyrics of matter, food of the senses. - -The octroi would have no sympathy with my loiterings among their -wares. It is a fête of my own, indolent and fanciful, unrecognized in -commerce. Any article I may put to its forthright use in actuality -becomes an idyllic toy when I find it in the Back of a magazine. -The desirable Revolvers are not firearms with which to shoot myself -and burglars, but only bijous to have and handle and caress. The -luxuriant vervain- and violet-scented Soaps are not for my toilet, -but something to eat, for my astral body to feed on--nourishing food -they make. The lush Cold Creams have no massaging possibilities in -them--they are for my thoughts to gambol among, for my meddlesome -spirit-fingers to touch and fuss with deliciously, blissfully, -transcending all vulgar use. The men's thin Watches mean nothing -to me as Watches: and their Garters--what's it to me whether -no-metal-can-touch-you or no-metal-at-all? My thoughts merely revel -and juggle with them, picture and legend--they are pastimes of my -child-self. The cream-woven Note Papers are not to write on but -wherewithal to imagine how cool and smooth they would feel drawn -slowly across my flushed cheek. A sack of Flour--I feel only how -I'd like to have it spilled out--eventually-why-not-now--in a thick -warm-tinted heap on the blue-velvety floor of my room that I might -roll and bathe in it and feel it feathery-fluffy on my skin. - -So I play with my toys on black-browed Wednesdays. - -Some Wednesdays even fail to be black-browed because there are Backs -to magazines. - - - - -_The conscious analyst_ - - - To-morrow - -I don't know whether I write this because I wear two plain dresses or -whether I wear two plain dresses because I write it. - -My life fell into a lowering mood which calls for but two dresses: -which mood compels me to write out these things that are in me as -inevitably as heavy gathered clouds come raining to the ground. The -mood having overtaken me I can not keep from writing this day after -day, more than I can keep from brushing my hair every day, and eating -lumps of food every day, and picking up tiny white specks from my -blue rug. - -I love this book and I fear and hate it. I love the writing of it -though it is a finical unobvious task--more so than it looks. And -often I fear to read it over lest I hurt my own feelings. And I hate -it in ways. I am a particularly sane woman when all's said. And many -things I come to in me are grating and inexplicable and incongruous. - -But also I love it. It is my companion 'when the world is gone.' I am -as solitary as if I had no human place in this earth. My days are as -silent as if I lived in it alone. The few voices that bespeak me in a -day or a week stop at my ear-drums and are immensely alien. At times, -for weeks on end, I am quite alone in this house and the silence -then has a depth and a hollowness. From it I feel not alone in a -house but alone in a world: and more when the family is in the house. - -And it is what-should-I-do if I had not a writing talent to expend me -upon from day to day, and so rest me. I feel God around some corner -but that feeling is no rest, but only an odd terror which wants the -dignity of terror. - -Times I wonder if I shall have this published afterward for all to -read and if so what colors it will paint on my world--and what else -may befall. - -But it's an aspect dim and remote now. I wearing but two nunlike -dresses and face to face with me, have nothing to do with publishing -books and with the beautiful noisy world and its befallings. It is -easy to believe I shall never again have to do with any of that. This -may be my death-mood. I am very tired. The weight of being a person -is heavy on me as weights of lead. And still I know if I suddenly -bloomed with beautiful frocks and went out to-morrow to lose myself -among people, people, people I should at once achieve a veneer of the -utmost frivol. I have an odd frivolous quality full of an ardor and -strength, with all of my mental mettle in it. Also I know if I did -that now it would be but postponing this analytic reckoning. Which -would confront me again with the more rancor, the more futileness -gathered into it from having been put off. - -This book and the two dresses are my present portion. If I could -escape them (I am not quite sure I want to--but--_hell!_)--it would -be of no use. They would come back again in an unexpected ripeness of -time and demand a hearing: an exquisite nervous tragic hearing. - -They are such stuff as the conscious analyst is made of. - -But though I'm the conscious analyst I can't quite tell whether I -write the book because I wear two plain black dresses or I wear those -because I write it. - - - - -_Eye when I mean tooth_ - - - To-morrow - -I write it, and it's a surprising book. - -It is not what on the surface it looks to be. - -I do not write what my clear Mind may want to say to the white blank -paper. - -I do not write what my thoughts are saying to me. - -Those things are facile, uninformed--flat mental pictures, the -writer's craft. - -I write what still voices of life: voices trivially frightful in -their secret pettiness: voices of all my life--merest living--say -to my ancient Soul and my young present Body and what they two may -answer. - -I am in some sort a wonderful person--and in places I do that, nearly -perfectly. - -I am also tired and someway whelmed by self-conscious despair, -and possessed of a talent imperfect and inadequate to reveal the -radiances and shades my being perceives: and in places I fail. - -I fail remarkably. I write Eye when I mean Tooth. I write Fornicate -when I mean Caress. I write Wine when I mean Blood. For no better -reason than that my writing hand is not sufficiently dexterous: the -little flashing shutters open and shut so quick that the second ones -are shut and the third starting to open before I have got written the -things I saw through the first ones. - -Only not always. - - - - -_A wild mare_ - - - To-morrow - -Also I am dissatisfying to myself. - -My thoughts smother me: they keep me from life. - -I am a hundred times more introspective than most people, most -women. Most women, even conventional ones, are lawless--the more -conventional, the more lawless usually. - -And so most women beat me to life. Where they yield to an -impulse the moment they feel it--I, because an impulse itself is -adventure-fabric--I feel of its quality, test it for defects, wash a -little corner of it to see if the color will run--and conclude not to -use it. - -That I gaze inward at the garbled biograph of Me keeps me from -several sorts of violent action. - -I have violent action in me, chained in analysis. - -Most women are secretly lawless on the old plan inaugurated by -Eve--of inclining to do anything forbidden, of hugging everything -they are unsupposed to hug, of determinedly kicking over the traces -when coerced too much. The ban is the chief attraction. - -It's but little like that with me. There would be point and purpose -in my Action. But it is kept in stupor by analysis. - -I am malcontent about that, though I live upon analysis. I hate the -inaction and inertia that follow on its heels. - -I could be an anarchist. I condemn anarchists but not as I condemn -Me. I would respect me more were I this moment prisoned in a real -bastile for having stuck a good knife into a bad king. I could feel, -no matter how foolish and mistaken in itself the act, that I had done -the strong and brave thing at sacrifice of my personal selves. The -dry living-death of the prison would be compensated for each day when -I said to Me, 'It was a needful honorable act and _I_ did it: for -once in my life I was a Regular Person.' - -There would be a nourishment in being able to tell that to myself. -There would be warming food in owning one so brave remembrance of -myself. - -But, my Soul-and-bones!--at the very moment of lifting the good -knife a thought would come: 'How is this king worse than another? -What rotten rascal mightn't rise in his place?' And on with a -lightning-trail of analysis till my pale hand dropped inert and the -knife in it grew harmless as a lily-petal. - -It isn't that I haven't the guts. I have. - -I am a wild mare in foal: and unfoaling. - - - - -_The mist_ - - - To-morrow - -Because I am to myself someways dissatisfying and exasperating often -this thing I write is dissatisfying and exasperating. - -It is a true account of what is inside me. 'The wine must taste of -its own grapes.' - -It would be easier to make it an untrue account, for fiction is the -most effortless of writing. So I have found it. And I am very clever. - -I could write myself as a pretty dainty harmlessly purring one--the -leopard with claws clipped and fangs drawn. - -When my dynamos rest I am like that, doubtless. - -But the wears and tears of breathing and the influences of varied -life-details and of clothes worn and food eaten start me moving -devilishly. - -Phases of a score of persons, men and women, come to light in me. - -To be one human being means to be monstrously mixed. - -I write me out not as I might be, nor as I should be--whatever that -may be--: but merely as I am. - -As, Just Beneath The Skin, I am. - -So my written account must come out someways dissatisfying and -exasperating. Logically dissatisfying and divinely and ethically -exasperating. - ---a passage in Vergil tells of a Mist that is all over and about -this world from the human 'tears that are falling, falling, falling -always.' Something, and it may be that Mist, makes one's view of -everything--everything in life--a little blurred. It may even blur -one's view of oneself. So it may be I do not see myself with entire -clearness-- - -I only know I write me as clearly as I see me, considering the Mist. - - - - -_A white liner_ - - - To-morrow - -To-day came the Finn woman and cleaned my blue-and-white bedroom. - -She comes now and again and cleans excellently. - -I would like to clean my room myself but lack the strength and skill -to do it well. - -But I stay with the Finn woman and show her how and I watch her work -and muse upon her. She would be called in England a charwoman, but in -this America of the vast mongrel heterogenesis she is an unclassified -laborer. - -I like to watch her and talk with her a bit and dwell on her mixed -potentialities. She contrasts fascinatingly with me. - -She is a human being and so am I, and beyond and with that there are -odd parallels and similarities and distinctions between her and me. - -Her name is Josephina and she looks as if it might be. - -Mine is Mary MacLane but I don't look entirely like it. - -She lives a lonely life and so do I, differing in sort and -circumstance. - -I am middle-class and American of Canadian reminiscence, and -early-thirty. - -Josephina is Finn and lower-class with a 'foreign' look, and she is -forty-five and looks sixty and is twelve years out of Finland. - -I am tallish and slim and weigh nine wavering stone. - -The Finn woman is short and solid and weighs all of a hundred and -seventy pounds. - -I am slender of flank and ankle, narrow through the loins and bony at -the shoulders. - -The Finn woman is thick everywhere, broad of girth and deep of chest -like a Percheron stallion. - -I am darkish with dusky gray eyes. - -Josephina is dirty-blond with pale narrow blue eyes like a china -doll's. - -My sex feels to me like a mysterious sweetness. - -Josephina's sex looks porcinely obvious and uninteresting like her -large dubious breasts. - -I am inwardly full of strong-flavored emotions. - -The one positive outward feeling Josephina manifests is a dull but -comprehensive hatred, peculiar to her nationality and station, for -everything Swedish. - -The Finn woman has a husband now and had a different one formerly. - -I have none and never had. - -Josephina is elemental primeval woman. - -So am I but terrifically qualified by complexity, incongruity. - -I have white smooth firm beautiful hands. - -Josephina's hands are particularly ugly and have a menacing look. - -I have quick intelligence. - -Josephina is markedly stupid. - -I live in a quiet clean bungalow. - -Josephina lives in an unusually filthy unrestful little house. - -I own two dresses whose personnel alters at intervals. - -Josephina owns one unchanging dress, septic, maculate and repellent. - -I have a sense of humor vivid and intriguing to myself. - -Josephina has no more sense of humor than a flatiron. - -I bathe foamily icily each morning. - -Josephina would seem never to have had a bath. She cleans windows and -floors and rugs for thirty-five cents an hour. She would regard it as -a fantastic waste of time and soap to clean herself for nothing. - -I own in a still flawed life one phase which is an endless treasure -of beauty and power and charm and light: my love for John Keats. - -The Finn woman owns about the same thing in a life which may be more -still and flawed than mine: her love for strong drink. - -There begins a curious line of similitude between us. - -I feel oddly joyous and light of heart on a solitary veranda corner -with the John-Keats poetry book open in my lap. - -And Josephina has been found many a time by Butte policemen sitting -alone joyous and very drunk, in dark alleys with empty pint bottles -strewn all about her. - -In my un-Keats hours I am mostly mournful. And Josephina sober -has all the melancholy of her race with an added gloom, as if the -acetylene had run out of all her lamps. That my melancholy is more -lustrous than hers I lay to her native dullness as against my native -braininess, and to alcohol's having rotting effects on human mental -tissues: whilst John Keats to those who drink his poetry is a starry -savior. - -I like to think there's the same ambrosial food in the Demon Rum for -Josephina as in the Grecian Urn for me. - -There seems no other pleasure in life for her. - -The limit of her literary pursuit is the reading of a four-page -Finnish newspaper full of obituaries. - -The opalescent enchantments of her inner being mean nothing to her: -she wouldn't know her entity from her duodenum. - -Her body can bring her no delight: there's no lightness to it, no -tang, no feminine charm, no consciousness to make her love it as the -Dianas love theirs. - -A sunset above the western peaks is less than a setting sun to her. - -Her food is merely her fodder. - -Love and Romance pass her by. She and the husband vie with each -other for solitary possession of their little nasty house. And her -personality is not conducive to lovers. - -She has nor chick nor child to mother. - -Her idea of a life beyond this vale is crude and uncomfortable. She -went two Sundays to the Finnish church and had a surprising lusty -doctrine of eternal fire rammed down her throat: she took the Finn -minister's word for it and quitted the fold, preferring to live this -life unhampered by flaming anticipation. All her material treasure -she works for with mops and scrubbing-brushes at thirty-five cents an -hour. - -Other roads being thus blocked it is sing-ho for King Alcohol in pint -bottles. - -Josephina is what is called a white liner. Which means that she -has drunk so long, so much, so regularly that whiskey, rum, gin -and brandy have no or negligible effects upon her. To achieve her -intoxicating aim she must drink pure alcohol. - -By the same token I eschew many a tame poet: I must have John Keats. - -What the poetry of John Keats does to me I know. - -What the distilled waters of her choice do to Josephina it pleases me -to imagine while I watch her clean my walls and floor and windows. - -She works strongly, steadily, quietly till I pronounce the room -clean. Then she stops, carries the pails and other things downstairs -to the kitchen, removes a big brass pin from the rear of her dingy -skirt which had held it back and doubled over her darkling petticoat, -re-dons an antique rain-coat and bad hat, ties her clinking silver -into the corner of a decadent handkerchief, bids me good-evening with -a grave blond Finn bow and goes out into the dusk. She takes her -way through alleys and short-cuts to the side door of a 'Finlander' -gin-palace in the Finn quarter of the town. And there she lays out -her day's wage in the pint bottles of her delight. As many pint -bottles as her few dollars will buy, so many she buys. She ventures -her all in the name of passionate thirst taking no thought of the -morrow. She then seeks out some alley with a dark door-step and -there she does her drinking. It would not do to go home with her -alcoholic wealth because the husband might be there who, like the -alphabetic vintner, would 'drink all himself.' So she drinks away in -pint-bottle-ish peace, sitting alone in the gloom of the alleyway -door-step, in her limp rain-coat and bad hat and her stolid Finn -self-sufficience. - -Because I like Josephina it charms me to think of the happiness that -must be hers as she sits emptying pint bottles into herself and the -white strong fire-water begins to work. - -Before having her drinks she is unelated and uninformed like a -corpse coldly electrified by a storage battery. As she drinks and -drinks on she remains outwardly unchanged as the way is with her -race--but within! The changes that come to pass in the heavy person -of Josephina as the white flames wash down her walls! - -Into her dull veins pours a hot stream like melted seething copper -and it heats her knees till she knows she _has_ knees and that they -are white and very beautiful: and it heats her legs and her back and -her breasts till they glow with the double-glow of an Aphrodite's in -a reluctant Adonis's arms: it heats her eyes and temples and throat -till she feels herself a radiant girl: it heats the crown of her -head till she feels something like a brain there: it heats her heart -and stomach till she's filled with a gay gust for life: it heats her -imagination till she even imagines herself in love with her hard -Finn husband since he is not by to beat her and so dispel the fancy: -it heats a sense of humor into her till she laughs suddenly and -heartily at some fugitive funniness that had lain long frozen in her -memory: it heats a hundred little human carburetors in her which send -a wreathe of vapors up into her drab being to flush it with misty -golds and thin blues and rosy crimsons till her dormant involuntary -soul awakes--a thing of old mellowed beauty, it may be--and is -wafted on warm pretty vapory wings far from alleys, far from mops -and scrubbing-brushes, far from thirty-five cents an hour, far from -doorsteps--to fair sweet Isles of the Blest! - -Nearing the last of her pint bottles she reels sideways on the -doorstep: her bad hat cants forward: she sprawls about. The -policeman on that beat to whom in that aspect she is a figure long -familiar strolls toward her late in the night and looks at her with -a lackluster eye. But Josephina is physically unaware of all this -world. Her last pint bottle is gamely emptied, her inner sun's -chromosphere burns like mad--but her body, unable to cope with the -virile delectations new-risen within it, limply gives way. - -A quaint picture, interesting to dwell on: her thick bathless body -laid low in the darkened alley, with the empty pint bottles scattered -on the paving-stones beside it--but her astral shape, lit by the -subtle fires of alcohol, lifted high, high to remote elysiums. The -policeman calls the 'wagon' and Josephina is taken up by several -ungentle hands and tossed into it like a sack of coal. They take her -to the city jail and lock her in a cell. The next morning she stands -jaded and morbidly intoxicated before a police judge who glances at -her uninterestedly for the several-hundredth time and says five days. - -The five days can not be pleasant days but Josephina owns a robust -sporting spirit. She gives not so much as the shrug of a shoulder -either at going into jail or coming out of it. A black eye from her -husband, a broken arm from a drunken fall, a filthy sojourn in jail: -all one to her. She accepts them as she accepts all of her life, with -an immense psychic calm. But she takes strongly to drink to translate -herself out of it. And let her drink. - -I know how she feels for I take to John Keats. I don't myself care -much for strong drink. I drink a little of it at irregular intervals, -but, by and large, I drink without éclat. In this mountain altitude -whiskey makes me sick, champagne makes me dizzy and gin is a pungent -punishment. One morning after reading of Josephina's white-line -distinction in a police-court column I tasted some alcohol, but it -had a varnish flavor and had strangling effects on my throat. It -made me marvel at Josephina's prowess. I like absinthe in its bitter -strength mostly because to sit sipping it feels restfully forbidden. -Port wine is a brackish medicine, I hate the stickiness of cordials, -and a cocktail I like chiefly to contemplate. So much for me and -strong drink. - -Josephina on the other hand does not care for John Keats. I sounded -her on poetry in some of its human aspects: there was nobody at home. -Her own enlightened north country has some poets of borealic iron and -brain-brawn and beauty: to Josephina's wooden intellect their books -are eternally closed. - -But the Demon Rum looses a heated flood of poetry upon her, which I -can but vision and not feel. - -I am incapable of strong drink even as Josephina is incapable of -John Keats. - -We are quits there. - -I look on myself as the more fortunate.--John Keats! - -A woman so drunk as to fall and reel about is always an exquisitely -shameful thing. And when I think of how she's tossed into the -wagon--to mention but one item-- - -But it's a matter of the human equation. Doubtless it is all -relative. The Finn woman is not aware of how she is knocked about, -and if she were she would not regard it with any of my imagination. -So what matter? - -A likeable and admirable person is Josephina. A so strong fine -businesslike worker, a so thoroughbred sport, a so splendid drunkard, -and asking no odds of God or man. In her stolid Finn fashion she -likes me as she has proven, and I like her though she makes me feel -inferior. - ---if Josephina could and would write _her_ inner isolated world of -thoughts--the saga of her one horrid gown! There would be a book. All -blacks and carmines--all stolidly sober and brilliantly drunk--all -dingily bathless: deeply savagely quietly human. - -It would be a book savoring not of white alcohol but of the salty -unshed Tears, the dry artistic Griefs of Josephina. - - - - -_Beneficent bedlam_ - - - To-morrow - -I have been so long Sane it would be gay and sweet and resting to go -Mad. - -I would I could go Mad. - -To a Mad-woman a Door is not a Door, probably: a Cat is not a -Cat, belike: and To-morrow is not To-morrow at all--it may be -week-before-last, it may be next year, it may be an exquisite jest. -One can not tell _what_ it is. - -It is the thing one escapes by going Mad: Monotony. - -It's all beneficent bedlam. - - - - -_A deathly pathos_ - - - To-morrow - -I love the sex-passion which is in this witching Body of me. I love -to feel its portent grow and creep over me, like a climbing vine of -tiny red roses, in the occasional dusks. - -It is no shame or shadow or sordidness: but beauty and sweetness and -light. - -no token of sin: a token of virtue. - -no thing to crush: rather to nurture, to garner. - -no thing to forget: to remember, to think about. - -no flat weak drawn-out prose: live potent clipped heated poetry. - -not common and loosely human: rare and divine. - -not fat daily soup: stinging wine of life. - -not valueless because born of nothing and nowhere: valuable, -priceless, a treasure under lock and key. - -Sex-desire comes wandering in dusk-time and gulfs me as in a swift -violent sweet-smelling whirlwind. It goes away sudden-variant as it -came, out of a region of hot quick shadows. - -And for that, for hours and days afterward, oranges and apples look -brighter-colored to my eyes: hammocks swing easier as I sit in them: -rugs feel softer to my feet: the black dresses lend themselves -gentler to my form: pencils slide faciler on paper: my voice speaks -less difficultly into telephones: meanings sound super-vibrant in -Keats's Odes: sugar--little pinches of granulated sugar--are shaper, -sweeter-sweeter in my throat. - -And God grows less remote. And my wooden coffin and deep wet yellow -clay grave move a long way back from me. - ---all from fleeting ungratified wish of sly sex-tissues-- - -Also in it, and in my life from it, I sense some deathly pathos. - - - - -_The necklace_ - - - To-morrow - -The Necklace which God long ago hung round the white neck of my Soul -is composed of little-seeming curses, like precious and semi-precious -gems. They are polished smooth as if by age, as if by wear, as if by -fingering and as if by brisk industrious rubbing. - -The Necklace is at once beautiful and ugly. The gems are in color -chiefly blues and greens--with grays, lavenders, drabs and mauves. -But mostly blues and greens. They make a circlet of small stones -strung at short intervals as if on a strong thin gold wire, with -two large tawdry pretty pendants hung in front. One of the pendants -is my fertile phase of Weakness and the other my odd encompassing -Folly. The smaller stones are seventeen in number and their names and -natures are these: - -the first is Dishonesty which makes ghosts of half my life. - -the second is Pretense, hard and genuine stone, which keeps me from -being all-ways sincere even to anyone who knows me and whom I know: -who loves me and whom I love. - -the third is Fear which makes me who scorn all leonine dangers cringe -and crawl for Trifles of life incredibly little. - -the fourth is Sensuality which burns and bursts across my Mind, -half-missing my Body. - -the fifth is Anxiety, strange flawed green stone--by it I worry, -tortured and wildly wavering, about the passing hours of my life: -where they are going, where they are taking me. - -the sixth is Amativeness, extraordinary deep-tinted warm false -gem--it makes me love someway amorously some person I meet and fancy: -an intimate tragedy, crucial and trivial. - -the seventh is Fatigue of the spirit itself, gray sad stone, meaning -terrible sensations of age in my young flesh. - -the eighth is Incongruity, the sense and feeling of it, round blue -stone--it kills what might be art and constructiveness and excellence -in me. - -the ninth is Acquiescence, worn dull stone--it has kept me all the -ages from the salvation of heated luminous strife. - -the tenth is Sensitiveness, pale-toned stone--by it the fingers of -life touch me too suddenly, too sharply, too tensely to do me the -good they might. - -the eleventh is Doubt, frail opalescent stone--by it my delight in -the sunny Spring wind against my cheek is qualified with dubious -surprise: by it I half-disbelieve in moon and stars and in long -country roads stretched out solitary, lovely, drenched in sunset. - -the twelfth is Self-consciousness, blue-and-green stone--it robs me -of the comfort and self-respect of feeling any motive in me to be -un-ulterior. - -the thirteenth is Introspection, beautiful-beautiful blue-green -stone--it pays for its place in beauty but by it I lose the building, -the substance, the _matter_ of living. - -the fourteenth is Intensity--too vivid vision, too vivid taste for -some details of life--little hot-looking cool-feeling stone--by it -I undervalue and overvalue, dwell upon surfaces, missing the serene -feel and possession of precious solidness. - -the fifteenth is Isolation, pale purple stone--it makes me feel -_never_ at home, _never_ at ease, _never_ belonging--a subtle -insulation--in this sheltered peopled world. - -the sixteenth is Bewilderment, mixed-tinted stone--by it I wonder -_what_ is truth with truth seeming that moment fluttering soft-plumed -wings at my throat. - -the seventeenth is--it has no name--the _Feel-of-Me_, bright -blue-green stone, lovely and loathesome--by it I've lost my way, I've -felt all and only Me when I might have groped outward, hand and foot, -and found a wind-swept path to go in: I was always blurred by Me. - -A small Necklace, all dull gleams and unusual tints, strung finely -and strongly and beautifully on shining gold. The sweet Soul droops -like a wilted lily under even its slight weight. Strong fine rivets -hold it firm-clasped and the weight of the two charming imitation -pendant-stones keep it gracefully in place. My loved and lovely Soul -has worn it through the ages: manacle, shackle. - -How long more--God may know but does not tell me. - -It's only a Necklace. And my Soul is a Soul! - -Even under the frail galling burden of the flesh the Soul of me -to-morrow could tear off that Necklace and crumble it to airless -nothing. - -It does not: but _could_. - - - - -_Slyly garbling and cross-purposing_ - - - To-morrow - -At rarish intervals comes my Soul to visit me. - -My Soul is light sheer Being. - -My Soul is like a young most beautiful girl marked and worn by long -cycles of time but not anyway aged. She comes dressed in something -like gray-white de-soie muslin or fine-grained crêpe silk, a -loose-belted frock reaching to her ankles. - -My Soul is unmoved by the world and the flesh and their feeling, -as befits a Soul. She looks on me with a chill faëry-ish contempt, -as also befits a Soul. The quality of her contempt is of weary -understanding and is like a caress. - -In the dusk of yesterday came my Soul to visit me--a dusk of a deep -beauty. The last glow of the sun lay along the earth, and all was -gentian blue. - -I leaned against my window-pane watching it, and beside me sat her -Presence. Her Presence makes me feel wonderfully gifted: it is -_mine_, this Soul all Golden-Silk and Silken-Gold! - -We talk on many topics, of many things: I in worldly nervous -ignorance and with a wishfulness to reach and compass and know: the -Soul with poise and surety of attitude, a wearied patience and the -chill sweet contempt. - -She answers me from her cool old tranquil viewpoint, which is near -me yet remote. - -We talked last of some bygone persons I have been, some shapes she -wore. - -Said the Soul: 'Early in the sixteenth century you were a ragged -Russian peasant girl living in ignorance and filth in a hut -by a swamp-edge. You had parents both of whom beat your body -black-and-blue from your babyhood. And at eighteen you were a -coarsened hardy wench tending a drove of pigs and goats on the sunny -steppe. I was there with you as presently as now--as sentient, as -perceptive. But it is a question whether you or the little beasts you -drove were the more beastly stupid. You and they were equal in outer -quality, equal in uncleanliness, equally covered with vermin.' - -I have no ghost-memory of that time, but as the Soul told of it a -nascent feeling came on me, as if some part of my Mind felt its way -back to that. I warmed to the thought of the Peasant Girl. I was -quiescent to her filth and ignorance. - -Said I: 'Was she brave and fairly honest?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were a ready liar--you lied your way out of many -a beating. But you were brave enough. You faced the roughnesses of -your life uncringing, and you died game.' - -Said I: 'How did I die?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were run neatly through the body by the short -sword of a soldier whose lust-desire you had had the hardihood to -refuse--and I fled away upon the instant.' - -Said I: 'I half-knew it--she died a violent death. You--were you glad -to be quit of her filthy flesh, her surroundings, her ignorance?' - -Said the Soul: 'Glad? Such things mean nothing to me. Your -body, be it sweet or foul, has no bearing on my long journey. -Motives--motif--back of your human acts make me glad or sorry at -leaving you.' - -Said I: 'Tell me about a time when I seemed someway fine, humanly -fine.' - -Said the Soul: 'In London, near the end of the seventeenth century, -before and during the period of the Gordon Riots, you lived in a way -of peace. From when you were fourteen until you were twenty-nine you -lived alone with your little lame half-sister whom you cared for very -devotedly, very tenderly.' - -My little half-sister-- Until the Soul spoke of her there was no -vision, no image like her. Then something of me remembered. - -Said I: 'What was she like? Who were our parents?' - -Said the Soul: 'Your mother died at your birth, hers at her birth. -Your father was hanged at Tyburn for forgery. The sister was pale, -large-eyed, long-haired, crippled from a dislocated shoulder and -hip. When you were twenty-five she was eleven, a beautiful frail -child. You lived in two rooms above a linen-draper's and you -supported the two of you by weaving and calendering cloths for the -shop-keeper, and by illuminating missals and manuscripts when you -could get that work. For a very poor wage, but living was cheap. All -the time you took zealous care of your sister. Your heart was bound -up in her--you adored her.' - -Said I: 'I know that. Tell me what we did--how we lived--how we loved -each other.' - -Said the Soul: 'In the summer evenings you often walked out along -quiet London streets--the sister sometimes with a crutch and your arm -about her, sometimes in a rolling chair, whilst you walked beside -her pushing it. Your father had educated you in an erratic fashion. -You had a deal of desultory knowledge--what is called knowledge--and -you educated the young sister in the same manner. Often it was of -the poets--Latin, English, Italian, and of histories and sciences -and arts--what odd comprehensive bits you knew--that you two talked -as you sauntered in the bright late English sunlight. Or you -talked of the little details of your joint life. Sometimes you sat -together--you holding her close in your arms--by a window in your -darkening front room, and watched the children at play in the common -opposite, and conversed and were quietly happy. You were maternal and -the child was a mature old-fashioned yet childish innocent child.' - -My little sister--sweet--long gone-- Would that I had her now! - -Said I: 'Tell me what we said.' - -Said the Soul: 'You said to her, "Our poverty and even our -deprivations, dearest, which for your sake I feel deeply would not -matter, not the least, to me if I could see you well and strong." -And the child replied, "Sweet, just to rest like this in your arms -each twilight makes me rich, rich--as rich as the smartest ladies -in Piccadilly." And you said, "Rich reminds me, Darling, we shall -have four extra shillings--four bright silver shillings--at the end -of this week from the book-seller. So what shall we purchase for a -treat? There'll be, if you like, prawns and crumpets for tea, for -days to come--or if my Child prefers oranges or pineapples once--" -And the child replied with her cheeks quite pink at the thought, -"O Sister-love, let us have the pines, just one day, and let us -make-believe to be ladies that day, and comport ourselves like -ladies, and take our tea--all like ladies." And you pressed her close -to your breast--you both wore caps and kerchiefs and stuff-gowns in -the fashion of the lower-middle artisan class--and showered gentle -kisses on her cheeks and eyelids, and promised her the pineapples -and the tea like ladies.' - -I listened to this with vivid still pleasure. It felt like endearing -fulfilling life--a day of tenderness--. And oddly familiar. - -Said I: 'What were we in the habit of having for our tea--that prawns -and crumpets would make us a treat?' - -Said the Soul: 'Your tea was chiefly bran-bread and cress or perhaps -lettuce, with a stone mug of milk for the child when you could afford -it. The London of that day had no luxuries for the poor. And having -had none you missed none. But the populace lived in starveling -misery. The rabble rose and rallied to the Gordon as it would have to -anyone who urged it to rioting. You were Protestants but you regarded -him as a weakling visionary. You watched the rioting in the streets -with little fear, but the linen-draper and all other shop-keepers -kept barred doors. You two were venturesome and were yourselves of -the masses, and when the mob stormed Newgate prison you both stood -watching with many other householders on the outskirts of the crowd, -in terror but secretly half in sympathy. You were safe enough from -the rioters who were intent on wrecking the gaol and freeing the -inmates. It was characteristic of you as you were then to be out -looking on at a murderous night scene with interest, carefully -protecting the child from contact with the throngs.' - -Said I: 'How long did that life last?' - -Said the Soul: 'Four years after that your sister changed from her -bare little bed to a coffin and you went on alone achingly suffering -her loss for long years. You lived to be seventy, a thin old woman, -working latterly as one of the night nurses in a public hospital. You -lived an abstemious outwardly self-sacrificing life and died alone, -from hardened arteries, one autumn night.' - -Said I: 'And was there an informing beauty for you, for you and for -me, in my life then?' - -Coldly said the Soul: 'You were self-centered, for all your -self-sacrifice. You reckoned it your duty to care for your sister. -It was also your irresistible delight. And after her death you took -self-satisfaction in self-sacrifice: smug--smug. For me there was a -laming distortion in it all.' - -Said I: 'Tell me some other life.' - -Said the Soul: 'You were once a little thief in the streets of a -later London. You picked pockets, you stole bits of food in Covent -Garden market, you pilfered shop-tills, you systematically worked the -wealthy throngs as they came from the Opera at midnight. You were -known to the police as the cleverest child-thief in London.' - -It warmed my vanity to think of myself as clever in so theatric a -rôle as thief. - -Said I: 'How did that life like you?' - -Said the Soul, with a shrug of her delicate shoulders: 'I had little -to do with it and that in a negative way. My part in you was to keep -up your heart in hungry hunted days. You were neither a good thing -nor a bad thing: perishingly passive. And you were dead in a potter's -field before your sixteenth birthday.' - -Said I: 'How did the little Thief look?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were sufficiently ugly--an undersized form, a -gamin face, bastard features.' - -Said I: 'And I daresay ignorant?' - -Said the Soul: 'Ignorant of everything rated useful, but wise to the -under-sides of human nature and in the sordid viciousness of London -slums. And singularly shrewd--what is called philosophical.' - -Said I: 'Pray tell me another life.' - -Said the Soul: 'An earlier time--Paris, some century before the -Terror saw you a slim _fille-du-pavè_, a prostitute of a low cheap -type, but with more brain, more of what is termed character than you -have ever possessed. You had wit, will, _esprit_, determination. -From having been at seventeen most obscenely of the streets you -were at thirty a wonderfully grand courtesan: no better in what are -called morals but possessed of very much inner and outer strength and -luster. You were _chère-aimèe_ to men of brain, men of importance -to the state, whose acts were shaded by your influence. And you -achieved unusual wealth chiefly by the powers and strategies of -your character. You lived in the extreme of luxury of that time and -of your type--a delicate luxury, almost high-bred. You were wanton -in amour, being physically extremely passionate, but admirably -straightforward and strong in each matter and aspect of your life.' - -Said I: 'You admired her?' - -Said the Soul: 'I was serene and vividly alive within you. You were -in all ways, simply and completely, an honest woman, and for the only -time.' - -Said I: 'How could she be honest, since she lived by exchanging -treasure of much personal economic value for cheap cheapest gold, -trash, and a besmirched name: and all through two sorts of greed?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were honest since you made no pretense of any -kind to yourself. You took no gold that you did not logically, -humanly or shamefully earn. You were consciously and unconsciously -above all subterfuge. You wrought no ruin nor error nor darkness -upon your own spirit or any other. You deceived neither yourself nor -anyone about you. The tone of your life was of sun-shining simplicity -and cleanness. There was no greed in you. You saw your way of life -before you and lived it without degradation, with a positiveness of -strength.' - -It is as if my Soul's view and mine were infinitely separate from -being narrowly paralleled. The portrait was mystically familiar: but -not by her light. - -Said I: 'Was she beautiful to look at?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were beautiful in a pallid saintlike French -manner--an uncertain type of beauty which fatigue or depression -turns to plainness. You had but little light charm of prettiness. -But you had what counts for more than beauty: the nerve and verve -of attractiveness, the force and fascination of physical being, the -fragrance, the _flair_ of the deeply-sexed woman. In one phase you -were constantly preying and preyed upon, but with high valors of -attack and endurance.' - -Said I: 'Did she live in peace--had she no times of suffering?' - -Said the Soul: 'You had hours of violent bitter suffering. Paris -has always accepted without countenancing the properous cocotte. -And often you were infamously insulted at street-crossings by -soldiers and _sergeants-de-ville_ as you drove out in your small -bright-colored carriage. And you were hailed with opprobrious -appropriate names by the ragged populace as they picked up silver -pieces which you threw among them. Such things were stinging brands -and lashes to you. But you bore yourself with entire courage. You -gave much money to churches and charities but looked on such acts in -yourself rightly as some slight weakness which would, however, be of -benefit to the starving poor. I can not describe--so you could grasp -it--the peace, the expansion, the freedom for me in that life and in -that attitude.' - -The exact outlook of the Soul throws over me a veil of wistfulness, -bewilderness, freedness, lostness which hides the material moorings -of my life and casts me adrift on broad clouded seas. - -Said I: 'What was the end of that--how did she die?' - -Said the Soul: 'You died exquisitely, of syphilitic disorders. You -were something past forty, badly broken--your looks were gone, your -friends were gone, your money was not gone but it was of little use -to you. But you smiled serenely and lived up personally and mentally -to your smile. A surgeon and a fat mustached old woman saw you die in -the beginning of that bodily rot--the just portion of the passionate -whore--one sweet Spring dawn, with birds twittering in green branches -outside your window and a great gold sun slowly breaking the mist. -Then for once I left you with reluctance. I clung to you. The kiss of -me was last on your fainting brain and your fast-cooling heart. For -I was leaving, in an agony of my own, an _honest_ person. And I knew -not what might be my next petty prison.' - -Said I: 'What was my next life?' - -Said the Soul: 'It was not so petty as were some others. You were -next--about seventeen-fifty--a quaint extremely common little person. -You were apprenticed as a child to a milliner in Liverpool, England. -You grew out of that and became a dancer in a dingy theatre--a cheap -bedraggled life. You were a cheap and bedraggled young woman. You -wore odd gay tawdry frocks, hideous little shoes, ragged raveled -silk hose, surprising bright bonnets. Your mind was a shallow pool -filled with tales from shilling shockers and penny dreadfuls in which -you believed implicitly. You were mentally degenerate, organically -a fool, a wonderful snob. You wanted only wealth and place bitterly -to deride and browbeat the low class to which you belonged--not -from lack of heart but because you believed it to be the proper -aristocratic manner. And what you wanted in mind you made up in -temper. You quarreled, you came to blows, with your fellow-dancers in -any of a half-score of small selfish daily disputes. Cleverness among -you consisted in gaining any possible advantage over the others and -in calling each other names. Also in maneuvering bits of money--as -much as might be--from unpleasing men who hung about the dingy -play-house. On holidays you were invariably half-drunk.' - -Said I: 'And wherein was she not petty?' - -Said the Soul: 'You believed in yourself. You had not a doubt you -belonged in worldly high places but were kept down by the malice and -depravity of human nature, people about you. And you lived up to your -vulgar ideal of ambition. There was a simplicity, an enlightening -pathos in you then which was lacking in the linen-draper's lodger.' - -In my flawed way I saw that, but objected to the bygone Liverpool -lady from many an angle. - -Said I: 'Had I no life of a sweetness and gentleness and with it -something that buoyed and bore you on?' - -Said the Soul: 'Never once. You were many centuries ago a Greek girl -of the aristocratic class, bred in an intellectual life. You read -the philosophers in the cool retreats of an olive grove. The mental -knowledge you have now compared to your learning then is a tangle -of ignorance. But the Greek girl had no heart, no human flame, no -active blood of personality. Those wanting I starved. The Liverpool -dancer in her warming virile vulgarness bore me vastly farther on -my way. You were a Greek woman in a still earlier time--of a type -which murders all simplicity. Your body and mind were haunted by -perfervid imagination and both ached with the weight of it. You were -made of twisted fires. I grew in _that_ day: grew burdenedly: grew -distortedly.' - -Always those Greek visions are my 'half-familiar ghosts.'-- - -Said I: 'Was I sometime a married woman?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were--in four separate ages. Which brought you -and me singular solitude.' - -Said I: 'Was I always woman?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were once a young lad of fierce temper and were -at twenty a madman. And died mad. No male body and brain could -withstand and outface merely the emotional besiegings of _you_.' - -Said I: 'When I went mad, what of you?' - -Said the Soul: 'I fell asleep, and knew no rest, but dreamed.' - -Said I: 'Of what?' - -Said the Soul: 'Things I always dreamed in your mad lapses--poetry -served very conscious and very hot: the material Color of the -Sunshine: the musical Softness of the Dawns: the pulsing Thoughts in -Girls' Throats: the Scent of Water-Falls.' - -The Soul has an airless voice which tells her meanings, beside her -words and in their rhythm. - -Said I: 'What do you, and how do you, with me now?' - -Said the Soul: 'I grow tired with you. Exasperated. Desperate. As if -I too wore flesh. You are a deathly prison, a torture chamber. I turn -everywhere and nowhere at all. You tire me--you wear me. I wait. I -stay. Yet I move.' - -She looked lovely, my Soul--and quite in and of this bitter-ish -lovely world in its bloody bitter wrappings of bone and flesh. Around -her neck was the Necklace she wore in all the ages, showing greenish -in a dusk of gentian blue.-- - -All of it slyly garbles and cross-purposes me a little bit more than -usual. - -I wish I'd been born a Wild Boar. - - - - -_Not quite voilà-tout_ - - - To-morrow - -The clearest lights on persons are small salient personal facts and -items about them and their ways of life. - -To know that a woman is 'sensitive' is to have but a blurred -conception of her as one easily impressed, easily hurt. But to know -that she wears thick union-suitish under-clothes and uncompromising -cotton stockings is to know much about her: by those tokens she is -plain: she is stupid: she is smugly virtuous: she is poor: she is -narrow-thoughted: she lacks imagination: she is prosaic: she has a -defective sense of humor: she is catty: she is 'kind': she catches -cold: she is a thoroughly good woman. - -To know that a child is 'bright' is to have no definite knowledge of -the child. But to know she flies into rages and bites whisk-brooms, -laces and her fragile grandmother is to have a wide-beamed -far-reaching spirit-light upon her. - -That I am 'thoughtful' means little or anything or nothing: that I -love the odor of ink, that I hate the stings of conscience, that I -never lounge untidily about the house or in my room but am always -'groomed,'--those tell me to myself. - -Here for my enlightening I write a garbled list of my items and facts: - ---I never see a soft new yeast-cake without wishing to squeeze it -for the salubrious feeling of the tinfoil bursting facilely and the -yeast oozing with its odd dry juiciness through my fingers. - ---And I never see a shiny waxy green rubber plant without wanting to -bite the leaves precisely and daintily with my sharp teeth. - ---My luncheon each late midday is made of four radishes, three -crackers and a thin glass of water: an anchoretic feast which I eat -with relish. The rhyme I murmur with it is: 'what do you think, she -lives upon nothing but victuals and drink.' - ---Whenever I look out my window at five in the afternoon I see a neat -nice-looking strange nigger-woman walking past. And the nigger-woman -glances casually up at my window and sees me. We are unknown to one -another and have belike as much and no more in common as if we grew -on different planets. But the nigger-woman and I are someway dimly -liking each other and dimly knowing it. - ---I scent my belongings faintly with Houbigant's Quelques Violettes -perfume. - ---I like to light a box of matches at a twilight window-sill singly -and by twos and threes and little bunches, and hold them till they -burn out, and watch the little flames, and drop the burnt ends out -the window: a pastime inherited from my child-self. - ---Of living creatures that I know I most hate cockroaches. - ---Of inanimate things that I know I most hate a loose shutter -rattling at night in the wind. - ---While I smoke after-dinner cigarettes down-stairs I put flat round -black records on a tall red Edison phonograph and I curl up in a -leather chair in the dark to listen to the music which is soft and -deep: 'Che Gelida Manina' in a wistful tenor, and 'Refrain Audacious -Tar,' and 'Ah Quel Giorno,' and 'Scenes That are Brightest' and -others and others--tantalizing, tawdry, artistic, cheaply pleasant, -luring, whatnot. And by turns it makes me lighthearted, lightheaded, -emotional, romantic, restless, evilly coarse. It is piquant -debauchery. Music sweetly poisons me. - ---My bureau-drawers I keep neatly in order--lingerie and other -articles arranged convenient to my hand in white rows and fragrant -tidy piles: with the exception of the upper left-hand drawer which is -a bit of terrific snarled chaos. In it is an inky handkerchief of an -old vintage: in it are several un-mated crumpled gloves: in it are -some olive-pits: in it is an empty sticky liquid cold-cream bottle -with tufts of eider-down power-puff stuck to it: in it is a tangle -of smudged ribbons: in it are two pieces of pink rock-candy: in it -is a spent yellow-silk garter: in it is a torn sponge: in it are -blackened pieces of chamois-skin: in it is a broken scissors: in it -are three twisted ragged black-net veils: in it is a brass curtain -ring: in it is a broken scattered string of coral beads: in it is -a lump of wax: in it is a piece of knotted twine: in it are little -bunches of cotton-wool: in it is a spilled box of powder whitening -everything: in it is a spilled box of matches: in it is a jet -bracelet broken into small pieces: in it is a broken hand-mirror: in -it are some crushed cigarettes: in it is a ruined blue plume: in it -is a warped leather purse: in it is a damaged lump of red fingernail -paste: in it is a stick of gum arabic: in it is a bisque kewpie -defiled by wax, ink, paste, powder and rock-candy: in it are some -partly melted vestas: in it are other bits of rubbish: all in wildest -disorder. Why I do not empty the drawer and burn the rubbish I don't -at all know. - ---I sometimes take one or two of the neighborhood children to a -picture-show. - ---Sometimes as I lean at my window I alternate looking at the -distant deeply-blue mountains by looking at the near-by women -who chance to pass on the stone pavement below--the smartly-clad -and lighthearted-seeming ones. I look at their good shoulders in -pastel-toned silk and at their trim silk ankles and proud flaring -skirts and insolent beautiful hats--the buoyant worldly insouciance -of their ensembles--as their owners walk along on happy errands. As I -look I feel Me to be behind prison bars looking out in thin psychic -jealousy: regret for a time when I also went thus buoyantly on happy -worldly errands and an odd raging silent impatience for a time when -I may again. But with it too the wavering acquiescence in this -analytic-writing mood.--'pussy-cat-mieow,' I ruminate, 'can't have -any milk until her best petticoat's mended with silk.' - ---One kind of man I impatiently scorn is the kind that looks bored if -I mention Ibsen or ceramics or Aztec civilization but is interested -instantly, alertly if I mention my garters. Equally I abhor the type -that begrudges me my own private phases of amorousness: not those who -condemn me for them: not those who dislike them in me: not those who -deplore them: but who _begrudge_ me them. - ---Always I come up a stairway softly. Always I close doors softly. I -make no noise. - ---The quaintest character I have met with in fiction is Huckleberry -Finn's father, looked at as a father. Next in quaintness I place -Sally Brass, regarded as a human being. - ---I like a glass of very hot water and a dish of preserved damson -plums on a sultry August day: and another of each on top of that: and -another of each on top of that. - ---I like the word addle: I hate the word redress. I would fain have -my 'wrongs' ever addled than redressed: merely for the word prejudice. - ---I would rather that almost any physical disaster should befall me -than that I ever achieve an 'abdomen.' When an abdomen comes in at -the door life's romances fly fast out the windows: so it looks to me. -May death overtake me haply before the menopause. - ---The pictures I have crowded on a small side-wall space two feet -from my eyes as I sit at my desk are: Theda Bara as Carmen: the -late Queen Isabella of Spain: Marie Lloyd, loved of the London -populace: a velvety-looking black-and-orange print of a leopard: -Blanche Sweet, loveliest of film actors: John Keats, a small old -print: Ethel Barrymore, a pencil drawing made by herself: Nell Gwyn, -a photograph of a Lely portrait: Watts's 'Hope': Stanley Ketchel, -dead middle-weight fighter: 'Jane Eyre' by a Polish artist: Fanny -Brawn, the solitary extant silhouette print: Ty Cobb: two children: -Charlotte Corday in the Prison de l'Abbaye: Susan B. Anthony: a -Chinese lady: Andrea del Sarto: Queen Boadicea: and Christy Mathewson. - ---I am old-fashioned in many of my tastes--in all my reading and -writing tastes. I do not like typewriters: they make fingertips -callous in a poor cause. And I do not like fountain-pens which -someway seem suitable only for business-letters, forgeries, -bookkeeping and crude cursory love-letters. I like a steel pen -in a fat glossy green enameled wood penholder with a thick -pleasant-feeling rubber sheath at the lower end. - ---I wear to-day a modest frock of black silk: beneath it a light silk -petticoat: beneath that a white pussy-willow silk 'envelope' and a -pale narrow pink silk shirt chastened by many launderings: no stays: -thick white silk stockings gartered above my knees by circles of mild -mauve elastic: on my feet cross-ribboned bright-buckled black shoes: -round my neck a jet necklace:--all of it a costume that might be of a -conventional woman, a plain-living woman, a good woman, a well-bred -woman--saving only that beneath my left shoulder-blade the smooth -new pussy-willow silk has a jagged two-inch rent where it caught on -a drawer-handle: and the rent--in lieu of neatly mending it with -the thread and needle of woman's custom--I caught up any way by its -jagged edges and tied tight in a hard vicious heathen knot: the note -of spiritual fornication, of Mary-Mac-Laneness: always there's some -involuntary pagan touch to undo me, to arraign me, to betray me to -God and to myself. - ---I wear five-and-a-half A-last shoes: number twenty-one snug -whalebone stays: and weigh a hundred-twenty-four pounds. - ---I am fond of green peas, baseball and diamond rings. - ---I like violently to spoil a little charlotte-russe with a fork: -it gives me the same feeling of lawless sweet-fiery lust which must -belong to a Moslem soldier when deflowering a Christian virgin: and -harms nobody. - ---Sometimes when I'm dressing in the morning I glance down through -my window and see two elderly Butte business men, one a lawyer and -one a banker, going by on the way to their offices. And I wonder at -how frightfully respectable they look in their tailored clothes and -reproachless gloves and perfectly celestial-looking hats. I murmur: -'Robin and Richard were two pretty men who lay in bed till the clock -struck ten.' - ---I keep on my desk a little doll with fluffy skirts, blue eyes, -pouting lips and curly hair and named Little Jane Lee after an -adorable child I have seen in moving pictures. - ---I am five feet six inches tall in my highish heels: - ---I wear number six gloves: the calf of my leg is a shapely thing. - ---The six extant Americans I most admire are Thomas A. Edison, -Harriet Monroe, Gertrude Atherton, Theodore Roosevelt, the remaining -Wright Brother, and Amy Lowell. - ---I think I'd learn to be a cook, a professional cook, if I were less -easily fatigued. - ---I love the sound of the clinking of two clean new white clay pipes, -one upon the other. - ---I crack nuts with my teeth. - -Voilà! - -But not quite voilà-tout. - - - - -_A damned spider_ - - - To-morrow - -To-day was one of the To-morrows of encompassing dissatisfaction when -this seems all a nasty world and a nasty life. - -A Spider drowned in my bath-tub this morning. - -It was one of those long-legged spiders. It was in the tub when I -went there--a small ovalish dark-gray pellet with seven ray-like -legs as of an evil little sun lying flat on a white desert. It feels -inconceivable that any creature should naturally have an odd number -of legs: we are all, including spiders, laid out as with rule and -compass. Perhaps it is inconceivable. But this Spider had seven legs. -I counted them while I knelt, blue-peignoired, beside the tub with -my elbows on the edge and watched the Spider and waited for it to go -away. Whether it had lost a leg, or had one too many, or its kind -is normally made like that: those things I vexedly wondered about. -In either case it seemed a so much worse Spider. It did not go away -so I touched it gently with an oblong of green soap. Then it moved -and began to walk up the side of the tub. But the side is smooth as -glass and always it slipped back. I went to my room and fetched a -post-card. With a post-card newly from Delaware I lifted the Spider -out of the bath-tub. Then I scaled card and Spider to the farthest -ceiling corner of the room. Then I drew the tub one-third full of -tepid water. And there floating in it as if brought down by Black -Art was the seven-legged Spider, drowned and ruined. It spoiled the -atmosphere and anticipation of my morning tub. I shuddered miserably. -I pulled out the rubber plug and water and Spider washed down and -away into the dark sewer-wastes of Butte, into the bowels of the -earth, through the gateways of hell, I hope. I took a hasty shower -with a flavor of long-legged Spiders in it. I dressed, and combed -and coifed my hair, with the clouded thought in me that throughout -my life I shall inevitably encounter by eternal law a long-legged -Spider from time to time. I know there'll be no evading it. Those -who know statistics doubtless could tell me how many Spiders I shall -encounter in so many or so many years: the exact percentage even to -the division of a week and the half or the quarter of a Spider. There -is something disconcerting and tragic in the thought. - -The drowned Spider's ghost pursued me all day though its memory faded. - -My breakfast, though it included an egg, seemed antagonistic, hostile -toward me as I ate it. It made me melancholy. - -I watched from my back window a slim boy painting a porch and -singing in incipient tenor a rhythmic lullaby beginning 'go to sleep -my dus-ky ba-by.' He painted silently for some minutes and then -dipped his brush in the tin of paint. Whenever he left off painting -to dip the brush he sang. Once he failed to sing when he dipped the -brush but instead burst forth with it in the midst of painting a -long mustard streak on his porch. Ordinarily that would not have -mattered to me since I am innately keyed and pitched to expect the -galvanically unexpected. But to-day it made me rackingly nervous. - -In the afternoon I went for a walk. Down and down, seventeen squares -from here, in a quiet neighborhood a strange woman accosted me. She -was pale and smartly dressed and quite drunk. She said, 'Listen--can -you remember which of these corners I was to meet a friend at?' It -made me feel annoyed and bewildered and sad and silly. - -When I came back I read awhile--a story of Guy de Maupassant's about -a little dog named Pierrot, whose owner loved him much but loved -money more and could not bring herself to pay a tax of eight francs -to make Pierrot's existence legal. So she threw him into a pit. As -heartbreaking a tale as even de Maupassant ever wrote. It made all -the loves in this world feel terrifyingly sordid. It made me unhappy. - -Then I found a poetry-book and read about the Blessed Damozel leaning -out from the gold bar of heaven. Always, by her loveliness alone, she -stirs me to my still depths of tears. But to-day the song made me -feel over-wrought and life-worn. - -To-night I walked out to a little desert-space west of the town, a -very pale, very gray desert, with a sweet wet mist like dissolving -pearls swathing it. The million placid stars looked down, remote and -hard, as if each one had newly forsaken me. It made me afraid and -cold around my heart. - -Here I sit and nothing in all the world is pleasant or reassuring. - -That damned Spider. - - - - -_To wander and hang and float about_ - - - To-morrow - -My damnedest damningest quality is Wavering--Wavering-- - -I might say I prefer the dawn to the twilight or the twilight to the -dawn. - -Neither would be true. - -I love the dawn--I love the twilight. - -What I unconsciously _prefer_ is the long negative Wavering -space-of-day between the two. - -I might say I prefer heaven to hell or hell to heaven. - -Neither would be true. - -My garbled gyral nature, partaking uneasily of both, prefers to -wander and hang and float about between the two. - -I might say I prefer strength to weakness or weakness to strength. - -Neither would be true. - -What I prefer is a hellish hovering, an endless torturing Tenterhook -between the two. - -And that Wavering preference is against my will, against my reason, -against my judgment, against my taste and liking--against my life, my -welfare, my salvation: against the clear lights of my spirit. - -I know I work intently and industriously at the articles of my -damnation in the Wavering--Wavering-- - -I know it would be better to die at once: failing that, to live -but to live positively as a beggar, a whore, a thief or a milliner. -Knowing that, I know also I Waver: I know I shall prefer to Waver: I -know I shall constantly Waver. - -I am constant--I am remarkably profoundly constant--in my Wavering. - -In the morning as I dress I draw on a stocking--a long black or white -glistening stocking. I know I do it only because the mixed big world, -which refuses to Waver, is pushing--pushing me. I would choose if -I could--though loathing my choice--to stay with my bare foot and -my stocking in my hand, Wavering. Between drawing it on and pausing -barefoot, Wavering. I prefer not to draw on the stocking: I prefer -not to be barefoot: I prefer Wavering--Wavering-- - -When I'm hungry I choose: not to let food alone: not to eat it: -to have it by me and Waver, Waver emptily. Not to enjoy its -anticipation: not to contemplate it. No--_no_! To _Waver_! I reach -and take the food because the world in its pushing pushes me. - -If the world stopped pushing-- - -One reason it will be pleasant to be dead: I can then no longer Waver. - -Worms will eat me unwaveringly. Or they may then do the Wavering. -But _I_ shall no more pause with a bare foot and an empty stocking, a -dish of food and a gnawing midriff. - -Here I sit as yet, alive and Wavering. - -The Wavering is not the pale cast of thought: it is not my way of -analysis: it is only Wavering--Wavering-- - -Wavering is not among the blue-green Stones in my antique necklace: -not by that name--not as one Stone. - -It is a marked and hateful and hellish gift of this present Me who -house my Soul. - -It is half of this Mary MacLane--who is I--: and I know. - -I am constant alone--noticeably tensely constant--in my Wavering: and -less constant in Wavering than in the ghoulish preference. - -An odd and subtle doom. - - - - -_A thousand kisses_ - - - To-morrow - -Among my other gifts I own also Wantonness. In proof of which I am -wishing as I sit here for a Thousand careless kisses: eleven o'clock -of still evening--a Thousand Kisses. - -A wonderful, wonderful attribute, Wantonness: rich, rich luster in -the conscious temperament which owns it, a Gift-thing delicate and -gorgeous. - -By it I want a Thousand Kisses: a Thousand--made all of Wantonness. - -Kisses come in differing kinds and only one is Wanton. - -The kiss of a lover has an intense cosmic use: the kiss of a mother -is tender fostering food: the kiss of a friend is vantage and grace -of friendliness: the kiss of a child is cool charm of snowflakes and -green springtime leaves. - -And the kiss of Wantonness is not of use, nor of food, nor of gracing -vantage, nor of childhood charm--but is restless essence of humanness -and worldliness and mere sheer limitless encompassing liking: born of -sweet lips, alien it might be, and secretly 'unattuned,' but warm and -fond and _present_: answering the pathos of infinite jejuneness which -flows, flows always in red human blood. - -Through the race rides a long dread wistfulness, made of tears and -lies and the barbaric distress and pitfall of everyday's journey: a -crying wish for a cup of warmed drugged sweet ease to turn it all a -moment away: but a moment away. - -And through all the race is the measureless poetry, purling and -mantling in its bowl of flesh. Each human one is made of the sun, -and made of the moon, and made of the four winds and the seas and -the last pink sea-foam on the crests of the twilit waves: and made -of salt and of sugar and of lonesome calling of loons and quick song -of skylarks: and made of sword-edges and of money and of dolls and -toys and painted glass: and made of loose reckless shuffling of dry -autumn leaves, and of nerves and of illusions and of broken food and -hesitance: and made of Mother-Goose rhymes and of cigarette-ashes and -of raveled silk: and made of layers and layers of mixed-up passionate -colors and of gilded cakes and of strawberries and of temperamental -orgasms and raw silvery onions and gaming and dancing and -minute-by-minute inconsistency: all veiled in a thin gold veil--all -in a thin gold veil. - -Betwixt the wistfulness and the poetry--_hélas_, what chance has -the human equation, unsought, unwarned, unchallenged of God to be -straitly equable! - -No chance. - -Happily no chance. - -Thus I, Mary MacLane, so conscious of Me and garbledly gifted, want -a Thousand Kisses at eleven o'clock of a still evening. - -No spirit-hands of Love are laid soft on my drooping shoulders in the -passing days: no Love--no Love--in all my life. - -No miracle Wonder and Gentleness stirs in and against my Heart: my -Heart is strangely dead of a strange Realness, known and felt but -unachieved:--no Love--no Love in my life. - -And I can wish for no Love, for the listless Heart is listlessly dead. - -I wish instead, in hastening present clock-ticking moments, for a -Thousand present-warmed Kisses: a Thousand in Wanton response to a -Wanton 'leven-o'clock. - -Dominating waving washing warmth of Wantonness, compassing me at -eleven o'clock. - -A Thousand careless insouciant Kisses: a Thousand gorgeous delicate -Kisses: a round Thousand. - -From what lips--whose lips--what do I know?--: so their Kisses are a -Thousand. - -From what lips--what do I care?--: so they be eager and live and -tenderly false. - ---come some of the Thousand glowing on my pink lips, and my white -fingers, which were tense, relax-- - ---come more of the Thousand, and my rigid hard-riding thoughts grow -drowsy and pliant and negligible. - ---come more of the Thousand, and my knees and the marrow in my bones -are gently aware of most logical opiate ease-- - ---come more of the Thousand, and my midriff is full of cream-and-chocolate -casualness and my smooth arms are washed down with mists of custom. - ---come more of the Thousand, and my seven senses start to melt at the -edges-- - ---come more of the Thousand, and the palms of my hands wax merely -pleasant-feeling and the soles of my feet fatly comfortable-- - ---come the last of the Thousand in a swirling silly lovely -lightly-insane shower--and I feel exactly like a woman in the next -street who goes forth clad in mustard-and-cerise with a devilish -black-and-white Valeska-Suratt parasol: and more--much more--I feel -the way she _looks_-- - -For this Wanton-thing is not amour but psychology: in it I am less -the mænad than the philosopher: less the Cyprian woman than the Muse. - -I am a deeply gifted woman. - -I am not prone on my green couch, frayed, frazzled, bowed-down in -spirit from a day of frightful stress and cross-purpose. - -Instead, hair-triggerishly alive, with definite desire beating -hotly this moment in my throat: the wish for Kisses--Kisses far -removed from Death and Graves and Coffins: Kisses of this present -clock-tickingness, Kisses useless, meaningless, sweet--oh, _sweet_!-- - ---in number, a Thousand: in kind. Wanton. - - - - -_A fluttering-moth wish_ - - - To-morrow - -A wish that God would come personally to see me flutters in my -thoughts ever and anon like a restless moth. - -I am in a prison-mood and coldly content to be in it. For how long -content--content is not the word: despairingly acquiescent--there's -no word to express that--I can noway tell. But now I live and breathe -aloof and strange-mooded. And with it I wish God would visit me a -moment. - -It is not a strong wish. Yet restless and persistent. - -I want to be free from myself and away, loosed in the little broad -big narrow World: but first and more I want God to visit me. - -I want people again, those away from here who are my friends--some -glowing-spirited ones who appreciate my Mind and cater to me: I want, -I think, a poet to love me with some unobvious madness: but first and -more I want God to visit me. - -More than I want strength of spirit and flesh, more than I want a fat -mental peace, more than I want to know John Keats in star-spaces: -more than I want my dream-Child: I want God to visit me. - -More than I wish this appalling tiredness would leave me: more than -I wish this I write to be a realization, a _de-fait_ portrait of the -thin-hidden Me, my self-expression achieved: more than I want to be -quit of my two black dresses and back in the wide sweet frivol of -variegated clothes: I want God to visit me. - -God must know all about that. He must have known it a long time. He -still does not come. If he would come and tell me one thing, one -_certain_ thing, it would be enough. It would show me a direction and -I could keep on in it by myself. If God would tell me even a sheerest -matter-of-fact, for _sure_--like What O'Clock by his time it really -_is_: that would be a spark from which I could build an eternal fire -for myself. Forever after I could dispense with God as a personality. - -I am strangely weak. Strong of will, strong of mind, but weak of -purpose: damnably, damnedly. I shall never be able to write in words -one one-thousandth of the dramatic drastic weakness which is in me. -But I hate weakness with so deep and strong a hatred, and to know one -eternal certain thing would be so roundly restful, I could then go -on: I could vanquish the potent pettinesses which beset me. - -I do not want from God a passport, a safe-conduct into heaven. I -don't want to get into heaven. I don't know what it is, but the word -has sounds of finality, as if all winds, sweet nervous petal-laden -winds, had stopped blowing forever. For cycles and centuries to come -the Soul of me will be too restless to live where winds can not blow. - -I love the journey: so that only I might have one dim torch to go by. -I love the pitfalls and ditches--all the dangers--black-shaded woods -and wolds, and lonesome plains and briery paths, and very wet swamps, -and strong whistling gales which chill me: so that I could feel but -one tiny bright-bladed truth, within and without, pricking and urging -me to struggle on through it all till I might emerge at last like -a human being, rather than linger indifferent and inanimate like a -jaded wood-nymph in drearily pleasant spaces. - - - - -_Twenty inches of ajarness_ - - - To-morrow - -God might come to visit me on a Monday afternoon. - -He would come in at the door of my blue-white room which had been -left about twenty inches ajar: for I cannot imagine God, the aloof -and reticent, opening a shut door to visit anyone. It is as if God -purposely lacks all initiative. If I wish to meet God I must first -suffer deeps of terror and passion and loneliness to make the mood -that wants it. Then I must train my life down to two plain frocks. -And to crown all my room-door must be left ajar on the day he happens -to come or he will not come in. _That_ seems certain: but for twenty -inches of ajarness at my door he will not come in. - -In it God is quite fair. I do the reaching-out and I live out the -despairs: he furnishes a fact to go upon: I go upon it, in some -anguish doubtless: but then mine, not God's, are the lights and the -translated splendor. It is a 'gentleman's game' God plays. It is -because I feel that to be true, more than for that he is the Dealer, -that I would have a word with him. - -On a Monday afternoon-- - -He might come in the figure of a precise mystic-looking little old -man, punctilious of dress and manner like an English duke on the -stage. He might wear overwhelmingly correct afternoon attire, with -spats and a monocle on a wide ribbon. It someway fills my peculiar -trivial concepts of God: mystic-seeming because he is the God of the -dead dusty hosts of Israel, and punctiliously modern because he is -also the God of new-poeted radium-gifted Now. A God like a druid or -like Aladdin's genie, such as I fancied as a child, or like Jove or -Vulcan, would seem an inadequate and unsuitable God. What would such -a one know of the shape and fashion of my two plain dresses, and of -my shoes, and my breakfasts, and the charmed surface joy in the back -of a magazine? God, to be God to me, must know all those things. - -And if he only bespoke me in thunderous preludes touching souls' -triumphant apotheoses--bold and intolerable ecstasies beyond heaven's -last poignantest door--it would be nothing to my purpose. Those my -poet-brain can make for me if I wish. But I'd like God to explain me -the little frightful puzzles which thrive all around me in the wide -daylight of this knife-and-fork-ness. - -God might come walking lightly in and perhaps seat himself -fastidiously in my chastest chair. He might cross one knee over -the other. He might adjust his monocle and regard me through it -speculatively or sadly or politely-wearily. I should be outwardly -calm but I might feel an inward panic: lest he go away again without -having told me a fact. - -I might say to God: 'God, if you please, this small blue vase on my -window-sill--I see it and I touch it and I love it--will you tell me, -you who know, _is_ there a blue vase there or is there no vase?' - -And God might merely glance at the vase through his glass and -daintily hold his white handkerchief crumpled-up in his gray-gloved -fingers and might merely say: 'Madame, you have eyes with which to -see the vase and hands with which to touch it and sentiments to lend -it charm for you, no doubt. Then why not let them inform you as to -its actuality?' - -And then I might say, with a weariness equal to God's: 'My senses are -pleasant--they are sweet--but they do not inform me, or they inform -me wrong. Because they don't plainly tell me whether it's a Blue -Vase or a Blue Shadow--just for that I burn in little disconcerting -hell-fires, and vulture-thoughts with beaks and talons come and tear -me in the night, and I starve and decay trivially, and my life is a -flattish ruin and a tasteless darkness and a slight shallow death, a -death in the sunshine--I am fed-up with a sense of _death_ because of -pricking doubts as to my blue vase's realness.' - -To which, again, God might reply with his head tilted to one side, -tranquil and impersonal: 'As to that, Madame, there may be less death -in doubt than in certainty about your vase. You might in discovering -it discover in yourself no right whatever to the sunshine--no right -to live in it, no right to die in it.' - -And I might answer, with some insolent feeling: 'I should wish to -discover the _fact_ about it though it proved to me I don't exist -and never existed--that I'm a dust on a moth's wing, and at that -alien--not belonging there.' - -Upon which God, for what I know, might only shrug-the-shoulders. - -In that identity he might shrug-the-shoulders or break-the-world with -equal omnipotent plausibleness. - -But I might try again. I might say: 'One thing _feels_ realer than my -blue vase--this blue-and-green Necklace which my Soul wears. It is -rare and recherché but my beautiful Soul is very tired from wearing -it. Will you please unclasp it for me?' - -And God might say, deprecatory: 'Pray, Madame, do you consider what -portion of the beauty you mention may be in the Necklace? Should I -unclasp it--it is doubtful whether you would recognize your soul -without it.' - -To which I might answer, with more insolent feeling: 'I don't know -anything of that and I don't care for it. I only know I want the -Necklace off. To wear it makes me languid and frenzied and worn--full -of wild goaded saneness and the wish to go violently mad.' - -And God might answer: 'Permit me to express my regrets for those -sentiments which, I should add, I neither concur in nor refute nor -deny nor share.' - -There I might be: conversationally whip-sawed.--God is full of works -of beauty, serene and miraculous: Gray Lakes and Blue Mourning -Mountains and Deserts beneath the Moon. Those have quietly ravished -me many and many a night and day--and will again, and still again, in -pacing To-morrows. - -But I can't tell What O'Clock it is by them. And if God were by me -and I asked him the time the odds are all that he would look at the -toy-face of my little ivory toy-clock, which sets on my desk where I -can see it myself, and tell me the time by that. - -But though he is thus perplexing he knows the right time and could -tell me it. - -For that restlessly I wish God would make me one brief visit. - -I wish that though he should so godlily baffle me and divinely bore -me. - - - - -_A profoundly delicious idea_ - - - To-morrow - -It is nineteen minutes after one on a summer night. And if only I -felt a bit hungry this is what I should wish--spread out on a damask -cloth before me in a few gold-medallioned Chinese dishes, with no -forks or knives: first of all, two thin _foie-gras_ sandwiches, four -grilled snails and maybe a little alligator pear: on top of those, -two truffles: on top of those, two slim onions: on top of those, two -thin salted biscuits: on top of those, a bit of Camembert cheese: on -top of that, two cigarettes: on top of all a hollow-stemmed glass of -sparkling Burgundy. - -I'm not hungry, but it is comforting to think how delightful that -supper would taste if I were. Food is a so magic rich gusty gift -bestowed on the human race: and is besides a profoundly delicious -Idea. - -I like food better to imagine than even to eat. If I were hungry I -think I could obtain that chaste supper item for item, and eat it: -swallow it down magic and all, and thus vanquish it magic and all, -and there an end. So I am glad I am not hungry. It is much more -delectable to sit here and think that if I were-- - -_if_ I were-- - -a Hollow-stemmed Glass of Sparkling Burgundy. - -two cigarettes. - -a Bit of Camembert Cheese. - -two Thin Salted Biscuits. - -two Slim Onions. - -two Truffles. - -two Thin _Foie-Gras_ Sandwiches: Four Grilled Snails: and maybe a -Little Alligator Pear. - -If I were a bit hungry: oh, the idea of a little supper! It would -then be blestness, benediction--fruit of the very garden of Paradise! - - - - -_A mountebank's cloak_ - - - To-morrow - -I am so _Clever_. I am the Cleverest human being I know. - -I have thought my Cleverness an outer quality, a mountebank's cloak, -and as such not belonging in this book of my own self. But there are -no outer qualities. Everything in and about me is my own self. - -My Cleverness is of high quality--even supernatural, I have -thought--and is of unobvious tenors. - -To any essentially false nature, such as mine, a quick and positive -Cleverness is its needfulest resource in coping with this pushing -world. To any un-sanely sensitive nature such as mine Cleverness is -its fender against human encounters and onslaughts. - -There is no Cleverness in this I write. There is writing skill and my -dead-feeling genius. But my Cleverness is beside those points. - -I use Cleverness when I encounter people. - -Sometimes I like people and wish to impress them. - -Always I am vain and sometimes I wish my vanity catered to. - -And I can get from people whatever tribute I choose. - -I mostly choose to bewilder and half-fascinate which is easiest: -I talk about anything, nothing, everything with a tinsel-bright -complexity which captures average intellects. And even very Clever -people seem not Clever to me because I feel so exceeding Clever to -myself. I am a little more intuitive, a little falser, a little -lightning-quicker than the most artistically antic mentalities I have -known. - -I am a lady with the ladies, a woman with women, a highly intelligent -writer with writers, a loosed fish with the loose fish: being all -the time nothing but my own self, unspeakably incongruent. Having -never found anyone remotely matching me in barbaric and devastating -incongruity of nature I use in human encounters whatever phase makes -the occasion most gently befit me. I cater, or I thrill some bastard -dull brain, or I grow roundly versatile: all with a sudden coruscant -Cleverness which is not in itself any of Me but is my mountebank's -scarlet cloak. - -But its main cause and reason is not vanity nor a fancy for piquant -trickery, nor the wish to try my superior wings in glowing human -atmospheres--the preponderant impulse to fly because I can fly. It's -none of those, but a need of protection, of a bright armor to keep -other people's superficialities from touching me. There's a human -effluvium which I feel from people which would touch, wrap, enclose -me in a harsh vapor--a half-froze, half-stinging worldly cloud. It -hurts with thin cruelness like a corroding spray of acid on my skin: -unless I send out the sudden air of my own Cleverness to keep it off -and away. - -It is long months since I have encountered people with any impulse -save hastily to avoid them. But if I should meet, with an aggression -of mettle and mood, some woman or man or little group of human -sorts (except children of and for whom I have always a fear and a -respect) I should then suddenly be casual and half-fascinating and -phosphorescently glowing and insolent: being inside me haggard from -solitude, wistful from a bereftness and a beauty-sense, suffering and -lost. - -Ah, I'm notably Clever! - -I write a letter of Clever delicate surprisingness--it is the only -Clever writing I do. There are twenty people, now long outside my -life, to whom a Mary-Mac-Lane letter is the agreeably-vividest thing -that could come into a day. The letter, which is an unapparent -cater, is not real Me who am someway a strong and contemptuous -spirit--but instead one tinsel facet. And it makes people--people! -people!--admire and defer to me in a subtlest human aspect: an -unwilling antagonistic homage. It stays me, buoys me for the time. - -I am profoundly Clever in that I who am in reality so futile, so -wavering, so sensitively lyingly artistic, can still show myself -aggressively Clever to other persons. I must, being false, be Clever -in order to get by. - -It is at its best a trickster's quality: and so much the more am I -Clever in stretching it out over my shaded life like a strong bright -cloak-of-mail. - -Just to be Mary MacLane--who am first of all my own _self_!--and get -by with it!--how I do that I can not quite make out. - -I'm by odds the Cleverest human being I know: more than likely one of -the Cleverest who ever lived in this world. - - - - -_A familiar sharp twist_ - - - To-morrow - -I have--a Broken Heart-- - -It is nearly a year now. - -It feels strange to be writing it. What _is_ one's Heart? But it is a -plain fact of me. - -I have not had a Broken Heart in the years before. I have had silly -fancies--I have wasted the outer tissues of my Heart, and it has been -bruised and battered. But nothing pierced deep enough to break it -till this. - -My Broken Heart is the outstanding inner item of my life: and it -still is a very small thing even in my own reckoning. It tortures me -minutely all the minutes and moments and hours. And yet my all-round -life moves on beside it and often passes it on the road. - -My Broken Heart contributes nothing, no cause and no urge, to the -writing of this song of my Soul and bones. It rather is a handicap. -It makes me sit and brood. It makes my eyelids heavy and my head -droop. It makes my shoulders ache. It makes me sit longish half-hours -with my head on my lonely hands. It fills me with foolish wasting -despair. - -Its foolishness is the foremost thing about my Broken Heart. It is -not a foolishness of worldly reasons nor of outer causes but of -all the surprising folly of myself crowded into my Heart and into -that which Broke it. The foolishness would not be so noticeable -if the Brokenness were not so hideous and genuine and actual and -matter-of-course. It was foolish to lay myself open, who am humanly -starved, to the possible Breaking of my Heart: and doubly foolish -to let it be Broken. And being left in possession of a Broken Heart -I feel it to be a triply insanely foolish thing: but complete and -absolute and natural. - -I am so oddly a fool. - -The proper price for such or such a thing in the Market might be -one-and-twenty drops of red human blood. But I headlongly pay for it -one-and-ninety drops: each one touched with fire, shot with purple, -tinctured with hottest spirit-essence. The proper payment for Love is -to pay back value received--which is enough. But I in addition dip -my white bare foot into red world-and-hell flames by way of quixotic -bonus. When other persons emerge from Love with the old-fashioned -accustomed wounds and scars I emerge with besides an immensely -useless futilely ruined foot. - -It is wildest foolishness. Not merely folly. Folly is something -picturesque--a bit romantic. - -I am oddly a fool. It is that consciousness that rushes over me with -each sad black thought of my Broken Heart. - -My Broken Heart--it feels half-false to myself as I write it. And -the written words look half-false to my eyes. But it is realer than -my fingernails: than my palms: than my aching left foot. - -My Broken Heart, besides being a triviality is a mistake, and will -pass in time doubtless, but is long about it. - -It is one thing I do not dwell upon in this book of me. A Broken -Heart is sharply immediate like a newly-bitten tongue. It may bleed -at a touch. To dwell on it connects me strainedly with the world -around, and the world is really gone from me. This book is I as I -breathe alone. I cannot write in it the silly shadowy Breaking of my -Broken Heart. This writing is I Just Beneath My Skin. My Broken Heart -is beneath bones and flesh. And though my M.-MacLane heart intact is -wildly individual, my Broken Heart is merely human: made not alone by -me and not alone by God. Its place in this I write is just outside -the margins. - -At times my Broken Heart feels far off while I'm feeling it hideous -and wan inside my breast. Myself is Me, and much of Me had nothing -to do with my Heart when it Broke: though I loved with all of Me. I -loved with all of Me one who lives in New York--and I lost and lost, -all the way. There was mere human ordinariness about which I built -up a strangely sincere temple-of-grace which I looked to see shed -light on my life like the new eternal beauty of a Day-break. I gave -the best I knew to it, from the distance, and I lost. The day was -a little day and broke at last only like my Heart. All was broken -without so much as clasp-of-hands. - -I am realest, strongest, passionately-sincerest in my essential known -falseness-- - -It was all foolish and petty and someway false but I felt foolishly -and shudderingly that I could live no more. But I am singularly brave -from life-long custom. I have no pleas and surrenderings in me. I -shudder but live on. - -One Thursday I felt suddenly oppressed and beset and something in my -throat cried out to the absent God to help me and guard me. - -It was something in my throat which shrieked it dumbly in the -deafening silence in my room. It was not I myself: for I am -unsuppliant toward everyone human and divine though there often come -such Thursdays. - -Harder than Thursdays are Fridays and some other days when comes a -familiar sharp twist beneath my chest-bones without the cognizance -of my remembering thoughts: and when though I strive against it my -Broken Heart makes me sit longish half-hours with my head on my hands. - - - - -_A dark bright fierce fire_ - - - To-morrow - -I am Lonely. I am so Lonely that I can feel myself rattle inside my -life like one live seed in a hollow gourd. - -I am on fire with Loneliness. - -I am living this month alone in this house. The solitude is pregnant: -Doors and Door-knobs and Curtains and Tables have silently come alive -in it and have taken on identities like those of tamed wild beasts. - -I do housework--I dust window-sills and water flowers. I gather up -newspapers and brush the floors with a dust-mop. I wash my dishes. I -cook my breakfasts. I look out of windows. I linger at screen-doors. - -I answer the telephone: I say, 'They're not at home.' - -I change my frock and put on a hat and a cloak and gloves and go -softly out the door and front gate on an errand. - -I meet people on the street whom I know, whom I may speak to, whom I -may avoid: who may speak to me: who may avoid me: for I am at best -well hated in this Butte. - -I come back again, softly unlock the door and come in. I come -upstairs, take off the out-door things, give a hasty side-glance in -my glass and go downstairs. - -I read awhile. To-day I read an old-fashioned short story whose soft -wondrous prose cadences fed my senses--the Parable of the Prodigal -Son.--for this my son was dead and is alive--was lost and is found--. - -But I am very restless and cannot read long. - -I am on fire--dark bright fierce fire with Loneliness. - -I move about again from room to room. I look out of windows and -linger at doors. - -I close my eyes and open my eyes. - -My Soul-and-bones! I'm afire with Loneliness! - -It is Loneliness not made of the Empty House and the tamed wild -Door-knobs and Doors and Curtains and the Lonely Errands. Those are -its small-fruits. Itself is my ancient daylight Loneliness dating -from Three-Years-Old when I first began whisperingly analyzing things -and finding little life-items to be of a fierce bitter importance. - -If I were living among people, friendly people, then the Loneliness -though unchanged would be disguised and vested with a padded muffling -power--false, belike, and a mistake (but everything _is_ false and a -mistake: only there are wrong mistakes and right mistakes)--but made -of the world-stuff that lets a human being get by in this nervous -life. - -But it would be of no use now. I must face Loneliness: and outface -it. I do, and with no effort: for I am Lonelier than Loneliness's -self. So it feels. This locked-in mood--soon it may be worn down and -outgrown, and the husks blown away in the winds. - -But may come after it a wilder Loneliness of being free, fearfully -free: flavored with the heaviness of rain at night and draggledness -of beggar-women's skirts.-- - -Meanwhile bright and black among Doors and Door-knobs and Curtains -and Tables burns the fire of this Loneliness with strong, strong -flame. It is mystic agony. There is no thinking in it. There is an -utterly irrational wish, an aching yearning for people: not people -to see, or listen to, or talk to, but--humanness I could _feel_ with -familiarity. I wish for hands and bodies near me: breath for mine -faintly to mingle with: the feel of their human garments in the room -around me: the feel of the pulsing blood in their veins remotely -vibrant in the air: the feel of minds and spirits and throats and -rich warm virile hair of human heads keeping me warmly company. I -have heard one may step rarefied out of this living-place into the -Fourth Dimension, where one feels everything without the efforts of -feeling, and knows everything without the weights of knowing. It -might be that I grope for in this black bright anguish. - -Yet I feel rarely rarefied, heavily rarefied, wornly rarefied in this -living-place where Loneliness burns me in strong fire and where I can -shake my life like a hollow gourd and hear the eerie rattling sound I -make in it. - - - - -_Late afternoon_ - - - To-morrow - -Last night as I slept I dreamed a vivid dream. - -I dreamed it was late afternoon and I was locked in a condemned -cell, sentenced to die. I would be led out and hanged on a gallows -the following morning at day-break. I dreamed I sat beneath a narrow -window in the cell through which shone the light of the waning -afternoon. The light was very pale, as of sunshine long dead. I -dreamed I held on my knees a small block of paper which had a -half-inch blue border at the top to mark a perforation, and in my -hand I had a red pencil. And I dreamed I had cheated the gallows and -was writing a little ballad about it in sudden rhymes and rhythms -quite alien to my waking forms. When I awoke the song was still -beating time in my brain. And with my black awake-time pencil I -wrote, except for two words, the rhyme, title and all, as I dreamed: - - LATE AFTERNOON. - - They'll think when I pass through that door - To-morrow in the dawn, - I'll then be going to my death. - _It's I've already gone._ - - They'll watch me walk serenely out, - Still-nerved and somber-eyed, - 'So strong,' they'll say, 'to meet her death.' - _To-day it is I died._ - - There'll be my pulses quick with life, - My white sweet throat, my breath: - But flesh and bone are all will hang. - _This noon I met my death._ - - For days I charmedly dwelt on death-- - I raved at death--I swore-- - Till vexédly death waived the date: - _And came this Day-Before._ - - From being lured with artful thoughts - My life abortive grew. - From being broached in livid mood - _My death aborted too._ - - To-morrow they'll remark my calm-- - No fuss, no fright, no swoon. - They'll kill a wench to-morrow dawn - _Was dead to-day at noon._ - -Three oddnesses are in that dream: - -that it is true to life in that I in my lightning Mary-Mac-Lane-ness -_would_ manage to cheat a gallows. - -that it is untrue to life in that instead of writing of it in the -true twilit poetry of my own sufficient prose I wrote it in the -shallow trick-phrasing of rhyme, a little serenade to the gibbet. - -that it catches and holds my Shadow-self who lives not _in_side me -but _be_side me: the resembling dissembling shadow I cast when I -stand between the daylights of the actual world and the quivering -films of the region of dreams.-- - -My owned mysteries thrive apace. They are poetry and beauty and -loveliness yet they bruise and batter me and split me to atoms. -Withal are terrifyingly superfluous: they violently kill the wench -to-morrow dawn who died restfully to-day at noon. - - - - -_An ancient witch-light_ - - - To-morrow - -Also I am someway the Lesbian woman. - -It is but one phase--one which slightly touches each other phase I -own. And in it I am poetic and imaginative and worldly and amorous -and gentle and true and strong and weak and ardent and shy and -sensitive and generous and morbid and sweet and fine and false. - -The Lesbian sex-strain as an effect is reckoned a prenatal -influence--and, as I conceive, it comes also of conglomerate -incarnations and their reactions and flare-backs. Of some thus -bestowed it makes strange hard highly emotional indefinably vicious -women, turbulent and brilliant of mind, mystically overborne, -overwrought of heart. They are marvels of perverse barbaric energy. -They make with men varied flinty friendships, but to each other they -are friends, lovers, victims, preyers, masters, slaves: the flawed -fruits of one oblique sex-inherence. - -Except two breeds--the stupid and the narrowly feline--all women have -a touch of the Lesbian: an assertion all good non-analytic creatures -refute with horror, but quite true: there is always the poignant -intensive personal taste, the _flair_ of inner-sex, in the tenderest -friendships of women. - -For myself, there is no vice in my Lesbian vein. I am too personally -fastidious, too temperamentally dishonest, too eerily wavering to -walk in direct repellent roads of vice even in freest moods. There -is instead a pleasant degeneracy of attitude more debauching to -my spirit than any mere trivial _traînant_ vice would be. And a -fascination in it tempers my humanness with an evil-feeling power. - -I have lightly kissed and been kissed by Lesbian lips in a way -which filled my throat with a sudden subtle pagan blood-flavored -wistfulness, ruinous and contraband: breath of bewildering demoniac -winds smothering mine. - -Lesbian essence is of mental quality. There are aggressively endowed -women whose minds are so bent that they instinctively nurture -any element in themselves which is blighting and ill-omened and -calamitous in effect. There are some to which the natural inhibition -of their own sex is lure and challenge. There are some so solitary by -destiny and growth that the first woman-friend who comes into their -adolescence with sympathy and understanding wins a passionate Lesbian -adoration the deeper for being unrealized. There are some so roiledly -giftedly incongruous in trait that they are prone to catch and hold -any additional twisted shreds afloat in human air-currents. - -Each of those influences biases the Mind of me, which is none the -less a clear-visioned mind which rates no thing a truth which it -knows to be a lie: though it batten on the lie. - ---often here and there around this human world the twisted and -perverted and strongly false concepts are the strong actual working -facts and the straight road is myth--myth--existent but in visions-- - -I don't understand why it's so: I know it is so. - -Not only so with me: so with millions whose stars jangled. - -Not always. But often.-- - -The deep-dyed Lesbian woman is a creature whose sensibilities are -over-balanced: whose imagination moves on mad low-flying wings: whose -brain is good: whose predilections are warped: who lives always in -unrest: whose inner walls are streaked with garish heathen pigments: -whose copious love-instincts are an odd mixture of mirth, malice and -_luxure_. - -Its effects in me who am straight-made in nothing, but strongly -crooked, is to vivify tenfold or a hundredfold or a thousandfold in -my shaded vision the womanness of any woman whose inner or outer -beauty arrests and stirs my spirit. - -I see in some woman, some girl, any who attracts me--be she a casual -acquaintance, or a Victorian poet dead fifty years whose poetry and -portrait live, or an actor in a play, or a sweet-browed friend, or -an Old Master--I see one such as if all her charm were newly painted -and placed near me shining wet with delicate fresh paint. It is -bewitching to look at: it has a deep seductive fragrance of smell: -it is luxuriantly aromatic to all my known senses--and two senses -unknown float from my deeps and rise at it. The Stranger becomes a -dearly poignant fancy to dream over. My Friend turns into a vivid -goddess whose fingers and hair I would touch tenderly with my lips. - -Because of it a little flame, pale but primal, leaps from the -flattest details of life. In such a mood-adventure a window-shutter -blooms: a hair-brush glows: a sordid floor has gleams upon it. These -bewildering frightful beautifulnesses in this life--. - ---withal the same inherence which makes me someway Lesbian -makes me the floor of the setting sun--strewn with overflowing -gold and green vases of Fire and Turquoise--a sly and piercing -annihilation-of-beauty, wonderful devastating to feel--oh, blighting -breaking to feel--oh, deathly lovely to feel!--It is the bewitched -obliquities that run away with me: grind, gnaw, eat my true human -heart like bright potent vitriol. - -What God means me to do with such gifts and phases--I don't and don't -understand. I never get anywhere as I think it out. I don't know -shades of rights and wrongs since that ancient witch-light has found -more trueness of human feeling in me than has any simplicity my life -knows. - -It began, they say, with Sappho and her dreaming students in -the long-ago vales of Lesbos. It may be, I daresay. I know it -did not stop there. And I know that--Greek, French, Scotch, -Indian--Welch--Japanese--_all_ women sense its light lyric touch. For -myself, I know only it is part and parcel in my tangled tired coil. - -I don't know whether I am good and sweet in it or evil and untoward. - -And I don't care. - - - - -_The gray-purple_ - - - To-morrow - -Close at the east edge of this Butte is a barren ridge of Rockies -that is sudden and big and breathing-looking, barbarously personal, -touched with varying gifted color-moods and glowering morose -color-passions: at the south the snow-topped Highlands lie long faëry -solitary miles away, caressed at their summits by thin soft sun-rings -and sun-vapors of salmon and sea-green and turquoise and mauve: at -the west a gray-shadowed desert burns red-gold in the setting sun -and sleeps in pearl-and-ashen stillness under midnight stars: at the -north smaller spurs of the range break into foothills and bluffs and -gulches, restful wastes of lonely stones and blurred radiances of -tawny sand: on top of all the rarefied air of these plateau heights -refracts the light into hot dazzling prisms at any vagrant flash of -sun on a trailing storm-fringe. This Butte is capriciously decorated -with sweet brilliant metallic orgies of color at any time, all times, -as if by whims of pagan gods lightly drunk and lightly mad. - -St. Paul-Minnesota looks a greenlier-prettier town: the Arizona Cañon -looks vastly more fearfully beautiful: Wichita-Kansas probably looks -more a regular town: Akron-Ohio doubtless looks more Americanly -reassuring: Rome-Italy must have a more 'settled' look: New York is -much larger and much brighter-looking. - -Only this Butte looks deeply and exactly like Butte-Montana. - -Its insistent charm is that it goes on strongly resembling itself -year after year. - -There is love in me for this Butte. - -I am profoundly lonely in it: my life-tissues are long-familiar with -the feel of it: its mournful beauty has entered like thin punishing -iron into my Soul: and my love for it is made of those things. For no -_reason_ I feel love for this Butte. - -As much as for the mountains in their mourning intimateness I -feel love for all the outsides and surfaces of the town itself: -the stone streets full of houses and shops and stores and brick -walls and laundry-wagons and persons: the vacant lots where boys -play ball: the school-buildings which for twenty years have needed -the same green grass around them and the same playgrounds for -school-children to play in (and will go on twenty years needing -them): the little mines in unexpected midtown blocks with their -engines and hoists and scaffolds and green coppery dumps: the big -mines on the Hill busily working day and night, a bristling citadel -of smoke-stacks and tall buildings above the treasure-drifts and -tunnels that come down honeycombing the town under its streets -and hoses and yield up wealths of monthly millions: the desolate -wind-swept cemetery on the Flat: the Timber Butte: the School of -Mines: the Brophy grocery-window full of attractive grocery-food: -the St. Gaudens statue of Marcus Daly: the few sweet green trees on -North Montana Street by the court-house: the edge of Walkerville: -Ex-Senator Clark's old-fashioned closed house in Granite Street: the -stone Episcopal Church with the memorial windows: the surprising -steep Idaho Street hill: the old Reduction Works reminiscent of the -bygone Heinze and the bold buccaneering days: the Montana Street -cemetery at last kempt and nurtured green as Beloit-Wisconsin: the -little rocky Missoula gulch: the North Excelsior Street neighborhood -where I wrote my Devil and Gray-dawn book: the Butte High School -where I studied and meditated youngly: the old Library where I used -to get a variety of books in my gangling girlhood: the electric -ore-trains going to Anaconda: the vegetable Chinamen: the Post-Office -News-stand: the Mexican tamale venders in the early night: the sweet -green trees and other greenness in people's yards garnered and -cherished in a way which would astonish Toledo-Ohio: the brilliant -sparkling look of the town from far out on the Flat late in the -evening, like a mammoth broken tiara of starry diamonds, twinkling -points of blue and orange and cerise and violet, fired and flung -against a mountainside of dark velvet,--an aspect intensely Butte: -the cool mosquitoless summer nights: the Anaconda Standard: the -sulphurous smoky deadly-cold winter mornings: the Cornish and Irish -and Austrian and Finn miners: the little slim green onions in the -markets: the noise and color and morale of the crowds on a Miner's -Union day: the markets on the afternoon shade side of West Park -Street full of crabs and lobsters from Seattle and shining fish from -California, and mushrooms and froglegs and squabs and hothouse things -from hereabouts: the Parrot smelter: the Chinese gardens at Nine -Mile: the Italian village of Meaderville: the fortified battlemented -look of the town at the east of South Butte: the mystic familiar -sand-and-barrenness-- - -All of it has a feel of something aloof and metallic and distinctive -and gray-purple and Butte-Montana. Gray-purple is the color of the -town, its spirit-tone. Its odor and fascination are gray-purple. - -This Butte is bodily a young rich present-day city of a -hundred-thousand population, all told: miners who bulwark -its foundations: masses who make and manage its business: -millionaire-members who spend most of their lives and dollars in -New York: all are Butte-made. But its soul is still the soul of the -frontier mining-camp which sprang into copper being when the Comstock -mine in Virginia-Nevada failed of its silver-ish promise. - -A very few years ago--what one could count on one hand's -fingers--there were no lids in this Butte. Every summer bony -thoroughbred horses from Juarez and Denver raced round the oval track -on the Flat, watched by a shrieking betting throng of Butte citizens -and citizenesses, ridden by silk-bloused black-booted jockies, their -finish-spurts under the wire chaperoned by a flock of bookmakers. -Roulette and poker and faro were wide-open in the town and flavored -the air with a taste of gray-purple hazard. Gin-palaces and -mining-camp dance-halls, highly de-luxe'd, lent their tinted breath -to the current. Noodle-ish and little bacchanalian dives flourished -in unexpected nooks. The police court on a Monday morning resembled -the debris from an alcoholic human volcano, a condemned but owned -portion of this Butte in its Butte-Montana-ness. All of it was but -one element in an isolated prosperous town of many elements, but it -someway tinctured all. - -No pagan-wild sunset burst above the west desert but suggested that -the vague lid was off the town, and vaguely lost: a lost lid. - -The gambling lid is fast on now--if they gamble they gamble under it. -And no more do ribby horses and surprising-mixed crowds disport them -at the deserted race-track. - -But the setting Butte sun suggests the same wealth and wildness as if -always its celestial chemistry were shot with essence of mining-camp: -rich, generous, feverish and virile. - -Brophy's grocery-window and the Marcus Daly monument and the -Parrot smelter and the Clark house and the Idaho Street hill--all -of it--owns the gray-purple which is not St. Paul and not Wichita -and not Pittsburg and not Spokane: not anything except intensely -Butte-Montana. - -I have felt it since I first lived here in little young short-frocked -days, and I felt it when I lived away from Butte: I feel it all these -now-days to the roots of myself. - -I have no reason: but the contrary: to love Butte as a townful of -human beings. - -I have no friends in it, no feel-of-friendship, no human friendliness. - -And the sculpturesque poetry of the outlying deserts and buttes -pushes and presses hurtingly upon the lonely and introspective gazer -in Body and Soul: I knew it as child and girl and woman. - -There is nothing benign, nothing enlightening--no gentleness, no -pity--in its barren beauty. But its hard chaste influence on the -sensitive spirit is beyond any analytic power to gauge. - -Its wonderful Aridness starves human nerve-soil till the sad -wide eyes of the Soul grow bright--fever-bright, light-bright, -star-bright--from denial and unconscious prayer: involuntary worship: -homage of the unsuppliant unhoping dévotee. - -Because of that--and because of all its long-familiar outsidenesses-- -mournful, beautiful, mystic, lavish, madly-mixed, gray-purple--a -fascination beyond plaisance or pain--I feel love for this Butte. - - - - -_The subdivided cell_ - - - To-morrow - -When I was twenty I was one strong Cell firmly, primly closing many -little cells different from each other but each greenly intact. - -When I was thirty the Cell had burst in dusty worldly winds and -loosed the little cells. Those in turn had subdivided, losing -strength by the cellful but gaining in shadowed truth by a roundabout -road. And they showed me my fates and inevitablenesses as in a broad -wrecked field misty but plain to view. And thus I see me in the -subdivided cells: - -a piece of a normal woman. - -a piece of a child. - -a piece of a poet. - -a piece of a Lesbian woman. - -a piece of a writer. - -a piece of a jester. - -a piece of a savage. - -a piece of something someway brave. - -a piece of a student. - -a patriotic American. - -a lump of tiredness. - -My strength is in knowing the evil from the good and the false from -the true in it. - -My weakness is in wildly waveringly inclining toward the false. - -Except for love of my country I am ardenter, determinder, stronger -in my falseness than in any of my shadowy truth. - - - - -_Food and fire_ - - - To-morrow - -The first beauty in my life is John Keats. - -In John Keats is my faith in some resurrection. - -Without John Keats human nature feels to be something broken, -menacing, unspeakably despicable and lost--lost in the shade. With -John Keats the lights break across it and reflect the blazing yellow -sun again from eyes and foreheads and fingers and shining hair. - -There are world-and-human things which it thrills me to think about -and dwell on: Nathan Hale on the British gallows: the charge of -Pickett's Confederate infantry at Gettysburg: Henry V, prince among -kings and men, at Agincourt: Charlotte Corday in prison: Columbus -with his felon crews sailing westward: Susan B. Anthony--a woman -made in a strange still heroic splendor half-incredible: Alexander -Hamilton: Arnold Winkelried: the sea-worn Pilgrim women disembarking -into bitter Novemberness. - -Those thrill me because they are brave persons and brave things -full of idealistic strife: but they still are made of very -struggling-garbled world-stuff--they are mere human fabric--till I -think of John Keats: and at once they grow informing and eternal. - -In his light the detailed world burns and glows! - -John Keats! John Keats!-- - -Other poets have written Nightingales and Grecian Urns and Sonnets -and Mirth-and-Passion things: but _he_ wrote them in his glorious -and wistful pain. He wrote the sweet headaches of his spirit into -his delicate beaten-gold verse: the precious fevers of his mental -veins: the bone-aches and muscle-aches of his thoughts: the darling -skin-damps and palm-damps of his divine fancy:--all in the Song of -his lilied youth. - -There is no poet but writes his poetry out of inner travails and -immense wistfulness. But they all write just beside their travail, -not in it: just beside their wistfulness, not with it. A poet -who feels the throat of his soul aching and swollen and inflamed -writes--not just that astral diphtheria, not till another time: -but instead the fine smothering of a hope, perhaps, the oblique -suffocating of a love. A poet whose brain-hands throb with some -horrible dulcet-ish tiredness from handling the heavy bright tools -of his craft writes instead the throbbing of his brain-soles and -brain-insteps from walking small odd hard rutted daily ways. - -It rouses me--it heats my eyeballs with salty honeyed warmth as I -read: but it is not John Keats: who writes his own immediate magic -sickness in perfect sudden obvious blood-warm golden _Now_! - -It is always old, old-fashioned ailment, worn of ages. The drowsy -ache of the Nightingale goes a thousand years back and a thousand -years to come: the restless ecstasy of a thousand thousand -Nightingales, one for each who reads, in any age, all ages. Long, -long after the jeweled English language is gone, dead as Homer's, -Keats's Nightingale will flutter lyric-winged in the nervous jeweled -lovely _Now_. - -'Weep for Adonis,' wailed the differently-lovely Shelley, 'he is -dead.' But he isn't dead. He is terribly living, passionately living. - -Each day of my life I feel him living. He breathes. He breathes close -to me, pantingly, like a swimmer breasting waves or a playing child -in a summer day.--John Keats! - -Just Beneath My Skin he is my God-of-the-World, my Fetich and my -Lover. He has been my Lover for seven gold years. - -He is the first beauty in my flawed futile life. He is the most -beautiful thing in the living and dying world. John Keats--John -Keats!-- - -In everyone else I can feel mixed motives, tough tangled silk threads -of self woven into wonderful wefts of days and deeds: in _everybody_, -from Iscariot to Toussaint L'Ouverture, from Jeanne d'Arc to -Victoria Woodhull, from Paul of Tarsus to Aaron Burr. - -Only John Keats stands out alone, a true-breathing Poet, an Inmost -Heart bleeding outward. - -The lyric poet is the true poet. The lyric poet achieves no end in -his art. He turns fragments of light and life into terms of beauty -and sends them flying forth on flaming word-wings which translate -the smooth human flesh they brush-by into delicious flesh-of-gold, -flesh-of-petals, flesh-of-fire! But he makes no morals, teaches -no lessons, finishes nothing. It's as it should be. Nothing _is_ -finished. The mixed world is all unfinished, a glorified Mistake. -The race is a millionfold Mistake: lives it, breathes it, battens on -it--coarsely and finely and lamentably and musically and bravely. -So that all poetry which wanders from the lyric is only a play or -a picture or an airship or a cause which aims at _fait-accompli_, -attaining an object: it is limited and man-made: its beauty is lopped -off like boughs and branches after a storm: its wings are clipped. -Its distanceless spaces, little and large, are visibly engineered -by mathematic hands. But the lyric poetry is the true luminous and -bloody interpreting of humanness. - -John Keats wrote by the lights of his living and he lived all his -days in joyous lyric anguish. - -Once he wrote, 'Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home.' -It is a factful of himself--lawless, radical and non-civilized, -agleam in the mixed world. It is everybody--poets, burglars, -nursemaids: everybody. He wrote it in a hundred other ways, but it -is all in that: it is the lyric epitome of every day. Pleasure never -_is_ at home. - -And 'Heard melodies are sweet,' he wrote, 'but those unheard are -sweeter'-- - -There spoke the wild delicate wiseness of his brain and the -passionate delicate wonder of his heart.--John Keats! John Keats! - -But everything he wrote, the Grecian Urn itself, is immeasurably less -lyric than himself writing it and being it. - -He is rich bright-wet living lyric for this Me in this Now though he -has lain dead in Rome nearly the full hundred years. - -My garbled life and my thinking hunger feed upon him. - -He was the one human one who walked on in the way before him: not -around the jagged little stones and icy little pools that were in -it: but straight on through them all, though his lyric feet were -quivering shuddering sensitive, sensitive beyond knowledge of -commoner feet that walk around. - -It fattens my leanest self to keep that in my constant remembrance. - -The thought of his brave radiant loveliness reassures me to myself, -by the hour. - -I am futile: but _he_ is mysteriously omnipotently useful and I catch -some of it from him. - -I am half-full of vanity: but he is of a lustrous priceless vanity -himself that justifies mine and all the world's. - -I am fearing and false: but he is so brave, so true to infinite -form, that by it he leavens the lump of the whole world's mendacious -cowardice. - -My brain is full of wilding darknesses, snarled and knotted gifts -and penchants: but into _his_ strong brain the strong fresh -yellow rain-washed sun shines straight down--through the wide -twin-brightness of his Eyes. I look down his Eyes--twin public wells -(he belongs publicly and privately to all this mixed mad world, and -anyone may look!--)--I look into that titanic vibrant brain, and mine -catches some of it: a blest and precious Disease, oh, a rare Disease! - -My Heart--my Heart feels strange and tired and dead, a bit of -dead-sea fruit: but _his_ heart, warm and real and boundlessly -unsatisfied, is always the deep quick fragrant Rose of this World. - -A Hero!--a Poet-at-arms!--John Keats! - -'He has outsoared the shadow of our night,' wrote that Shelley, and -wrote no truer word. - -I have read so many of the strange and splendid things--bits of them: -Vergil and Homer and Villon and Goethe and all the English poets, -and prose writers like Carlyle who in places out-poet poets,--and -moderner ones and the new poets, imagists and others: John Keats -feels a noticeably braver thing, and always, always a little way -beyond. He is purely lyric. - -When he loved a woman he loved the dubious fascinating Fanny Brawn-- -sordid-brained, worldly: to him a mixed living devilish-glowing -goddess. A higher-souled woman would neither have so tortured nor -so held him. He was purely lyric. He cared truly nothing for the -verdicts of critics and reviewers: and in the sweet-lipped boyish -beauty of his youth they truly and easily killed him. It would be -like that--it had to be. He was so purely lyric. - -He died in the sweet fierce dazzling cause of Beauty. - -I have so many thoughts and my thoughts are always my own. There -are endless written thoughts deeper than mine--finer, stronger, -anything-you-like. But mine answer for me: no written thoughts affect -them, though they thrill my reading hours. Only John Keats's thoughts -can enter in and crush and cripple mine. - -Because everybody is a little bit like John Keats I have a starry -thin edge of faith inside me. He is food for my hunger of thought, -fire for my passion of life.--John Keats! - -He is the resurrection and the life.-- - -From my desk he gazes at me in a frame of old-gold. Every day the -sunset on the glass blurs his large mournful joyous eyes with -strangest agonized sunset tears: he shows me the sweet, sweet -intoxication of his lyric grief. - -He died young, unfinished--and oh, but it's a shivering ecstasy -to think of all those lyrics in him he never wrote!--the sweeter -melodies--'Unheard.' - - - - -_The edge of mist-and-silver_ - - - To-morrow - -Hidden somewhere in the invisible unused air-plateaus is a little -Child: mine: who has never been born. - -A tenet in me is that a woman by every right and by old earthen law -should, if she will, have her child--should be the warm-winged mother. - -I am a devil and a fantasy, a jezebel and a wanderer in fields of -inverted fungi: so I seem to me. I do not know my status--I but know -my personal incidents as they happen. But I am also woman: a woman by -inherence and by fact. Being woman I am the potential mother, mother -of my Child who has not been born. - -I feel myself a fitting mother. - -I am bodily in good health--if not robust yet durable, as a mother -should be: I am always tired as if from touches and weights of -living as a loving mother should be: I am warm of blood, latently -savage-toothed like a jungle-mother, deadlier than the male, as a -brave mother should be. Though I have no child I have an ancient -right in my Child, and I want my Child. My Child _is_, but has not -been, born. Merely to want my Child makes me a fitting mother. - -My Child often is realer to me than books I read and walks I take -and the friend who writes me frequent letters. - -Sometimes my Child is a soft pink baby smelling of rain-water, milk -and flowers: lying close to the curves of my breasts in the hollow of -my arms: feeding soft insistent baby hunger and feeding soft strong -living hunger of my kissing mother-lips-- - -More often my Child is a little happy-voiced fellow, my small brave -boy three years old: he clings to my skirt with his sweet tiny hand -as we hurry along a frosty pavement in an early December morning. -We live in New York in a little common quiet apartment and are -gratefully poor, and I work in a factory for a little weekly wage for -the living of my little fellow and me. Every day in the early morning -we go out to a corner bakery to buy a long crisp loaf of French bread -for breakfast. And in the December morning my heart contracts with a -sort of happiness and a sort of grief at the sound of little feet in -stout shoes yet frail shoes pattering-pattering gaily along beside me -on the frosty flagstones. We start out hand-in-hand--his small hand -is wonderfully firm and virile--but presently I let go his hand as we -hurry along, to feel it instantly clutch the folds of my work-skirt: -it pulls and drags at my waistbands and my Heart together with -twisted sweetness that makes me ache from head to foot. 'Mother, -wait,' he says in his happy voice, 'wait for me.' But I hurry faster. -Always I hurry faster when my happy brave little fellow cries, 'Wait, -mother,' for the sweet feel of that dragging at my mother-skirt-- - -More often my Child is the little girl six years old of the shy eyes -and the sun-kissed hair and the firm child-mouth, full of high temper -and strong will. All over her is need and demand of her mother to -guard and adore and cherish her every moment of her life. We are -together in a country field with oak-trees in it, and poplars, and -daisies and bluebells and other field-flowers, and it is overgrown -with long coarse fragrant wild grass. The noonday sun is bright-hot -and I bring my Child there to dry her hair, for I have newly washed -it with a square of white soap and a porcelain bluebird bowl: the -feel of her small round wilful head was marvelously fulfilling in -my cupped hands. She wanders around in the hot-brightness through -the tall grass, gathering the hardy scentless field-flowers with -her little brown fingers, and she shakes back her beautiful thick -short damp curls. I sit on a flat stone like a Sioux squaw and watch -her. The grass brushes her bare legs: the magic sun mixed with a -faint cool breeze plays upon her head: the tragic delicate music of -rustling poplar leaves comes down from tree-tops and catches her -in a fairy song-net. She is always very new, very incredible, my -Child. She looks toward me with her shy radiant eyes and she says, -'Mother, look, my hair is nearly dry.' Her hair is thick and heavy. -In my experienced subdued mother-wisdom I know it will not be dry for -an hour. I feel the damp of her hair rheumishly keen all over me: a -menacingness for me to guard her from: a dear anxiety: an ancient -mother-note in the long human gamut of sounds. - ---it is precious wearing racking colorful romance to be her mother: -each mother-day holds gold-and-blue foreboding: each mother-day -holds thin insistent gold-and-purple sorrows: each mother-day holds -deep gold-and-gray care, incessant and absolute: an aching wealth -of beauty: no more but no less than the damp of her hair in the -noonday field. _My_ Child!--herself incessant and absolute: warm pure -palpitant gold-of-my-life-- - -Someway realer than books I read and walks I take my Child clamors to -be born. - -My Child will never be born to any other woman. While she hovers and -flutters on the edge of Mist-and-Silver--a border edge--there are -ten million fertile hot milk-teeming bodies of women each ready to -gather her in and wrap her in delicate-sweet flesh. Ten million other -children hovering on the edge will drop off into the ten million -matrix-cups--each woman mysteriously a fitting mother so only she -wants her baby--though she be, besides, a thief or a traitor or a -weakling or a murderer or a harlot or a drunkard or a fool. - -Let them come, the ten million. The chrysalid children are clamoring, -clamoring always for their birth: a wide 'melody unheard.' - -But my Child will never drop over the edge to any woman but me. She -calls with veiled and dazzling flames of eagerness for her Birthday: -but she will await my made-readiness through a long night, though it -should last till the day-break of another age. Dimly I weep for her, -my needing-me Child. I weep that she must come to this richly-cursed -me. But I weep more that I have not got her in this sterile now, -where is flawed passionate wealth of intangible life-stuff: but no -small round wilful head of hair to wash: no little fellow's feet on -December flagstones and sweet dragging at my skirt: no soft pink-baby -hunger-- - -It is hunger I feel from her. I feel her always _hungry_ where she is -and I can give her no nourishing--no warming _food_ in all my strange -unfertile passing life! - -It is that less than my empty arms that makes blurred unrests and -writhings in my Dreaming Womb. - - - - -_A right shape and size_ - - - To-morrow - -Sometimes I fancy me married--a responsible wife, a housekeeping -matron: with my window-sills full of potted plants. - -I have a woman quality which seems uxoresque: I am someway a Right -Shape and Size to be somebody's wife. My bodily and astral dimensions -have outlines apparently suitable for something in the married-woman -way. - -The wild piquance of being myself--who but for extreme saneness would -be mad--rises up and smashes that concept. - -But being a Right Shape and Size I involuntarily imagine it. - -Fleetingly I imagine a flat in the West Seventies in New York, -or a bungalow on the Jersey side, or a middle-sized house in -a middle-sized town in Middle-West Illinois--whichever might -happen--with me set marriedly down in the midst of it like a suitable -maggot in a suitable nut. Suitableness, diametrically opposed to -Romance, is its keynote. - -I fancy me walking about my married house mornings after breakfast -in a neat linen dress and high-heeled satin slippers: snipping dead -leaves off my window-sill plants, dusting bits of porcelain, giving -my maid some tame household directions. My Body looks slender and -supple and newly-married and in-the-drawing in the linen house-dress. -The geometric gods regard me with immense satisfaction as being an -exact proved theorem. I go to the telephone to order some Little -Neck clams and some vermouth cocktails for dinner, and a roast and -some Brussels sprouts and the assemblings of a salad: and in it I am -ingrainedly domestic, dreadfully useful, a strong pillar of the vast -good nice world. - -Afternoons I go out to a modiste's to fit a gown, or to a mild -bridge-party along with other suitable women, or to a matinée with a -suitable neighbor. - -Everything is perfectly right in my insides and in my thoughts: -my thoughts run in little troughs in which there is no leakage or -deviation, thoughts of a dreadful niceness, thoughts which ever -presuppose potted plants on my window-sills. - -Evenings I go out with my husband, or sit around with my husband, or -take leave of him for a few hours at the hall door. - -My husband would be the sort of man that is called a Good Scout. And -he would have married me not for my wistfulness or wickedness or -weirdness but for that I am a proper Shape and Size, with a smooth -proper covering of flesh, to make a suitable sizable wife. And he -would be a heavy grappling anchor to hold me fast in an ocean of -domesticness. - -Men of the genus Good Scout are all fiercely alike. All women, no -matter what their genus, are exceptions to the rule. But men--rich -men, poor men, beggar-men, thieves: so only they are Good Scouts--are -of marvelous sameness. It comes from the want of minute lifelong -pinpricking care of petticoats and potted plants--a detailed -intensely personal sort of pain which touches dull solid tones of -individuality with vivid various spots of color. - -Men are made in 'job lots' like their own cravats. Their cravats will -differ in texture and color and quality and price. But each one is -innately necktie. Use it as a garter or a tourniquet or a strangler's -noose: it still is a man's deadly necktie. Its use may be ruined but -its necktique is deathless. Except poets--and perhaps scientists--men -are themselves like that. They cannot get away from the Adam. Nor can -women get away from the Eve. But Eve was not a type but a somewhat -pleasant human ensemble. While Adam was a type and a sufficiently -nasty one: a rotter and a welcher: doubtless the Good Scout type of -his day. - -A Good Scout is the sort of man who if a woman trusts him with one -one-hundredth of her heart will take the whole heart and twist and -batter it: and read the paper and smoke his pipe and pay the bills: -serenely unaware. - -Which is beside the point in this. For in this image all my -marriedness is a thing of outer Shape and Size and Suitableness. The -odd but natural sequence is that I make an excellent wife. Excellent -is the word. I keep a neat house with no dust left in the corners and -no dead leaves on the potted plants. My husband is well looked after -as to breakfasts and dinners and bodily comfort, and I am rigidly -square with him and chastely true to him. - -If, some dinnertime, as I sit opposite him in a soft pretty chiffon -gown, my secret thoughts overflow their troughs and I passionately -forget the potted plants and the window-sills and want horribly to -rise up and bloodily murder my husband for being such a Good Scout: -that would be a genuinely powerless matter, a cobweb trifle, compared -with my actual potent Shape and Size which are so suitable for a wife. - -I make truly and simply an excellent wife. - ---by God and my Soul-and-bones! it would be honester, finer, -sweeter--more _comfortable_ to be the dirty beggar-woman in the wet -slippery streets-- - -But it's facilely fancied because I am of Right Dimensions to be some -Good Scout's wife. - -A curious subtly pitfalled world: in it my Shape and Size, and my -Weight which is also Right, could betray me into being an excellent -wife: and by that a lying chattel, an inexpressibly damaged woman. - - - - -_Ice-water, corrosive acid and human breath_ - - - To-morrow - -I have love for two towns. One is this Butte that I tiredly love -inside me. And the other is New York that I smoothly love with all my -surfaces. - -It is some years--a little lump of years--since I have seen New York: -and it is two thousand miles away. So I see and feel its hard sweet -lurid magnetism now ten times sharper than when I lived in it. But I -felt it sudden and sharp at every turn then. A surface emotion which -hits one's flesh and spreads wide over one's area is more exciting -than a spirit emotion which pierces inward at one tiny point: an ice -shower-bath on the white skin is more anguishing than an ice-water -drink down the red throat. The spirit emotion lives longer and works -more damage and buries itself at last in proud shaded soul-reserves. -The surface emotion stays always on the surface and lives actively in -the front of one's senses and musings. - -The feel of New York is a mixture of ice-water, a corrosive acid and -human breath sweeping someway warmish against one's flesh. - -It is immensely ungentle, New York: immensely human: immensely -intriguing to all one's selves. It is too big to have prejudices and -traditions of locality: so it leaves its dwellers free, by ones and -multitudes, to be human beings. - -In South Bend and Toledo and Beloit and St. Paul and all the -tight-built inland towns they murder you with narrowness and -harshness and rancorous ill-will: they are scowlingly annoyed with -you for making them murder you. - -In New York they murder you with a large soft wave of indifferent -insolence--no annoyance, no friction. New York eats you as it eats -its dinner, rather liking you. - -And my love for New York is made of liking: a plaisance of liking. - -made of liking: a plaisance of liking. - -I like New York with a charmed restfulness for varied things in -it: subways, and Fourth Avenue, and the River, and Fifth Avenue on -a sunny October afternoon, and the statue of Nathan Hale, and old -cockroachy downtown buildings, and the soft rich whelming creamy -boiling-chocolate fragrance from the Huyler factory in Irving Place. -And mostly I like it for the people in it--People--Persons--People: -they are human beings. - -In the inland towns people are half-afraid of thoughts, half-afraid -of spoken words, half-afraid of each other, half-afraid of the fact -of being human. - -In New York they are not afraid of any humanness. Even when they -are in themselves craven-cowardly, cowardly enough to turn their own -stomachs, they still turn their humanness unfearfully face-outward -like upturned faces of a pack of cards. - -An Italian organ-grinder grinding out his loud fierce music -in a long deep New York side-street is a human organ-grinder: -he bestows his rasped melody widely on everybody in ear-shot, -not individually--since all around him is a spreading world of -strangers--but jointly. So it feels-like. - -A beggar-woman at a subway-entrance with a whine and a dirty face -and the deadly black cape and chicken-coopish beggar-odor is a human -beggar-woman. She throws out an inner savor of herself like a soiled -aura on all collectively who pass her. Each-and-all of New York by -tolerating and owning her partakes of her mean human essence. - -A stout-hearted worn-bodied Jew factory girl working at a hard greasy -little machine day after day gives all New York her bit of young -virtue which is hardy and heroic and unaware: the whole Island of -looseness and vice has an equal gift of impregnable surprising sordid -purity thriving on sixes and sevens of poor dollars-a-week. - -All of it is because New York is one Large Condition made of human -breaths and the worn scrapings of tired Youth rather than one large -town made of individuals and stone houses. - -And in that is an odd enchantment for me who am born and grown in the -places of Half-fear with an old isolated whole fear always on me. - -In New York I am a partaker of that smooth manna of humanness as I am -of the air and the sunshine and the little black specks of coal-soot: -partly from choice, partly willy-nilly, partly in the sweeping -unanalyzable pell-mell-ness of massed human nature. - -And it is in New York I have those strangest things of all: human -friendships. Not many friendships and not of spent familiarities: -for I don't like actual human beings too much around me. But yet -friendships made of the edges of thoughts and vivid pathos and -pregnant odds and ends of nervous human flesh and fire. - -It is in New York I go to the apartment of a Friend at the end of -an afternoon. In the apartment are some persons having tea, men and -women. The Friend greets me at the door. She wears maybe a dress of -thin dark and light silk, shaped in the quaint outlandish fashion of -the hour. And she has shrewd kindly eyes like a Rembrandt portrait, -and a worn New-York-ish Latin-ish brain and heart both of which are -made of steel, sparkle and the very plain red meat of living. She -says, 'Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane,' and clasps my hand, and we exchange -a glance of no real understanding at all but suggesting warmed -challenge of personality, and an oblique sweet call of depth to -depth, and of friendship which by mere force of preference and of our -separate quality and _calibre_ is true rather than false. So close -and no closer may friendship be. And friendship, with-all, is closer -than any love. It is the closest human beings ever come to meeting. - -In a New York doorway I, made in broad loneliness of self, get -suddenly companion-warmed at the little pleasant twisted fire of -someone else. - -It might be so in some other town, even Beloit, but it feels only -like New York to me. - -I go in the room where the others are and they say, 'Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane,' -and I drink some tea and listen and talk in fragments of half-meanings. -And I get warmed and half-warmed and cooled and slightly scorched in -the easeful unevenly-heated humanness of the women and men sitting -around. - -In the inland towns they throw their thoughts and ideas at you at -tea-time, inland thoughts and ideas, which hit you and then drop off -like little pebbles and nuts and hard green apples. - -In New York they throw those things in the form of long ribbons, -heated from being worn next their skin, which fly out and wrap around -your skin: pleasantly or foolishly or fancifully. - -The point of it is that nobody is afraid of that. - -It is nothing fulfilling, nothing satisfying. It is merely human. It -is half-lyric. - -It reassures me as a person: it makes me feel human in all my -surfaces. - -Which are harder to humanize, in everybody, than any deepest deeps. - -And it is therefore with all my surfaces, smoothly and restfully, I -love New York. - - - - -_Rhythm_ - - - To-morrow - -Now and again I think I catch some truth by the sweat of its Rhythm. - -Often I read the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and feel their -truth in the blood-sweating tune of their Rhythm--Rhythm unspeakable -and ecstatic. - -The prophet Christ believed himself divine and was all Rhythm in his -utterances: and so sounds true as the scheme of digestion and the -laws of hygiene. - -He said, Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. - -Everybody who has tried it knows that to be true with the flawless -Rhythmic truth of health and illness. - -Mourn frightfully a day and the next day will be a day of soothed -warmth and quiet like a grateful pitiful heat current in the breast. -Mourn a week and that will come the week following. Mourn a year and -the next year will be the year of peace. For anguish: peace. For -peace: anguish. It never fails. - -The great thing lacking in Christ, the sense of humor, permitted -his perfect personal Rhythm. Humor oddly wants Rhythm. The human -race is made in Rhythm like its beating heart: but humor is an -'extra.' Everybody is so full of lies that humor, an 'extra,' always -wonderfully appetizing and out of season, and inexplicably God-given, -feels like a great keystone of the race. So it is: but in a lying -race. And Christ in his beautiful dual rôle _would_ lack humor. As a -God come among the human race to save it, knowing it as he did: his -measureless worldly wisdom being paramount even to his gentleness: -his mind and his personal tenor could be set only in intense terrific -gloom. - -The Rhythm in the Beatitudes is equal Rhythm of sense and Rhythm of -sound: Rhythm of music and Rhythm of meaning. Equally, half and half. - -The most Rhythm thing in it is: Blessed are the pure in heart: for -they shall see God. - -I feel it soft-prickling just under my skin. Rhythm--Rhythm and -ecstasy! - -I have read it many times since I was a child: till I know it in my -brain, in my Soul, in my hands, in my breast, in my throat, in my -forehead, in my gray eyes, in my aching left foot. I know it and feel -it by its Rhythm. There is barbarous justice in it. It cuts everybody -off from seeing God. - -Pure in heart I take to mean pure in motive. A fool has an equal -chance with a philosopher: a harlot with a horse-thief: a nasty -rag-picker with a small sweet child. But none is pure in motive. - -Of other persons I don't judge. But me I know to be murderously -un-pure of heart. - -If I could open a window or unlock a door with only the simple -mechanical motive in the act-- But I can't. There's a romantic -impurity in even the look of my hand as it touches the window-sash or -the door-key. There's a pervasive delicate infusion of impure motive -all over me, Soul and bones, as I perform the act. It is one curse in -the Necklace which God himself bestowed on me so long ago. - -It is not my fault that I am un-pure in heart. - -And it is not God's. It is a comfort to me that I can reason out -that it is not God's fault. He knew I needed the Necklace and -each blue-green stone in it to rhyme and balance me. In the wide -surprisingness of the universe everything will be rhymed and -balanced. In me, being savagely complex, that balancing took a bit -of doing: hence my unusual Necklace. It comforts me that I can reach -that analytic point. It leaves me a lightning conviction that God is -worth seeing. - -And if a day dawns for me when I can open a door with no ulterior -motive: thinking only of the door and the fine small muscular power -of smooth hand and supple wrist given me to open it: thinking only -that I want to get the door open: then back of _that_ door I know I -shall see God! - -It is so written in that barbarous blood-sweating worldly Rhythm on -the Mount. - - - - -_A prayer-feeling_ - - - To-day - -So it is finished: and I have oddly Failed. - -I have slyly Succeeded and oddly Failed in equal degree. - -I have Failed because I am too cowardly and too weak and too -dishonest to write certain bruised and self-accusing places in my -Soul and in my Heart and in my Mind which rightly come in the scope -of this: there are the Stern and Delicate Voices one closes one's -ears against: there are the starry grimy Actualities one drops from -one's hands: there are the Thoughts one Does Not Think. Yet and yet: -they too are in it, hanging cobweb-ish on my wordings and colons. - -It is not a strong tale, and that is very well. This book is less -I-written than it is I-myself. And Just Beneath The Skin no person -is strong: not Theodore Roosevelt, true fearless American: not -Bonaparte, splendid tyrant: not Joan of Arc, titanic martyr. They are -strong in their depths and strong on the outside. So are many others. -So am I, I think. But just under the skin all who are human are -roundly weak. - -Roundly weak, every one. - -And with that, in my case, False. - -This primarily is the picture of one who is made-False: False from -her fingertips to her innermost concept. - -It is belike because of that that this, as itself, oddly Fails. - -It is as if I have made a portrait not of Me, but of a Room I have -just quitted. My Gloves are left on a chair: my Hat is left on a -couch: my taken-off Shoes are left on the floor: my faint-smelling -Handkerchief is dropped by the door: my round ribboned Garter is -hanging on the door-knob: my Breath is in the air: my Grief is on the -walls clinging like smoke: my flat Despair is on the petunia-leaves -in the window: my fragrant Horridness lingers in the curtains. I am -not there! But I--_I have just Quitted that Room!_-- - -Therein I have slyly Succeeded. - - * * * * * - -My feeling at my book's-end is a prayer-feeling, both frantic and -quiet: God have mercy on me! but not unless you want to. - -And I feel barbarous and utterly solitary, solitary from here to -Jericho, solitary from here to the cool stars. - -There comes off the grim gray east hills a soft whelming taste of -Sunset, bloody and full of human marrows. - -And I feel a need of great Pain or great Sin to make and break me, -Soul and bones. - - - - -[Transcriber's Notes: - -As the first lines of the paragraphs in the original are not indented, -in some cases the presence of a paragraph break is not entirely -certain. In such cases, insertion of paragraph breaks was determined -according to the structure and content of the surrounding text. Page -images of the original are available at the Internet Archive: American -Libraries (http://archive.org/details/imarymclanediary00macl). - -Except for the following changes, spelling, hyphenation, and -punctuation have been preserved as printed in the original. - - Page 43, comma after "husband's" was deleted (my husband's temper). - Page 59, "ecstasy" was changed from "esctasy" (hunger and ecstasy). - Page 64, "I'd 'a'" was changed from "I'd' a'". - Page 82, a period was added after "bastard lacy valentines". - Page 96, "Cornwallis" was changed from "Corwallis". - Page 138, "calefacient" was changed from "calefaciant". - Page 142, "listlessly" was changed from "listessly" (I listlessly - change). - Page 160, "four-and-twenty" was changed from "four-and twenty" - (at four-and-twenty). - Page 169, "arresting ruination" was changed from "arrest - ingruination". - Page 174, "patrician" was changed from "partrician" (slim - patrician hands). - Page 175, "Mérimée" was changed from "Merimée" (long-adored - Mérimée). - Page 194, a period was added after "remembrance of myself". - Page 205, "of" was changed from "if" (herself out of it). - Page 217, "Soul" was changed from "soul" (Said the Soul: 'Glad?). - Page 227, "philosophers" was changed from "philosphers". - Page 237, an em dash was added before "I keep on". - Page 256, "or" was changed from "of" (or a Blue Shadow). - Page 276, "highly" was changed from "hightly" (highly emotional). - Page 294, a closing single quotation mark was added after "are - sweeter". - Page 300, a comma was added after "little fellow cries". - Page 306, "opposite" was changed from "spposite" (opposite him).] - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of I, Mary MacLane, by Mary MacLane - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK I, MARY MACLANE *** - -***** This file should be named 43556-8.txt or 43556-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/5/5/43556/ - -Produced by Marie Bartolo from page images made available -by the Internet Archive: American Libraries - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: I, Mary MacLane - A Diary of Human Days - -Author: Mary MacLane - -Release Date: August 25, 2013 [EBook #43556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK I, MARY MACLANE *** - - - - -Produced by Marie Bartolo from page images made available -by the Internet Archive: American Libraries - - - - - - - - - - [Photograph: Author's portrait] - [Signature: Mary MacLane] - - - - - I, MARY MACLANE - - _A DIARY OF HUMAN DAYS_ - - - BY - MARY MACLANE - AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF MARY MACLANE" - - - [Illustration: Publisher's logo] - - - NEW YORK - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - _Copyright, 1917, by_ - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - - -_All rights reserved, including that of translation into -foreign languages._ - - - - -_To M-- T--_ - - - _these Live Fruits - from the Withered Garden_ - - - - -I, MARY MACLANE - - - - -_A crucible of my own making_ - - - To-day - -It is the edge of a somber July night in this Butte-Montana. - -The sky is overcast. The nearer mountains are gray-melancholy. - -And at this point I meet Me face to face. - -I am Mary MacLane: of no importance to the wide bright world and -dearly and damnably important to Me. - -Face to face I look at Me with some hatred, with despair and with -great intentness. - -I put Me in a crucible of my own making and set it in the flaming -trivial Inferno of my mind. And I assay thus: - -I am rare--I am in some ways exquisite. - -I am pagan within and without. - -I am vain and shallow and false. - -I am a specialized being, deeply myself. - -I am of woman-sex and most things that go with that, with some other -_pointes_. - -I am dynamic but devasted, laid waste in spirit. - -I'm like a leopard and I'm like a poet and I'm like a religieuse and -I'm like an outlaw. - -I have a potent weird sense of humor--a saving and a demoralizing -grace. - -I have brain, cerebration--not powerful but fine and of a remarkable -quality. - -I am scornful-tempered and I am brave. - -I am slender in body and someway fragile and firm-fleshed and sweet. - -I am oddly a fool and a strange complex liar and a spiritual vagabond. - -I am strong, individual in my falseness: wavering, faint, fanciful in -my truth. - -I am eternally self-conscious but sincere in it. - -I am ultra-modern, very old-fashioned: savagely incongruous. - -I am young, but not very young. - -I am wistful--I am infamous. - -In brief, I am a human being. - -I am presciently and analytically egotistic, with some arresting -dead-feeling genius. - -And were I not so tensely tiredly sane I would say that I am mad. - -So assayed I begin to write this book of myself, to show to myself in -detail the woman who is inside me. It may or it mayn't show also a -type, a universal Eve-old woman. If it is so it is not my purport. I -sing only the Ego and the individual. - -So does in secret each man and woman and child who breathes, but is -afraid to sing it aloud. And mostly none knows it is that he does -sing. But it is the only strength of each. A bishop serving truly -and tirelessly the poor of his diocese serves a strong vanity and -ideal of the Ego in himself. A starving sculptor who lives in and for -his own dreams is an Egotist equally with the bishop. And both are -Egotists equally with me. - -Egotist, not egoist, is my word: it and not the idealized one is the -'winged word.' - -It is made of glow and gleam and splendor, that Ego. I would be its -votary. - -So I write me this book of Me--my Soul, my Heart, my sentient Body, -my magic Mind: their potentialities and contradictions. - ---there is a Self in each human one which lives and has its sweet -vain someway-frightful being not in depths and not in surfaces but -Just Beneath The Skin. It is the Self one keeps for oneself alone. -It is the Essence of soul and bones. It is the slyest subtlest thing -in human scope. It is the loneliest: tragically lonely. It is long, -long isolation--beautiful, terrifying, barbarous, shameful, trivial -to points of madness, ever-present, infinitely intriguing to oneself, -passionately hidden: hidden forever and forever-- - -It is my aim to write out that in the pages of this Me-book: no -depths save as they come up and touch that, no surfaces save as they -sink skin-deep. Only the flat unglowing bloody Self Just Beneath My -Skin. - -I shall fail in it, partly because my writing skill is unequal to -some nicenesses in the task, but mostly because I am not very honest -even with myself. - -I'll come someway near it. - - - - -_Half inevitably, half by choice_ - - - To-morrow - -Half inevitably, half by choice, I write this book now. - -I am at a lowering impatient shoulder-shrugging life-point where I -must express myself or lose myself or break. - -And I am quite alone as I live my life. - -And I am unhappy--a scornful unhappiness not of bitter positive grief -which admits of engulfing luxuries of sorrow, but of muffled unrests -and tortures of knowing I fit in nowhere, that I drift--drift--and it -brings an unbearable dread, always more and more dread, into days and -into wakeful nights. - -And writing it turns the brunt of it a little away from me. - -And to write is the thing I most love to do. - -And I myself am the most immediate potent topic I can find in my -knowledge to write on: the biggest, the littlest, the broadest, the -narrowest, the loveliest, the hatefulest, the most colorful, the most -drab, the most mystic, the most obvious, and the one that takes me -farthest as a writer and as a person. - -I write myself when I write the thoughts smouldering in me whether -they be of Death, of Roses, of Christ's Mother, of Ten-penny Nails. - -One's thoughts are one's most crucial adventures. Seriously and -strongly and intently to contemplate doing murder is everyway more -exciting, more romantic, more profoundly tragic than the murder done. - -I unfold myself in accursed and precious written thoughts. I cast the -reflections of my inner selves on the paper from the insolent mirror -of my Mind. - ---my Mind--it is so free-- - -My Soul is not free: God hung a string of curses, like a little -manacling chain, round its neck long and long ago. Always I feel it. -My Heart is not free for it is dead: in a listless way and a trivial -way, dead. And my Body--it is free but has a seeming of something -wasted and useless like a dinner spread out on a table uneaten and -growing cold. - ---but my free Mind-- - -Though I were shut fast in a prison: though I were strapped in an -electric chair: though I were gnawed and decayed by leprosy: I -still could _think_, with thoughts free as gold-drenched outer air, -thoughts delicate-luminous as young dawn, thoughts facile, seductive, -speculative, artful, evil, sly, sublime. - -You might cut off my two hands: but you could not keep me from -remembering the Sad Gray Loveliness of the Sea when the Rain beats, -beats, beats upon it. - -You might admonish me by driving a red-hot spike between my two white -shoulders: but you could not by that influence my Thoughts--you could -not so much as change their current. - -I am intently aware of my Mind from moment to moment--all the passing -life-moments. The awareness is a troubled power, a heavy burden and a -wild enchantment.-- - -Also what I feel I write. - -I am my own law, my own oracle, my own one intimate friend, my own -guide though I guide me to dead-walls, my own mentor, my own foe, my -own lover. - -I am in age one-and-thirty, a smouldering-flamed period which -feels the wings of the Youth-bird beating strong and violent for -flight--half-ready to fly away. - -I am not a charming person. Quite seventy singly-used adjectives -would better fit me. - -But I have some charm of youth, and a charm of sex, and a charm of -intellect and intuition, and some charms of personality. - -I have a perfervid appreciation of those things in other persons. And -my steel has sometime struck fire from their flint. - -But always my steel has turned back drearily yet strongly to itself. - - - - -_A twisted moral_ - - - To-morrow - -If I should meet God to know and speak to the first thing but one I -should ask him would be, 'What was your idea, God, in making me?' - -I can believe he had some Purpose in it. - -I'm in most ways a devilish person. There's sevenfold more evil -than good in me. It is evil of a mixed and menacing kind, the kind -that goes dressed in brave and beauty-tinted clothes and is sane -and sound. While the good in me is ill and forlorn and nervously -afraid--a something of tear-blurred eyes and trembling fingers. - -Yet God has made many things less plausible than me. He has made -sharks in the ocean, and people who hire children to work in their -mills and mines, and poison ivy and zebras-- - ---and he has made besides a Wonder of things: Thin Pink Mountain -Dawns, Young English Poets, Hydrangeas in the sudden Blue of their -first Bloom, human Singing Voices,--more things, always more-- - -When I think of them all a joyous thrill breaks over me like a little -frenzied wave. It is delirium-of-bliss to feel oneself living though -shadows be pitch-black. - -God has a Purpose in making everything, I think. - -I am half-curious about the Purpose that goes with me. He might have -made me for his own amusement. He might have made me to discipline -my Soul with some blights and goads or to punish it for bacchanalian -ease and pleasure in the long-distant centuries-old past. He might -have made me to season or scourge other lives, as I may touch them, -with Mary-Mac-Lane-ness. He might have made me to point a twisted -moral. - -I muse about it with doubts. - -But if I knew my Purpose I belike would not swerve a hair's-breadth -from my own course which is an unhallowedly selfish one. - -If I could myself see a way of truth I would walk in it. I have it in -me to worship. I long to worship. And I am game, wearily and coldly -game: when I start I go on through to the end. - -But I see no way of truth--none for me. And God is eternally absent -and reticent. So I go on in the way where I find myself. And muse -about it. And damn it faintly as I make nothing of it. - - - - -_Everyday and to-morrow_ - - - To-morrow - -Aloofly I live in this Butte in the outward role of a family daughter -with no responsibilities. - -This Butte is an incongruous living-place for me. - -And I have not one human friend in it--no kindliness. And Nature in -her perplexingest mood would not of herself have cast me as a family -daughter. Three things have kept me thus for four years past: that -nothing has called me out of it: a slight family pressure like a tiny -needle-point which pierces only if one moves: and to stay thus is -presently the line of least resistance. - -Unless impelled to violent action by a violent reason--like love -or hatred or jealousy or a baby or humiliated pride or rowelling -ambition--a woman follows the physical line of least resistance. I -have followed it these years with outward acquiescence and inward -rages--languid rages which lay me waste. - -The years and acquiescences and rages have built up a mood which -compasses me, drives me, damns me and lifts me up. - -It is a forceful mood, though I am not myself forceful. - -This mood is this book.-- - -I live an immoral life. It is immoral because it is deadly futile. -All my Tissues of body, soul, mind and heart are wasting, decaying, -wearing down, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day: with no -return to me or to my life, nor to anything human or divine. - -It makes me dread my life and myself. - -I do not quite know why. - -But to be an ardent pickpocket or an eager harlot would feel honester. - -My Everyday goes like this: I waken in the morning and lie listless -some minutes with drooping eyelids. I look at a gilt-and-blue bar -of morning light which slants palely in at one window and at a -melting-gold triangle of sun which shows at the other window on the -red brick wall of the house next to this. Then I say 'another day,' -and I kick off bed-covers with one foot and slide out of my narrow -bed, and into blue slippers, and out of a thin nightgown, and into -peignoir or bathrobe. I twist and flatten and gather up my tangled -hair and push some amber pins through it. And I go into a respectable -green-and-gray bathroom and draw a bath and get into it. I splash in -brief swift soapsuds, and go under a sudden heroic icy cold shower, -and dry me with a scourging towel. Then I go back into the blue-white -bed-room and get into clothes, feminine thin under-garments and a -nunlike frock. - -I look in my mirror. Some days I'm a delicately beautiful girl. -Other days I'm a very plain woman. - -One's physical attractiveness is a matter of one's mental chemistry. - -I say to Me in the mirror, 'It's you-and-me, Mary MacLane, and -another wasting damning To-morrow. - - "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow - Creeps in this petty pace from day to day."' - -A haunting decadence is in that To-morrow thought. And always the -To-morrow thought comes out of my morning mirror. I dwell on it -awhile, till my gray eyes and my lips and my teeth and my forehead -are tired of it, and make nothing new of it. - -I jerk the flat scollop of hair at one side of my forehead and -turn away. I open door and windows wider for the blowing-through -of breezes. And I wander down-stairs. It is half-after nine or -half-after ten. I go into the clean empty clock-ticking kitchen -and cook my breakfast. It is a task full of hungry plaisance and -pleasantness. I make a British-feeling breakfast of tea and marmalade -and little squares of toast and pink-and-tan rashers of bacon and two -delightful eggs. Up to the moment of broaching the eggs the morning -has an ancient sameness with other mornings. But eggs, though I've -eaten them every day for quite five-and-twenty years, are always a -fascinating novelty. - -They are delicious in my breakfast. So are the squares of toast and -the bacon-rashers and the tea and marmalade. When I've done with them -I lay down my napkin by my cup, light a cigarette, breathe a puff -or two from it and feel contentedly aware that my brain has gone to -rest in sweet tranquillity with my breakfast. When my brain is in my -head it analyzes the soul out of my body, the gleam out of my gray -eyes, the savor out of my life, the human taste off my tongue. That -post-breakfast moment is the only peace-moment I know in my day and -in my life. - -Having puffed away the cigarette and read bits of a morning paper -I then prove me arrantly middle-class by contemplating washing my -breakfast dishes. - -I am middle-class, quite, from the Soul outward. But it is not -specially apparent--one's tastes and aspirations flit garbledly far -and wide. But a tendency to wash one's dishes after eating one's -breakfast feels conclusively and pleasantly middle-class. Not that I -do always wash them, but always I think of it with the inclination to -do it. - -I sit on the shaded front veranda in the summer noon-day and look -away south at the blue Highlands, ever snow-peaked: or east at the -near towering splendid grim wall of the arid Rockies which separates -this Butte from New York, from London,--the Spain-castles--the -Pyramids--the Isle of Lesbos: or south-west beyond house-tops at some -foothills above which hangs a fairy veil made by melting together a -Lump of Gold and an Apricot and spreading it thin. - -Then restlessly I go into the house and up to my room. I put it in -order--in prim, prim immaculate order. One marked phase of mine -is of some wanton creature--a maenad, a mental Amazon, a she-imp. -But playing opposite to that is another--that of a New-England -spinster steel-riveted to certain neat ferociously-orderly habits. -A stray thread on my blue rug hurts, _hurts_ me until I pick it -up. Dust around my room gives me a nervous pain, a piteous gnawing -grief-of-the-senses, until I've removed it. And my chastened-looking -bed--after I've turned over its tufted mattress and 'made' it, smooth -and white and crisp and soft--how the fibers of me would writhe -should anyone sit on it. But no one sits on it. And I myself sooner -than press one finger-tip down into its perfectness would sell my -body to a Balkan soldier for four dimes: it is that way I feel about -it. My bed _must_ be kept perfect till the moment I slip into it at -night to float under the dream-worlds. - -Then maybe I pull a soft black hat down over my hair and draw on -gloves and go out into the gray-paved streets for a longish walk. -Or maybe the day is humidly hot. Then I don't go but stay in the -blue-white room and mend a bit of torn lingerie or a handkerchief -or a silk stocking or a petticoat. Or I take books and dig out some -Greek--Homer or a Sapphic fragment--very laboriously but marvelling -that I can do it at all: the first things one forgets being the -last things one learned at school. Or I read an English or a French -philosopher, or a translated Tolstoi, or a bit of Balzac novel, or -some bits of Dickens-books with which latter I am long familiar and -long enamored for the restful falseness of their sentiment and the -pungent appetizing charm of their villains. - -And betweenwhiles I think and think. - -Then it's dinnertime and I perhaps change into the other nunlike -dress, and nibble some dinner with no appetite, and talk with the -assembled small family in a vein and tone of life-long insincerity. -When in family-circle-ness I've had to hide my true self as if behind -a hundred black veils since the age of two years. It would be a -poignant effort now to show any of it at the family dinners, which -is the only meeting-time. The one easy way is to be comprehensively -insincere at the dinners where with no appetite I nibble. None -there wants my sincerity, and so in my Soul's accounting now it is -eternally and determinedly No Matter. It is a little bell which -stopped ringing long and long ago. If it rang now it would ring only -No-Matter, No-Matter. - -Then it's night and I go to take the walk I didn't take in the -afternoon. I walk down long lonely streets. Long lonely thoughts -pile into me and through me and wrap me in a nebula that I can feel -around me like a mantle. I walk two or three miles of paved streets -till I'm very tired. I am lithe but fragile from constant involuntary -self-analysis. One may analyze one's life-experience and life-emotion -till physical tissues at times grow frail, gossamer-thin. It is then -as if--at a word, a whispered thought, a beat of the heart--one's -Soul might flutter through the Veil, join light hands with the -death-angel and flee away. - ---but I love my life even while I analyze it bit by bit and so hate -it. I love it in its grating monotones and its moments of glow and -its days of shadow and storm and bitterish lowering passion-- - -I walk back beneath a night sky of dusky velvet-blue decked with -jewels of moon and star and flying bright-edged cloud. The night has -a subdued preciousness, like an illicitly pregnant woman's. It is big -with the bastard-exquisite To-morrow. The night air kisses my lips -and throat. I pull off my gloves to feel it on my hands. It gives me -a charmed and unexciting feeling of being caressed without being -loved. - -I come back to my blue-white room, take off my hat, ruffle my fingers -through my hair, look at Me in the mirror and smile the melancholy -wicked smile which I keep for Me-alone. It's an intimate moment of -greeting--a recognition of my Familiar on coming back to her. Often -when I walk I go without Me, and wander far from Me, and forget Me. - -Then I sit at my flat black desk and write desultorily for two or -three or four hours. Sometimes a letter, sometimes some verses or a -hectic fancy in staid prose. But now mostly this. - -Then I go downstairs to a refrigerator or a cellar-way to find -food--a slice off an affable cold joint, some chaste-looking slices -of bread, a slim innocent onion. And I eat them, not relishingly but -voraciously, reminding myself of a lean foraging furtive coyote. It -is two or three or four in the morning. I smoke a quiet cigarette in -a cool night doorway and count the nervous gray-velvet moths outside -the screen. - -And all the while I think and think. - -Then I come up to my room and sit on the floor by my low bookcase and -read some last-century English poets--the Brownings and Shelley and -the unspeakable John Keats. The Poets make me a space of incalescent -magic and loveliness. They are the beings blest of a flaming Heaven. -In the midst of soddenest earthiness their fiery wings 'pierce the -night.' - -Then I'm thrilledly tired. I close the books and make ready for -my bed in a lyric-feeling languor. A soft soothing unsnapping of -whalebone stays: a muffled rhythmic undoing of metal-and-silk-rubber -garters: a pushing down and sliding out of daytime clothes -and into a thin pale cool silk nightgown: a hurried brushing -of hair: an anointing of hands and throat with faint-scented -cream: a goodnight to Me in the mirror: a last wave of a fateful -thing--my life-essence--casual and determined and contemptuous and -menacing--sweeping down over me in an invisible shower: and I'm -betwixt smooth linen sheets. - -In twenty seconds blest, blest sleep. - -Of such wide littleness is my day made. One day will differ from -another in this or that volcanic molehill. And some days I not only -wash a great many dishes but do a deal of housework neatly and -self-satisfactorily and like a devilish scullery maid. - -And some days as I move in the petty pace thoughts and feelings sweet -or barbarous come and change my world's face in a moment. - -Also a casual human being of rabbitish brain and chipmunkish -sensibility may stray across my path and gently bore me and -accentuate my own paganness. - -But always the same days in restless dubious To-morrowness. - -Always immorally futile. - -And eerily alone. - - - - -_A mathematic dead-wall_ - - - To-morrow - -I'm put to it to decide whether God loves me or hates me when he sets -me down alone. - -There are times when my Loneliness is a charmed and scintillant and -resourceful Loneliness with a strange and ecstatic gleam in it. The -miracle of being a person rushes upon and about and into me 'with -lightning and with music.' - -One loses that in a day of many friendships. - -But oftener are times when the tired, tired heart and the weary, -weary brain beat-beat, beat-beat to anguished torturing self-rhythms. -The spirit of me closes its eyes in turbulent dusks of wondering -and wishing and leans its forehead against a mathematic dead-wall. -And it prays--blind useless unhumble prayers which leave it dry and -destitute, arid, unspeakably lacking. But when it lifts its head -and opens its eyes there are the melting mauves and maroons of a -dead sun across the evening sky, and the small far wistful flames of -always-hopeful stars. - ---they make it matter less whether God loves or hates me, but I still -wish I knew. - - - - -_My neat blue chair_ - - - To-morrow - -I suppose there's nothing quite peculiar to even my inmost self in -what I ponder and what I experience and what I feel. - -My only elemental 'differentness' is that I find it and write it. - -But I used to think at eighteen--those thrice-fired adolescent -moments--that only I suffered, only I reached achingly out into the -mists, only I tasted new-bloomed life-petals intolerably sweet and -bitter on my lips. - -The egotism of youth is merciless, measureless, endlessly vulnerable. -Youth plays on itself as one plays on a little dulcimer, with music -as sweet, but with a crude cruel recklessness which jerks and breaks -the strings. - -I have got by that stage of egotism. But I've entered on another -wilder, more lawless--farther-seeing if less be-visioned. - -While I sit here this midnight in a Neat Blue Chair in this -Butte-Montana for what I know a legion-women of my psychic breed -may be sitting lonely in neat red or neat blue or neat gray or neat -any-colored chairs--in Wichita-Kansas and South Bend-Indiana and -Red Wing-Minnesota and Portland-Maine and Rochester-New York and -Waco-Texas and La Crosse-Wisconsin and Bowling Green-Kentucky: -each feeling Herself set in a wrong niche, caught in a tangle of -little vapidish cross-purpose: each waiting, waiting always--waiting -all her life--not hopeful and passionate like Eighteen but patient -or blasphemous or scornful or volcanic like Early-Thirty: the -waiting-sense giving to each a personal quality big and suggestive -and nurturing--and with it a long-accustomed feeling like a thin -bright blade stuck deep in her breast: each more or less roundly -hating Waco-Texas and Portland-Maine and Red Wing-Minnesota and the -other places: and each beset by hot unquiet humannesses inside her -and an old yearn of sex and the blood warring with myriad minute -tenets dating from civilization's dawn-times. - -But though I am of that psychic breed no little tenets war in me. - -It's as if a prelate and a wood-nymph had fathered and mothered -me: making me of a ridiculous poignant conscience and of no human -traditions. - -I am free of innate conventionalities, free as a wildcat on a -twilight hill. I am free of them as I sit here, quiet-looking in my -plain black dress. The virile Scotch-Canadian curl is brushed and -brushed out of my hair to make it lie smooth and discreet over my -ears and forehead. My feet are shod daintily like a charming girl's. -My nails are pinkly polishedly pointed. My narrow black eyebrows -look nearly patrician in their sereneness. My lips are stilly sad. -My eyelids droop like the sucking dove's. But my gray eyes beneath -the lids--when I raise them to the glass, my own Essence looks out -of them, tiredly vivid. It seems made of languor and barbaricness -and despair: and vague guiltiness, and some pure disastrous heathen -religion, and lust: and lurid consciousness of everyday things and -smouldering melancholy and blazing loving hatred of life. - -My gray eyes out-look the wildcat's on a twilight hill. - -But--so far as the Sitting goes--I sit here in my Neat Blue Chair -the same as they all sit in any-colored chairs in their Wichitas and -La Crosses. - - - - -_A lost person_ - - - To-morrow - -I am wandering about, a Lost Person, wandering and lost. - -Not magnificently lost in wide Gothic forest closes, with strong -great blackish green trunks and branches all around overwhelming and -thrilling me. - -Not dramatically lost on desert reefs with breakers riding up like -menacing hosts and joyously drowning me. - -But lost surprisingly in a small clump of shoulder-high hazel-brush. -In it are some wood-ticks, and a few caterpillars, and a few wan -spiders which spin little desultory webs from twig to twig and then -abandon them for other twigs. Underfoot are unexpected wet places at -intervals that my high hard heels sink into exasperatingly. - -I walk round and round and across in the hazel-brush groping and -knowing I'm lost in it but knowing little else of it: knowing no way -out of it. - -The bushes bear green leaves--rather small ones and warped because -the clump is in a half-shaded place back of a hill. And they bear -hazel-nuts, but not very good ones--mostly shell. - - - - -_A thin damnedness_ - - - To-morrow - -I own Two plain black Dresses and none besides. - -And I need no more. - -In which two sentences I touch the crux and the keynote and the thin -damnedness of my life as it is set: of my life, not of myself, for -myself lives naked inside the circle of my life. - -But my outer life is spaced by my Two plain Dresses. My Two Dresses -measure how far removed I presently am from the wide world of things. - -In the world of things a woman is judged not specifically by her -morals: not invariably by her reputation: not absolutely by her -money: not indubitably by her social prestige: only relatively by her -beauty: and as to her brain or lack of it--la-la-la! She is judged in -the matter-world simply, completely, entirely by her clothes. It is -tacitly so agreed and decreed all over the earth--wherever women are -of the female sex and men pursue them. - -It is no injustice to any woman. It is the fairest fiat in the -unwritten code. - -Only a few women, the few specialized breeds, can express the fire -or the humanness in them by play-acting or suffragetting or singing -or painting or writing or trained-nursing or house-keeping. But -there's not one--from a wandering Romany gypsy, red-blooded and -strong-hearted, to an over-guarded overbred British princess--who -doesn't express what she is in the clothes she wears and the way she -wears them. - -Her clothes conceal and reveal, artfully and contradictorily and -endlessly. - -It is all a limitless field. - -No actor could act Hamlet without that perfect Hamletesque black -costume. - -A nun's staid beautiful habit interprets her own meanings within and -without. - -A woman naked may look markedly pure: the same woman clothed -conventionally and demurely may achieve a meanly ghoulishly foul -seeming. - -One either is made or marred by one's habiliments. - -A woman by her raiment's make and manner can express more of her wit, -her ego, her temper, her humor, her plastic pulsating personality -than she could by throwing a bomb, by making a good or bad pudding, -by losing her chastity or by traducing her neighbor. The germ and -shadow and likelihood of each of those acts is in the fashion and -line and detail of her garments. - -A jury thinks it tries a woman for a crime. Some of the twelve good -and true may admit each to himself that they are trying the color of -her eyes or the shape of her chin or the droop of her shoulders. But -it's only her clothes they unwittingly try for murder or theft or -forgery, or whatever has tripped her. It may be an alluringly shabby -little dress that saves her from the gallows. It may be a hat worn at -the wrong angle that is found guilty and sentenced to death. A glove -in her lap, a fluttering veil, a little white handkerchief dropped to -the floor by her chair--those are what the court tries for life or -liberty.-- - -But it is I I tell about, I and my Two plain Dresses. - -In me a smart frock or an unbecoming one makes a surprising -difference. I impress my costume with my mixed temperament and it -retaliates in kind. - -One day I looked a beautiful young creature--one August Saturday in -New York it was--in a tailored gown of embroidered linen. With it I -wore such a good hat: its color was pale olive: its texture was soft -Milan straw: its price was forty dollars. My shoes were gray silk. I -so fancied myself that day that I feared lest my writing talent had -gone away from me. For God takes away the beer if he gives you the -skittles. And in ill-conditioned clothes--some days the weather, the -devil, the soddenness of life get into one's garments and make even -fair ones look ill-conditioned--I am plain-faced, plain all over--so -plain that the villainies of my nature feel doubtful and I half-think -I may be a good woman. - -In a life full of people I would own varied delicate beautiful -clothes since it is by them one is judged, and since I am quite -vain. But no people are in my life. I feel deadlocked. I am caught in -a vise made by my own analytic ratiocination. I am not free to live a -world-life till I've someway expressed Me and learned if not whither -I go at least where I stand. - -So it's Two plain Dresses I own and none besides. - -It may be I shall not ever again need more. - -The Two Dresses are at present of serge and voile. Their identity -changes with change of fashion and with wearing out. They are cut -well and fit me well. But the Two does not change, nor the plainness. -I change only from one Frock to the other and from the other to the -one again. - -I have various other clothes. A woman--whatever her traits and -tempers--garners what she can of handmade under-linens and dainty -nightgowns and silk hose and all such private panoply. They are the -apparel of her sex rather than her individuality. The uncognizant -world is unable to judge her by them. But the woman herself judges -and respects herself by the goodness of her intimate garments. - -My sex is to me a mystic gift. I marvel over it and clothe it -silkenly. - -Also I own a healthful-looking percale house-gown or two in which I -do housework. - -But my passing life, my eerie lonely life, is lived in my Two Dresses -and none besides, and I need no more. - - - - -_A prison of self_ - - - To-morrow - -My Two Dresses tell me the scope of my present Mary-Mac-Lane-ness. - -Every day they tell me things about myself. - -They tell me I'm living in a prison of self, invisible and ascetic -and somberly just. - -They tell me I'm living an outer life narrow and broodingly -companionless and that if I were not self-reliant by long habit a -leprous morbidness would rot me in body and spirit. - -They tell me because of outer solitude an inner fever of emotion and -egotism and a fervid analytic light are on all my phases of self: -mental, physical, psychical and sexual. - -They tell me my way of thought is at once meditative and -cave-womanish. - -They tell me I'm all ways the Unmarried Woman and profoundly -loverless. - -They tell me I'm like a child and like a sequestered savage. - -They tell me I am having no restful unrealities of social life with -chattering women and no monotonous casually bloodthirsty flirtations -with men. - -They tell me I walk daily to the edges of myself and stare into -horrible-sweet egotistic abysses. - -They tell me I'm grave-eyed and coldly melancholy. - -They tell me there's a bereftness in the curves of my breasts and an -unfulfillment in my loose-girt loins. - -They tell me I am barren of sensation and fertile in feeling. - -They tell me God has taken away the beer and also the skittles and -left me only pieces of bread and drinks of water. - - - - -_A winding sheet_ - - - To-morrow - -The least important thing in my life is its tangibleness. - -The only things that matter lastingly are the things that happen -inside me. - -If I do a cruel act and feel no cruelty in my Soul it is nothing. If -I feel cruelty in my Soul though I do no cruel act I'm guilty of a -sort of butchery and my spirit-hands are bloody with it. - -The adventures of my spirit are realer than the outer things that -befall me. - -To dwell on the self that is known only to me--the self that is -intricate and versatile, tinted, demi-tinted, deep-dyed, luminous, -gives me an intimate delectation, a mental inflorescence and -sometimes an exaltation. It is not always so but it can be so. But -always to look back on the mass of outer events that have made my -tangible life darkens my day. - -Introspection throws a witching spell around me, though it may be a -black one. - -But retrospection wraps me in a Winding Sheet. - -When the day is already dark from low-hanging clouds--and often when -the sun is bright, bright, bright--I walk my floor and think of my -scattered life-flotsam with a frown at the eyebrows: a coarse and -heavy and twisted frown. - -To-day was a leaden day. The air held a quality like the infernal -breath of dead people. I leaned elbows on my dull window-sill and -looked off at green and purple mountains. I tried to think of some -reason--some reason tangible or poetic--for living. - -I wore my brocade Chinese coat fastened down the left side with -round flashing glass buttons and embroidered with blue bats and -gardenias: and with it a crinkly crepe-silk petticoat: and silk -shoes and respectable white silk stockings. I felt righteous because -in the forenoon I had done much housework. I worked thoroughly and -well, swearing and repeating poetry softly to lend me impetus. And -afterward I felt useful and good. - -But having changed from Dutch cap and apron and domesticness to -scented silk and my sad window I grew suddenly frail and vulnerable. -Shadows stormed my wall and scaled it and entered in and sacked my -castle. I lounged away from my window, folded my arms in my loose -blue sleeves and slowly walked my floor. I had no strength within to -combat shadows. - -I picked up two alien shreds, of lint and paper respectively, from -the rug, but inside me undigested and indigestible memories had their -own way. - -They brought close an unsatisfying and dissatisfying vista of Mary -MacLanes. - -There was a stubborn baby in Winnipeg-Canada, as I've heard, a baby -with a white skin, coldly pensive dark-blue eyes, no hair, no voice, -hand-worked muslin frocks and a fat lumpish mien. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a three-year-old child, as I dimly remember, still in -Canada and still stubborn, with a stout keg-like pink-and-white body, -baffling blue eyes, a tiny voice, thick sun-colored curls, cambric -frocks and short white socks and a morose temper. She had one love, -a yellow tortoise-shell kitten which she hugged and hugged with -violence until one day it died surprisingly in her arms. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a seven-year-old child in Minnesota, as I well remember, -still stubborn and still often morose, with a thin bony little body, -conscious gray eyes, a tanned face, weather-beaten hands, untidy -frocks, beautiful fluffy golden hair, a tendency to secretiveness and -lies, a speculative mind, fantastic day-dreams and a free hoydenish -way of life. She had playmates but no loves except an objective love -for quiet greenwoods and sweet meadows and windy hills and hay-filled -barns, and for the surface details of life. She had subjective -hatreds for being fussed over, for being teased and for relatives. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a thirteen-year-old person, as I well remember, in a -windy Montana town, who was neither girl, child nor savage but -was a mixture of the three. She had a devilish contrary will and -temper, the unenlightened inexpressive wholly unattractive face and -features of early adolescence, a self-love that had not the dignity -of egotism and a devouring appetite for reading. She read everything -she happened on--from Voltaire to Nick Carter: from 'Lady Audley's -Secret' to Fox's Book of Martyrs. She read Alexander Pope and Victor -Hugo and John Stuart Mill. She read 'Lena Rivers' by Mary J. Holmes: -also Confucius: and the Brothers Grimm. She had a long-legged lanky -frame, conscious gray eyes, lovely coppery-gold dark hair and a silly -headful of tangled irrational thoughts. She had pathetic impossible -day-dreams. She had few companions and no loves but much hatred for -most things sane, sensible and honest. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was an eighteen-year-old girl in this Butte, as I well -remember, with the outward savagery tamed out of her by studiousness. -She was slim but no longer lanky and owned a white-hot aliveness -and a grace. She had repelling gray eyes and the beautiful coppery -hair, and about her an isolation, a complete aloofness. Her spirit -fed itself on wonderful and exquisite dreams alternated by moods -of young passionate woe, analyzed and torn to shreds: all of it hid -beneath a very quiet surface. She had outwardly a tense markedly -virginal quality but was inwardly insolently demi-vierge. She had no -companions, no friendships. She absorbed herself in digging knowledge -out of her high school text-books, studying and imagining over it, -and wandering in the fascinating highways which it opened to her. She -was at her moment of brain-awakening, soul-awakening, sex-awakening, -life-awakening, world-awakening: it uncurtained windows of magic -old sorrow for her to look from. She had no characteristic -weaknesses--she was strongly and scornfully courageous. It and the -need of self-expression, born of her teeming spirit and life-long -suppression of it, led her to write herself out in a book, which was -published. It was a poetic book and had insight and vision and a riot -of color with youth as its keynote. And it was human and figuratively -and literally full of the devil. The far-and-wide public in England -and America read it, and the newspapers made a loud noise about it -and the lonely girl who wrote it found herself oddly notorious. It -brought money which made her free of Butte and it brought human -things into her life which changed her life forever. And it brought -her no inner or outer excitement or elation. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a girl of six-and-twenty in Boston and in New York who had -half-forgot her long-familiar Ego for several years. She lived and -moved in folly and triviality and falseness. From having had too -few companions she had too many who did her no good and no harm but -helped her waste passing days and dissipate her moods and mental -tissues. She had grown worldly in taste, weak in manner of thought, -fragile in body from a mad irregularity of food and sleep, and in -every attribute uncertain of herself. Her Soul lay sleeping: her -Heart because it felt too keenly worked overtime: nothing engaged her -Mind. But her analytic trend stayed by and with it she pulled to bits -the varied fragmentary things she encountered. She learned New York -town in human sordid enlightening disciplining ways. She learned -people of many kinds in many ways. She learned other young women, -which depressed and exhilarated and perplexed her. She learned men--a -race whose make and motive toward women bears no analysis. She had -not the usual defensive armor of the normal woman, for she was not a -normal woman but certain trends of varying individuals gathered into -one sensitive woman-envelope. She was careless toward men in their -crude sex-rapacity in ways no 'regular' woman would dare or care to -be. No man could wring one tear from her, nor cause a quickening of -her foolish Heart, nor any emotion in her save mirth. And there were -women friends-- There were some friendships whose ill effects she -will never recover from, from having bestowed too much of herself on -them in the headlong newness of knowing and owning friendship after -her long young loneliness. - ---she could not cherish anything sanely. She couldn't stand in her -doorway and watch a pretty bird flying above a green hedge, and -admire it for the gleam of its brilliant wings in the sun, and let -it go. She must needs run out--leaving her door standing open and -tea-and-cakes untasted within--and follow where the bird flew, -through mire and brier, round the world-- - -From the odd notoriety were many letters and experiences and -adventures. She met some famous persons--writers, actors, artists--of -agreeable philosophic plaisances. She saw her book of youth -burlesqued with artistic piquance in the Weber-and-Fields show of -its season (with one Collier, adroitest of comedians, cast as her -long-lost Devil). There was a hasty voyage to the edge of Europe--a -voyage of terrific seasickness lying in her stateroom: a half-glimpse -of Paris all gray and green in the rain: a whole glimpse of London, -mystic, Dickensesque and roundly British in its yellow-brown fog: and -back again within ten days with more berth-ridden seasickness lasting -from Cherbourg to New York harbor: the whole adventure grown from a -Spring morning impulse. There were winters in Florida at sun-flooded -resort towns full of gaudiness and gambling and surprising -winter-resort people. Those were mongrel wastrel years empty of -every realness, every purpose, every vantage: they filled her with a -bastard wisdom. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -There was a girl of seven-and-twenty worn to psychic fragments and -returned on a winter's day in a mood of indifference to this Butte. -It was her first return since she and her book had gone forth eight -years before. She celebrated it by being brought low with a baleful -blood-sucking demon of illness, what is called scarlet fever. Borne -upon by the mountain altitude after sea-levels and getting in the -way of epidemic germs, she had no chance. A strong feverish serpent -wound itself around her, consuming and destroying. There were -tortured dying weeks. She had never been ill before in all her life. -This was the most crucial bodily adventure she had known. It opened -a new and dreadful world. There was no passing of time in those -long, long weeks, no rational thinking, no day, no night, no dark, -no morning, no memory. There was pain, and utter weariness, and a -feeling of being hurried to her grave. There was an air of hurry -in the stillness around, as if she and Death had made a date which -she would be late in keeping unless she were urged on. There was a -doctor, and a crisp white starched nurse, and there were interminable -bitter drugs and tall narrow glasses of monotonous milk. She was -endlessly disturbed by milk and medicine, and by cold spongings -and changings of feverish bed-linens, and anointings with olive -oil, and takings of her temperature, and sprayings of her throat: -when she wanted only to sink down, down, forever and forever to the -underworld. She almost sank. But God capriciously decided he had -other plans for her--insomuch as decreeing she was not to be let -go then. After seven weeks she tiredly rose from her bed and took -stock of herself. Her role then was of a horrible yellow skeleton -with negative gray eyes, a wreck of tissue and vitality such as only -scarlet fever can achieve, and her beautiful thick coppery hair -changed to a strange short mouse-colored tangle. She was a long time -recovering. The scarlet demon changed her life and its meanings and -energies and outlooks more effectually than if she had been trapped -by a game-at-law and gaols and courts had had their toll of her. -But after months, a year and a half of months, her health came back -perfect if not vigorous, and her good looks--the few she ever had, -and even the humanizing incongruous curls, though changed, grew long -and covered her head again in a heathen frivol. A so magnificent -mystery is this blood-and-flesh. It grows up again out of its ashes. -Burn all of it but one cell in the scorchingest sickness and so that -bones are still whole it will renew itself from that, perfect as the -sweet-bay. But this mind, less magnificent and less mysterious and -more delicate and dubious, rallies only by aid of the heart beneath -it and the soul beyond it. Her mind came slowly out of darkened -apathy. It lived in a high-walled cloister telling its languid beads -by rote. But as if it sensed the sweet aura of her renewed body it at -last woke strong and cold overnight and was aware again of itself and -the mourning magic of being. - -It was this Mary MacLane. - -And after a year or two more it is this Mary MacLane. - -It is I myself. - -I walk my floor in leaden retrospect-days with a feel in my throat of -damned and damning unfulfillment and at my eyebrows the twisted frown. - -In it is dread and anguish and worriment: in it is hideous altering -breaking prepollence of death. - ---if my hair, just my hair, had not come back after that red fever -I'd have decided--not capriciously like God but determinedly like -myself--to have died by my own hand one night. It is no brave -thought and it would have been no brave deed. Though it wants a -lowering courage to leave life when, despite all, one loves its very -textureless _color_, its bodiless air: not to speak of the yellow hot -deathless sunshine that can not reach one in her dark grave-- - -But the look and feel of my hair are the look and feel of positive -life, opposed to death. - -To live up to my hair would keep me brave. - -But the retrospects, which I can't escape, come and wrap me in the -Winding Sheet. - - - - -_The Dover road_ - - - To-morrow - -I lay down at noonday on my green couch and I had a quaint dream. -I have just awakened from it in a flush of languor and comfort. -And the dream is vivid in my mind. I dreamed I was married and it -was pink-and-pearl dawn in my married bed-room. And in the bed one -inch away from mine was not my married husband but 'another man.' -It was no man I can recall having seen. As I look back into the -dream he seems of the nowhere, a stranger. But in the dream he was -no stranger. I had crudely admitted him to my night. And I had just -awakened in the pink-and-white dawn and was sitting silk-gowned and -ruffle-haired in my bed, cross-legged like a tailor with my elbows -on my knees and my chin on my palms, idly contemplating him. And -he was lying in the other narrow bed contemplating me and smiling -a little. He had nice teeth and yellowish hair. The crux of the -dream was the sound 'off-stage' of the approaching footsteps of -monsieur-the-husband. As it always is in the psychology of dreams -the insistent thing in the situation was not the footsteps, nor even -that they were approaching, but the sound: the elusive threat of -their sound. He would presently discover us. Nobody appeared to care: -not 'another man' smiling so tranquilly: not I sitting musingly -overlooking him who had overnight 'enjoyed me': not the husband, -because he never knew it--before he could open the guilty door I -awoke. - -A short-cut gently headlong dream. I was at once married, mixed -adulterantly with an imperfect stranger and awaiting in pleasant mild -anticipation, to match the pink-and-pearl of the summer dawn, the -climax in the approaching sound of my husband's footsteps. It was -humorous and artistic. Unseemly preliminaries were done away with in -that dream. I was given at once the one exciting worthwhile moment -in it. - -Having no data as to what were my husband's temper and tenor, what -he looked like or who he was, I could not in the dream or out of it -surmise what he would say or how he would act when he opened the door. - ---a theme for idling speculation in a summer's day-- - -Also I wonder whence came that dream: so Unexpected: so Irrelevant to -any thought in me: so Artistically Right: so Disgusting: so Dramatic: -so quaintly Vulgar. - -A question: to which the one answer is that unanswerable answer to -all questions, propounded by Mr. F.'s Aunt--'There's milestones on -the Dover road.' - - - - -_The harp of worn strings_ - - - To-morrow - -May I own no unleavened egotism. - -May I own no egotism that is not sensitive and poignant and vibrant: -a harp of Worn Strings. - -The surprising world is full of non-analytic persons of ox-eyed -vision and hen-headed mental caliber whose egotism is a stupendous -impregnable armor: those who burned the Maid of Orleans: those who -crucified the prophet of Nazareth: those who killed John Keats. - -They inherit the earth, which is a Golden-Green earth, but never look -at it. - -They accept this life, which is Intoxicating life, but never feel its -texture with their fingers. - -They gather a Blue iris by a marsh-edge and let it die in their -sweating hands, or let it fall to the ground as they walk, or throw -it away when the Blue petals droop: without looking at it and -breathing it and knowing it: without sensing the tremulous Blue to be -lovelier in its wilting. - -Theirs is the thick fat solidly-fierce egotism of an emperor or an -infant whose main metaphysic concept is that _he_ is alive, and will -remain alive, and must be alive, though all around him bleed drop by -drop to their death. - -I have analyzed mine, and it is not so with me. - -If I say I am enchanting or false or despicable it is because I know -it's true. Not because I say it but because I have tested and proved -it. I feel the textures of my life with the tips of my fingers. I -turn my senses outward and let the old winds blow over them--icy, -balmy, harsh, gentle, scorching, cooling. I suffer for it but I know -those winds: songs of seas and stars and of little pebbles are in -their thunderous-dim wailing: life is in the soft stinging perfume of -their wings. - -No breath of poetry and beauty comes to me that I do not pay for with -the beating ache of my Heart, the nervous tensions of my Body, the -fraying and shredding of my Soul. If any beauty or poet-thing comes -easily and gives me pleasure and not pain, I know I have not yet got -it and that it will come again. - -It will come again: with the pain. - -I can't eat cake and have it. - -I can't make silk purses out of sows' ears. - -Those things I learn nearly perfectly from playing on my harp with -the Worn Strings. - - - - -_A strongly-windy Saturday_ - - - To-morrow - -It is a strongly-windy Saturday. - -A thought achieves itself in my roiled-and-placid brain: that one -half of me is Mad, but the other half is doubly Sane and someway -over-Sane, so that in it all I break a little better than even. - - - - -_A someway separate individual_ - - - To-morrow - -This Body I live in is familiar and mysterious. - -It is like a book of poetry to read and read again. - -It has the owned sentientness of bone-and-flesh, and with it tremors -fine as spirit-emotions. - -My Body is more chaste than my Mind, my Heart and my Soul. My Body if -fragile is healthful, and is one with the woman-race: it moves with -the sunlit cosmos. My Mind wanders in sex-chaos and muses on piquant -impure things, enchanting villainies, odd inversions, whatnot. My -Soul--a sweet and an exquisite Thing--its tired wings have borne it -languidly down the dim stairways of many centuries, some leading in -wilful perverted ways. And my Heart is a pagan Heart. Its essence is -flavored with the day and lyric trail of the Sapphic students. - -Bodily I am also pagan in the freedom of my owned sex feelings--as -are all women. Most of them do not know it and those who do hide it -in a tomb-like silence, except the brazen, the headlongly honest and -the artlessly frank. I come under none of those heads. I am myself. I -live and ponder alone. - -And my Body feels consciously aloof and as a someway separate -individual: with inner organs as eternal hopes, smooth skin as -emotion and drops of blood as thoughts--little drops of sparkling red -virile sweet blood for its thoughts. - -I so _love_ my Body as it lives and breathes and moves about, with me -and close to me. It is my so constant companion. It is an attractive -girl, a human being of some charm. I love it for the priceless air -it breathes and the long jewel-days of sunshine it has known: for -the tiny wears and tears of its daily life--the rending of its -magic tissues with each going-up-or-down-stairs, each crossing of -a door-sill. I love it for that it must lie at last pale, pale and -still--still--still--in its grave. - -I love my Body for its woman-complexities of sex. I love it for the -lonely lyric poetry of its cell-adventures. - -I love my Body for this long journey of woe and loveliness which -it goes, from Birthday to Death-day, in wilding passions of subtle -nervousness: each day a day of bodily beauty and intolerableness and -fear and utter mystery: because life _is_, and because I own a white -smooth-skinned Body, and because the strange, strange Air of Everyday -breathes on it--touches it--always! - - - - -_Sincerity and despair_ - - - To-morrow - -I am a true Artist, not as a writer but as a writing-person. - -I try to feel myself literarily a poet--finer-made than a god. But I -fail as a poet-litterateur as I fail as a poet-person. A poet flies -always on wings of fiery gold though it might be waywardly. But often -I walk with my feet in odd gutters, and have some plaisance in them, -and analyze their gutteriness absorbedly and own them as part of my -portion. - ---poet or no poet, it is best to be myself. In heights and murks and -widths and trivial horrors, _myself_-- - -But as an Artist I am in the true. As a painter of words and maker of -paragraphs which picture my phases and emotions, and in my conscious -feeling anent it, I realize the artist _flair_, the artist temper. It -is not a literary but a personal art. - -I have what goes with all artist-matter--long periods of dry-rot when -having nothing ripe to write I write nothing. My Artist-spirit proves -itself, justifies itself in my times of stagnation and reaction. Out -of it something human and sad and lustrous grows in me, something -which is half worldly but awaits its ripe time of expression with -someway-divine scorn. - -I once thought me destined to be a 'writer' in the ordinary sense. -And many good people visioned a writing career for me. It has a vapid -taste, just to recall it. My flawed life has that to felicitate -upon--that I have not spent it in fat lumps of writing, magazine -tales and sex-novels. In the days, and later, when my demi-vierge -book made its success I was besought by publishers to write -others--to go on, to reap and garner. I pushed all that away with a -preoccupied hand, not as part and parcel of my wastrel living but in -my assured Artist-temper. I should feel more true-to-form to earn -my living by making linen roses in a shop, along with rows of pale -women, than by my writing. - -My writing is to me a precious thing--and a rare bird--and a -Babylonish jade. It demands gold in exchange for itself. But though -it is my talent it is not my living. It is too myself, like my -earlobes and my throat, to commercialize by the day. - -But I can not think of me as an Artist without thinking of me as a -Liar. The two are someway related. I am an appalling, an encompassing -Liar. I am a Liar by the clock. My life ticks out silent lies as my -little clock ticks out seconds. It is a phase hard to put my finger -on. I feel it on me the way I feel a headache. I write this book -with seriousness and earnestness. It is all a mood of sincerity and -despair. But except I give it some backgrounding of lies, though -each thing in it is fair fact, I fail as an Artist. - -It is strange about lies--any lies, all lies. They are muscularly -stronger than truths. They come more readily to human tongues. They -fit more easily into the games of this life. And in me they seem -needful to my Artist mind. - -I mean not the lies I may tell but the lies I think. - -I mean not my falseness. That is a different thing, one I feel -someway responsible for. But the thinking lies feel to be a heritage -from ancient evil selves. - -I lie to myself, to the air around me--I blow lies into space from my -quiet lips. And one half of me knows them for lies and the other half -of me _believes_ them. - -Those half-known lies, the _need_ of the lies half-believed, are the -realization of an essential Artist-spirit. - -The oblique belief in them and the recognition of them as lies -proclaim me to myself, as a writing-person: Liar and Artist. - - - - -_It's not death_ - - - To-morrow - -It's not Death I fear, nor Life. - -I horridly fear something this side of Death but out-pacing Life a -little: a nervousness in my Stomach--a very Muddy Street--a Lonely -Hotel Room. - - - - -_A human prerogative_ - - - To-morrow - -It is a quiet deep of night. A bell has just tolled two. - -I am clothed in cool bedroom negligees and a softening sweetness of -cold cream, from head to foot. - -I am tranquil for to-day I had a walk that made me feel Sincere and -Safe. - -It is a comforting feeling: it is like a beef-sandwich. - -It was a long walk south-east of Butte along an outskirting road -where I used often to walk when I was sixteen--a broad gray desert. -It was the same sand and barrenness. It was bare and withered as if a -giant coyote had picked its rocky ribs. - -The day was windy and dusty. The sunshine was thick and sweet and -heavy like floating honey. The dust that blew against the white of my -neck was like ground glass. - -My feet ached as I walked. - -My shoes were Cuban-heeled thick-soled pumps of corded silk, a kind -easy to walk in. But the same feet which once readily bore me seven -miles along that road ache now at three. All of me ached as I walked -along. I cursed desultorily with a smooth whispered flow of curses, -because the circumstances seemed to demand it. But I loved the -walk--even the more for my tired feet and my aching knees and my -irking drooping shoulders and the hot glazed sand against my throat. - -My Soul tasted realness in it. - -Quite close to me, in immense sad beauty, were the deep high heavy -silent somber hills of Montana. To-day the nearer ones were a stately -enchanted Blue: a Blue of all ages: a Blue of infinitude: a Blue with -a feel of life and death in its Blueness. Above it the sky was not -blue but a pale glimmering shimmering silver hung across with gray -silk clouds soft as doves' plumage. - -I sat on a flat rock and looked at all of it and at the desert -around, and at my dusty shoes. - -All of it felt overwhelmingly sincere: at one with the wide worn used -earth. - -My dusty shoes looked to be at one with it and could interpret it. - -I felt my shoes could claim their human prerogative of getting dusty -in any of this world's roads. - -It gave me a feeling of human Sincerity: good-and-evil Safeness. - -It is on me now, along with cold cream and strong memory of Desert -and Sun and Blue. - -It is as good as a beef-sandwich. - -Better: I don't like beef-sandwich. - - - - -_The merciless beauty_ - - - To-morrow - -Sometimes the dusk is full of fire. - -Some dusks I sit by my window looking out and hotly and coldly want a -Lover: hotly with my Body and coldly with my Mind. - -A dusk has just gone. I sat looking out at it. - -A mist of dark cream tinged with heated violet came from nowhere and -hung above the ground. - -Suddenly came on me a sense of bewildering mysterious beauty. - -In it was a feel of rippling warmth that crept into my bone-and-flesh -from forehead to heel, from temples to soles, from crown to toe-tips. - -It crept slow and suffocating like magic chloroform. - -I leaned elbows on window-sill and chin on palms and sunk my gaze -in the violet shades outside and straightway knew I wanted a Lover: -not in delicate moonlit culmination like Juliet in her balcony: not -denyingly like the timid young nun in her cloister assailed unaware -by faint forbidden emotions. - -I wanted a Lover like the jungle leopard leaping through the -Springtime covert at nightfall to find her mate. - -It is a subtle and an obvious feeling, made of a merciless beauty. - -It is the tired urge of sex-tissues and nerve-cells: positive, -furious, fiery as the bloodiest sun. - -It is the same which the heated leopard feels in her sharp immaculate -lust. It is quite the same--but it could not move me as I sat alone -loverless to the knitting of an eyebrow, to a change of posture, a -movement of elbows on the window-sill or of palms beneath my chin. -Nor could it, though the potential Lover had stood outside my window. - -For any woman of any charm the world is full of Lovers: each and -all to be had by the flutter of her finger, the droop of her white -eyelids, the trembling of her pink-bowed lips. The world is full of -them--facile Lovers, craven, potent and pinchbeck. And it's that kind -I want hotly with my Body, coldly with my Mind in dusks of rippling -warmth--rippling, rippling warmth-- - -I want the Lover as the leopard wants hers. But I'm not a leopard: -instead, a woman-person of keen sentientness and wild wistful -imagination. So I wouldn't so much as crook a finger to call a Lover -to me: a curious nervous inertia. - -It's only I _want_ the Lover with frantic blind cosmic ardors -inside me. - -I analyze it in my magic Mind and find I would call no Lover. -I analyze farther and find I'd reject all but an impossible -one-in-ten-thousand. But remains the desire, hot as live embers, -cold as hail. - -Sex is an odd attribute. It has been to me like a blest impediment -and a celestial incumbrance and a radiant curse.-- - -When I was seventeen I stood on a threshold and peered curiously into -a dim-lit strange-scented Room. - -It was unknown to me then. My mind alone bespoke it. As I stood at -its doorway the air it wafted out touched my sense with only the -lightest frayed-cobweb contact, unintelligible and unenlightening. I -had lived an emptily alone girlhood. I was icily virginal. - -At five-and-twenty I crossed the Room's threshold. I breathed -lightly the odd fragrance. I looked curiously around. I touched some -amorous-looking grapes and some love-promising apples that lay about: -I bit into one and burst a grape with my finger and thumb. I gathered -a weak-petaled flower or two. I gauged the Room and its furnishments -and was unthrilled by anything in it. Even bodily it left me -unthrilled. - -Those two memory-mists do not keep me in the now-dusk and in the -strength and terror and fire of top-most youth from wanting a sudden -Lover with all that's in my Body. - -Love has naught to do with it. Love is a flame-winged Bird. I know -it. I know the values of my life and of me. I do not mistake tapers -for torches, ducats for louis d'ors, vicarious nepenthe for dreamless -death. - -In dusk-moments my bone-and-flesh is all of me I'm sure of. It begins -and ends in this earth. It answers the violent summonses of this -earth and its dusks. - -In the just-gone dusk I felt the prickling blood flow to my -finger-ends. A flood-tide, blinding red, surged and seethed and -bubbled and pounded at my heart. - -'I want a Lover--some Lover'--I murmured to the shadows beyond my -window. - -I grew breathless. - -The spirit of my flesh rose like a wind-blown flame. - -A loud cry rang in my nerve-wilderness. - -That moment the variant analysis which always rides with me stopped -dead. - -There came instead sheer feeling--the merciless beauty. - ---a man-person, maybe--the man of happy unanalytic brutality--to be -suddenly there with me: to flash into my shadowy solitude like a -lightning bolt and burst and break me. - ---a quarter-hour of exquisite wildness--restlessness, made of -Star-flame and Lily-petal and Cloud-burst on Mountain-summits and -Sea-waves purple in a Stormy Dawn--an intolerable hunger and ecstasy-- - -But just gone and I sit writing it in the pale cast of thought. - -But breathlessly I recall the breathlessness of it. - - - - -_My shoes_ - - - To-morrow - -I love my Shoes. - -I love them because they so guard my feet. - -I walk many a mile along the stone pavements and into distant odd -streets and on open roads at the outskirts of this Butte. - -And while I walk I think. - -I think things of a great many kinds--potent and magic and mad. -The act of walking starts an engine in my sparkling infernal mind. -And the weight and the sting and the hurt and the fascination of -my walking thoughts bear down on my slim feet as they carry me -along. And the hard-beaten world beneath them feels resentful and -uncomplaisant to my soles. - -And then I look down at my Shoes with their trim tailored vamps and -their walk-worthy soles and instantly my feet feel secure against -evil, smartly protected from my thoughts and from the world's -surface: my thoughts which shoot down on them out of my devilish -brain and the world-hardness beneath them. - -To-day I was walking along the road that leads up the ever-wonderful -Anaconda Hill--a place of stones and sand-wastes and hoists and -scaffoldings and mines with ten thousand digging men thousands -of feet down in their metallic bowels. Close by were melancholy -mulberry-toned mountains at the north-east. They were tragic, -triumphant, grief-stricken, terrifyingly beautiful. Purple clouds -hung around them like mourning veils. I can't look enough at -those--it is as if there weren't enough looking-power in my human -gray eyes. - -Presently I came to a small open space as I walked, a toy desert. A -toy desert is more like a desert than is a real one. The sand in it -is grayer sand. The stones are abrupter. The sun is flatter-looking. -The air is less willing to furnish breath to a human being. The best -that could be said of this one is that it was intolerably desolate. I -looked about and about it. And suddenly I was afraid. Afraid of many -things: afraid of grief-stricken mountains: afraid of my life and -of Me. - -I leaned against a yellow ledge of rock with a subtle sickening -faintish feeling. 'I am afraid,' I said inside me, 'of this world and -this life, and of all things little and large--nerves and Christmas -days and poetry: toy deserts and all. How can I cope with it--I -alone?' - -Then I looked down at my Shoes of black soft dull leather and cloth, -buttoned snugly around my ankles and with tough supple soles fit to -take me to Jericho and back. Thus neatly armored I felt suddenly my -blue-veined feet need fear nothing from sand and stone and hardness -of ground. And if my feet are not afraid--my feet which bear weights -of all-of-me--why should afraidness touch my spirit which is proud? - -There will be always Shoes in the world: stout stylish serviceable -boots, and pale delicate rat-skin pumps, and satin mule-slippers. - -And always I shall have Shoes: in toy deserts I shall have black -strong snug-buttoned ones. - -I looked at them in this toy-desert and straightway I wasn't afraid. - -It has been often like that. - -So I love my Shoes. - - - - -_An eerie quality_ - - - To-morrow - -When I was Ten years old I played marbles 'for keeps,' smoked -little pieces of rattan buggywhip in the hay-scented barn and slid -'belly-buster' down long winter hills on my sled. And I hammered and -sawed ruinously with grownup tools, whistling happily. And I played -with dolls absorbedly for hours on end. - -I was not boyish and not girlish. - -I was not childish except for an oddly hungry child-heart. - -I was myself. - -So long ago and longer I consciously owned an eerie quality which -toppled over the edge of my humanness. - -And still own it. - - - - -_A helliad_ - - - To-morrow - -This noonday as I sat on the veranda two young lads stopped by the -stone coping which borders this front yard, and conversed. One was -eager-looking and about eleven years old. The other was perhaps -thirteen and morose and he had a small rifle which he polished with a -bit of waste, not lifting his gaze as they talked. - -Said the younger boy: 'Say-Frank, I could 'a' had that old shot-gun -off my dad if I'd 'a' went after it to Rocker that time.' - -'Like hell you could,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, you know that Winchester o' Billy O'Rourke's?--he made -six bull's-eyes and one inside ring with it day 'fore yesterday.' - -'Like hell he did,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, Mexicans and Indians can get a guy ev'ry time with a -long-distance rifle without taking aim through the sight.' - -'Like hell they can,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, there's a kid down on South Arizona that's got a Colt -automatic that'll hit without him aiming at all.' - -'Like hell there is,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, you know them little brass machine-guns the militia's -got?--the bores o' them things 're rifled just like this.' - -'Like hell they are,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, my grandfather in Illinois 's got a bullet in him he got -at the battle o' Fredericksburg in the Civil War.' - -'Like hell he has,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, it costs a hundred-thousand dollars to make a Krupp gun -and eighty dollars ev'ry time you fire it.' - -'Like hell it does,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, it ain't a felony to croak a burglar with a gun even if -he's only breakin' into somebody else's house.' - -'Like hell it ain't,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, my mother goes huntin', too--she can shoot rabbits and -ducks on the wing and once she got a deer with that big old .44 o' my -Uncle Walt's.' - -'Like hell she did,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen, will you gimme your gun for my bicycle, both my -catcher's gloves and four dollars when I get paid?' - -'Like hell I will,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen, will you gimme it for my bicycle, my two -catcher's gloves, four dollars when I get paid and my shepherd pup?' - -'Like hell I will,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen,--and my artificial snake?' - -'Like hell,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen,--and my half o' Ernest's camera?' - -'Like hell,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--listen,--and my last year's shin-guards?' - -'Like hell,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank--_listen_,--and my _this_ year's shin-guards?' - -'Like _hell_,' said Frank. - -'Say-Frank, come right down to it I don't want a .22. If I get a gun -this year it'll be a .32.' - -'Like he--'-- - - * * * * * - -Which point I felt to be the too-note of the helliad, so I rose and -came into the house. - -I felt replete with rhythm and with a sense of surprising human -attitudes remote from my own. - - - - -_Swift go my days_ - - - To-morrow - -Swift, Swift go my days. - -By rights I think time should drag with me, for I am wasting my -portion of life as I live it. - -But my days pass Swift--Swift, Swift. - -They come, they fly away--before I know. - -I'm thinking it is Tuesday: but while I'm thinking--Wednesday has -come: and gone: and Thursday is rushing in. Tuesday, blue-and-gold or -gray-and-silver, with its mornings and nights and bits of food and -openings of doors and thinkings: Wednesday with the same equipment: -Thursday the same. - -Each day comes and goes like a flash of filmed silvered garbled light. - -But there is time in each for me to touch the enchanted Everydayness: -time for the turbulent sly delight of tasting, smelling, feeling the -eternal humors and romances in each small thing near me--my Clock, my -Window, my Jar of Cold Cream, my Two Thumbs. There is time in each -day for it to make me pay a wearing glimmering feverish homage to the -mystic daily godhead. - -My life exacts terrific homages from me. - -I am wearing out--frailly, tiredly, from a desolate uneasy love of -living. - -It is why my days go Swift when by rights time should drag leadenly -in punishment for barbarous futileness. - -There is not time-space enough in any of the days sufficient to love -the virile green and the murderous red and the sweet pale surprising -purple in the sunset above the west desert: nor space to love the -smell of a sudden August rain: nor the flaming delicate Idea of the -poet John Keats. - -While I'm starting to love each of those to its height of -love-worthiness--the to-day is gone: and the to-morrow, which must -see a new love-game started for each Thing, is come. - -But while I say 'is come': it's gone. - -So Swift go my days--oh Swift, Swift! - - - - -_By the blood of dead Americans_ - - - To-morrow - -Since I wrote the beginning of this there has come the war in Europe: -a war full of suffering brave women and dead children: full of -German greed and cruelty and stupidity and of French gameness and -cheerfulness, French splendor of valor. - -It has an effect of some kind on each person who reads so much as its -'headlines.' - -It has the effect on me of making me a jealously patriotic American. - -It makes me think of Lexington and Gettysburg with an odd furious -personal shame. - -We are Americans not by accident but by the blood of dead Americans. -But we assume it is by accident. - -We lie down like a nation of bastards to let the pig-hearted Hun -trample by proxy on our neck. - -It was for America to declare war in the same hour the _Lusitania_ -passengers met murder. - -We were not 'too proud' but afraid. Afraid and not ready. - -Not ready has no right thing to do with it. - -They were not ready at Lexington. - -I long with some passion to exchange my two black dresses for two -white ones with red crosses on the sleeves: to serve my country in a -day of death and honor. - -It too is all the time under my skin though I write along but in this -flawed song of myself. - - - - -_To express me_ - - - To-morrow - -I suppose I'm very lonely. - -It is luck--luck from the stars--not to be beset by clusters of -people, people who do their thinking outside their heads, 'cheerful' -people, people who say 'pardon me': all the damning sorts scattered -about obstructing one's view of the horizons. - -But for want of--other, _other_ people--I am intensely lonely. - -When I was eighteen I thought I must be the most lonely creature in -this world. I analyzed my life then as now and it by itself had set -me apart. But I stood then as it's given Youth to stand--on High -Ground. I was strong to endure loneliness while viciously hating -it. There was unaware a hope-colored bliss in my inexperience which -companioned me. I felt it then without knowing I felt it. I can see -that plainly now. - -Now also I see plainly and feel plainly that I stand on lower ground, -at poorer vantage. As my bodily strength which was then robust is -now slight. The metaphysic life-shadows reach me more easily. They -have a feel of fatally shutting down, fatefully closing in. They are -the mirages on the dun-colored worldly air near me of my own useless -untoward selves. There is no more the hope-colored bliss. - -At eighteen I said to me: 'I'm lonely but some day I may be happily -friendshiped and apprehended and it will be like paradise.' - -Now I say to me: 'I'm lonely by fate and by nature and temperament. I've -known some friendships of vivid alluringness and informingness--they -await me now in the offing. And others. There _is_ paradise in it--an -odd sweet dubious paradise. But what's the use--?' - -It's that what's-the-use, born of the lower vantage-ground and -the closing-in shadows, that chiefly makes me lonely--lonely to a -desperateness and on through to a ruinous calm. - -It is this metaphysic loneliness which breeds in me one constant -reasonless restless urgent motif: to Express me: not of-the-past -except desultorily, not of-the-future save indifferently: but of -my low-toned, low-echoing now. Until I've Expressed me there's no -setting open the gates of my spirit to a passer-by, though the -passer-by should be a poet-in-the-flesh, a god, an angel with a torch. - -Four-and-twenty turbulent moods may break over me in a day, or -four-and-twenty passive ones, or four-and-twenty someway joyous ones. -But like the theme in a fugue this loud tranquil recurrent need to -Express me transcends them all. - -It is a big voracious part-human bird of prey. Of it too I say -what's-the-use. But it is a need without a use, a need scornful of -use. It springs unconceived, unsourced from inside me. It rises from -the ashes of blightingest moods and beats its bruising strong wings -against my face. - -It says: 'Know me, defer to me, Slim-woman. Serve me, follow me, -gather-in all your answers for me. Do this though I undo you, though -I rend you, tear you with my sharp teeth so like a wolf's. When -you've answered me I may let you go. Until then, turn to me. Tell me: -tell me again and again. Utter yourself. Interpret. Unfold.' - -It makes my life-space someway sweet, someway heartbreaking, someway -frightful--strewn with dust of broken stars. - -I live long hours of nervous profound passionate self-communion. I -discover strange lovely age-worn facets of my Soul. I discover the -subtle panting Ego--the wonderful thing that lives and waits in its -garbled radiance just beneath my skin. - -To ask oneself and make answer out of oneself is the most delicious -of this life's mental delectations. I might have missed it but for -those beating bruising wings against my face, now and years ago: for -expressing breeds the last Expressions. - -I might have gone on through years and decades and lumps of months -knowing at best a little of some rare person, a little less or -more of another rare person, a little of a musician's soul in a -nocturne, a little of a dead poet's splendors. But to Me and my own -fine spirit-relationships to those things I could remain, but for my -radiant flawed egotistic interpreting, eternally strange. - -But for it I'd not have the wit to perceive the one human being in -the world I may know with vitalness: my own Self. I should drop into -my grave at last without a good-by to the glowing one who was locked -just inside, whose hand I'd never clasped, whose sad prescient eyes -I'd never looked in, who was then flitting out and on and away. - -It is a being cruel and transfiguring and terrifying: terribly worth -clasping close and breathing with. - -And some days it sleeps, sleeps like the dead: it is delicater than -rose-vapors before the dawn: a sun-blown faery thing. - -When it sleeps I'm left alone. Then comes a doubtful dreadful quiet, -a hell of dumbness that only God could reach. - -It is as if neither God nor I attempts to cope with it. - - - - -_Bastard lacy valentines_ - - - To-morrow - -The thing I admire most is strength. The thing I most hate is -Weakness, of each and every kind. - -All the reassuring things in the world are in and of the strong deeds -done in it. All the mischief and despair come from human Weakness. - -I would better strongly murder my foe than forgive him Weakly for -my seeming advantage. I would be happier in my mind as a careful -charwoman than as a loose-jointed poet. I would rather have a -farthing's value as a faithful concubine than no value as a slattern -housewife. - -Strength repays itself with strength--and with magnificence. - -Truth is strength nearly always: and _not_ always. - -To cheat strongly in the life-game gets me more than does Weak easy -honesty. By being a strong man Napoleon brought home the bacon. Being -an honest one would have got him not one rasher of the bacon of _his_ -desire. The race is too ridden with 'temperament' to let truth be -its prevailing force. But strength plows its scornful way through -temperament like a steam-shovel. The bacon Napoleon brought home he -took from other people, causing them misery. They were Weak and let -him take it, or they were strong and got killed trying to keep it. -To get killed trying to keep your bacon is to be even stronger than -the Napoleon who lives and takes it from you. Those who sit still and -_let_ Napoleon get their bacon are fit only to be themselves made -into bacon. - -Truth belongs with love, with friendship, with charity, with psychic -lovingkindness: with all the altruistic graces and tendernesses. - -But in the mere grinding livingness of things it is to be strong. I -say to Me, 'Mary MacLane, be strong: whether you're living joyous on -a hill or mournful in a valley, make shift to be strong.' - -In which paragraphs I make an apologetic preamble to Me when about to -dwell on my odd ironic element of Weakness. My Weakness is not an art -nor a science nor a gift nor a trait but is a sort of ruinous trade -touched with all of those, a trade at which I work and lose heavily -from a viewpoint of personal economy. - -In Atlanta-Georgia lives a man with whom I exchange semi-occasional -letters. He is thirty-nine and clever and what is called a business -man. He is a business man not only by circumstance but by nature. -At a glance one would picture him in the setting of an office in -a steel-and-brick building with a roll-top desk, a swivel chair, -a cabinet full of files, a stenographer with an unregenerate -vocabulary, and stationery neatly engraved with his name, his -business, his cable address and his telephone number. The look of the -neat letterhead and the fibrous feel of the bond paper give one the -idea that whoever went into a business venture with him would come -out of it disadvantageously. - -After another glance at himself one would infer that his leisure -hours might be fancifully spent. In hours of ease some business men -follow baseball, others golf, 'tired' ones musical comedy. Others -take up curio collecting or some personal phantasm. In the latter -category is my acquaintance of Atlanta. He affects Mary MacLane and -musings of her in his leisure hours. But what I am to him does not -concern nor much interest me. What he is to me concerns me, for -he--his letters--are a present source of my elaborated Weakness. - -I feel a wave of conscious Weakness washing over me as I write about -it. His letters make a soft buffer, a foolish pretty window, a tinted -veil between me and my too-harsh actualities. - -I met him when I lived in New York. He had read the book I wrote -in the early nineteen-hundreds and at meeting me he conceived a -thinly insistent admiration which someway went to his head. He has -at intervals since then written me letters full of charmed and -salubrious flattery and of appreciation and praise for traits and -gifts and qualities which I do not possess. They appeal and cater -remarkably to my vanity--and are pleasant and unreal and vain and -fatuous and fond and piquant. - -He is a clever man and does not make love to me. A butcher's-boy may -write love-letters--and I'd prefer those of a butcher's-boy to those -of a business man: they would be more sincere and less hopelessly -discreet. But this business man is discerning and intuitive and -writes me no love. His wife--a business man always has a wife--could -not rationally object to what is in the letters, though she would -irrationally and naturally object to the letters themselves. She -is unloving and unloved--they always are--but whatever may be her -caste (I know only that she is tall and blonde and named Bertha) -she doubtless would find something superfluous in the idea of her -husband's letters to me. - -A letter comes from him in Georgia after I have written him a brief -disquieting one with a latent human appeal in it to make him think -the chief thing I need in life is his appreciation, his attitude -toward me, to brace my spirit. Then his comes, written in his small -slanting commercial hand. It is arresting from any angle and well -thought, well couched. - -In it he tells me that my brain, scintillantly brilliant though it -is, needs the dim twilights of other brains such as his to catch the -sparks it throws off. - -Which is a lie. My brain is not scintillantly brilliant and it -'needs' nothing. But the lie is agreeable to read. There is a gentle -caressingness in its untruth which feels someway soothinger than any -flattering fact. - -And he tells me my chief attraction as an individual is my ability -accurately to gauge another individual and to breathe myself -graciously out to it and upon it while pretending to be immersed in -my own ego. - -Which is another lie. Immersed in my own ego is never a pretense -with me, and I have not gauged--in the sense of weighing and -measuring--another individuality except to hate it. But it is -piquantly restful to hear that I am thus benign. - -And he tells me that though several years have passed since he and I -took leave of one another he has never forgotten that last parting -because it was like the passing of a little weir-woman who brushed -him lightly with her garments as she went. - -Which is another lie. My association with him was in brief meetings -at hectic studio tea-fights and two noisy dinners at Churchill's, -at all of which I frowned impatiently at his tiresome conversation. -And his leave-taking with me consisted in his sharpening a -lead-pencil--beautifully he sharpened it--for me to write a telegram -with. It was not until this correspondence that we established an -unreliable intimacy. But to be told I seemed a weir-woman to a -hard-headed business man who could doubtless cheat a client out of -four thousand dollars easily in a half-day's maneuvering is oddly -inspiriting. - -And he tells me he is highly privileged to be permitted to gaze in -at the mezzo-tinted windows of my soul, which are surely curtained -against the passing proletariat. - -Which is another lie. He has never remotely glimpsed my tired Soul in -the firmly false little letters I've written him. As to its being a -privilege if he had: it is the proletariat, it so happens, who have -first chance at those windows, which are not mezzo-tinted but made of -the plainest of plain glass. But the conceit tastes mellow and naif -and bromidic and appetizing to me, like cream and raspberries in July. - -And he tells me the most delightful thing in the world would be to -live near me and have a season of daily meetings--meetings of astral -selves upon a 'higher plane' whereon we should exchange those flowers -and fruits of the spirit which grow not from the soils but from the -esoteric essences of life:--that sort of thing. - -Which is another lie. No possible man (except a Poet whom I -loved--or perhaps a scientist--) could find me delightful for more -than two consecutive meetings--I develop something like temper--and -I care for no higher planes except in airships. As for esoterics--I -would fainer exchange musings anent over-shoes than over-souls. And -my spirit bears in fertile earthy soil chiefly thistles from which -men gather no figs. But it gives me a warmish feeling, similar to -a hot-water bottle between my shoulders on a winter night, to read -that picturesque palaver written to me in my slim scorn by him in his -springy swivel chair. - -Thus it goes. His letters are made all of softest quaintest lies -which I know to be lies the moment my gray gaze falls on them. All -his premises in regard to me and his deductions from them are roundly -lightly mistaken. But I like that fluent flattery the more because -it is so false. I am too vain a creature to want to cope often with -truths even though they might be uplifting self-lauding truths. My -vain peculiar Weakness demands as well semi-occasional collations of -creamed lies upon which it feeds like a sleek cat on creamed fish. My -humor enters into it, in no obvious way but eerily like a gay ghost. -My humor is a strong influence in me. It is stronger than my pride -and anger and fear and caution and reverence and self-love--stronger -than most things I own. - -And it's for reasons of pastime and vanity and oblique humor I -let letters from the business man come, though not often, into my -solitudes. And I spend hours of inert time-waste conning his fanciful -ideas. And the letters I write him in reply, though brief and -impersonal and done in my best false manner, consume a surprising lot -of time and mental and physical force to write. It is the Weakness in -it which is so devouring: it eats me hungrily and lingers about like -a buzzard, picking my bones. - -A spinelessly Weak game. I hate its Weakness more than I like its -pleasant futility. I hate it and myself in it all the time I'm -dwelling on it. I hate it as I'd hate a little drug habit fastened on -my nerves. - -Its influence is the same but more insidious than a drug would be, -more demoralizing. As feeling fear makes one afraid, feeling more -fear makes one more afraid. - -Still once in a month, once in a two-month, I feel the hankering -itch to be applauded for second-rate qualities I do not own, and I -give way to it: in a particularly Weak way, after my sanest self has -reduced it analytically to shreds, and after saying bosh! with all my -selves. - -After telling Me too that it is a common-tasting game. Life is a -strange music-clangor of gold bells, some silent, some far-echoing. -And the common-tasting thing cracks a bell-edge. - -Then briskly I answer the last letter from Atlanta-Georgia and soon -there comes a fresh sheaf of smooth velvetish lies to pad my way. - -There may come no more if this I write now should find its way to -Atlanta-Georgia. Or if fate or Bertha should intervene. - -But always I know Weakness of me will find ways to work at its losing -trade. - -It is of the dubious inevitable side of human nature--like gold teeth -and tinned salmon and bastard lacy valentines. - - - - -_Sweet fine sweatings of blood_ - - - To-morrow - -Merely from the view-point of outward intellect this book of myself -is oddly difficult to write. - -My most-loved thing to do and my hardest thing to do is to write. - -It is hard to catch and hold with mental fingers one's own emotions -and then doubly hard to write them. A feeling is something without -the words and without even the thought. To put it into the thought -and then into the words is a minuter task than would be the -translating of a Francois-Villon poem into Choctaw. - -It's a knowing person who realizes her own emotions and a knowinger -who recognizes what is what, who is who, which is which among them. -I look inward at Me and I see an emotion of World-Weariness and -want to write it. I write it as nearly as I can. But when I have -done--it's not World-Weariness that I wrote but its twin-sister, -Boredom-of-the-Moment, which happened to be next the other when I -looked. I am glad to have transcribed Boredom-of-the-Moment. It is -the finer and thinner and more elusive of the two. But how and why -did I fail of World-Weariness? - -But sometime when I aim at Fear or Resentment or Surprise it may be -World-Weariness I'll bring down unexpectedly with a clean wing-shot. - -When I set out to write the Look-in-my-Eyes it may be the -Feel-of-my-Fingers that comes out in my round writing. Another time I -think I'm writing my Bad-Tooth: until I get it written when it turns -out to be my little Eye-Wrinkles. - -Having failed of the thought often I fail of the words. When I have -a particularly M.-Mac-Lane thought to express I review the top tier -of my vocabulary of words to find proper ones for it. They are all -very nice words in that top-tier--neatly washed and dressed and -hair-brushed and tidied-up, like the children in a small private -school: words like Necessary and Irresolute and Crockery and -Inconvenience and Broth and Apprise: good words and useful if one's -thought is radical or risky and wants conserving. I call some of -them to me and question them and consider them and ponder a bit, and -decide they will none of them suit. Then I go to the bottom tier, the -unkemptest of words in the untidiest attire: words like Traipse and -Nab and Glim and Hennery and Chape and Plash. And I at once reject -those as too carelessly bred for my terse thoughts to associate -with. (But for my uncombed ungroomed grimy-faced thoughts I turn to -them.) Then I glance over a tier of mysterious words, spruce but -with indefinable vagabond faces: such as Whelk and Mauger and Frush -and Gnurl and Yare and Hyaline. They are expressive but of a kind -it's well to use with caution, the kind that may trip up thoughts -that would make them their medium and lead to slips 'twixt cups and -lips. So I dismiss them with a mental reservation of one or two to -use if I fail to find right ones among the less mysterious. Then I -turn to a tier that represents the virile middle-class in words, the -lower-case words, the mob and riot words, the words for poets and -anarchists and prophets: such as Adroit and Nightingale and Gallows -and Gutter and Woman and Madrigal and Death. And I say, 'Without -doubt here are my words.' But I use discretion. I know that tier of -words to be of the nature of bombs, of strychnine, of a dynamic force -resistible against all human and wordly substance. They also must be -used cautiously and with a sparing hand. With caution one can handle -a bomb, and sparingly one can eat strychnine, and one can control -any dynamic force by studying its tendencies and keeping out of its -direct road. It behooves one to heed those conditions in broaching -the countermining counter-irritant words if one would avoid blowing -oneself analytically broadcast. - -So I may have found the right sort of words and measured their -possibilities and pitfalls. But again: it's a nerve-racking task -to choose out one word from seven, one from five, one from two. I -see two words which may be the only proper ones out of ten thousand -to bear my thought. The two may be Echo and After-glow, each an -unacknowledged half-sister to the other: meaning respectively -something living and growing and vibrant in my spirit-ears, and -fading and dying and radiant before my spirit-eyes. But because my -spirit-ears may glow bright and hot from what they heard, or my -spirit-eyes may seem to themselves to gaze a moment at a soundless -sound--an Unheard Melody of Keats,--I miss the raylike distinction -and I write After-glow when my true word was Echo. - -But another time I write Echo perfectly and masterfully to my own -delight: having meant After-glow. - -So it is. There's no plain sailing on this analytic sea. And if there -were it would be not worth while. I want nothing, nothing, nothing -that comes easily. What comes easily I distrust, be it love or -language. It afterward proves dead-sea fruit. What I suffer to get I -know to be life-food even if it drugs or pains or poisons me. It is -one lesson I have learned. - -Without doubt it is so with everybody, all around. One sees only -surfaces, husks. Anyone looking casually at this Me sitting writing -might say, 'How easily and smoothly and well she writes. How kind -of God to give her so light a task in life. How complacently go her -working hours.' And I looking casually at--oh--Miss Lily Walker -singing and swaying and glancing sideways in a gorgeous Broadway -chorus--I might say, 'How easy a task in life has _that_ brainless -gazelle. To work with her body and not even with the sweats and -sinews of it like a scrub-woman, and not with the facile shames of -it like a lorette, but with the grace and suppleness and beauty and -suggestions of it, aided by a soprano throat and a soprano face--with -only the effort it wants to fling it all over footlights. And that -pastime gets her her livelihood.' - -But whoever marks me writing as one doing an easy task because I -write along rapidly enough considers nothing of my mental travail -for the thought, my blind grope for the language, my little nervous -anguish of choice among the double-edged and triple-pronged words: -and the neat concise failure of the result. - -And no, I do not thus comment on Miss Lily Walker. I have -an appreciative pleasure in her charm and suppleness and -bird-and-butterfly prettiness. But after a bit of contemplation and -analysis of her surface I deduce the unconscious struggle it may be -for Miss Lily Walker to be supple on nights when she does not feel -supple, the thin agony of being sweet when she does not feel sweet, -the neurotic torture of being seductive _regularly_--by the night: -the more that perchance the struggle always _is_ unconscious. Her -brain being required in her body it's to be assumed there's none in -her head. But I can deduce a nervous red heart beating illogically -somewhere in her being protesting dumbly sometimes against one irking -item, sometimes against another, sometimes against all the items in -Miss Lily Walker's scheme of life, but beating and beating on, like a -little automatic drum wound up tight and tossed into a maelstrom to -beat itself out. - -I'd like--like with breathless eagerness--to read the analyzed being -just beneath Miss Lily Walker's skin. - -Everybody--every human being--is wildly _Real_: radiant and -desolate.-- - -With no amount of temperamental struggling could Miss Lily Walker -analyze a psychic emotion of her own and then find the right -word-combination to write it in. - -With no conceivable effort of mine could I manage to be supple when I -do not feel supple. - -So Miss Lily Walker and I are quits at this game. - -It totals up evenly, all ways around. - -Nobody gets through one Real day--though it be a dayful of Real -lies--without a demoniacal struggle of soul or a heavy blow on the -personal solar plexus. - -And I make not even the intellect side of this book, which is a -Realness to me, without sweet fine sweatings of blood. - - - - -_Instinct--a 'first law'_ - - - To-morrow - -I long to do a Murder. - -Despite my futile way-of-life and my rotting destroying -half-acquiescence in it I have a furious positive Murder in me. - -One near me in my daily life injures me and goes on injuring me in -a way which is scourging and malicious and intensely petty. There -is in it helpless humiliation for me--me self-loving, proud and -determinedly unsuppliant--and it makes maddening Murder rise in me. - -I don't know why I do not do the Murder. I have nothing to lose by -paying the law-penalty: nothing but my life, and my life is stripped -bare--and was always barren by God's decree--of all that makes a -life sacred or lovely or precious. For long years and years, since -child-days, I have been lost. - -I don't know why I do not do the Murder: except that I think of it -and brood over it and turn it round and round smoulderingly in my -Mind. From no choice. I have tried to push the feeling away as a -common thing beneath me. It is beneath me, for I am not little but -someway big. But my Mind will take its toll of all that confronts me. - -The humiliation and the helplessness to combat being humiliated in me -who keep a casual proudness toward people is like a secret hot sword -thrust, and kept freshly thrust, in my flesh. It makes me wild to do -the Murder. But it makes me brood over it till the red act is lost in -red brooding. - -There come also thinkings. - -Murder, any Murder, is in its essence cowardly, a slinking meanness. -And I am not cowardly and I am not mean. I am above malice and -retaliation--all such impoverished impoverishing emotions. A shrug of -my shoulders and they are satisfied. The impulse to hit back after a -bitter wound is not of vengeance. It is instinct--a 'first law.' But -Murder is self-accusingly cowardly and sneakingly human. I can't get -away from that. To take away a person's life is like setting fire to -his house--an officiously stooping act. It's for me to live my life -in aloof self-sufficience. No human malice should reach me in it. -Then it's not for me to reach out of it and stain my good fingers -with unpleasant sticky blood. I am always in a prison of radiance and -gloom. - -But the mere habit of being a human being is breakingly insistent--no -matter how many or how few frocks one owns. Neither of my two dresses -is a protection against humiliation. A thin black serge dress -gives me to myself a melancholy cold inert air: but beneath the -smooth-fitting breast of it comes too often a throbbing frightful to -feel, frightful to know, made of fierce petty anger and abasing hurt. -I hide it and me in my room and twist my hands together and walk my -floor, and a hurricane of helpless bitter trifling woe shakes and -wrenches me. Then Murder enters me. - -What humiliates me is an obvious common thing that to any human one -would mean hurt and more hurt. Though I am determinedly brave I am -sensitive. - -I do not write itself because this is the book of me and not of -people. - -It is a slight, a poor and vivid cruelness. There is the tie of blood -in it which in all ways--from a deep heritage--I respect: and it rubs -an added stinging poison in the wound. - -It is an injury I do not deserve. What I deserve I accept. What I -do not deserve pressed on me to humiliate me makes Murder in me. -Regardless of the other one-- - ---it would be simpler and finer for me to do that Murder than to keep -it in me. So many times in a week the trembling smothering longing -to do that Murder beats, beats in my thin breast. To be so owned by -a thing so small:--it is grief and despair and fury and wild nervous -intolerableness. It strains my flesh--it wrenches my pulse--it blinds -my eyes--it fills my throat-- - ---it would be a simpler and finer thing to do any Murder than to -feel, even once, the strangling damnedness rising, rising at my -throat-- - - - - -_Loose twos_ - - - To-morrow - -I take it for granted God knows all about me. - -If God should read this it would not be news to him. - -But his knowledge of me is not immediate knowledge nor immediately -interesting to him. He knows my Twos-and-Twos but he does not make -Fours of them. - -I am formed of loose Twos which wait for God to make them Fours. - -I can not do it myself. When I've tried the added Twos come out -threes, seventies, nines, twelves--all the mysterious numbers. Never -Fours. - -Long ago I decided not to try but to wait for God. - -I juggle with temperamental and psychic Twos and experiment in -hysteric additions. - -But it's no good my trying to make Fours. - -If God does not take it up I shall be eternal Twos. - -And I seem not greatly to care: whenever that comes home to me I -merely light a carefree cigarette. - - - - -_Knitting or plaiting straw_ - - - To-morrow - -The things I know are jumbled and tangled into an indescribable heap -inside me. - -The things I Don't Know are separated and ranged of their own -volition in long orderly rows in my conscious mentality. - -The things I know glow with tints and gleams and will-o'-wisp lights -and primal colors and waveringly with the blinding gold-purple -lightnings of all-Time. - -The things I Don't Know glow--each one separately--with a small -precise lantern-brightness of its own. - -Also in my wide background are things I don't know and am unaware -of it: the mass of my luminous Ignorance--it shines with an earthy -phosphorescence. - -When I look at the things I know I get an undetailed perspective of -me like a bird's-eye view of London. - -When I look at neat formal rows of things I Don't Know I have a clear -look, as if through an uncurtained window into a bare little room, at -my quietest self sitting knitting or plaiting straw. - -I reckon up and count up and check up lists of big and little things -I Don't Know--like this, rapidly: - -I Don't Know what ink is made of, nor how to fire a Maxim gun: -I don't know how to make a will: I don't know how to cook a -prairie-chicken, nor what to feed a pet weasel, nor who invented the -snarling-iron, nor what it is. - -I Don't Know what food people eat in the Himalaya Mountains, nor how -Lord Cornwallis felt when he surrendered: I don't know the color of -a chicken's gizzard, nor of sand, nor of fish-scales, nor of mice: I -don't know whether an English cabinet minister needs strength of mind -or strength of will, or both, or neither. - -I Don't Know how I hurt the true heart of my friend: I don't know -astronomy nor solid geometry: I don't know what I think with: I -don't know what ooze leather is, nor who pitched for the Tigers in -nineteen-nine. - -I Don't Know a good horse from a bad horse: I don't know why a bat -sleeps head downward, nor what wasps live on: I don't know how to -open oysters, nor how to milk a cow: I don't know the Latin for -'whiskey.' - -I Don't Know whether friendship is a selfish or an unselfish thing, -nor who discovered the medlar apple: I don't know what is a jab, -fistically speaking, nor a punch, nor a hook, nor a wallop, nor the -fighting weight of Packey McFarland: I don't know whether a moth -'marries' or whether her eggs are impregnated like a fish's: I don't -know why a clasp knife is called a jack knife, nor what to do for an -aching foot. - -I Don't Know how glass is blown: I don't know whether coal is -vegetable or mineral: I don't know the chemical composition of the -sunset vapors, nor how to play euchre: I don't know how many guns an -armored cruiser carries, nor whether a gorilla meditates: I don't -know whether I hate or greatly admire Catherine and Marie de Medici: -I don't know a winch from a windlass. - -I Don't Know where is the cinnamon bear's native haunt: I don't know -how flint is mined, nor if wire is made of steel: I don't know who -was the better man--William Wordsworth or the Duke of Wellington: I -don't know the advantages of tariff revision downward: I don't know -where ex-President Taft will go when he dies. - -I Don't Know whether I feel more comfortable with or without my -stays: I don't know the origin of the word 'dogged': I don't know -whether a 'full house' is better than 'two pairs,' nor whether a -right merry heart to-day is better than a wrong contented mind -to-morrow: I don't know whether rabbit-pie is made of cats in Paris, -nor how many sails has a sloop: I don't know what makes a dead body -rot. - -I Don't Know how to sharpen a carving knife, nor how to roll a -cigarette: I don't know the real English meaning of the French noun -'elancement': I don't know whether my sex is a matter of my genital -organs or of my mental inwards: I don't know how to determine the -contents of a circle in square inches, nor how to pronounce 'zebra.' - -I Don't Know whether Edgar Allan Poe is big or little: I don't know -how many soldiers fell at Shiloh: I don't know whether temperament -or nature or circumstance makes one woman a happy kindhearted whore -and another an unhappy cruel-hearted nun: I don't know how to grow -artichokes: I don't know what brimstone is, nor how to play the -accordion: I don't know what quality in me forms my handwriting. - -I Don't Know what-like was my Soul in the Stone Age: I don't know -whether cheese is good or bad for my health: I don't know what -becomes of discarded hairpins, nor a tooth-brush's ultimate destiny: -I don't know the 'Fra Diavolo' opera, nor whether anyone ever uses -the word 'thwack.' - -I Don't Know whether my heart breaks from within or without: I don't -know whether 'good old Marie Lloyd' of the London 'halls' has a brain -like G. K. Chesterton or a dexterous individuality like a juggler: -I don't know whether I feel spiritual bliss in my knees or in my -spirit: I don't know why I breathe and go on breathing. - -I Don't Know what became of the ten lost tribes of Israel: I don't -know how to say how-do-you-do to a king: I don't know the exact -meaning of my terror and despair: I don't know why I love--why I ever -love-- - -I Don't Know whether laws of chance govern a spinning roulette -wheel and ivory ball or whether chance is beyond law: I don't -know what kind of missile a Krupp gun shoots: I don't know how a -ground-and-lofty tumbler turns a triple air-summersault: I don't -know whether I really am the way I look in the mirror: I don't know -whether the Russian language has Romanic roots: I don't know what is -the wild power in poetry. - -I Don't Know whether lust is a human coarseness or a human fineness: -I don't know why death holds a so sweet lure since it would take away -my Body: I don't know that I wouldn't deny my Christ, if I had one, -three times before a given cockcrow: I don't know on the other hand -that I would: I don't know whether honor is a reality in human beings -or a pose: I don't know that I mayn't be able to think with my Body -when it is in its coffin. - -I Don't Know what makes each day a Day of dark Gold and life -mournfully precious: I don't know where is God: I don't know how they -make tea in Ireland: I don't know how to pronounce the word 'girl': -I don't know how to make lace: I don't know whether I hear a sound -or feel it, nor why a spool of thread looks exactly like a Spool of -Thread. - -I Don't Know--I Don't Know--I Don't Know, rapidly, to the end of the -mystic common-place infinitudes. - ---those give me a clear look, as if through an uncurtained window -into a bare little room, at my quietest self sitting knitting or -plaiting straw-- - - - - -_A life-long lonely word_ - - - To-morrow - -Fleeting times I wonder if it is my defect or others' that no human -family tie holds and warms me. - -There is none. I think about it with wistfulness. - -The only tie-of-blood feeling that clings to me is of my warming and -keeping-alive. And it is very feeble. It grows more feeble. - -It is a trivial matter as I look at it universally. - -But as I look at it earthlily: there would be an abnormalness, a -lostness in one when the mother who bore her got from it at best but -a small cool dislike. - -It makes me feel humanly lost. - -'Lost' is the shuddering life-long lonely word that brushes against -me some nights and noons. - - - - -_Their voices_ - - - To-morrow - -Every day at half-past ten and half-past two I hear the high -shrill sweet choric Voices of hundreds of children shaking the thin -clear air. - -A public school is but a block from here. The children rush out of -it, a hilarious noisy crowd, for a few mid-morning and mid-afternoon -minutes. So those minutes, from hearing their Voices day after day, -and day after day, have become lyric to my inner-listening. - -Their Voices stir me, rouse me, speak to me with old very joyous, -very woful meanings. - -The children fairly leap out of the school-building through doors -and down fire-escape stairways. And their Voices are at once hurled -skyward, clamorous and chaotic. - -The Sound they make is a roundly common sound yet 'winged.' It is an -untrammeled Sound, uncultivated, only a little civilized. - -It is world-music. - -In it is the note beyond culture, higher than civilization, and -older. It is brave as voices of the shrilling winds and warmer, -viriler. It is liltinger than bird-songs and lustier than roarings of -mountain cataracts. - -Music of the world!-- - -A little door inside me opens to those Voices. - -My little door opens at the first shriek of the first child out of -doors, and I hear not only the hundreds of vivid piercing Voices but -more--their far-off echoes. - -They are the Voices of children, children light-held in crude cold -innocence. The eyes of the children are clear--their impulses and -instincts rule their little lives. They are yet untouched by the -tiredness and terror and shame and sorrow of being human beings. - -So the Sound of their Voices sweeps out resistless and regardless -as the sea or the sun which makes nothing of its own strength or -weakness. And through my little spirit-door I hear them, the poignant -common little sweet Voices, echoing, flying away, farther and -farther: along the roads: over plains and hills: through valleys long -worldly distances from here: through streets: through stone buildings -and dingy courts: through big rich houses: through homes of comfort -and homes of misery and homes of desolate smugness: into lifeless -social foyers: into learned places: into law-courts and cabinet-rooms -of nations: into graveyards and churches and down into dead-vaults: -into theatres: into clinics: into shops: into factories: into dives -and stews and brothels and at lustful doorsteps: into hotels and -on sport-courses: into market-places and across battle-fields, -round monuments and in towers and in forts and in prisons and in -dungeons:--there along fly their Voices. - -It is a brave, brave Sound, and an insistent: nothing stops it. - -It is triumph. - -The noise of the noisiest battle dies away in time. The pounding of -ocean-surf on the rocks and of electric thunder in the clouds are -lasting only with this earth. But brave wild Voices of children fly -on and on, outlasting a million earths, silencing aeons of thunder, -floating strongly back of the stars. The voices of men--wizards, -monks, artisans, thieves--echo no farther than their talking -conceits: even of poets except as they catch up into their sonance -something to interpret a cool gay clamor of child-Voices. The voices -of women--singing women, lovely women, angelic honest women--die with -their bodies: even of mothers of the children except as they follow -with their own echo, by dream and shadow, the thronging child-Voices -as they go. - -For the Sound of the child-Voices is more potent than wizards'--it is -not cramped into thought-forms: more devotional than monks' because -super-conscious; more menacing than thieves' because absolute. And -it echoes, echoes, echoes in the market-place full-tongued, ringing, -rising like the northern gale when all the other voices are long -dead-silenced: and after. - -Music of the world. - -This moment I hear it for it is half-after two of a bright gold -day. The air is emotional, nectareal, and mellow and yellow and -hot-sparkling. The Voices pierce it like a storm of fine steel -arrows. I at once set open my spirit-door and through it come the -sweet shrill chorus and the marvel echo beginning and swelling and -starting away. It wakes vision so that I see--quick, evil, terribly -human, in the dazzlingest daytime colors--all those Places where the -Voices go. - -I go to a window and watch the children running about beneath the -high tide of their Voices. And they and the school-building and the -streets and stone walls show in duller colors than the Places where -their Echo goes. - ---small girls with clipped hair and bloused cotton frocks, taller -girls throwing a basket-ball, thin-legged little girls playing -hop-scotch, groups of varied sizes with rainbow ribbons in their -hair, confused masses of knitted sweaters and fat white-stockinged -legs and shiny leather belts and ankle-strapped shoes, and -little young shoulders and knees and waistlines--restless and -kaleidoscopic-- - ---and confused boy-groups--little fellows in suits misnamed -Oliver-Twist, larger boys of serge-Norfolk persuasion, types of -the generic knickerbocker at once motley and monotonous--all with -the strong sturdy calves of their legs clad in a time-honored kind -of black ribbed stockings, all with the same breed of ties and -collars and short-cropped hair, all with the tacit air of confessing -themselves the most serenely cruel of all animals-- - -A careless conscienceless happy mob. - -It is the Sound of their Voices that invests them with the terrifying -Power, the long world-sweeping Force as of spirit and matter merged, -the human radioactivity not evil and not good, stronger than all evil -and all good. - -Those children I look at must cease to be children, and must lose -their Voices and grow into monks and thieves and singing women--must -turn into persons--'Romans, countrymen and lovers.' - -But will come after those another chorus: the same chorus: the same -Voices. - -The brief yellow mellow minutes have passed and the last shout has -been silenced and the hundreds of children, Rainbow Hair-Ribbons and -Black Ribbed Legs, are again gathered into the McKinley School. - -And my little door is shut again: that door opens but for those -Voices. - -The Voices: their echo flying everywhere flies here into my -still room: and it stirs me, rouses me, speaks to me with the old -joyous woe. - -Music of the world. - - - - -_My damns_ - - - To-morrow - -I bear the detailed infliction of being a person with a tired mixture -of patience and indifference and scorn. - -I say on Monday, Damn the ache in my left foot: on Tuesday, Damn -that rattling window--I hate it: on Wednesday, Damn this yellow -garter--it's too tight: on Thursday, Damn my futile life: on Friday, -Damn the solitude: on Saturday, Damn these thoughts: on Sunday, Damn -my two dresses. - -But I pronounce each day's Damn in a half-perfunctory half-preoccupied -tone, more from duty and fitness than from conviction. I intently -mean each Damn, but the scornful indifferent patience which is my -spirit-essence leavens each one. I swear at my life's perversities -with only a fatigued contempt due partly to bodily fragileness but -mostly to a cold continently reckless mood which is clasped on me -like a strong stupefied devil-fish. In this mood I should murmur the -same gelded Damn if I found myself penniless and foodless in strange -streets: if I became suddenly deaf: if my Body were being lashed with -whips or raped by a Mexican bandit. I should murmur the same worn -Damn if I were this moment on a gallows with the rope around my neck -and life were dearly madly precious. - -I mark that with my musing regrets. I remember in the strong young -furies of eighteen each new day of my life was filled with passionate -poetic blasphemy, protests and rebellions of youth. Those were not -tired, not acquiescent, not indifferent to slings-and-arrows, but -firey-blooded quick-pulsed breathless brave young Damns. - -There is splendor in being brave in a fighting attitude, but in being -brave through indifference there is no splendor. - -But it is only toward calamity and adversity and worldly untowardness -that I feel indifferent. Fighting blood is stirred in me if not -against the hated things then for the loved things. I could fight -and I could die, and love it, to save poet-lusters, poet-fineness, -poet-beauty from the world's flat griefs. In that, which I feel warm -and real and sparkling in my blood, in some splendor for me. - ---and also I could die for my country: and there is fighting hatred -stirred in me against its foes-- - -But in poetry there is nothing that evokes a lusty curse against its -vulgar adversaries. Poetry floats too high upon its dazzling wings. I -get delicately drunk from watching it till I can see the wings' Gold -Shadow touch its foes and magically split them into dust-atoms. - -So then the morale of my Damns remains perfunctory. - -But they are apt and useful. They fit into the nervous rhythms of my -life. They mark time in my spirit's flawed action. I begin each day -with a Damn of sorts. I end each day with a Damn of sorts. At midday -sometimes it's, 'Damn the terrifying ignorance of people.' In the -dusk a deep-felt Damn of the blood. In the night another. And at my -late eating time a negligible Damn. - -A wonderful word, Damn. It means enough and not too much. It means -everything in life, and roundly nothing. - -Without Damn my day would lack tone. Damn richly justifies each -pronouncement of itself in word-value, substance-value and musical -resonance. It harms nobody and it helps me. It destroys nothing and -it strengthens me. It damages my annoyances and mends me somewhat. - -But--perfunctory, desultory, tiredly insolent, it would be thrilling -to think the hot fire would sometime be back in my Damns. Better that -than Youth's faith in my dreams. Better that than the _jeune-fille_ -beauty in my hair. Better than even Youth's ichor in my veins: -Youth's fire in my Damns-- - -But there is dearness in this mood, which is indifferent and scornful -and slightingly patient, though it wants splendor. Let my Damns be -always brave, always contemptuous of disaster to me, and they will be -first-water value though their kind alter never-so. - - - - -_To God, care of the whistling winds_ - - - To-morrow - -This morning came a letter from a half-forgot friend in London. She -is in vaudeville and has been booked for two months in the Music -Halls. Her letter is of a tenor productive of a letter in turn. But I -am somehow not free to write letters to friends while I'm living in -my two plain dresses. So I wrote this letter to God instead: - - 19th November. - -Dear God: - -I know you won't answer this letter. I'm not sure you will get it. -But I have the feeling to write you a letter, though it should only -blow down the whistling winds. - -I haven't a thing to ask of you: no prayer to make. I am not -suppliant nor humble nor contrite. Nor would I justify myself as a -person in your eyes. I scorn to try to justify myself. What I am I -am. If I am a bad actor I take the results of it without plaint. -I comment on it--why not?--since cats may look at kings and each -person inherits four-and-twenty hours a day. But I am bewildered and -distraught and sad. - -The best you do for me, God, when I think of you--you personally--is -to make me bewildered and distraught and sad. - -But I've imagined I could put myself to you as a proposition to take -or to leave as you like: on my terms since I do not know yours. - -There are some verses--the Rubaiyat--in which you are upbraided as if -you might be the dealer in some gambling game who had the long end of -all the wagers and still so protected his money that _he_ could not -lose however the cards turned.--'from his helpless creature be repaid -pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allayed.'--'thou who didst with -pitfall and with gin beset the Road I was to wander in--.' - -But to me that seems a cheap attitude toward you, God. I admit you -are fair. If I thought you weren't my mind would not vex itself with -you at all. I can not make you out a crooked dealer nor one who lends -out bad money and demands good money in repayment. - -But you are reticent and cold-tempered and uninterested. So it seems. -The necklace which you gave me so long ago, made of little curses, I -wear always round my spirit-neck. It serves some purpose, perhaps, -and it answers as a keepsake: so at least I may not forget you -whether or not you forget me. I don't ask any more of your attention -nor anything more of you than I would be willing to give you in -return. But I wish you would be willing to exchange attention with -me. I am lonely. I am terrified. I am frightfully overshadowed by -myself and my odd aloofness and my thronging solitary emotions and my -menacing trivialities. I am always fearing not that I may be wicked -or immoral or allied with evils--I don't really care a tinker's curse -about that--but that I may be growing petty and trivial and weak. It -is horrible, horrible to feel that I may be a weakling--you, God, may -not know how horrible to me. It is like black annihilation for all -eternity when my Soul longs frantically, desperately to live. I feel -weakness to be the only immoralness--hateful and vile in whatever -aspect. I want to be strong to endure and to live in noonday lights -and to overcome my poorness. I want, though I'm far from it, to be -brave and big. What I admire you for, though you're so far off and -strange and inexplicable, is that you are strong. You are Strength, -you are Light, you are the Solution and the Absolute. You'd hardly -know what weakness is if it did not so crop out in this human race -you made. This human race is a faerily beautiful thing: star-flaming -poets have sung in it: lovely youth has breathed upon it: happy wild -hearts have informed it. But the odd keynote of it all is weakness. -And I have felt me tuned overmuch by that keynote. - ---but I won't be weak, I won't be, I won't be, God! Whether -you pay attention or not, whether I breathe only futileness, I -will be strong, strong, strong in myself--strong if only in my -falseness--strong and strong again-- - -This would be your chance with me if you cared to take it: because -I own now just my plain two dresses. When I grow out of this quiet -mood--(if ever I do: I begin to doubt it)--I shall have more dresses, -and then I shall think about them, God, and the phases of life -they'll build up around me, and not about you. It's not that pretty -frocks would take my attention away from you if you once claimed it. -Once you claimed my attention it would be yours forever. But pretty -frocks would mean I am again walking in paved peopled roads. Being -there without your attention I shall go where my garments may lead me -forgetful of you. One's life is of the flavor of one's clothes: 'the -wine must taste of its own grapes.' - -Now feels like a fitting time for you to be personal with me, to give -me a sign that you know I'm here. I know I am blind and ignorant -about that. You may know a time that shall be more fitting, a time -when my still mood and two dresses are long gone and my life is made -of fluff and lightness so your sign will crash into it like a black -two-ton meteor. I only tell you how it seems. If you should come -now and speak to me I should feel suddenly glad. To-day feels such -a day-of-God. The sky is all wet silver and the air a thin cloud -of gold. I sit writing you by my window, often looking out with -my forehead resting against the cool pane. There is an ache in my -forehead, in my insteps, in my backbone and in my spirit. By stopping -in here a moment you would gladden me. If you could give me, or show -me--where it perhaps had always been--one true thing to have always -in my life I should cling to it and ask nothing of it but that it -remain true. If you'd make me one far-off promise of a dawn to come -after this tired darkness I would take your word for it and would -walk toward your dawn in a straight road from which I should not ever -turn aside. In me is a small torch glowing though set in chaos. By -its light I should keep in the road leading to your dawn. I should -keep in it at any sacrifice to my merely human self: any sacrifice, -believe me. - -It isn't a bargain I would make with you. I don't like the thought of -a bargain with you. I would rather take the chance and lose honestly: -not in everything but in this matter with you. You show me the road -and I take it for the sole reason that it's a true one. I should -expect myself to pay the tolls--heavy ones since I'm innately a liar, -a someway bad lot. I know, the same as I know one and one make two, -that I've only to be square in the human business of living to get -back a square deal, though I'll get badly battered, with it. But it -isn't what I mean. Something inside me hungers for answeringness--a -Gleam--to make me know the worldly squareness and the battering are -worth while beyond themselves: but a detail in the game. - -You mightn't guess it but I am diffident about broaching this much -that may sound like a plea, so I'll say no more of it. - -But before I close the letter I want to tell you that I'm not wanting -in gratitude for the terrible beauty of this world. I feel with -ecstasy the burning loveliness of the life you give the human race. - -I want to tell you thank-you for some things in it. But all that they -mean I can not tell in words. - -Only yesterday a light at sundown lingered on the hill-tops and on -the desert back of the School of Mines in tints of Olive and Copper -and Ochre and Rose so delicate, so radiant, so dumbly forlorn that -I closed my eyes against it all as I walked along the sand: its -aliveness, its realness, its flawless golden dreadful peace tortured -and twisted and too-keenly interpreted me. - -And one summer day in Central Park in New York I saw a little -Yellow-Yellow Butterfly fluttering above a small plot of brilliant -Green-Green Grass in the afternoon sunshine. To you, God, used to the -purpling splendor of untold worlds that mightn't seem noteworthy. -But to me--because I am half-sister to so many trivialities the -Yellow-Yellow of those little wings and the sweet bright Green of -the clipped velvet Grass beneath the sun suddenly fiercely entered -in and beat-beat hard on my imagination. O the glare and the flare -of that fairy prettiness! I shall never forget that picture though -I should one day see those worlds. It made me think wildly of -you, God, at the time--and ever since. It is there yet in Central -Park, that particular plot of Grass, and if not that Yellow-Yellow -Butterfly--happily, happily Yellow it was--then another! - -And to-day and often other days I read this-- - - '_Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter_'-- - ---magic words: potent hushed wizardry of beauty. It opens the -doors of all the Inner Rooms and more blest, more precious, of the -celestial brain of him who wrote it. In making the glimmering Purple -of all your worlds, God, you have not surpassed the thing you made in -the regal wistful glory of John Keats. - -And two nights ago I went close to my glass and looked deep into my -own dark gray eyes, and they were beautiful. Their color is the gray -not of peace but of stormy sky and clouded sea. Their expression is -alien and melancholy and they are never without circlings of fatigue -or stress. And when I meet their glance they mostly accuse and -condemn and confound me. But two nights ago they grew wide and deep -and breathless-looking at realizing me human and alive. And presently -I saw, back of their gray iris--my Soul: like a naked girl: like a -willow in the wind: like a drowning star at daybreak: an inherent -inexpressible grace--my Soul of many ages. - -And this moment another little memory, God, of a tropic marsh -a little way back from the sea on the island in the bay at -St. Augustine, as it looked in the wane of one sun-flooded February -day. In the marsh were tall waving feathery salt-marsh grasses, -and little pools of murky water. And there were snail-shells and -ancient barnacles and smooth beach pebbles. And bordering the pools -were reeds and flags and tiny wax-petaled death-white lilies. By a -mound of wet moss was a slim wild blue heron standing on one leg and -staring about and preening its blue feathers. And over all the scene -was a Pink-Pink Flush. The curving quivering tops of the long grass -were Pink with it. The pools were dull Pink mirrors. The barnacles, -the pebbles, the death-white lilies were as if a thin bloody veil -had been flung down on them. Pink touched the heron's wings, its -beak, its head, its glittering beady eyes and spindly leg. The -sinking sun shot a Pink broadside of dream-dust all over the marsh: -it lingered and hung and floated. Almost I could have reached out my -two hands and gathered a bouquet of Pink Flush. The stillness, which -was intense, was Pink stillness. O but it was pleasant, pleasant, -pleasant, God--it wrapped me in a scarf of Pink sweetness: it filled -my throat with Pink honey: it laid on me a gentle eager quiet -covetous Pink spell. - -Nobody knows how you do it, God. But it is all--Sunset Tint, -Yellow-Yellow Moth, Conscious Soul, Poet-Flame--maddening and -precious and terrifying and transfiguring to me who live among it. I -cherish it as a lonely one may who loves it with passion and is never -happy in it. And for it all I thank you, God. - - Yours very sincerely, - Mary MacLane. - -I wrote the Letter on my long-unused monogram note-paper to please my -whim, and put it in the envelope and addressed it to God, care of the -Whistling Winds. He may receive it--what do I know?--only _he_ knows, -and is reticent. - -I only know he'll not answer it. - - - - -_A working diaphragm_ - - - To-morrow - -I am not Respectable nor Refined nor in Good Taste. - -I take a delicate M.-Mac-Lane pleasure in those facts. - -I doubt if they are anyway peculiar to me, but they feel like a -someway delicious clandestine circumstance: something to enjoy all to -myself. - -It is difficult to imagine any woman really Respectable on her inner -side, the side that is turned toward herself alone. And it's certain -no woman is Refined: it feels not possible. (There are yet inland -places where the word is used in its smug sense and believed in.) And -no woman but a dead woman in her coffin is in complete Good Taste. -Every live woman has for instance a working diaphragm: and in a -diaphragm there is, in the final analysis, simply no taste at all. - -(As for men--except poets--I mean _poets_: and perhaps scientists--they -are so ungenuine: a race of discreet cautious puppets: wooden dolls -who move as their strings are pulled: with nothing so real about them -inside as even outside--what use to dwell upon them?) - -Nearly all women are perplexingly interesting as human beings. And I -am quite the most interesting human being I know: and with it the -most appealing, the most sincere--in my own false fashion, and the -most bespeaking. - -It is much due to knowing and feeling me to be not Respectable nor -Refined nor in Good Taste: particularly to being not in Good Taste. - -One autumn evening in Boston I went to dine with a man in his -apartment in Beacon Street. He is a mining engineer whom I have -known since we were both children. He had bidden me to dinner in his -off-hand engineering way, but when I arrived at his diggings he was -not there. He did not come. Instead there was a dinner waiting, a -Japanese boy to serve it, and a strange man who had happened in. The -strange man had iron-gray hair, a brow like Apollo, a jowl like Bill -Sikes and much conversation. He said that he was newly from China, -South Africa and Egypt and that in his life he had been married -seven times with book and bell. Together we ate the dinner, talking -pleasantly in the light of colored Chinese lamp-shades. There were -little birds to eat and Chinese wine to drink--_sam shu_ distilled -virilely from rice: always a little of it is too much. After the -dinner we were standing by a teakwood sideboard and the strange man -was holding me tightly in his arms against a large smooth evening -panel of shirt-front, and he was kissing my mouth with a great -deal of ardor. I did not like it. I thought of all the women he had -married and wondered if they had liked it. And I mused in my placid -brain, 'As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives.' It -was the only thought in my mind as I waited boredly for him to have -done. (It's no good struggling.) And that incident I know was not -Respectable. - -And one summer day I was riding horseback up a steep gorge in these -Montana hills. It was hot dusty riding. I came to a mountain stream -with a beautiful little white-and-blue cascade tumbling over a high -rock upon smooth pebbles below. I got down from my horse, took off -my dusty khaki suit and all my clothes and stood under the fall of -the little tumbling cascade, whitely naked, without so much as a -figleaf's covering. It was delectable and pagan, what with my quaint -thoughts as I stood crouched beneath the sparkling splash. And I know -there was nothing Refined in it. - -And one evening between nine and ten, a week ago. I was walking -across the broad desert valley east of this Butte. It is late -November and the night was stormy. A strong high gale swept the -Flat. Presently it rained. I was on my way back with a mile or two -to go. It rained harder. Heavy sheets of black water whipped and -whirled down on me and wrapped me in their wet wings. I love all -weather when it is mild and more when it is rough except when it -bears down too hard: then I feel indifferent to it. As I moved along -the dark road not hurrying and not loitering I was saying inside -me, 'Why am I going to any shelter out of this heavy wet rain? Why -am I not a houseless beggar-woman with nothing gentler in all my -life than this November storm? It is not because I deserve gentler -things--' And with a sudden heavy shudder I whispered, 'I wish I -were a beggar-woman! I wish I had no roof to cover me in this cold -night-blackness. It would be honest: I should be stripped to my -deserts. And I wish it were so--this drenching rain, this strangling -wind--nothing but this--shelter, money, comfort, self-satisfaction, -however seemingly earned, are dishonest--thieved. I ought to -be--ragged beggar--bleared eyes--dirty petticoats--a foul ratty hole -to creep into--hunger--bodily misery--all the portion of outcasts-- -As God may hear me--I'd eagerly tremblingly change lives this moment -with a beggar-woman. I would--I would--!' It is a piece of clear -inside truth about myself. And I know it proves me to be in poor -Taste. - -It is a matter of attitude. Each of those incidents might happen to -any woman--except perhaps the last. I have known but one girl who -agreed with me in such a feeling. And not quite that feeling. She -had married a lot of money with a horrible old gentleman and had -wearied of both. But the other two episodes could readily belong to -any woman of _esprit_ who might be on the outside both Respectable -and Refined: even a woman lawyer. - -But my attitude in the incident of the strange iron-gray man, -though in a bored way I could have viciously knifed him, was not a -Respectable attitude. I was bored and fanciful when doubtless I ought -to have been breathlessly angry. But my breathless anger is too rare -and beautiful an emotion to waste on ridiculous strange iron-gray men. - -In the incident of the sparkling cascade my attitude was shameless: -something of the sort. It is never reprehensible for a woman to -take a cold shower-bath in solitude and health. But my spirit rose -and rejoiced at my bodily nakedness and then grew nymph-like and -figleafless on its own account. My sex exploited itself in mental -visions, like of Leda and the Swan or of myself as a slim villainous -Scotch Aphrodite conceived by a bold surprising Titian. And doubtless -I ought to have felt timorous in the vast sunlit mountainside, or -like a sexless child (or merely 'hygienic' like William Muldoon and -Bernarr McFadden). But the quick charm of the situation and the -heavenly anguish of the icy water, and my lovely Body, and my odd -moralless musings were too intriguing to expend themselves banalely. - -The wet night road and the beggar-woman wish: it is drearily real -to me. Though I wear two plain dainty dresses, in a house--in me, -beating, beating, pounding down is a cold wild heavy rain: and under -my feet a long lonely muddy road. If they belong to me--well. I love -Me the more for feeling them. - -And I feel them because I am not yet dead and in my coffin, but alive -and with a working diaphragm: which diaphragms are in not Good Taste. - - - - -_Lot's wife_ - - - To-morrow - -To-day in the afternoon I briskly manicured my fingernails, sitting -by my gold-and-blue window, and I mused upon Lot's Wife. - -So many persons and incidents and events and adventures and episodes -there are to muse upon, in this mixed world, dating from when it -began till now. There's something to charm any mood. Let me leave the -doors of my mind open and anything at all may float in like an errant -butterfly on a summer's day. - -It is an entertaining world, by and large: a limitless vaudeville. - -Lot's Wife is to me a fantasy from the antique, a bit of archaic -frivol to beguile me. - -When first I heard of her, from an acrid aunt of caustic humor who -told me the tale tersely in explanation of a biblical print, I was -seven years old. From that day to this my meditative thoughts have -from time to time flitted backward to dwell interestedly upon Lot's -Wife. Later when I went to an Episcopal Sunday-school I was pleased -to find this adjuration in according-to-St.-Luke: 'Remember Lot's -Wife.' There seemed no special meaning attached to it. It seemed like -Remember Lot's Wife in any way you like--as it might be with a card -on her birthday, a useless gift at Christmas, in your prayers, or in -retributive patriotism like Remember the Alamo, Remember the Maine. - -But I remember her because I like her. - -There's no name given for Lot's Wife in the brief biblical narrative, -so I long ago named her Bella as expressive of the temperament and -character that have grown around her image in my thoughts. Poor -Bella, I ruminated as I tinted and polished my nails. Her life in -Sodom was not entirely satisfying to her. Sodom was a town completely -given over to pleasure of the physical and outward sorts. The -dwellers lived in and for their physical senses alone. And Bella had -it in her to care for the foods of the spirit. Not that she longed -for them--she was not so conscious of herself--but she had it in her -to care for them had they been given her. Still, Sodom and its ways -were the best she knew and she had known them all her life. The roots -of her temperament had shot down into the Sodomesque substrata. She -fondly loved the place. - -Sodom was a prototype for Babylon or Pompeii, worshiping the hotness -of the sun in moralless plaisance, with fetes and drinkings of wine -from gold and silver cups, and bathings in warm scented marble-lined -pools, and anointings with oils of olive and palm, and dwellings -among flowers of thin bright petals and birds of vivid plumage and -fountains of crystal and rainbow, and caterings to the sparkle and -froth of human emotions, and browsings amid loves and lights o' love. -Can Bella be wondered at for growing fond of it all, having known -nothing substantialer? And can she rightly be blamed for hating the -thought of leaving it for dry sage-brush wilds in the mountains? She -did hate and dread that thought with all her soul from the moment -it was made known to her that Sodom for its sins was booked for -destruction. She had perhaps a fortnight in which to dread it, and a -fortnight if given over to dread is long enough to damage stronger -spirits than hers. - -Bella was slender and svelte, with long straight soft beautiful -silken pale red hair and white-lidded eyes of grayish green. She -was thirty-eight--a young thirty-eight. There's an old thirty-eight -which applies to greedy school-teachers, gangrenous woman -government-clerks, fading hard-hearted stenographers, over-righteous -woman doctors; to all whose virtue is ever indecently on guard. But -there's a glory-tinted sun-kissed young thirty-eight which applies -to sensitive high-strung generously-emotional women like Bella Lot. -She had smooth hands with supple tapering fingers, an irregular -expressive-lipped mouth like a pimpernel-bloom, firm slim feet -and the quivering suggestive white knees of a wood-nymph. From any -angle-of-view can she be blamed for hating to take that equipment -away from the city-de-luxe which was its so proper setting and hiding -it in the sage-brush? - -Furthermore Bella had a lover in Sodom. It is beyond a sane effort -of the imagination that she could have loved that unpleasing old man -Lot. The best and worst that can be said of him is that he was a fit -addition to the company of the old Patriarchs who were for the most -part an exceeding craven crew. The martyrs, the sages and especially -the prophets had their splendors. But the lean old patriarchs--The -sporting blood of all of them--in the sense of merest simplest -courage--from Adam down, would hardly aggregate one drop. There are -any number of reasons--as many as Bella had charms--to account for -Lot's having married her. But what she could have seen in him to make -her wish or even willing to be married to him is a deep mystery to -me. It may have been his family. I believe Bella lacked family: she -was just a person. And was he not nephew to Abraham? But even being -niece-in-law to Abraham himself seems insufficient compensation for -being Lot's Wife. - -The Lots had two young daughters, one fifteen and one seventeen, it -might be. I do not know their names--call them Ethel and Agnes. But -they were of a recalcitrant temper and absorbed in their own racy -pastimes among the younger youth of Sodom and they had no need of -their mother. Besides, they 'took after' their father. So Bella was -fain to turn outward in search of nurturing matter whereon to feed -her humanness. Had it been expected of her to play fair with the -patriarch she would have played fair. But it was not expected of her -by anyone in Sodom--far from it, and least of all by the patriarch. -She was eight-and-thirty, and Lot--_he_ was doubtless eight or nine -hundred years old, after the surprising long-lived fashion of the -period. - -So Bella found a lover ready and awaiting her. She would have found -a lover in the circumstances even without caring to. But she quite -cared to, I think. Everything points that way, and when one remembers -that good old man her husband one can not censure her but only pity -her. Be it as it may she had one--one as real as anything could be in -that town of sparkling froth. - -Of the lover's identity--little is known, as the historians say. My -fancy as I filed my fingernails failed me on the point. Suffice it -to state that ever and anon as time passed in Sodom the gray-green -eyes of Bella were gazed into with fondness, affection, adoration -and desire: the white eyelids of Bella had showers of light kisses -bestowed on them, soft-falling as rose-petals shaken loose in summer -winds: the tapering white hands of Bella were caressed and caressing -with the oddly intense tenderness of physical love: the pale red hair -of Bella was ruffled and fluffed and disarrayed by the fingers of -love: the red-pimpernel mouth of Bella was touched, bruised, clung -to by the lips of love: the svelte whiteness and nymph-knees of -Bella glowed as she broached love's arms:--and all went much merrier -than marriage bells. In short, Bella paid herself with usury for the -deadliness of being Lot's Wife. - -And there we have the crux of Bella's dread of leaving Sodom and its -tempered sweetness for the arid sage-brush hills and the respectively -cold and hectic companionship of the good old patriarch and the -recalcitrant daughters. - -It can not be claimed for Bella that any white poetic fires gleamed -across her soul, that any limning beauty shone palely from within -her. The air of Sodom was not conducive to suchlike matters and Bella -was no finer than her breeding and generation. But she was gentle and -wistful and kind of heart. She was lovely to look at and ingenuously -lovable in her clinging affection and disarming naturalness. She was -all one could want to imagine in the word charming. - -Came the night set for destruction and the Lot family fled -according to schedule. They fled away in the early damps of an -autumn evening through the outer city gates and along a rough road -faintly lit by a dying moon. They had three separate reasons for -fleeing. Lot fled because he was a patriarch and was given to doing -craven Old-Testamentish things of that sort: Bella fled because -she was Lot's Wife and obliged to act out the role: and Ethel and -Agnes fled because they had true patriarchal blood in their veins -and had therefore no marked inclination to remain in Sodom to be -annihilated--'safety first' was one of their watchwords. They fled in -the van. Lot came after them, being less swift of foot. Bella lagged -behind. She didn't want to go. Every way she looked at it she didn't -want to go. She hated that flight for a thousand reasons. - -The ghastly moon shed a terror on her with its dim rays. The ground -was hard and rutted with frosty mud and bruised her slender feet -through her white buckskin sandals. - -She wore a loose _ninon_ gown of white silk and linen with a -gold girdle around her narrow loins and a gold clasp at the left -shoulder. Binding her long hair, so palely red in the moon, was a -white-and-gold fillet. In one hand she carried a gold-and-enamel -link bracelet, a gift but that afternoon from the lover. Suddenly -she stopped and cried to herself, 'I'm too lovely for this fate--I'm -too lovely and beloved--the cruelty of God--: I'll not go on!' She -thought of the gleams and colorings of Sodom. She quickly reckoned -the cost and decided to pay it. She was a rare good sport, and a -quaint. She looked back at the doomed city blazing in brimstone--'But -his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of -salt.'-- - -As I put away my chamois-skin buffer and glass paste-jar through my -mind floated the pensive burden of a by-gone French song-- - - '_Oh, the poor, oh, the poor, oh, the poor--dear--girl_'-- - -She must have made a beautiful statue, all in glistening salt. - -I wish I had a glistening little salty replica of it to set on my -desk: a so unusual, a so dainty conceit, Lot's Wife! - - - - -_My echoing footsteps_ - - - To-morrow - -While I live so still in this life-space, while I muse and meditate -and analyze everything I touch, while I walk, while I work, while -I change from one plain frock to the other: in quiet hours roiled -tumbling storms of vicarious unhopeful Passion whirl, whirl in me: -Passion of Soul, Passion of Mind, Passion of living, Passion of this -mixed world: in terror, in wild unease, in reasonless mournful joy. - -I never knew real Passion, Passion-meanings, till I reached thirty. -It is now I'm at life's storm-center, youth's climax, the high-pulsed -orgasmic moment of being alive. - -At twenty the woman's chrysalis soul and aching pulses awaken in -crude chaste Spring-cold beauty. At forty her fires either have -subsided to dim-glowing coals or leaped to too-positive, too-searing, -too-obvious flames--her bones and the filigrees of her spirit may be -alike dry, brittle-ish. But at thirty her Spring has but changed to -midsummer. Poesy still waits upon her Passions. - -My Spring has changed, bloomed, burst to midsummer. - -Soft electrical heat-currents of being swing and sweep around me. -They touch me and enter my veins. But the liquid essences of youth -still quell and compass them. I am at youth's climax--a half-sullen, -half-smouldering youth which still is youth. - -My rose of life is fragrant and aglow. Its sweet pink petals are -uncurled and conscious in the wavering light. - -Winds flutter and stir and rumple and twist those petals-- - -To-day is a To-morrow of countless unrests. Large and little -Passions beat at me all the blue-and-copper day. I walked my floor -with irregular lagging steps. I felt menacing, dangerous to myself, -dynamic as nitro-glycerine: and smoothly drearily sane as a bar of -white soap. I stood at my window and looked long at the circling -range of mountains which skirt this Butte. Nothing else I have looked -at, of sea or plain or hill, affected me like that chain of barren -peaks. They are arid splendor and pale purple witchery and grief and -lasting sadness and deathlike beauty and woe and wonder. Their color -quietly stormed my eyes and blurred them with tears. - -It was a mood in which any color or gleam or thought or strain of -music or note of sad world-laughter or any un-sane loveliness of -poetry could enchant or flay or transport me to my frayed last nerve. - -There is terror in facing death on battlefields, on sinking ships, -in black ice-floes, in blazing buildings. But to me no death, for I -fear no death, could be so dreadfully pregnant with in-turning woe -and frenzy and all intolerable feeling as facing starkly my futile -life. - -My life is a vast stone bastile of many little Rooms in which I am a -prisoner. I am locked there in solitude on bread and water and let to -roam in it at will. And each Room is tenanted by invisible garbled -furies and dubious ecstasies. I run with echoing footsteps from Room -to Room to escape them: but each Room is more unhabitable than the -last. There are scores of little Rooms, each with its ghosts, each -different. - -In one Room silent voices in the air accuse my tired Spirit of wanton -vacillations and barren lack of purpose and utter waste, waste, waste -of itself. And they threaten death and destruction. I know that -accusation and I hate it: I hate it the more for that it's wholly -just. To escape it I run from that Room along a dim passage into -another one. In it unseen fingers clutch my Heart. In their touch -also is an accusation: of selfishness and waste and want of something -to beat for: and in their touch is the savor of wild wishes and human -longings and passionate prayers for something warm and simple and -real to rest against: and in their pressing clutching turbulent touch -is a tormenting half-promise, chance-promise, no-promise: and the -hovering inevitable threat of death and destruction. That too I know -and hate and half-love: and I can't bear it. So I run out of that -Room along a passage and into another. I hear my footsteps echoing as -I run. - ---as a child when I ran in the early night through a dark leaf-lined -tunnel-like driveway the sound of my own flying footsteps on the -hardened gravel was the only thing that frightened me. I quite -believed there were bears in the brushwood on either side, but -fear of them never struck to the core of my child-being like the -unknown thing in my echoing steps. And it is fear I feel now from -the ghost-sound of my ghost-footsteps running, running away from the -little Rooms. It is realer to me now than were my child footsteps to -my child-self long ago: it is more definite than my hand which writes -this: it is hideous-- - -Out of a dim passage I run into another little Room. In it some gray -filmy threads, like strands of loose cobwebs caught on ceilings, -float about. They sweep gently against my cheeks and hands and -neck, and cling and twine and lightly hold with the half-felt -feeling peculiar to bits of cobwebs on the skin. And it torments my -woman-flesh with calefacient thrills fierce and goading and sweet. -There also is the accusation, now against my Body; for tissues and -strength wasted: for useless fires meant to warm human seeds to life, -meant to make me fruitful, meant to make me bear dear race-burdens: -accusation for the cosmic waste of hot objectless desire, for the -subtle guilt of a Lesbian tendency, for an unleashed over-positive -sex-fancy. With it too is the lowering promise of death and -destruction. It also is just. But out of my borne-along helplessness -in it comes no culpable emotion because of cobweb thrills and their -arraignment but only a wearing wearying despair. I rush out of that -Room in shrugging impatience, with only scorn for a threat of death, -for a threat of destruction--but with a wild fear of my own flying -steps. I hurry and hurry on from door to door: but it's no good. In -some other Room my brain is anathematized from frowning walls as an -impish demoniac power which I use with no good intent and therefore -with bad intent: and again I shrink and run away. In another Room are -all the lies I have ever told: I have told legions--my own peculiar -lies, gentler on me than truths: they dart around me in the Room like -black heavy-winged moths, clouds of them fluttering at my forehead. -They drive me out shivering. In another Room four times when I was -a not-good-sport confront me in a row like pictures and sting me -and make me hide my eyes: I'd rather be a leper, a beast, a maniac -than a not-good-sport (for my own precious reasons)--and I rush away -again. In some other Room-- - ---the same galling torment in all the Rooms. Wherever I run with the -echo-echo of steps there are Accusing voices and half-formed Prayer -and uncertain Yearning and violent yet dumb and inexpectant Protest -and the unfailing Threat of death and destruction: not earth-death -but universe-death: death and death and death everywhere coming on -and on: myself knowing the just note in it all and from it grown numb -with some cold and restless terror. Also I know no door I run through -with my panic-feet will ever set me free of the bastile except a -death door: the earthly death of this tired life-- - -But it's from this maelstrom that the flashing burning sparkling mad -magic of being alive leaps out brilliant and barbarous--and throbbing -and splendid and sweet. A merely human hunger comes back on me. Then -I want all I ever wanted with a hundredfold more voltage of wanting -than I have ever yet known. - -I am all unhopeful, all unpeaceful, all a desperate Languor and a -tragic Futileness: I am an unspeakably untoward thing. - -And already I have been seared and scarred trivially from standing -foolishly near some foolish human melting-pots. - -No matter for any of it. I want to plunge headlong into life--not -imitation life which is all I've yet known, but honest worldly -life at its biggest and humanest and cruelest and damnedest: to be -blistered and scorched by it if it be so ordered--so that only it's -_realness_--from the outside of my skin to the deeps of my spirit. - -It is not happiness I want--nothing like it: its like never existed -since this world began. - -I want to feel one big hot red bloody Kiss-of-Life placed square and -strong on my mouth and shot straight into me to the back wall of my -Heart. - - * * * * * - -I write this book for my own reading. - -It is my postulate to myself. - -As I read it it makes me clench my teeth savagely: and coldly -tranquilly close my eyelids: it makes me love and loathe Me, Soul and -bones. - -Clench and close as I will the winds flutter and stir and crumple and -twist my petals as _they_ will:--as I sit here tiredly, tiredly sane. - - - - -_A comfortably vicious person_ - - - To-morrow - -The blue-and-copper of yesterday is dead and buried this To-morrow in -a maroon twilight. - -I this moment saw darkly from my window the somber hills in their -heavy spell of pale-purple and grief and splendor and sadness and -beauty and wonder and woe. - -But their color brings no tears to my wicked gray eyes. - -The passion-edged mood is burnt out. - -Gone, gone, gone. - -I listlessly change into the other black dress for listless -dinnertime and all my thought is that my abdomen is beautifully flat -and that I must purchase a new petticoat. - -I rub a little rouge on my pale mouth and I idlingly recall a clever -and filthy story I once heard. - -I laugh languidly at it and feel myself a comfortably vicious person. - -I pronounce a damn on the familiar ache in my beloved left foot and -turn away from myself. - -I stick out the tip of my forked-feeling tongue at the bastard -clock on the stairs. I note the hour on it with a fainness in my -spirit-gizzard to dedicate Me from that time forth to a big blue god -of Nastiness: Nastiness so restful, humorous, appetizing, reckless, -sure-of-itself. - ---these hellish To-morrows creeping in their petty pace: they bring -in weak-kneed niceness, and they bring in doubts, and they bring in -meditation and imagery and all-around humanness, till I'm a mere -heavy-heeled dubious complicated jade. - - - - -_In my black dress and my still room_ - - - To-morrow - -I have fits of Laughter all to myself. - -The world is full of funny things. All to myself I Laugh at them. I -lounge at my desk in the small night hours, and I finger a pencil or -a box or a rubber or a knife and rest my chin on my hand, and sit on -my right foot, and Laugh intermittently at this or that. - -Ha! ha! ha! I say inwardly: with all my Heart: relishingly. - -I laugh at the thought of a mouse I once encountered lying dead--so -neat, so virtuous--though soft and o'er-long dead--with its tail -folded around it--in a porcelain tea-pot: a strong inimical anomaly -to all who viewed it. It had a look of a saint in effigy in a whited -sepulcher. Looked at as a mouse it seemed out of place. Looked at as -a saint it was perfect. - -I Laugh at the recollection of a lady I once met who had thick -black furry eyebrows incongruous to her face, which she took off -at night and laid on her bureau. They were at once 'detached' and -detachable: itself a subtle phenomenon. She referred to her mind as -her 'intellects' and talked with a quaint bogus learnedness, and in -remarkable grammar, of the Swedenborgian doctrines. Looked at as a -person she was inadequate. Looked at as a conundrum she was gifted -and profound. - -I Laugh at that extraordinary tailor in the Mother Goose rhyme--him -'whose name was Stout,' who cut off the petticoats of the little old -woman 'round about,' herself having recklessly fallen asleep on the -public highway. The tale leaves me the impression that such were the -straitly economic ideas of the tailor that he obtained all his cloth -by wandering about with his shears until he happened upon persons -slumbering thus publicly and vulnerably. Looked at in any light that -tailor is ever surprising, ever original, ever rarely delectable. - -I Laugh at William Jennings Bryan. - -How William Jennings Bryan may look to the country and world-at-large -I have never much considered. - -It is all in the angle of view: St. Simeon Stilites may seem -rousingly funny to some: Old King Cole may have been a frosty dullard -to those who knew him best. - -To me William Jennings Bryan means bits of my relishingest brand of -gay mournful Laughter. - -The ensemble and detail of William Jennings Bryan and his career -as a public man, viewed impersonally--as one looks at the moon--is -something hectic as hell's-bells. - -I remember William Jennings Bryan when his star first rose. It -was before Theodore Roosevelt was more than a name: before the -battleship _Maine_ was sunk at Havana: before Lanky Bob wrested the -heavyweight title from Gentleman Jim at Carson: before aeroplanes -were and automobiles were more than rare thin-wheeled restless -buggies: before the song 'My Gal She's a High-born Lady' had yet -waned: before one Carrie Nation had hewn her way to fame with a -hatchet. I was a short-skirted little girl devouringly reading and -observing everything, and I took note of all those. So I took note -of William Jennings Bryan nominated for president by the Democratic -convention in eighteen-ninety-six. The zealous Democratic newspapers -referred to him, though he was then thirty-six, as the Boy Orator -of the Platte. Looked at as a grown man, advocating free coinage -of silver at sixteen-to-one--a daring dashing Democrat, he was a -plausible thing and even romantic. Looked at as a Boy Orator he -turned at once into a bald and aged lad oddly flavored with an -essence of Dare-devil Dick, of the boy on the burning deck, of a kind -of political Fauntleroy madly matured. - -Long years later with the top of his hair and his waistline buried -deep in his past he became Secretary of State: and at the same time a -Chautauqua Circuit lecturer--entertaining placid satisfied audiences -alternately with a troupe of Swiss Yodlers. Of all things, yodlers. -Politics makes strange bedfellows and always did. But never before -has the American Department of State combined and vied with the -yodler's art to entertain and instruct. Looked at as a monologist he -might pass if sufficiently interpolated with ah-le-ee! and ah-le-o-o! -Looked at as Secretary of State he is grilling and gruelling to the -senses: a frightful figure quite surpassing a mouse softly dead in a -tea-pot, a pair of detachable fuzzy Swedenborg-addicted eyebrows, a -presumptuously economical tailor. - -And he entertained the foreign ministers at a state dinner, did -this unusual man, and he gave them to drink--what but grape-juice, -grape-juice in its virginity. Plain water might have seemed the -crystalline expression of a rigid puritanic spirit. Budweiser Beer, -bitter and bourgeois, might have been possible though surprising. -But grape-juice, served to seasoned Latin Titles and Graybeards and -Gold-Braid, long tamely familiar with the Widow Clicquot: that in -truth seems, after all the years, boyishly oratorical, wildly and -darkly Nebraskan. Looked at as an appetizing wash for a children's -white-collared and pink-sashed party, or for anybody on a summer -afternoon, grape-juice is satisfactory. In the careless hands of -William Jennings Bryan with his soul so unscrupulously at peace, the -virgin grape-juice becomes a vitriolic thing: a defluent purple river -crushing one's helpless spirit among its rocks and rapids. - ---a terrible American, William Jennings Bryan. He is for 'peace -at any price.' There were some, long and long ago, who suffered -and endured one starveling winter in camp at Valley Forge that -William Jennings Bryan might wax Nebraskanly fat: and _he_ is -valiantly for peace: at any price-- - -For that my Laughter is tinged with fulfilling hatred. - -Rich hot-livered Laughter must have in it essential love or hatred. - -To William Jennings Bryan everything he has done in his political -career must seem all right. - -It _is_ all right, undoubtedly. Just that. - ---that Silver-tongued Boy Orator - -those Yodlers - -that Peerless Leader - -that Grape-juice-- - -They come breaking into my melancholy night-hours with an odd -high-seasoned abruptness. - -I wonder what God thinks of him. - -It might be God thinks well of him. - -But I--in my black dress and my still room--I say inwardly and -willy-nilly, and with all my Heart and relishingly: - -Ha! ha! ha! - - - - -_Their little shoes_ - - - To-morrow - -Often in windy autumn nights I lie awake in my shadowy bed and think -of the children, the Drab-eyed thousands of children in this America -who work in coal mines and factories. - -Whenever I'm wakeful and the night is windy and my room is dark and I -lie in aloneness--a long aloneness: centuries--then shadows come from -far-off world-wildnesses and float and flutter dimly unhappy around -my bed. They tell me tales of shame and tame petty hopelessness and -trifling despair. - -And the one that comes oftenest is the one that tells of those -Drab-Eyed children distances from here, but very immediate, who work -in coal mines and factories. I read about them in magazines and -newspapers, but they aren't then one one-hundredth so real as when -their shadow floats as close to me in the windy autumn night. - -Once in Pennsylvania I saw a group of children, very Drab in the Eyes -and very thin in the necks and legs, who worked in a mill. Their look -made its imprint in my memory and more in my flesh. And it comes back -as if it were the only thing that mattered as I lie wakeful in the -windy night. - -The children--unconscious and smiling their small decayed -smiles--they are living and being crushed between greed and need as -between two murderous millstones. Their frail flesh and their little -brittle bones, their voices and their pinched insides, the sweet -vague childish looks which belong in their faces are squeezed and -crunched by two millstones--squeezed, squeezed till their scrawny -fledgeling bodies are dry, breathless, and are gasping, strangling, -striving frightfully for life: and still are slowly, all too slowly, -dying between two millstones. - -If it were their own greed or their own need--but it's the greed of -fat people and the need of their own warped gaunt parents. Betwixt -the two the children meet homelike hideous ruin. Placidly they are -cheated and blighted and blasted, placidly and with the utmost -domesticness. - -The most darkling-luminous thing about the Drab-Eyed children is -that they never weep. They talk among themselves and smile their -little dreadful decayed smiles, but they don't weep. When they walk -it's with a middle-aged gait: when they eat their noontime food it's -as grown people do, with half-conscious economic and gastronomic -consideration. They count their Tuesdays and Wednesdays with -calculation as work-days, which should be childishly wind-sweptly -free. Which is all of less weight than the heavy fact that they never -weep. - -They reckon themselves fairly fortunate with their bits of silver -in yellow envelopes every Saturday. They are permitted to keep a -bit of it, each child a bit for herself or himself, so that on -Sunday afternoons they lose themselves for precious hours watching -Charlie Chaplin. Many pink-faced inconsequent children whose parents -nurture them and guard them and eternally misunderstand them are less -worldlily lucky. But the pink-faced children often weep--loudly, -foolishly like puppies and snarling furry cubs--and wet sweet salt -tears of proper childishness are round and bright on their cheeks -and lashes. It's a sun-washed blestness for them: they're impelled -and allowed to weep. But the Drab Eyes shed no tears--they know no -reason why they should. There's no impulse for soft liquid grief in -the murderous philosophy of two grinding millstones. And there's no -time--the lives of the work-children move on fast. Their very shoes -are ground between the millstones. - ---their little shoes are heartbreaking. The millstones grind many -things along with little-little shoes of children: germs of potent -splendid humanness that might grow bigly American in heroic ways or -in sane round honesty: germs that might grow into brave barbaric -beauty or warm wistful sweetness: germs that would grow into lips -blooming tender and fragrant as jonquils or into minds swimming -with lyrics:--what is strongly lasting and glorified in the forlorn -divine human thing--crumpled--twisted forever when millstones grind -children's little poor shoes-- - -The young Drab Eyes are endlessly betrayed: their very color thieved. -There's no reason why they should weep. - -But there's a far-blown sound as if ten thousand bad and good worldly -eyes were weeping in their stead: with a note in it careless, -compassionate and jadedly menacing. - -I seem to hear it in the wakeful windy night. And I hear no -world-music pouring out of small throats of work-children shrill with -woe-and-joy. The sound they make is a dumb sound, for they never -weep: a ghost-wail of partly-dead children borne lowly across this -mixed world on a stale hellish breeze. - - - - -_The sleep of the dead_ - - - To-morrow - -When I'm dead I want to Rest awhile in my grave: for I'm Tired, Tired -always. - -My Soul must go on as it has gone on up to now. - -It has a long way to go, and it has come a long way. - -My Soul first started on its journey somewhere in Asia before the -dawn of this civilization. And it has gone on since through the -centuries and through strange phases of Body, terrors of flesh and -blood, suffering long. But it has gone someway on, each space of the -journey taking it nearer to the journey's-End. - -It is the dim-felt memory of those journeys that heaps the Tiredness -on me now. Not only is my spirit Tired. Through my spirit my hands -are Tired: my knees are Tired: my drooping shoulders: my thin feet: -my sensitive backbone. When I lift my hand in the sunshine the weight -of the yellow honeyed air bears down and down on it because I'm so -Tired. When I start to walk on stone pavements the ache of them is in -my feet before I set a foot on them because I'm so Tired. The pulse -in my veins Tires my blood as it beats. My low voice, though I speak -but rarely--it Tires my throat. My breath Tires my chest. The weight -of my hair Tires my forehead and temples. My plain frocks Tire my -Body to wear. My swift trenchant thoughts Tire my Mind. - -It is not the Tiredness of effort though I strive to the limits of my -strength every day. - -It is not pain, Restful pain. It is Tired Tiredness. - -So when I'm dead I want to Rest awhile in my grave. It _would_ Rest -me. - -In the Episcopal Church they use a ritual of poetic beauty, full of -Restful things. One of them is the sleep of the dead. The crucified -Nazarene slept three days. But all others of us when we go down -into our graves are to sleep until a Judgment Day. 'Judgment Day' -is preposterous and evilly crude: there's no judgment till each can -judge himself simply and cruelly in the morning light. But the sleep -of the dead-- - ---the sleep of the dead. Its sound by itself without the thought is -Restful-- - -And the thought is Restful. - -I imagine me wrapped in a shroud of soft thin wool cloth of a pale -color, laid in a plain wood coffin: and my eyelids are closed, and my -Tired feet are dead feet, and my hands are folded on my breast. And -the coffin is nine feet down in the ground and the earth covers it. -Upon that some green sod: and above, the ancient blue deep sheltering -sky: and the clouds and the winds and the suns and moons, and the -days and nights and circling horizons--those above my grave. - -And my Body laid at its length, eyes closed, hands folded, down there -Resting: my Soul not yet gone but laid beside my Body in the coffin -Resting. - ---might we lie like that--Resting, Resting, for weeks, months, ages-- - -Year after long year, Resting. - - - - -_Stickily mad_ - - - To-morrow - -It is damn-the-Smell-of-Turpentine! - -Here I happen on a damn in me which is not desultory but bloodily -strong and alive and alone. - -The wood in my blue-white room has been newly painted. For a day -and a night I intermittently encounter and go to bed in a spirit of -Turpentine. It bears a cruel obscure abortive message to my nerves. - -I lie wakeful in the dark and try to reason out a logicalness or -poetry in a thing so artfully pestilential. But I am hysterically -lost in it and my heart beats hysterically in it. - -I remember the inexpressible ingenuity of man: of white man as -against bone-brained savage races. Every invented usefulness feels -like divine witchcraft. A pen and a bottle of perfume and a door-knob -and a granite kettle and an electric light: I have the use of each -since white man is so ingenious. Were I a red Indian I should have -only the awkward barbarous stupid tools my race had used a thousand -years. I contrast the two as I lie wakeful, with a sense of richness -and of detailed repletion and of material blestness. - -But at once comes the Smell of Turpentine and announces itself -something outside that and _different_, something stronger, something -masterfuler than ingenuity and savagery together. It tortures my -nerves: it burns my eyes: it lames my flesh: it jerks and flays and -garbles my inner body. The ingenuity of man has produced opium and -cocaine which would combat and hide it all behind a heavy curtain of -stupor, with effects equally damaging if less grievously subtle. - -The Smell of Turpentine is a thing to bear since all its -counter-things bring only solider evil. - -The paint was put on the wood by a dirty little man whom I briefly -inspected as something removed from my range of life. In return he -covertly eyed me. I expected my wakeful hours would be punished -by strong new paint and be-visioned by dirty little men. But it -is all sheer Turpentine with a power suggesting nothing human nor -super-natural nor divine. Just itself: a goblin virulence. - -In all my Soul and bones and Mary-Mac-Laneness it is damn-the-Smell- -of-Turpentine as a bastard murderous hurt. - -I have an odd feeling God has no more power over it than have I. - -It half-calls for a _different_ Turpentine God. - -I am shakily mad tonight, I believe, from a so slight sticky matter. - - - - -_God compensates me_ - - - To-morrow - -It's a Sunday midnight and I've just eaten a Cold Boiled Potato. - -I shall never be able to write one-tenth of my fondness for a Cold -Boiled Potato. - -A Cold Boiled Potato is always an unpremeditated episode which is its -chief charm. - -It's nice to happen on a book of poetry on a window-sill. It's nice -to surprise a square of chocolate in a glove box. It's nice to come -upon a little yellow apple in ambush. It's nice to get an unexpected -letter from Jane Gillmore. It's nice to unearth a reserve fund of -silk stockings under a sofa pillow. And especially it's nice to find -a Cold Boiled Potato on a pantry shelf at midnight. - -I like caviare at luncheon. And I like venison at dinner, dark and -bloody and rich. And I like champagne bubbling passionately in a -hollow-stemmed glass on New Year's day. And I like terrapin turtle. -And I like French-Canadian game-pie. And artichokes and grapes and -baby onions. And none of them has the odd gnome-ish charm of a Cold -Boiled Potato at midnight. - -I can imagine no circumstance in which a Cold Boiled Potato would not -take precedent with me at midnight. If I had a broken arm: if I had a -husband lying dead in the next room: if I were facing abrupt worldly -disaster: if there were a burglar in the house: if I'd had a dayful -of depression: if God and opportunity were knocking and clamoring at -my door: I should disregard each and all some minutes at midnight if -I had also a Cold Boiled Potato. - -I love to read Keats's Nightingale in my hushed life. I love to -remember Caruso at the Metropolitan singing Celeste Aida. I love to -watch the bewitching blonde Blanche Sweet in a moving picture. I love -to feel the summer moonlight on my eyelids. And it's disarmingly -contented I am with a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. - -Content is my rarest emotion and I get it at midnight out of a Cold -Boiled Potato. - -Some things in life thrill me. Some drive me garbledly mad. Some -uplift me. Some debauch me. Some strengthen and enlighten me. Some -hurt, hurt, hurt. But I'm not thrilled nor maddened nor uplifted nor -debauched nor strengthened nor enlightened nor hurt, but only fed-up -and fattened in spirit by a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. - -I stand in the pantry door leaning against the jamb, with a tiny -glass salt-shaker in one hand and the sweet dark pink Cold Boiled -Potato in the other. And I sprinkle it with salt and I nibble, -nibble, nibble. And I say aloud, 'Gee, it's good!' - -I liked Cold Boiled Potato at four-and-twenty. I liked it at -seventeen. I liked it at twelve. At three I climbed on cake-boxes in -search of one. And now in the deep bloom of being myself I am made -roundly replete at midnight with a Cold Boiled Potato. - -A Cold Boiled Potato--it tastes of chestnuts at midnight, the first -frost-kissed chestnuts in the woods: and it tastes of rain-water and -of salt and of roses: it tastes of young willow-bark and of earth -and of grass-stems: it tastes of the sun and the wind and of some -nameless relishingness born of the summer hillside that grew it: it -tastes at midnight so _like_ a Cold Boiled Potato. - -A precious peach-colored orchid, an antique spider-web-like lace -handkerchief, a delicate purple butterfly, an emerald bracelet: I'd -strive for each of those in an eagerly casual way. But it's like an -ogre at midnight I pounce on a Cold Boiled Potato. - -A Cold Boiled Potato reminds me of the Dickens books in which so much -food is eaten cold and tastes so savory--even the 'wilderness of cold -potatoes' portioned to the Marchioness by Sally Brass. And it reminds -me of the Rip Van Winkle play--'give this fellow a cold potato -and let him go.' And it reminds me of Hamlet--funeral baked meats -might include it. And it reminds me of Robin Hood's merry men, and -Huckleberry Finn, and the Canterbury Pilgrims, and the Prodigal Son, -and all the picturesque wayfarers. It reminds me of the poor as a -colorful race wrapped around with hungry romance. It reminds me that -life is full of life--rich and fruitful and evolutionary and cosmic: -few things feel so cosmic as a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. -It makes me want as I nibble to plant a field of potatoes on a -southern-exposed hill and hoe them and dig them all by myself: and -give all but one to the poor and Boil that to eat Cold at midnight. - -I have to be very hungry to crave a Cold Boiled Potato, but being -hungry no possible morsel of food can so interest me at midnight. The -same potato hot is domestic and tasteless. The same potato at ten -in the evening lukewarm within and sodden with memories of dinner, -is a repellent item. At midnight it is all unexpected magnetism. At -midnight my whole being is profoundly courteous, wooingly cordial -toward a Cold Boiled Potato. - -If I had only what I deserved my portion might well be a Cold Boiled -Potato. Intrinsically it is rated low and I know me to be a sort -of jezebel. But I'd wonder each midnight if whoever metes out the -deserts in this surprising universe knew with what gust I rise at -it--_would_ I get it. - -Nor am I satisfied like the meek and lowly with my midnight supper of -Cold Boiled Potato: damn the meek and lowly. It's a satanic delight -I take in it. It's a sly private orgie I make of it: a pirate's -banquet, a thieves' picnic, a pagan rite, a heathen revelry, a -conceit all and unhallowedly my own. My thoughts as I nibble are set -mostly on my villainies. No food I eat brings me so broad a license -of feeling--a sense of freedom--as a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. - -On a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight I am lightly valorous: call me -a trickster and I'll call you a rotter: call me a liar and I'll -call you a traitor: call me a coward and I'll call you another: not -pugnaciously but gayly and serenely. - -I am then in my most bespeaking mood. Anyone who met me standing -nibbling in a pantry doorway at midnight would be charmed. I would -talk with a dainty ribaldry and offer to share the feast. - -For shadow-things piled too near God compensates me in unexpected -midnights with a Cold Boiled Potato: along with it a pantry doorway -to stand in and a little glass salt-shaker to hold in my other hand. - - - - -_The strange braveness_ - - - To-morrow - -If God has human feelings he must often have a burning at the eyes -and a fullness at the throat at the strange Braveness of human -people: their Braveness as they go on in the daily life, with aching -dumbish minds and disgruntled bereft bodies and flattened pinched -gnawed hearts. - -The easy human slattern way would be to sink beneath the burden. - -Instead, people: I and Another and all others--seamstresses and -monotonous clerks and lawyers and housewives: sit upright in chairs -and talk into telephones and walk fast and eat breakfasts and brush -hair: all the while marooned in a morass of small wild unexciting -tasteless Pain. - -Of others--what do I know? - -But I might say, 'Look, God, I am not fallen on the ground, from this -and that--utterly lost and down. But sitting, drooping but strong, in -a chair, mending a lamp-shade--neat, orderly and at-it in my misery.' - - - - -_Just beneath my skin_ - - - To-morrow - -This I write is a strange thing. - -So close to fact: so far from it. - -So close to truth: so surrounded by lies. - -It does not contain lies but is someway surrounded by a mist of lies. - -A strange thing about it is that it _is_ expressing the Self Just -Beneath My Skin. - -That Self is someways trivial and outlandish and mentally nervous, -flightly, silly--silly to a verge of tragicness. I know that to be -true from a long acquaintance with me. It is oddly intriguing to read -over some chapters and find it _shown_. - -Some unconscious exact photography aids my writing talent. - -Some chapters are bewilderingly and mysteriously true to life. - -My everyday self that casually speaks to this or that person is -nothing like this book. My absorbed self that writes a letter to -an intimate acquaintance is not like this book. My heartfelt self -that deeply loves a friend, and gives of its depths, and thrills -answeringly to other depths, is not like this book. - -This book is my mere Hidden Self--just under the skin but hid away -closer than the Thousand Mysteries: never shown to any other person -in any conversation or any association: never would be shown: never -could be. - -How Another, any Other, would come out: what Another would show: -photographed Beneath the Skin--what do I know? - -Perchance ten times more trivial and inconsequent and mad than Me. - -If Another thinks Me someway mad, let him look at Himself Just -Beneath the Skin. - -Perchance Another every day as he thanks a janitor for holding open a -door, would much prefer to drive a long rusty brad-nail deep into the -janitor's skull. - -Perchance Another has a brain like Goethe, a Soul like a -humming-bird, a Heart like a little round nutmeg. - -What do I know? - -I know what I am. - -Another may know what he is. - -But I can't tell Me to Another and Another can't tell Himself to Me. - -I can tell Me to myself and write it. - -Another if he reads will see Me: but not as I see Me. Instead, -through many veil-curtains and glasses, very darkly. - - - - -_God's kindly caprice_ - - - To-morrow - -For twenty-five cents and one hour and twelve minutes one may get -in this present detailed world a bit of unforgettable complete -enchantment. - -So I found to-day in a moving-picture theater. A Carmen, the real -Carmen of Prosper Merimee glowed, vibrated, lived and died with -passion on a white screen. - -Of all prose writers I know Prosper Merimee is the one--(intimate -and sensitively alive as if I had lain against his shoulder as I -read 'La Guzla' and 'Venus d'Ille'--he melts into my veins--)whom I -would most eagerly see interpreted. Of all fiction characters--if she -is fiction--the poignant Carmen is the one I would most eagerly see -realized. - -Carmen is one of those fictions which are truer to life than life is. -Such fiction-things are all around, touching everybody: the spoken -truths which grow false at being spoken: the thought lies which turn -to truths the moment they touch words. - -I have heard Carmen sung and seen her filmed by the lustrous Farrar, -and I have seen her play-acted by some lesser lights. But Bizet's -opera, a sparkling music-storm, creates a sonant objective Carmen, -a beautiful bloody lyric, remote from Merimee who made a Carmen -intensely peculiar to his own subjective art. And the stage-Carmen -has always been a stage-Carmen waiting in dusty, draughty wings -for her cues. It remained for the cinematograph, which is a true -literal mirror of human expression, to make Carmen burst into violent -physical life. - -But it was less the scopes of the films which made Carmen animate -than it was the virile woman who played her. It was acting--but -acting in the sense of losing and sinking and saturating and -dissolving herself in another woman's temperament: and by it she -achieved some strong sword, keen shadings of the Carmen character--to -the hair's-breadth. - -And she _looked_ like Carmen. It was not important to the vigorous -fire of her acting but it made bewitchment in the portrait. No one -I have before seen play Carmen fitted the elusive points of her -description. - - 'Her eyes were set obliquely in her head but they were - magnificent and large. Her lips, a little full but beautifully - shaped, revealed a set of teeth as white as newly-skinned - almonds. Her hair was black with blue lights on it like a - raven's wing, long and glossy. To every blemish she united some - advantage which was perhaps all the more evident by contrast. - There was something strange and wild about her beauty. Her face - surprised you at first sight but nobody could forget it. Her - eyes especially had an expression of mingled sensuality and - fierceness which I had never seen in any human glance. Gypsy's - eye, wolf's eye'-- - -This (from the English translation of the story by Lady Mary Loyd) -fitted to a charm the pictured vision of the foreign-looking -woman--her name is Theda Bara--who flung a throbbing Carmen across -the screen with indescribable heat and color and luster. It was -comparable only to the muscular force of the original which that -Merimee rubs nervously and heavily into one's thoughts. I felt it -someway satisfyingly unbelievable--an illusion more actual than -actuality: a dream which outbore fact. - -I suppose there's no other character like Carmen for flaming -roundness in all fiction: filled with her treacheries yet purely true -to herself, without fear, utterly game: fierce, coarse, ruthless and -reckless yet wrapped in a maddening unwitting pathos: strong and bold -and cruelly poised yet capable of sudden complete surrender: ignorant -and abandoned and criminal in every instinct yet beyond every -littleness, every pettiness: sensual yet contemptuous and indifferent -in it, a woman of essential chastity. Carmen is the one criminal -conception in whom there is no vulgar evil, no personal maculateness -though wrecking all the wildness of her temper in her tempestuous -days'-journeys. She is a romantic murderous appeal to human -superjudgment. It was this isolate quality of her which Theda Bara -gave out with mystic masterful art. She gauged the personal odors -and blood-pressures of Carmen. She slipped into Carmen's skin and -first sucked in and then breathed out the irresistible menacingness -and arresting ruination of her beautiful diabolic spirit. A little -feverish artistic thrill ran in my veins as I sat in the dark -watching. - - 'She had thrown her mantilla back,' says Don Jose in the - translated tale, 'to show her shoulders and a great bunch of - acacias that was thrust into her chemise. She had another acacia - bloom in the corner of her mouth and she walked along swaying - her hips like a filly from the Cordova stud farm. In my country - anyone who had seen a woman dressed in that fashion would - have crossed himself. In Seville every man paid her some bold - compliment on her appearance. She had an answer to each and all - with her hand on her hip--"Come, my love," she began again, "make - me seven ells of lace for my mantilla, my pet pin-maker." And - taking the acacia blossom out of her mouth she flipped it at me - with her thumb so that it hit me just between the eyes. I tell - you, sir, I felt as if a bullet had struck me.' - -This first meeting of Carmen with the dragoon was pictured in a -brilliant hot-looking plaza as if before the cigarette factory in -Seville. This woman in throwing the flower at the soldier expressed -wonderfully in one fleet moment, by hand and lip and eye, the savage -sordid poetry and passionate freedom--that unearthly fragrance--which -_is_ Carmen. - -The film version followed the scenes of the opera rather than the -story, which took nothing from the headlong truth of the central -figure. - -But no picturing can equal the star-clarity of Merimee's prose in -Carmen's death-scene--a thing of a piercing pathos comparable to -nothing I know in writing. - - 'After we had gone a little distance I said to her, "So, my - Carmen, you are quite ready to follow me, isn't it so?" - - She answered, "Yes, I'll follow you to the death--but I won't - live with you any more." - - We had reached a lonely gorge. I stopped my horse. - - "Is this the place?" she said. - - And with a spring she reached the ground. She took off her - mantilla and threw it at her feet, and stood motionless with one - hand on her hip, looking at me steadily. - - "You mean to kill me, I see that well," she said. "It is fate. - But you'll never make me give in." - - I said to her: "Be rational, I implore you; listen to me. All - the past is forgotten. Yet you know it is you who have been my - ruin--it is because of you that I am a robber and a murderer. - Carmen, my Carmen, let me save you, and save myself with you." - - "Jose," she answered, "what you ask is impossible. I don't love - you any more. You love me still and that is why you want to kill - me. If I liked I might tell you some other lie, but I don't - choose to give myself the trouble. Everything is over between us - two. You are my rom and you have the right to kill your romi, - but Carmen will always be free. A calli she was born and a calli - she'll die." - - "Then you love Lucas?" I asked. - - "Yes, I have loved him--as I loved you--for an instant--less than - I loved you, perhaps. And now I don't love anything. And I hate - myself for ever having loved you." - - I cast myself at her feet, I seized her hands, I watered them - with tears, I reminded her of all the happy moments we had spent - together, I offered to continue my brigand's life, if that would - please her. Everything, sir, everything--I offered her everything - if she would only love me again. - - She said: "Love you again? That's not possible. Live with you? I - will not do it." - - I was wild with fury. I drew my knife. I would have had her look - frightened and sue for mercy--but that woman was a demon. I - cried: "For the last time I ask you, Will you stay with me?" - - "No! No! No!" she said and she stamped her foot. Then she - pulled a ring I had given her off her finger and cast it into - the brushwood. I struck her twice over--I had taken Garcia's - knife because I had broken my own. At the second thrust she - fell without a sound. It seems to me that I can still see her - great black eyes staring at me. Then they grew dim and the - lids closed.--For a good hour I lay there prostrate beside the - corpse.'-- - -No play-acting could make the scene so pregnant and palpitant with -human-stuff and alive in vision as that translucent jewel-prose -of Merimee. But so close as one art may counterfeit another, by -drinking-up the fiery spirit essence which informs it, so close -did this actor-woman compass and consummate the strong delicious -unafraidness of Carmen's death-hour. - -The scene was staged as in the opera--a court outside the -bull-fighting arena, with Carmen richly bejeweled and dressed in -the lacy smart-lady clothes of the Toreador's mistress. But that -was nothing. The gypsy wildness of the written scene was in every -insolently splendid bodily movement and each fateful loveliness of -eyes and lips of the fulfilling Theda Bara. - -I can still see the dark drooping-lidded dying eyes. I sensed Carmen -in conscious chambers of my Mind. I felt her in my throat. It was -Carmen herself living and breathing near me, the fearsomely adorable -Carmen who has haunted the edge of my thoughts since I first read her. - -There are some odd crudenesses in Theda Bara's acting which had the -effect of making her un-stagey, unobvious. They made her humanly -vibrant. And they added a devilish wistfulness to her Carmen and a -surprising feel of genuineness to the whole masque. - -The actor's art brings out the romance which is in human -bone-and-flesh. And Theda Bara seems someway a master of its physical -and spiritual subtleties. She expressed the swift emotion of Carmen -by ringing slightest possible changes on her own virile and mobile -body: insolence by kimboing an elbow: cruelty by the twitch of a -wrist: sensual feeling by moving a knee and an ankle: murder in the -twisting of her waistline: a fleet repressed animal tenderness by a -posture of shoulder and breast: a heartbreak of mirth in her careless -vivid lips: the desperate bravery of that death by the tilt of her -potent chin: the hurricane-freedom of Carmen's soul by lifting her -face and her arms in the night wind. She worked with an exquisite -muscular sincerity, as if she strongly gave her best of brain and -blood and mettle to the part. - -I looked at photographs of her which decorated the lobby of the -theater. She looks a beautiful and earnest-seeming girl of a mental -rather than a physical caste, with melancholy dark eyes, a childlike -mouth-profile and the slim patrician hands of a Bourbon duchess. She -will live in my warmed memory as the star of all the Carmens. - -A flood of life and color goes into the staging of a Carmen film: a -throng of attractive faces and bodies of people, women and men and -lovely children, move through it in a pulsating gay pageant: flowers -and Spanish prettinesses of costume and country-side and street -and cafe are all over it, bright as life: and sweet winds blow in -it and leaves and grasses wave and flutter, and the sunshine melts -and mellows the air--all as if one saw it thrice-enlarged through -windows. It is not poetry--it is not in itself any art, but a dear -delectable counterfeit of it, a miracle-_taste_ of the outer-looking -madly-peopled world. - -For me it meant my long-adored Merimee given sudden brief life, the -haunting Carmen turned into flesh: a spell of silent human-music -which glowed and burned upon me like gentle fire. - -Often is God thus capriciously kind to me. - - - - -_A fascinating creature_ - - - To-morrow - -I am a fascinating creature. - -I move in no stultifying ruts. There's no real yoke of custom on -my shoulders. My round white breasts beneath their black serge are -concurrent with nothing settled or subservient or discreet. - -My Mind goes in no grooves made by other minds. It lives like a witch -in a forest, weaving its spells, revelling in smooth vivid adventure. -When I look at a round gray stone by a roadside I look at it not as -a young woman, not as a person, not as an artist, nor a geologist, -nor an economist, but as Me--as Mary MacLane--and as if there had not -before been a round gray stone by a roadside since the world began. -When I look at a chair with my somber eyes I say to the chair, 'What -other persons may see when they look at you, chair, I don't know--how -could I know? But I well know what I see and that what I see is -uninfluenced by other eyes that may have looked at you, were they -Aristotle's or Galileo's or an archangel's.' There may be equally -egotistic viewpoints--in Waco-Texas, or Japan, or Glasgow-Scotland or -the Orkney Islands, where not? I don't know--I don't care. What is it -to me? I know my own virile vision and that it thrills and informs -and translates me as if crackling bright-jagged lightnings broke -along my sky.-- - -It is a night of whispering breezes and little restless clouds, an -endearing night. It makes solitude a delectation. I walked out in it, -in the glimmering moonlight past buildings and houses and mines and -mounds. My thoughts as I walked were all of Me: how fascinating is Me. - -I came in at midnight and met Me in my mirror. I pushed my -three-cornered hat backward off my head, slipped out of my loose coat -and dropped my squeezed gloves. I sank fatiguedly into a little chair -before the mirror, tipped the chair forward on its front legs, rested -my elbows on the bureau and my chin in my hands and looked absorbedly -at myself. Lovingly, tenderly, discerningly, marveling and absorbed -and deeply fascinated I looked at Me in the mirror. 'You enchanted -one!' said I, 'You Witch-o'-the-world! you Mary MacLane!--who you -are _I_ don't know--what you are I but partly know. You're my -Companion, my Familiar, my Lover, my wilding Sweetheart--I love you! -I know that--that's enough. I love your garbled temper, your aching -thoughts, your troubled Heart, your wasted spirit. I know much, much, -much of you and love you! I love your beauty-sense and your proud -scornful secret super-sensitiveness. I love your Eyes and your Lips -and your bodily Fire and Ice'-- - ---to _know_ oneself: apart from all the world! - -One looking at me sees a cold-poised young woman, reserved and aloof, -slightly diffusing insolence and inspiring misgivings. - -But I looking at Me see a woman standing high on flame-washed -battlements of her life in whom burn and beat the spirits and -lights and star-discords of uncounted tired lustrous ages. I see me -forlorn and radiant, drab and brilliant. I see me wrapped in a fiery -potentiality of pain and beauty and love and sorrow. I hear wild -voices in Me like horrid-sweet wailing of ghost-violins, muted but -crying loudly in frightful reasonless vital joy and in unspeakable -terror and sadness. I see Me ragged-clothed, bleeding, with -disordered tangled hair and bloodshot eyes, with coarse soiled hands, -broken-nailed, like a criminal's: a woman of woes. And I see Me -wistful in quiet pure garments like one seeking light. I see Me old -as old sin and young as new Spring days. I see Me un-sanely sensitive -and hardened over--closed in worldly cases: guarded antagonism round -my thoughts, protecting indifference round my Heart, dead silence -round my Soul. I see Me with brains to know, with prescient mind to -grasp, with mobile sense to feel. I see Me all futile, all hopeless, -all miserable. I see Me all poetry. I see Me all wonder, mystery and -beauty. I see Me!-- - ---much more than that, _this_ Me sitting here! my deep gray wanton -dark eyes: my lips--like pink flowers--with the inscrutable -expression: my white fingers--slim, strong, glossy-nailed, silken at -the tips. My glass gives Me back to Me, sitting by it, languid of -Body, tense of spirit and Mind, bathed in witcheries of Self-- - -I love my Mary MacLane! Ah--I love her! - -It is good--since I can't find God, since I can't find way-of-truth -however I grope about. - -Every human friendship I form throws me back more completely on -myself. - -Whom then shall I love but myself? - -I know my own human enchantments and that they never fail me. - -I'll know them more! I'll love them more!--I'll love them in sane -madness lest mad madness overtake and destroy Me, Soul and bones. - - - - -_No resonance_ - - - To-morrow - -My life, myself, I know are nothing noble, nothing constructive. - -There is no resonance in this analysis, but all Dissonance. - -Something lives, lives muscularly in me that constantly betrays -me, destroys me against all my own convictions, against all my own -knowledge, against all my own desire. - -It may be true of Everybody. - -I don't know. I think about it but get nowhere. - -It seems someway unlike God to make each person a something all of -cross-purpose. - -But I doubt that I am different from Everybody. - -I doubt if I am anyway abnormal. - -I am very sane. - -A match-flame burns me the same as it burns Everybody: pins prick me -and hurt. - -Yet I look in myself and see, through harmonic details, the massed -Dissonance. - -I am dying in a pit. - - - - -_Black-browed Wednesdays_ - - - To-morrow - -All my life I've liked the Back of a magazine. - -Some black-browed Wednesday I purchase a magazine, a fifteen-cent -one, and read it through. I read the stories and they deeply -engage or lightly interest me. I read the 'special articles' and -if they tell about flying machines or wild birds or hospitals or -woman-prisoners in penitentiaries they charm or absorb my thoughts. -I look at the illustrations and try to decide whether they are art -or science or mechanism. I read the verse and if it's poetry it -exhilarates me as if closed shutters were opened to let Day into a -gloomy Room. - -Then I read the advertisements in the Back and they do all of those -things to me in comforting life-giving oxygen-furnishing ways. Each -advertisement is a short story with an eerie little 'plot' in it: -each is a special article full of purpose: each is fruitful poetry: -and in my two hands I all-but have and hold those wonderful Things -they exploit. - -They make me feel it's my birthday and I'm presented a wealth of -lavish gifts. - -They make me feel it's all a world of playthings. - -They make me feel like a baby with a rattle, a ball and a hoop of -bells. - -I like _everything_ in the Back of a magazine. - -I like the Revolvers, handsome plausible short-barreled Revolvers -with pictures of ordinary people in dim-lit midnight bedrooms, and -ordinary expected-looking burglars climbing in windows--Revolvers -of ten shots and of six, and of different calibers, and all of them -gleamingly mystically desirable: I like the Soaps, smooth amorous -appetizing Soaps, some in luxurious Paris packets, and others -spread out in blue water and rosy foam, splashed in by athletic -Archimedesque young men and fat creamy babies and slim beautiful -ladies--Mary Garden Soap of pungent delicious scent, tar Soap for the -long lovely hair of girls, austere Ivory Soap--It floats: I like the -Rubber Heels of resilient charm so tellingly pictured and described -that at once I desire them beneath my spirit-heels--springy and -solid and thick and firm: I like the Tooth-pastes and Tooth-powders -and Tooth-lotions in tubes and tins and bottles, each bearing -beneficent messages to the human white teeth of this world--one -unfailing kind coming lyrically out like a ribbon and lying flat -on the brush: I like the foods--of miraculous spotless purity and -enticement--Biscuits and Chocolate and Figs, and _Foie-gras_ in -thick glossy little pots, so richly pictured and sung that merely -to let my thoughts graze in their pasturage fattens my Heart: I -like the men's very thin Watches, and men's Garters--no metal can -touch you--, and men's fluffy-lathered shaving sticks, and men's -trim smart flawless tailored Suits, in none of which I have use or -interest until I find them in the Back of a magazine--where at once -they grow charming and romantic: I like the jars and boxes and tubes -and glasses of Cold Cream, Cold Cream fit for skins of goddesses, fit -for elves to feed on--a soft satiny scented snow-white elysium of -wax and vaseline and almond paste, pictured in forty alluring shapes -till it feels pleasantly ecstatic just to be living in the same world -with bewitching vases of Cold Cream, Cold Cream, Cold Cream--always -bewitching and lovely but never so notably and festively as in the -Back of a magazine: and I like the Pencils: and Book-cases: and -Silver: and Jewels: and Glass: and Gloves: and Shoes--beautiful -Shoes: and Fountain-pens: and Leather things: and Paint--silkish -salubrious Paints, house-Paints, and the panegyrics with them--they -make me long to own a spirit-house and paint it liberally: and Rugs: -and Varnish: and Clothes--wonderful Clothes: and Bungalows: and -Phonographs--his master's voice: and Paper--fine-wrought Paper to -write on--bond and linen and hand-pressed, pale-tinted--a vast virgin -treasure: and Oranges: and Cigarettes--a shilling in London a quarter -here: and Water-Bottles of powdery rubber: and Stockings--patrician -Stockings which take me into realms of silk-looms and delicate dyes -and slim ankles: and Candle-Shades: and Candle-Sticks: and countless -Cosmetics--Cosmetics of tender colors for the outer women: and -Sealingwax indescribably useless and attractive: and Tennis-Racquets: -and Ivory--smooth Vantine Ivory toys and trinkets polished softly -bright as moonlight--and their lily-worded descriptions like -restrained sonnets: and Washing Powders--let the Gold Dust twins do -your work: and Shower-baths: and Evans' Ale: and Flying Boats: and -Umbrellas: and Cameras--if it isn't an Eastman it isn't a kodak: and -boxes of Candy--sweet wilderness of chocolates--their very makers' -names have a melting gust--Allegretti, Huyler, Clarence Crane, -Maillard--cloying courtiers all: and Diamond Dyes--a child can use -them: and Veranda Screens--she can look out but he can't look in: -and Cedar Chests: and Chartreuse from Carthusian monasteries: and -Perfumes--Perfumes in their maddening-sweet pride, Perfumes from -Paris, Perfumes bottled in thick crystal, enchantingly costly--each -American dollar added to their price-by-the-ounce making them -fragranter to my thoughts: and boxes of benevolent Matches, and -captivating Brooms, and fascinating Scouring-powders--a Dutch girl -on the can chasing dirt--all three luscious tempting things in the -Back of a magazine: and Automobiles--ask the man who owns one: and -Rifles--simple and formidable and fine: and restful Rat-poison--they -die in the open air seeking water: and sacks of Flour--eventually -why not now--flour unusual and piquant in the Back of a magazine, -flour novel and endearing: and Type-writers: and Mushrooms: and -Monkey-Wrenches: and Rosaries: and Rock-salt-- - -the Back, the Back, the Back of a magazine-- - -There's no sadness and no terror in the Back of a magazine. - -And it is for Everybody, Everybody. - -A million people read a story in the middle of the magazine and half -the million readily miss its point. But a single tin of Talcum Powder -in the Back--the whole million note that and miss nothing in it: it -gets to them both on and under their skin. - -Some of the million read a ten-line poem in _vers libre_ in the front -of the magazine--and nine-tenths of their number are hard-put to it: -the mentalities of this human race being mostly shops shut down. -It is something pregnant and prophetic to a poet, merely musical -to a plain prose writer, arrant folly to a telephone girl, amusing -nonsense to a butcher, a comic fantasy to a milliner, a form of -insanity to a plumber, an unknown tongue to a milk-man, a kind of -sin to a Baptist minister. But to each of those a Can of Soup in the -Back of the same magazine has easily, exactly the same ox-tail-ish -meanings: it reaches them where they live. - -A thousand persons agree with an article about atavism in -orang-outangs and ten thousand more quite refute it. But they all -harmoniously commit suicide with the same make of Revolver--hammer -the hammer--or get rousing drunk to the same degree with the same -brand of high-powered whiskey--Wilson, that's all. - -A countess, a courtesan and a convict-woman summarily pass over the -front and middle of the magazine as containing nothing to their -purpose. But like jungle denizens at their drinking pool the three -of them meet hostilely on the common ground of a popular Cigarette -featured in the Back--a blend to suit every taste--wherewith they -unwittingly smoke away half their generic differentiations. The -Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady anoint themselves nightly into a -state of shining invisible kinship from separated twin jars of the -same bewitching Cold Cream. - -I'm not sure myself and Miss Lily Walker of the Broadway chorus -regard similarly a beauteous box of Rice Powder: she perchance would -at once dash madly into it and powder herself o'er with it, whereas -I would fain ponder about it awhile as a tiny be-violeted adventure. -But pondering or powdering, equally exciting to each of us is its -delicate pale lilac blazonment in the Back of a magazine. - -The front of the magazine may mean little to you and the middle -of the magazine may mean nothing to me: the Back of it none of us -escapes. - -It is for Everybody, Everybody. - -Even Senegambians: they can look at the pictures and marvel over them. - -I can there meet a Senegambian on the common ground of it might be a -delicate transparent oval of Pears' Soap, pretty as a jewel of price: -perchance we would each unconsciously feel we wouldn't be happy till -we got it. - -It's only as playthings I want the Things in the Back of a magazine. - -To me they are toys, lyrics of matter, food of the senses. - -The octroi would have no sympathy with my loiterings among their -wares. It is a fete of my own, indolent and fanciful, unrecognized in -commerce. Any article I may put to its forthright use in actuality -becomes an idyllic toy when I find it in the Back of a magazine. -The desirable Revolvers are not firearms with which to shoot myself -and burglars, but only bijous to have and handle and caress. The -luxuriant vervain- and violet-scented Soaps are not for my toilet, -but something to eat, for my astral body to feed on--nourishing food -they make. The lush Cold Creams have no massaging possibilities in -them--they are for my thoughts to gambol among, for my meddlesome -spirit-fingers to touch and fuss with deliciously, blissfully, -transcending all vulgar use. The men's thin Watches mean nothing -to me as Watches: and their Garters--what's it to me whether -no-metal-can-touch-you or no-metal-at-all? My thoughts merely revel -and juggle with them, picture and legend--they are pastimes of my -child-self. The cream-woven Note Papers are not to write on but -wherewithal to imagine how cool and smooth they would feel drawn -slowly across my flushed cheek. A sack of Flour--I feel only how -I'd like to have it spilled out--eventually-why-not-now--in a thick -warm-tinted heap on the blue-velvety floor of my room that I might -roll and bathe in it and feel it feathery-fluffy on my skin. - -So I play with my toys on black-browed Wednesdays. - -Some Wednesdays even fail to be black-browed because there are Backs -to magazines. - - - - -_The conscious analyst_ - - - To-morrow - -I don't know whether I write this because I wear two plain dresses or -whether I wear two plain dresses because I write it. - -My life fell into a lowering mood which calls for but two dresses: -which mood compels me to write out these things that are in me as -inevitably as heavy gathered clouds come raining to the ground. The -mood having overtaken me I can not keep from writing this day after -day, more than I can keep from brushing my hair every day, and eating -lumps of food every day, and picking up tiny white specks from my -blue rug. - -I love this book and I fear and hate it. I love the writing of it -though it is a finical unobvious task--more so than it looks. And -often I fear to read it over lest I hurt my own feelings. And I hate -it in ways. I am a particularly sane woman when all's said. And many -things I come to in me are grating and inexplicable and incongruous. - -But also I love it. It is my companion 'when the world is gone.' I am -as solitary as if I had no human place in this earth. My days are as -silent as if I lived in it alone. The few voices that bespeak me in a -day or a week stop at my ear-drums and are immensely alien. At times, -for weeks on end, I am quite alone in this house and the silence -then has a depth and a hollowness. From it I feel not alone in a -house but alone in a world: and more when the family is in the house. - -And it is what-should-I-do if I had not a writing talent to expend me -upon from day to day, and so rest me. I feel God around some corner -but that feeling is no rest, but only an odd terror which wants the -dignity of terror. - -Times I wonder if I shall have this published afterward for all to -read and if so what colors it will paint on my world--and what else -may befall. - -But it's an aspect dim and remote now. I wearing but two nunlike -dresses and face to face with me, have nothing to do with publishing -books and with the beautiful noisy world and its befallings. It is -easy to believe I shall never again have to do with any of that. This -may be my death-mood. I am very tired. The weight of being a person -is heavy on me as weights of lead. And still I know if I suddenly -bloomed with beautiful frocks and went out to-morrow to lose myself -among people, people, people I should at once achieve a veneer of the -utmost frivol. I have an odd frivolous quality full of an ardor and -strength, with all of my mental mettle in it. Also I know if I did -that now it would be but postponing this analytic reckoning. Which -would confront me again with the more rancor, the more futileness -gathered into it from having been put off. - -This book and the two dresses are my present portion. If I could -escape them (I am not quite sure I want to--but--_hell!_)--it would -be of no use. They would come back again in an unexpected ripeness of -time and demand a hearing: an exquisite nervous tragic hearing. - -They are such stuff as the conscious analyst is made of. - -But though I'm the conscious analyst I can't quite tell whether I -write the book because I wear two plain black dresses or I wear those -because I write it. - - - - -_Eye when I mean tooth_ - - - To-morrow - -I write it, and it's a surprising book. - -It is not what on the surface it looks to be. - -I do not write what my clear Mind may want to say to the white blank -paper. - -I do not write what my thoughts are saying to me. - -Those things are facile, uninformed--flat mental pictures, the -writer's craft. - -I write what still voices of life: voices trivially frightful in -their secret pettiness: voices of all my life--merest living--say -to my ancient Soul and my young present Body and what they two may -answer. - -I am in some sort a wonderful person--and in places I do that, nearly -perfectly. - -I am also tired and someway whelmed by self-conscious despair, -and possessed of a talent imperfect and inadequate to reveal the -radiances and shades my being perceives: and in places I fail. - -I fail remarkably. I write Eye when I mean Tooth. I write Fornicate -when I mean Caress. I write Wine when I mean Blood. For no better -reason than that my writing hand is not sufficiently dexterous: the -little flashing shutters open and shut so quick that the second ones -are shut and the third starting to open before I have got written the -things I saw through the first ones. - -Only not always. - - - - -_A wild mare_ - - - To-morrow - -Also I am dissatisfying to myself. - -My thoughts smother me: they keep me from life. - -I am a hundred times more introspective than most people, most -women. Most women, even conventional ones, are lawless--the more -conventional, the more lawless usually. - -And so most women beat me to life. Where they yield to an -impulse the moment they feel it--I, because an impulse itself is -adventure-fabric--I feel of its quality, test it for defects, wash a -little corner of it to see if the color will run--and conclude not to -use it. - -That I gaze inward at the garbled biograph of Me keeps me from -several sorts of violent action. - -I have violent action in me, chained in analysis. - -Most women are secretly lawless on the old plan inaugurated by -Eve--of inclining to do anything forbidden, of hugging everything -they are unsupposed to hug, of determinedly kicking over the traces -when coerced too much. The ban is the chief attraction. - -It's but little like that with me. There would be point and purpose -in my Action. But it is kept in stupor by analysis. - -I am malcontent about that, though I live upon analysis. I hate the -inaction and inertia that follow on its heels. - -I could be an anarchist. I condemn anarchists but not as I condemn -Me. I would respect me more were I this moment prisoned in a real -bastile for having stuck a good knife into a bad king. I could feel, -no matter how foolish and mistaken in itself the act, that I had done -the strong and brave thing at sacrifice of my personal selves. The -dry living-death of the prison would be compensated for each day when -I said to Me, 'It was a needful honorable act and _I_ did it: for -once in my life I was a Regular Person.' - -There would be a nourishment in being able to tell that to myself. -There would be warming food in owning one so brave remembrance of -myself. - -But, my Soul-and-bones!--at the very moment of lifting the good -knife a thought would come: 'How is this king worse than another? -What rotten rascal mightn't rise in his place?' And on with a -lightning-trail of analysis till my pale hand dropped inert and the -knife in it grew harmless as a lily-petal. - -It isn't that I haven't the guts. I have. - -I am a wild mare in foal: and unfoaling. - - - - -_The mist_ - - - To-morrow - -Because I am to myself someways dissatisfying and exasperating often -this thing I write is dissatisfying and exasperating. - -It is a true account of what is inside me. 'The wine must taste of -its own grapes.' - -It would be easier to make it an untrue account, for fiction is the -most effortless of writing. So I have found it. And I am very clever. - -I could write myself as a pretty dainty harmlessly purring one--the -leopard with claws clipped and fangs drawn. - -When my dynamos rest I am like that, doubtless. - -But the wears and tears of breathing and the influences of varied -life-details and of clothes worn and food eaten start me moving -devilishly. - -Phases of a score of persons, men and women, come to light in me. - -To be one human being means to be monstrously mixed. - -I write me out not as I might be, nor as I should be--whatever that -may be--: but merely as I am. - -As, Just Beneath The Skin, I am. - -So my written account must come out someways dissatisfying and -exasperating. Logically dissatisfying and divinely and ethically -exasperating. - ---a passage in Vergil tells of a Mist that is all over and about -this world from the human 'tears that are falling, falling, falling -always.' Something, and it may be that Mist, makes one's view of -everything--everything in life--a little blurred. It may even blur -one's view of oneself. So it may be I do not see myself with entire -clearness-- - -I only know I write me as clearly as I see me, considering the Mist. - - - - -_A white liner_ - - - To-morrow - -To-day came the Finn woman and cleaned my blue-and-white bedroom. - -She comes now and again and cleans excellently. - -I would like to clean my room myself but lack the strength and skill -to do it well. - -But I stay with the Finn woman and show her how and I watch her work -and muse upon her. She would be called in England a charwoman, but in -this America of the vast mongrel heterogenesis she is an unclassified -laborer. - -I like to watch her and talk with her a bit and dwell on her mixed -potentialities. She contrasts fascinatingly with me. - -She is a human being and so am I, and beyond and with that there are -odd parallels and similarities and distinctions between her and me. - -Her name is Josephina and she looks as if it might be. - -Mine is Mary MacLane but I don't look entirely like it. - -She lives a lonely life and so do I, differing in sort and -circumstance. - -I am middle-class and American of Canadian reminiscence, and -early-thirty. - -Josephina is Finn and lower-class with a 'foreign' look, and she is -forty-five and looks sixty and is twelve years out of Finland. - -I am tallish and slim and weigh nine wavering stone. - -The Finn woman is short and solid and weighs all of a hundred and -seventy pounds. - -I am slender of flank and ankle, narrow through the loins and bony at -the shoulders. - -The Finn woman is thick everywhere, broad of girth and deep of chest -like a Percheron stallion. - -I am darkish with dusky gray eyes. - -Josephina is dirty-blond with pale narrow blue eyes like a china -doll's. - -My sex feels to me like a mysterious sweetness. - -Josephina's sex looks porcinely obvious and uninteresting like her -large dubious breasts. - -I am inwardly full of strong-flavored emotions. - -The one positive outward feeling Josephina manifests is a dull but -comprehensive hatred, peculiar to her nationality and station, for -everything Swedish. - -The Finn woman has a husband now and had a different one formerly. - -I have none and never had. - -Josephina is elemental primeval woman. - -So am I but terrifically qualified by complexity, incongruity. - -I have white smooth firm beautiful hands. - -Josephina's hands are particularly ugly and have a menacing look. - -I have quick intelligence. - -Josephina is markedly stupid. - -I live in a quiet clean bungalow. - -Josephina lives in an unusually filthy unrestful little house. - -I own two dresses whose personnel alters at intervals. - -Josephina owns one unchanging dress, septic, maculate and repellent. - -I have a sense of humor vivid and intriguing to myself. - -Josephina has no more sense of humor than a flatiron. - -I bathe foamily icily each morning. - -Josephina would seem never to have had a bath. She cleans windows and -floors and rugs for thirty-five cents an hour. She would regard it as -a fantastic waste of time and soap to clean herself for nothing. - -I own in a still flawed life one phase which is an endless treasure -of beauty and power and charm and light: my love for John Keats. - -The Finn woman owns about the same thing in a life which may be more -still and flawed than mine: her love for strong drink. - -There begins a curious line of similitude between us. - -I feel oddly joyous and light of heart on a solitary veranda corner -with the John-Keats poetry book open in my lap. - -And Josephina has been found many a time by Butte policemen sitting -alone joyous and very drunk, in dark alleys with empty pint bottles -strewn all about her. - -In my un-Keats hours I am mostly mournful. And Josephina sober -has all the melancholy of her race with an added gloom, as if the -acetylene had run out of all her lamps. That my melancholy is more -lustrous than hers I lay to her native dullness as against my native -braininess, and to alcohol's having rotting effects on human mental -tissues: whilst John Keats to those who drink his poetry is a starry -savior. - -I like to think there's the same ambrosial food in the Demon Rum for -Josephina as in the Grecian Urn for me. - -There seems no other pleasure in life for her. - -The limit of her literary pursuit is the reading of a four-page -Finnish newspaper full of obituaries. - -The opalescent enchantments of her inner being mean nothing to her: -she wouldn't know her entity from her duodenum. - -Her body can bring her no delight: there's no lightness to it, no -tang, no feminine charm, no consciousness to make her love it as the -Dianas love theirs. - -A sunset above the western peaks is less than a setting sun to her. - -Her food is merely her fodder. - -Love and Romance pass her by. She and the husband vie with each -other for solitary possession of their little nasty house. And her -personality is not conducive to lovers. - -She has nor chick nor child to mother. - -Her idea of a life beyond this vale is crude and uncomfortable. She -went two Sundays to the Finnish church and had a surprising lusty -doctrine of eternal fire rammed down her throat: she took the Finn -minister's word for it and quitted the fold, preferring to live this -life unhampered by flaming anticipation. All her material treasure -she works for with mops and scrubbing-brushes at thirty-five cents an -hour. - -Other roads being thus blocked it is sing-ho for King Alcohol in pint -bottles. - -Josephina is what is called a white liner. Which means that she -has drunk so long, so much, so regularly that whiskey, rum, gin -and brandy have no or negligible effects upon her. To achieve her -intoxicating aim she must drink pure alcohol. - -By the same token I eschew many a tame poet: I must have John Keats. - -What the poetry of John Keats does to me I know. - -What the distilled waters of her choice do to Josephina it pleases me -to imagine while I watch her clean my walls and floor and windows. - -She works strongly, steadily, quietly till I pronounce the room -clean. Then she stops, carries the pails and other things downstairs -to the kitchen, removes a big brass pin from the rear of her dingy -skirt which had held it back and doubled over her darkling petticoat, -re-dons an antique rain-coat and bad hat, ties her clinking silver -into the corner of a decadent handkerchief, bids me good-evening with -a grave blond Finn bow and goes out into the dusk. She takes her -way through alleys and short-cuts to the side door of a 'Finlander' -gin-palace in the Finn quarter of the town. And there she lays out -her day's wage in the pint bottles of her delight. As many pint -bottles as her few dollars will buy, so many she buys. She ventures -her all in the name of passionate thirst taking no thought of the -morrow. She then seeks out some alley with a dark door-step and -there she does her drinking. It would not do to go home with her -alcoholic wealth because the husband might be there who, like the -alphabetic vintner, would 'drink all himself.' So she drinks away in -pint-bottle-ish peace, sitting alone in the gloom of the alleyway -door-step, in her limp rain-coat and bad hat and her stolid Finn -self-sufficience. - -Because I like Josephina it charms me to think of the happiness that -must be hers as she sits emptying pint bottles into herself and the -white strong fire-water begins to work. - -Before having her drinks she is unelated and uninformed like a -corpse coldly electrified by a storage battery. As she drinks and -drinks on she remains outwardly unchanged as the way is with her -race--but within! The changes that come to pass in the heavy person -of Josephina as the white flames wash down her walls! - -Into her dull veins pours a hot stream like melted seething copper -and it heats her knees till she knows she _has_ knees and that they -are white and very beautiful: and it heats her legs and her back and -her breasts till they glow with the double-glow of an Aphrodite's in -a reluctant Adonis's arms: it heats her eyes and temples and throat -till she feels herself a radiant girl: it heats the crown of her -head till she feels something like a brain there: it heats her heart -and stomach till she's filled with a gay gust for life: it heats her -imagination till she even imagines herself in love with her hard -Finn husband since he is not by to beat her and so dispel the fancy: -it heats a sense of humor into her till she laughs suddenly and -heartily at some fugitive funniness that had lain long frozen in her -memory: it heats a hundred little human carburetors in her which send -a wreathe of vapors up into her drab being to flush it with misty -golds and thin blues and rosy crimsons till her dormant involuntary -soul awakes--a thing of old mellowed beauty, it may be--and is -wafted on warm pretty vapory wings far from alleys, far from mops -and scrubbing-brushes, far from thirty-five cents an hour, far from -doorsteps--to fair sweet Isles of the Blest! - -Nearing the last of her pint bottles she reels sideways on the -doorstep: her bad hat cants forward: she sprawls about. The -policeman on that beat to whom in that aspect she is a figure long -familiar strolls toward her late in the night and looks at her with -a lackluster eye. But Josephina is physically unaware of all this -world. Her last pint bottle is gamely emptied, her inner sun's -chromosphere burns like mad--but her body, unable to cope with the -virile delectations new-risen within it, limply gives way. - -A quaint picture, interesting to dwell on: her thick bathless body -laid low in the darkened alley, with the empty pint bottles scattered -on the paving-stones beside it--but her astral shape, lit by the -subtle fires of alcohol, lifted high, high to remote elysiums. The -policeman calls the 'wagon' and Josephina is taken up by several -ungentle hands and tossed into it like a sack of coal. They take her -to the city jail and lock her in a cell. The next morning she stands -jaded and morbidly intoxicated before a police judge who glances at -her uninterestedly for the several-hundredth time and says five days. - -The five days can not be pleasant days but Josephina owns a robust -sporting spirit. She gives not so much as the shrug of a shoulder -either at going into jail or coming out of it. A black eye from her -husband, a broken arm from a drunken fall, a filthy sojourn in jail: -all one to her. She accepts them as she accepts all of her life, with -an immense psychic calm. But she takes strongly to drink to translate -herself out of it. And let her drink. - -I know how she feels for I take to John Keats. I don't myself care -much for strong drink. I drink a little of it at irregular intervals, -but, by and large, I drink without eclat. In this mountain altitude -whiskey makes me sick, champagne makes me dizzy and gin is a pungent -punishment. One morning after reading of Josephina's white-line -distinction in a police-court column I tasted some alcohol, but it -had a varnish flavor and had strangling effects on my throat. It -made me marvel at Josephina's prowess. I like absinthe in its bitter -strength mostly because to sit sipping it feels restfully forbidden. -Port wine is a brackish medicine, I hate the stickiness of cordials, -and a cocktail I like chiefly to contemplate. So much for me and -strong drink. - -Josephina on the other hand does not care for John Keats. I sounded -her on poetry in some of its human aspects: there was nobody at home. -Her own enlightened north country has some poets of borealic iron and -brain-brawn and beauty: to Josephina's wooden intellect their books -are eternally closed. - -But the Demon Rum looses a heated flood of poetry upon her, which I -can but vision and not feel. - -I am incapable of strong drink even as Josephina is incapable of -John Keats. - -We are quits there. - -I look on myself as the more fortunate.--John Keats! - -A woman so drunk as to fall and reel about is always an exquisitely -shameful thing. And when I think of how she's tossed into the -wagon--to mention but one item-- - -But it's a matter of the human equation. Doubtless it is all -relative. The Finn woman is not aware of how she is knocked about, -and if she were she would not regard it with any of my imagination. -So what matter? - -A likeable and admirable person is Josephina. A so strong fine -businesslike worker, a so thoroughbred sport, a so splendid drunkard, -and asking no odds of God or man. In her stolid Finn fashion she -likes me as she has proven, and I like her though she makes me feel -inferior. - ---if Josephina could and would write _her_ inner isolated world of -thoughts--the saga of her one horrid gown! There would be a book. All -blacks and carmines--all stolidly sober and brilliantly drunk--all -dingily bathless: deeply savagely quietly human. - -It would be a book savoring not of white alcohol but of the salty -unshed Tears, the dry artistic Griefs of Josephina. - - - - -_Beneficent bedlam_ - - - To-morrow - -I have been so long Sane it would be gay and sweet and resting to go -Mad. - -I would I could go Mad. - -To a Mad-woman a Door is not a Door, probably: a Cat is not a -Cat, belike: and To-morrow is not To-morrow at all--it may be -week-before-last, it may be next year, it may be an exquisite jest. -One can not tell _what_ it is. - -It is the thing one escapes by going Mad: Monotony. - -It's all beneficent bedlam. - - - - -_A deathly pathos_ - - - To-morrow - -I love the sex-passion which is in this witching Body of me. I love -to feel its portent grow and creep over me, like a climbing vine of -tiny red roses, in the occasional dusks. - -It is no shame or shadow or sordidness: but beauty and sweetness and -light. - -no token of sin: a token of virtue. - -no thing to crush: rather to nurture, to garner. - -no thing to forget: to remember, to think about. - -no flat weak drawn-out prose: live potent clipped heated poetry. - -not common and loosely human: rare and divine. - -not fat daily soup: stinging wine of life. - -not valueless because born of nothing and nowhere: valuable, -priceless, a treasure under lock and key. - -Sex-desire comes wandering in dusk-time and gulfs me as in a swift -violent sweet-smelling whirlwind. It goes away sudden-variant as it -came, out of a region of hot quick shadows. - -And for that, for hours and days afterward, oranges and apples look -brighter-colored to my eyes: hammocks swing easier as I sit in them: -rugs feel softer to my feet: the black dresses lend themselves -gentler to my form: pencils slide faciler on paper: my voice speaks -less difficultly into telephones: meanings sound super-vibrant in -Keats's Odes: sugar--little pinches of granulated sugar--are shaper, -sweeter-sweeter in my throat. - -And God grows less remote. And my wooden coffin and deep wet yellow -clay grave move a long way back from me. - ---all from fleeting ungratified wish of sly sex-tissues-- - -Also in it, and in my life from it, I sense some deathly pathos. - - - - -_The necklace_ - - - To-morrow - -The Necklace which God long ago hung round the white neck of my Soul -is composed of little-seeming curses, like precious and semi-precious -gems. They are polished smooth as if by age, as if by wear, as if by -fingering and as if by brisk industrious rubbing. - -The Necklace is at once beautiful and ugly. The gems are in color -chiefly blues and greens--with grays, lavenders, drabs and mauves. -But mostly blues and greens. They make a circlet of small stones -strung at short intervals as if on a strong thin gold wire, with -two large tawdry pretty pendants hung in front. One of the pendants -is my fertile phase of Weakness and the other my odd encompassing -Folly. The smaller stones are seventeen in number and their names and -natures are these: - -the first is Dishonesty which makes ghosts of half my life. - -the second is Pretense, hard and genuine stone, which keeps me from -being all-ways sincere even to anyone who knows me and whom I know: -who loves me and whom I love. - -the third is Fear which makes me who scorn all leonine dangers cringe -and crawl for Trifles of life incredibly little. - -the fourth is Sensuality which burns and bursts across my Mind, -half-missing my Body. - -the fifth is Anxiety, strange flawed green stone--by it I worry, -tortured and wildly wavering, about the passing hours of my life: -where they are going, where they are taking me. - -the sixth is Amativeness, extraordinary deep-tinted warm false -gem--it makes me love someway amorously some person I meet and fancy: -an intimate tragedy, crucial and trivial. - -the seventh is Fatigue of the spirit itself, gray sad stone, meaning -terrible sensations of age in my young flesh. - -the eighth is Incongruity, the sense and feeling of it, round blue -stone--it kills what might be art and constructiveness and excellence -in me. - -the ninth is Acquiescence, worn dull stone--it has kept me all the -ages from the salvation of heated luminous strife. - -the tenth is Sensitiveness, pale-toned stone--by it the fingers of -life touch me too suddenly, too sharply, too tensely to do me the -good they might. - -the eleventh is Doubt, frail opalescent stone--by it my delight in -the sunny Spring wind against my cheek is qualified with dubious -surprise: by it I half-disbelieve in moon and stars and in long -country roads stretched out solitary, lovely, drenched in sunset. - -the twelfth is Self-consciousness, blue-and-green stone--it robs me -of the comfort and self-respect of feeling any motive in me to be -un-ulterior. - -the thirteenth is Introspection, beautiful-beautiful blue-green -stone--it pays for its place in beauty but by it I lose the building, -the substance, the _matter_ of living. - -the fourteenth is Intensity--too vivid vision, too vivid taste for -some details of life--little hot-looking cool-feeling stone--by it -I undervalue and overvalue, dwell upon surfaces, missing the serene -feel and possession of precious solidness. - -the fifteenth is Isolation, pale purple stone--it makes me feel -_never_ at home, _never_ at ease, _never_ belonging--a subtle -insulation--in this sheltered peopled world. - -the sixteenth is Bewilderment, mixed-tinted stone--by it I wonder -_what_ is truth with truth seeming that moment fluttering soft-plumed -wings at my throat. - -the seventeenth is--it has no name--the _Feel-of-Me_, bright -blue-green stone, lovely and loathesome--by it I've lost my way, I've -felt all and only Me when I might have groped outward, hand and foot, -and found a wind-swept path to go in: I was always blurred by Me. - -A small Necklace, all dull gleams and unusual tints, strung finely -and strongly and beautifully on shining gold. The sweet Soul droops -like a wilted lily under even its slight weight. Strong fine rivets -hold it firm-clasped and the weight of the two charming imitation -pendant-stones keep it gracefully in place. My loved and lovely Soul -has worn it through the ages: manacle, shackle. - -How long more--God may know but does not tell me. - -It's only a Necklace. And my Soul is a Soul! - -Even under the frail galling burden of the flesh the Soul of me -to-morrow could tear off that Necklace and crumble it to airless -nothing. - -It does not: but _could_. - - - - -_Slyly garbling and cross-purposing_ - - - To-morrow - -At rarish intervals comes my Soul to visit me. - -My Soul is light sheer Being. - -My Soul is like a young most beautiful girl marked and worn by long -cycles of time but not anyway aged. She comes dressed in something -like gray-white de-soie muslin or fine-grained crepe silk, a -loose-belted frock reaching to her ankles. - -My Soul is unmoved by the world and the flesh and their feeling, -as befits a Soul. She looks on me with a chill faery-ish contempt, -as also befits a Soul. The quality of her contempt is of weary -understanding and is like a caress. - -In the dusk of yesterday came my Soul to visit me--a dusk of a deep -beauty. The last glow of the sun lay along the earth, and all was -gentian blue. - -I leaned against my window-pane watching it, and beside me sat her -Presence. Her Presence makes me feel wonderfully gifted: it is -_mine_, this Soul all Golden-Silk and Silken-Gold! - -We talk on many topics, of many things: I in worldly nervous -ignorance and with a wishfulness to reach and compass and know: the -Soul with poise and surety of attitude, a wearied patience and the -chill sweet contempt. - -She answers me from her cool old tranquil viewpoint, which is near -me yet remote. - -We talked last of some bygone persons I have been, some shapes she -wore. - -Said the Soul: 'Early in the sixteenth century you were a ragged -Russian peasant girl living in ignorance and filth in a hut -by a swamp-edge. You had parents both of whom beat your body -black-and-blue from your babyhood. And at eighteen you were a -coarsened hardy wench tending a drove of pigs and goats on the sunny -steppe. I was there with you as presently as now--as sentient, as -perceptive. But it is a question whether you or the little beasts you -drove were the more beastly stupid. You and they were equal in outer -quality, equal in uncleanliness, equally covered with vermin.' - -I have no ghost-memory of that time, but as the Soul told of it a -nascent feeling came on me, as if some part of my Mind felt its way -back to that. I warmed to the thought of the Peasant Girl. I was -quiescent to her filth and ignorance. - -Said I: 'Was she brave and fairly honest?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were a ready liar--you lied your way out of many -a beating. But you were brave enough. You faced the roughnesses of -your life uncringing, and you died game.' - -Said I: 'How did I die?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were run neatly through the body by the short -sword of a soldier whose lust-desire you had had the hardihood to -refuse--and I fled away upon the instant.' - -Said I: 'I half-knew it--she died a violent death. You--were you glad -to be quit of her filthy flesh, her surroundings, her ignorance?' - -Said the Soul: 'Glad? Such things mean nothing to me. Your -body, be it sweet or foul, has no bearing on my long journey. -Motives--motif--back of your human acts make me glad or sorry at -leaving you.' - -Said I: 'Tell me about a time when I seemed someway fine, humanly -fine.' - -Said the Soul: 'In London, near the end of the seventeenth century, -before and during the period of the Gordon Riots, you lived in a way -of peace. From when you were fourteen until you were twenty-nine you -lived alone with your little lame half-sister whom you cared for very -devotedly, very tenderly.' - -My little half-sister-- Until the Soul spoke of her there was no -vision, no image like her. Then something of me remembered. - -Said I: 'What was she like? Who were our parents?' - -Said the Soul: 'Your mother died at your birth, hers at her birth. -Your father was hanged at Tyburn for forgery. The sister was pale, -large-eyed, long-haired, crippled from a dislocated shoulder and -hip. When you were twenty-five she was eleven, a beautiful frail -child. You lived in two rooms above a linen-draper's and you -supported the two of you by weaving and calendering cloths for the -shop-keeper, and by illuminating missals and manuscripts when you -could get that work. For a very poor wage, but living was cheap. All -the time you took zealous care of your sister. Your heart was bound -up in her--you adored her.' - -Said I: 'I know that. Tell me what we did--how we lived--how we loved -each other.' - -Said the Soul: 'In the summer evenings you often walked out along -quiet London streets--the sister sometimes with a crutch and your arm -about her, sometimes in a rolling chair, whilst you walked beside -her pushing it. Your father had educated you in an erratic fashion. -You had a deal of desultory knowledge--what is called knowledge--and -you educated the young sister in the same manner. Often it was of -the poets--Latin, English, Italian, and of histories and sciences -and arts--what odd comprehensive bits you knew--that you two talked -as you sauntered in the bright late English sunlight. Or you -talked of the little details of your joint life. Sometimes you sat -together--you holding her close in your arms--by a window in your -darkening front room, and watched the children at play in the common -opposite, and conversed and were quietly happy. You were maternal and -the child was a mature old-fashioned yet childish innocent child.' - -My little sister--sweet--long gone-- Would that I had her now! - -Said I: 'Tell me what we said.' - -Said the Soul: 'You said to her, "Our poverty and even our -deprivations, dearest, which for your sake I feel deeply would not -matter, not the least, to me if I could see you well and strong." -And the child replied, "Sweet, just to rest like this in your arms -each twilight makes me rich, rich--as rich as the smartest ladies -in Piccadilly." And you said, "Rich reminds me, Darling, we shall -have four extra shillings--four bright silver shillings--at the end -of this week from the book-seller. So what shall we purchase for a -treat? There'll be, if you like, prawns and crumpets for tea, for -days to come--or if my Child prefers oranges or pineapples once--" -And the child replied with her cheeks quite pink at the thought, -"O Sister-love, let us have the pines, just one day, and let us -make-believe to be ladies that day, and comport ourselves like -ladies, and take our tea--all like ladies." And you pressed her close -to your breast--you both wore caps and kerchiefs and stuff-gowns in -the fashion of the lower-middle artisan class--and showered gentle -kisses on her cheeks and eyelids, and promised her the pineapples -and the tea like ladies.' - -I listened to this with vivid still pleasure. It felt like endearing -fulfilling life--a day of tenderness--. And oddly familiar. - -Said I: 'What were we in the habit of having for our tea--that prawns -and crumpets would make us a treat?' - -Said the Soul: 'Your tea was chiefly bran-bread and cress or perhaps -lettuce, with a stone mug of milk for the child when you could afford -it. The London of that day had no luxuries for the poor. And having -had none you missed none. But the populace lived in starveling -misery. The rabble rose and rallied to the Gordon as it would have to -anyone who urged it to rioting. You were Protestants but you regarded -him as a weakling visionary. You watched the rioting in the streets -with little fear, but the linen-draper and all other shop-keepers -kept barred doors. You two were venturesome and were yourselves of -the masses, and when the mob stormed Newgate prison you both stood -watching with many other householders on the outskirts of the crowd, -in terror but secretly half in sympathy. You were safe enough from -the rioters who were intent on wrecking the gaol and freeing the -inmates. It was characteristic of you as you were then to be out -looking on at a murderous night scene with interest, carefully -protecting the child from contact with the throngs.' - -Said I: 'How long did that life last?' - -Said the Soul: 'Four years after that your sister changed from her -bare little bed to a coffin and you went on alone achingly suffering -her loss for long years. You lived to be seventy, a thin old woman, -working latterly as one of the night nurses in a public hospital. You -lived an abstemious outwardly self-sacrificing life and died alone, -from hardened arteries, one autumn night.' - -Said I: 'And was there an informing beauty for you, for you and for -me, in my life then?' - -Coldly said the Soul: 'You were self-centered, for all your -self-sacrifice. You reckoned it your duty to care for your sister. -It was also your irresistible delight. And after her death you took -self-satisfaction in self-sacrifice: smug--smug. For me there was a -laming distortion in it all.' - -Said I: 'Tell me some other life.' - -Said the Soul: 'You were once a little thief in the streets of a -later London. You picked pockets, you stole bits of food in Covent -Garden market, you pilfered shop-tills, you systematically worked the -wealthy throngs as they came from the Opera at midnight. You were -known to the police as the cleverest child-thief in London.' - -It warmed my vanity to think of myself as clever in so theatric a -role as thief. - -Said I: 'How did that life like you?' - -Said the Soul, with a shrug of her delicate shoulders: 'I had little -to do with it and that in a negative way. My part in you was to keep -up your heart in hungry hunted days. You were neither a good thing -nor a bad thing: perishingly passive. And you were dead in a potter's -field before your sixteenth birthday.' - -Said I: 'How did the little Thief look?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were sufficiently ugly--an undersized form, a -gamin face, bastard features.' - -Said I: 'And I daresay ignorant?' - -Said the Soul: 'Ignorant of everything rated useful, but wise to the -under-sides of human nature and in the sordid viciousness of London -slums. And singularly shrewd--what is called philosophical.' - -Said I: 'Pray tell me another life.' - -Said the Soul: 'An earlier time--Paris, some century before the -Terror saw you a slim _fille-du-pave_, a prostitute of a low cheap -type, but with more brain, more of what is termed character than you -have ever possessed. You had wit, will, _esprit_, determination. -From having been at seventeen most obscenely of the streets you -were at thirty a wonderfully grand courtesan: no better in what are -called morals but possessed of very much inner and outer strength and -luster. You were _chere-aimee_ to men of brain, men of importance -to the state, whose acts were shaded by your influence. And you -achieved unusual wealth chiefly by the powers and strategies of -your character. You lived in the extreme of luxury of that time and -of your type--a delicate luxury, almost high-bred. You were wanton -in amour, being physically extremely passionate, but admirably -straightforward and strong in each matter and aspect of your life.' - -Said I: 'You admired her?' - -Said the Soul: 'I was serene and vividly alive within you. You were -in all ways, simply and completely, an honest woman, and for the only -time.' - -Said I: 'How could she be honest, since she lived by exchanging -treasure of much personal economic value for cheap cheapest gold, -trash, and a besmirched name: and all through two sorts of greed?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were honest since you made no pretense of any -kind to yourself. You took no gold that you did not logically, -humanly or shamefully earn. You were consciously and unconsciously -above all subterfuge. You wrought no ruin nor error nor darkness -upon your own spirit or any other. You deceived neither yourself nor -anyone about you. The tone of your life was of sun-shining simplicity -and cleanness. There was no greed in you. You saw your way of life -before you and lived it without degradation, with a positiveness of -strength.' - -It is as if my Soul's view and mine were infinitely separate from -being narrowly paralleled. The portrait was mystically familiar: but -not by her light. - -Said I: 'Was she beautiful to look at?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were beautiful in a pallid saintlike French -manner--an uncertain type of beauty which fatigue or depression -turns to plainness. You had but little light charm of prettiness. -But you had what counts for more than beauty: the nerve and verve -of attractiveness, the force and fascination of physical being, the -fragrance, the _flair_ of the deeply-sexed woman. In one phase you -were constantly preying and preyed upon, but with high valors of -attack and endurance.' - -Said I: 'Did she live in peace--had she no times of suffering?' - -Said the Soul: 'You had hours of violent bitter suffering. Paris -has always accepted without countenancing the properous cocotte. -And often you were infamously insulted at street-crossings by -soldiers and _sergeants-de-ville_ as you drove out in your small -bright-colored carriage. And you were hailed with opprobrious -appropriate names by the ragged populace as they picked up silver -pieces which you threw among them. Such things were stinging brands -and lashes to you. But you bore yourself with entire courage. You -gave much money to churches and charities but looked on such acts in -yourself rightly as some slight weakness which would, however, be of -benefit to the starving poor. I can not describe--so you could grasp -it--the peace, the expansion, the freedom for me in that life and in -that attitude.' - -The exact outlook of the Soul throws over me a veil of wistfulness, -bewilderness, freedness, lostness which hides the material moorings -of my life and casts me adrift on broad clouded seas. - -Said I: 'What was the end of that--how did she die?' - -Said the Soul: 'You died exquisitely, of syphilitic disorders. You -were something past forty, badly broken--your looks were gone, your -friends were gone, your money was not gone but it was of little use -to you. But you smiled serenely and lived up personally and mentally -to your smile. A surgeon and a fat mustached old woman saw you die in -the beginning of that bodily rot--the just portion of the passionate -whore--one sweet Spring dawn, with birds twittering in green branches -outside your window and a great gold sun slowly breaking the mist. -Then for once I left you with reluctance. I clung to you. The kiss of -me was last on your fainting brain and your fast-cooling heart. For -I was leaving, in an agony of my own, an _honest_ person. And I knew -not what might be my next petty prison.' - -Said I: 'What was my next life?' - -Said the Soul: 'It was not so petty as were some others. You were -next--about seventeen-fifty--a quaint extremely common little person. -You were apprenticed as a child to a milliner in Liverpool, England. -You grew out of that and became a dancer in a dingy theatre--a cheap -bedraggled life. You were a cheap and bedraggled young woman. You -wore odd gay tawdry frocks, hideous little shoes, ragged raveled -silk hose, surprising bright bonnets. Your mind was a shallow pool -filled with tales from shilling shockers and penny dreadfuls in which -you believed implicitly. You were mentally degenerate, organically -a fool, a wonderful snob. You wanted only wealth and place bitterly -to deride and browbeat the low class to which you belonged--not -from lack of heart but because you believed it to be the proper -aristocratic manner. And what you wanted in mind you made up in -temper. You quarreled, you came to blows, with your fellow-dancers in -any of a half-score of small selfish daily disputes. Cleverness among -you consisted in gaining any possible advantage over the others and -in calling each other names. Also in maneuvering bits of money--as -much as might be--from unpleasing men who hung about the dingy -play-house. On holidays you were invariably half-drunk.' - -Said I: 'And wherein was she not petty?' - -Said the Soul: 'You believed in yourself. You had not a doubt you -belonged in worldly high places but were kept down by the malice and -depravity of human nature, people about you. And you lived up to your -vulgar ideal of ambition. There was a simplicity, an enlightening -pathos in you then which was lacking in the linen-draper's lodger.' - -In my flawed way I saw that, but objected to the bygone Liverpool -lady from many an angle. - -Said I: 'Had I no life of a sweetness and gentleness and with it -something that buoyed and bore you on?' - -Said the Soul: 'Never once. You were many centuries ago a Greek girl -of the aristocratic class, bred in an intellectual life. You read -the philosophers in the cool retreats of an olive grove. The mental -knowledge you have now compared to your learning then is a tangle -of ignorance. But the Greek girl had no heart, no human flame, no -active blood of personality. Those wanting I starved. The Liverpool -dancer in her warming virile vulgarness bore me vastly farther on -my way. You were a Greek woman in a still earlier time--of a type -which murders all simplicity. Your body and mind were haunted by -perfervid imagination and both ached with the weight of it. You were -made of twisted fires. I grew in _that_ day: grew burdenedly: grew -distortedly.' - -Always those Greek visions are my 'half-familiar ghosts.'-- - -Said I: 'Was I sometime a married woman?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were--in four separate ages. Which brought you -and me singular solitude.' - -Said I: 'Was I always woman?' - -Said the Soul: 'You were once a young lad of fierce temper and were -at twenty a madman. And died mad. No male body and brain could -withstand and outface merely the emotional besiegings of _you_.' - -Said I: 'When I went mad, what of you?' - -Said the Soul: 'I fell asleep, and knew no rest, but dreamed.' - -Said I: 'Of what?' - -Said the Soul: 'Things I always dreamed in your mad lapses--poetry -served very conscious and very hot: the material Color of the -Sunshine: the musical Softness of the Dawns: the pulsing Thoughts in -Girls' Throats: the Scent of Water-Falls.' - -The Soul has an airless voice which tells her meanings, beside her -words and in their rhythm. - -Said I: 'What do you, and how do you, with me now?' - -Said the Soul: 'I grow tired with you. Exasperated. Desperate. As if -I too wore flesh. You are a deathly prison, a torture chamber. I turn -everywhere and nowhere at all. You tire me--you wear me. I wait. I -stay. Yet I move.' - -She looked lovely, my Soul--and quite in and of this bitter-ish -lovely world in its bloody bitter wrappings of bone and flesh. Around -her neck was the Necklace she wore in all the ages, showing greenish -in a dusk of gentian blue.-- - -All of it slyly garbles and cross-purposes me a little bit more than -usual. - -I wish I'd been born a Wild Boar. - - - - -_Not quite voila-tout_ - - - To-morrow - -The clearest lights on persons are small salient personal facts and -items about them and their ways of life. - -To know that a woman is 'sensitive' is to have but a blurred -conception of her as one easily impressed, easily hurt. But to know -that she wears thick union-suitish under-clothes and uncompromising -cotton stockings is to know much about her: by those tokens she is -plain: she is stupid: she is smugly virtuous: she is poor: she is -narrow-thoughted: she lacks imagination: she is prosaic: she has a -defective sense of humor: she is catty: she is 'kind': she catches -cold: she is a thoroughly good woman. - -To know that a child is 'bright' is to have no definite knowledge of -the child. But to know she flies into rages and bites whisk-brooms, -laces and her fragile grandmother is to have a wide-beamed -far-reaching spirit-light upon her. - -That I am 'thoughtful' means little or anything or nothing: that I -love the odor of ink, that I hate the stings of conscience, that I -never lounge untidily about the house or in my room but am always -'groomed,'--those tell me to myself. - -Here for my enlightening I write a garbled list of my items and facts: - ---I never see a soft new yeast-cake without wishing to squeeze it -for the salubrious feeling of the tinfoil bursting facilely and the -yeast oozing with its odd dry juiciness through my fingers. - ---And I never see a shiny waxy green rubber plant without wanting to -bite the leaves precisely and daintily with my sharp teeth. - ---My luncheon each late midday is made of four radishes, three -crackers and a thin glass of water: an anchoretic feast which I eat -with relish. The rhyme I murmur with it is: 'what do you think, she -lives upon nothing but victuals and drink.' - ---Whenever I look out my window at five in the afternoon I see a neat -nice-looking strange nigger-woman walking past. And the nigger-woman -glances casually up at my window and sees me. We are unknown to one -another and have belike as much and no more in common as if we grew -on different planets. But the nigger-woman and I are someway dimly -liking each other and dimly knowing it. - ---I scent my belongings faintly with Houbigant's Quelques Violettes -perfume. - ---I like to light a box of matches at a twilight window-sill singly -and by twos and threes and little bunches, and hold them till they -burn out, and watch the little flames, and drop the burnt ends out -the window: a pastime inherited from my child-self. - ---Of living creatures that I know I most hate cockroaches. - ---Of inanimate things that I know I most hate a loose shutter -rattling at night in the wind. - ---While I smoke after-dinner cigarettes down-stairs I put flat round -black records on a tall red Edison phonograph and I curl up in a -leather chair in the dark to listen to the music which is soft and -deep: 'Che Gelida Manina' in a wistful tenor, and 'Refrain Audacious -Tar,' and 'Ah Quel Giorno,' and 'Scenes That are Brightest' and -others and others--tantalizing, tawdry, artistic, cheaply pleasant, -luring, whatnot. And by turns it makes me lighthearted, lightheaded, -emotional, romantic, restless, evilly coarse. It is piquant -debauchery. Music sweetly poisons me. - ---My bureau-drawers I keep neatly in order--lingerie and other -articles arranged convenient to my hand in white rows and fragrant -tidy piles: with the exception of the upper left-hand drawer which is -a bit of terrific snarled chaos. In it is an inky handkerchief of an -old vintage: in it are several un-mated crumpled gloves: in it are -some olive-pits: in it is an empty sticky liquid cold-cream bottle -with tufts of eider-down power-puff stuck to it: in it is a tangle -of smudged ribbons: in it are two pieces of pink rock-candy: in it -is a spent yellow-silk garter: in it is a torn sponge: in it are -blackened pieces of chamois-skin: in it is a broken scissors: in it -are three twisted ragged black-net veils: in it is a brass curtain -ring: in it is a broken scattered string of coral beads: in it is -a lump of wax: in it is a piece of knotted twine: in it are little -bunches of cotton-wool: in it is a spilled box of powder whitening -everything: in it is a spilled box of matches: in it is a jet -bracelet broken into small pieces: in it is a broken hand-mirror: in -it are some crushed cigarettes: in it is a ruined blue plume: in it -is a warped leather purse: in it is a damaged lump of red fingernail -paste: in it is a stick of gum arabic: in it is a bisque kewpie -defiled by wax, ink, paste, powder and rock-candy: in it are some -partly melted vestas: in it are other bits of rubbish: all in wildest -disorder. Why I do not empty the drawer and burn the rubbish I don't -at all know. - ---I sometimes take one or two of the neighborhood children to a -picture-show. - ---Sometimes as I lean at my window I alternate looking at the -distant deeply-blue mountains by looking at the near-by women -who chance to pass on the stone pavement below--the smartly-clad -and lighthearted-seeming ones. I look at their good shoulders in -pastel-toned silk and at their trim silk ankles and proud flaring -skirts and insolent beautiful hats--the buoyant worldly insouciance -of their ensembles--as their owners walk along on happy errands. As I -look I feel Me to be behind prison bars looking out in thin psychic -jealousy: regret for a time when I also went thus buoyantly on happy -worldly errands and an odd raging silent impatience for a time when -I may again. But with it too the wavering acquiescence in this -analytic-writing mood.--'pussy-cat-mieow,' I ruminate, 'can't have -any milk until her best petticoat's mended with silk.' - ---One kind of man I impatiently scorn is the kind that looks bored if -I mention Ibsen or ceramics or Aztec civilization but is interested -instantly, alertly if I mention my garters. Equally I abhor the type -that begrudges me my own private phases of amorousness: not those who -condemn me for them: not those who dislike them in me: not those who -deplore them: but who _begrudge_ me them. - ---Always I come up a stairway softly. Always I close doors softly. I -make no noise. - ---The quaintest character I have met with in fiction is Huckleberry -Finn's father, looked at as a father. Next in quaintness I place -Sally Brass, regarded as a human being. - ---I like a glass of very hot water and a dish of preserved damson -plums on a sultry August day: and another of each on top of that: and -another of each on top of that. - ---I like the word addle: I hate the word redress. I would fain have -my 'wrongs' ever addled than redressed: merely for the word prejudice. - ---I would rather that almost any physical disaster should befall me -than that I ever achieve an 'abdomen.' When an abdomen comes in at -the door life's romances fly fast out the windows: so it looks to me. -May death overtake me haply before the menopause. - ---The pictures I have crowded on a small side-wall space two feet -from my eyes as I sit at my desk are: Theda Bara as Carmen: the -late Queen Isabella of Spain: Marie Lloyd, loved of the London -populace: a velvety-looking black-and-orange print of a leopard: -Blanche Sweet, loveliest of film actors: John Keats, a small old -print: Ethel Barrymore, a pencil drawing made by herself: Nell Gwyn, -a photograph of a Lely portrait: Watts's 'Hope': Stanley Ketchel, -dead middle-weight fighter: 'Jane Eyre' by a Polish artist: Fanny -Brawn, the solitary extant silhouette print: Ty Cobb: two children: -Charlotte Corday in the Prison de l'Abbaye: Susan B. Anthony: a -Chinese lady: Andrea del Sarto: Queen Boadicea: and Christy Mathewson. - ---I am old-fashioned in many of my tastes--in all my reading and -writing tastes. I do not like typewriters: they make fingertips -callous in a poor cause. And I do not like fountain-pens which -someway seem suitable only for business-letters, forgeries, -bookkeeping and crude cursory love-letters. I like a steel pen -in a fat glossy green enameled wood penholder with a thick -pleasant-feeling rubber sheath at the lower end. - ---I wear to-day a modest frock of black silk: beneath it a light silk -petticoat: beneath that a white pussy-willow silk 'envelope' and a -pale narrow pink silk shirt chastened by many launderings: no stays: -thick white silk stockings gartered above my knees by circles of mild -mauve elastic: on my feet cross-ribboned bright-buckled black shoes: -round my neck a jet necklace:--all of it a costume that might be of a -conventional woman, a plain-living woman, a good woman, a well-bred -woman--saving only that beneath my left shoulder-blade the smooth -new pussy-willow silk has a jagged two-inch rent where it caught on -a drawer-handle: and the rent--in lieu of neatly mending it with -the thread and needle of woman's custom--I caught up any way by its -jagged edges and tied tight in a hard vicious heathen knot: the note -of spiritual fornication, of Mary-Mac-Laneness: always there's some -involuntary pagan touch to undo me, to arraign me, to betray me to -God and to myself. - ---I wear five-and-a-half A-last shoes: number twenty-one snug -whalebone stays: and weigh a hundred-twenty-four pounds. - ---I am fond of green peas, baseball and diamond rings. - ---I like violently to spoil a little charlotte-russe with a fork: -it gives me the same feeling of lawless sweet-fiery lust which must -belong to a Moslem soldier when deflowering a Christian virgin: and -harms nobody. - ---Sometimes when I'm dressing in the morning I glance down through -my window and see two elderly Butte business men, one a lawyer and -one a banker, going by on the way to their offices. And I wonder at -how frightfully respectable they look in their tailored clothes and -reproachless gloves and perfectly celestial-looking hats. I murmur: -'Robin and Richard were two pretty men who lay in bed till the clock -struck ten.' - ---I keep on my desk a little doll with fluffy skirts, blue eyes, -pouting lips and curly hair and named Little Jane Lee after an -adorable child I have seen in moving pictures. - ---I am five feet six inches tall in my highish heels: - ---I wear number six gloves: the calf of my leg is a shapely thing. - ---The six extant Americans I most admire are Thomas A. Edison, -Harriet Monroe, Gertrude Atherton, Theodore Roosevelt, the remaining -Wright Brother, and Amy Lowell. - ---I think I'd learn to be a cook, a professional cook, if I were less -easily fatigued. - ---I love the sound of the clinking of two clean new white clay pipes, -one upon the other. - ---I crack nuts with my teeth. - -Voila! - -But not quite voila-tout. - - - - -_A damned spider_ - - - To-morrow - -To-day was one of the To-morrows of encompassing dissatisfaction when -this seems all a nasty world and a nasty life. - -A Spider drowned in my bath-tub this morning. - -It was one of those long-legged spiders. It was in the tub when I -went there--a small ovalish dark-gray pellet with seven ray-like -legs as of an evil little sun lying flat on a white desert. It feels -inconceivable that any creature should naturally have an odd number -of legs: we are all, including spiders, laid out as with rule and -compass. Perhaps it is inconceivable. But this Spider had seven legs. -I counted them while I knelt, blue-peignoired, beside the tub with -my elbows on the edge and watched the Spider and waited for it to go -away. Whether it had lost a leg, or had one too many, or its kind -is normally made like that: those things I vexedly wondered about. -In either case it seemed a so much worse Spider. It did not go away -so I touched it gently with an oblong of green soap. Then it moved -and began to walk up the side of the tub. But the side is smooth as -glass and always it slipped back. I went to my room and fetched a -post-card. With a post-card newly from Delaware I lifted the Spider -out of the bath-tub. Then I scaled card and Spider to the farthest -ceiling corner of the room. Then I drew the tub one-third full of -tepid water. And there floating in it as if brought down by Black -Art was the seven-legged Spider, drowned and ruined. It spoiled the -atmosphere and anticipation of my morning tub. I shuddered miserably. -I pulled out the rubber plug and water and Spider washed down and -away into the dark sewer-wastes of Butte, into the bowels of the -earth, through the gateways of hell, I hope. I took a hasty shower -with a flavor of long-legged Spiders in it. I dressed, and combed -and coifed my hair, with the clouded thought in me that throughout -my life I shall inevitably encounter by eternal law a long-legged -Spider from time to time. I know there'll be no evading it. Those -who know statistics doubtless could tell me how many Spiders I shall -encounter in so many or so many years: the exact percentage even to -the division of a week and the half or the quarter of a Spider. There -is something disconcerting and tragic in the thought. - -The drowned Spider's ghost pursued me all day though its memory faded. - -My breakfast, though it included an egg, seemed antagonistic, hostile -toward me as I ate it. It made me melancholy. - -I watched from my back window a slim boy painting a porch and -singing in incipient tenor a rhythmic lullaby beginning 'go to sleep -my dus-ky ba-by.' He painted silently for some minutes and then -dipped his brush in the tin of paint. Whenever he left off painting -to dip the brush he sang. Once he failed to sing when he dipped the -brush but instead burst forth with it in the midst of painting a -long mustard streak on his porch. Ordinarily that would not have -mattered to me since I am innately keyed and pitched to expect the -galvanically unexpected. But to-day it made me rackingly nervous. - -In the afternoon I went for a walk. Down and down, seventeen squares -from here, in a quiet neighborhood a strange woman accosted me. She -was pale and smartly dressed and quite drunk. She said, 'Listen--can -you remember which of these corners I was to meet a friend at?' It -made me feel annoyed and bewildered and sad and silly. - -When I came back I read awhile--a story of Guy de Maupassant's about -a little dog named Pierrot, whose owner loved him much but loved -money more and could not bring herself to pay a tax of eight francs -to make Pierrot's existence legal. So she threw him into a pit. As -heartbreaking a tale as even de Maupassant ever wrote. It made all -the loves in this world feel terrifyingly sordid. It made me unhappy. - -Then I found a poetry-book and read about the Blessed Damozel leaning -out from the gold bar of heaven. Always, by her loveliness alone, she -stirs me to my still depths of tears. But to-day the song made me -feel over-wrought and life-worn. - -To-night I walked out to a little desert-space west of the town, a -very pale, very gray desert, with a sweet wet mist like dissolving -pearls swathing it. The million placid stars looked down, remote and -hard, as if each one had newly forsaken me. It made me afraid and -cold around my heart. - -Here I sit and nothing in all the world is pleasant or reassuring. - -That damned Spider. - - - - -_To wander and hang and float about_ - - - To-morrow - -My damnedest damningest quality is Wavering--Wavering-- - -I might say I prefer the dawn to the twilight or the twilight to the -dawn. - -Neither would be true. - -I love the dawn--I love the twilight. - -What I unconsciously _prefer_ is the long negative Wavering -space-of-day between the two. - -I might say I prefer heaven to hell or hell to heaven. - -Neither would be true. - -My garbled gyral nature, partaking uneasily of both, prefers to -wander and hang and float about between the two. - -I might say I prefer strength to weakness or weakness to strength. - -Neither would be true. - -What I prefer is a hellish hovering, an endless torturing Tenterhook -between the two. - -And that Wavering preference is against my will, against my reason, -against my judgment, against my taste and liking--against my life, my -welfare, my salvation: against the clear lights of my spirit. - -I know I work intently and industriously at the articles of my -damnation in the Wavering--Wavering-- - -I know it would be better to die at once: failing that, to live -but to live positively as a beggar, a whore, a thief or a milliner. -Knowing that, I know also I Waver: I know I shall prefer to Waver: I -know I shall constantly Waver. - -I am constant--I am remarkably profoundly constant--in my Wavering. - -In the morning as I dress I draw on a stocking--a long black or white -glistening stocking. I know I do it only because the mixed big world, -which refuses to Waver, is pushing--pushing me. I would choose if -I could--though loathing my choice--to stay with my bare foot and -my stocking in my hand, Wavering. Between drawing it on and pausing -barefoot, Wavering. I prefer not to draw on the stocking: I prefer -not to be barefoot: I prefer Wavering--Wavering-- - -When I'm hungry I choose: not to let food alone: not to eat it: -to have it by me and Waver, Waver emptily. Not to enjoy its -anticipation: not to contemplate it. No--_no_! To _Waver_! I reach -and take the food because the world in its pushing pushes me. - -If the world stopped pushing-- - -One reason it will be pleasant to be dead: I can then no longer Waver. - -Worms will eat me unwaveringly. Or they may then do the Wavering. -But _I_ shall no more pause with a bare foot and an empty stocking, a -dish of food and a gnawing midriff. - -Here I sit as yet, alive and Wavering. - -The Wavering is not the pale cast of thought: it is not my way of -analysis: it is only Wavering--Wavering-- - -Wavering is not among the blue-green Stones in my antique necklace: -not by that name--not as one Stone. - -It is a marked and hateful and hellish gift of this present Me who -house my Soul. - -It is half of this Mary MacLane--who is I--: and I know. - -I am constant alone--noticeably tensely constant--in my Wavering: and -less constant in Wavering than in the ghoulish preference. - -An odd and subtle doom. - - - - -_A thousand kisses_ - - - To-morrow - -Among my other gifts I own also Wantonness. In proof of which I am -wishing as I sit here for a Thousand careless kisses: eleven o'clock -of still evening--a Thousand Kisses. - -A wonderful, wonderful attribute, Wantonness: rich, rich luster in -the conscious temperament which owns it, a Gift-thing delicate and -gorgeous. - -By it I want a Thousand Kisses: a Thousand--made all of Wantonness. - -Kisses come in differing kinds and only one is Wanton. - -The kiss of a lover has an intense cosmic use: the kiss of a mother -is tender fostering food: the kiss of a friend is vantage and grace -of friendliness: the kiss of a child is cool charm of snowflakes and -green springtime leaves. - -And the kiss of Wantonness is not of use, nor of food, nor of gracing -vantage, nor of childhood charm--but is restless essence of humanness -and worldliness and mere sheer limitless encompassing liking: born of -sweet lips, alien it might be, and secretly 'unattuned,' but warm and -fond and _present_: answering the pathos of infinite jejuneness which -flows, flows always in red human blood. - -Through the race rides a long dread wistfulness, made of tears and -lies and the barbaric distress and pitfall of everyday's journey: a -crying wish for a cup of warmed drugged sweet ease to turn it all a -moment away: but a moment away. - -And through all the race is the measureless poetry, purling and -mantling in its bowl of flesh. Each human one is made of the sun, -and made of the moon, and made of the four winds and the seas and -the last pink sea-foam on the crests of the twilit waves: and made -of salt and of sugar and of lonesome calling of loons and quick song -of skylarks: and made of sword-edges and of money and of dolls and -toys and painted glass: and made of loose reckless shuffling of dry -autumn leaves, and of nerves and of illusions and of broken food and -hesitance: and made of Mother-Goose rhymes and of cigarette-ashes and -of raveled silk: and made of layers and layers of mixed-up passionate -colors and of gilded cakes and of strawberries and of temperamental -orgasms and raw silvery onions and gaming and dancing and -minute-by-minute inconsistency: all veiled in a thin gold veil--all -in a thin gold veil. - -Betwixt the wistfulness and the poetry--_helas_, what chance has -the human equation, unsought, unwarned, unchallenged of God to be -straitly equable! - -No chance. - -Happily no chance. - -Thus I, Mary MacLane, so conscious of Me and garbledly gifted, want -a Thousand Kisses at eleven o'clock of a still evening. - -No spirit-hands of Love are laid soft on my drooping shoulders in the -passing days: no Love--no Love--in all my life. - -No miracle Wonder and Gentleness stirs in and against my Heart: my -Heart is strangely dead of a strange Realness, known and felt but -unachieved:--no Love--no Love in my life. - -And I can wish for no Love, for the listless Heart is listlessly dead. - -I wish instead, in hastening present clock-ticking moments, for a -Thousand present-warmed Kisses: a Thousand in Wanton response to a -Wanton 'leven-o'clock. - -Dominating waving washing warmth of Wantonness, compassing me at -eleven o'clock. - -A Thousand careless insouciant Kisses: a Thousand gorgeous delicate -Kisses: a round Thousand. - -From what lips--whose lips--what do I know?--: so their Kisses are a -Thousand. - -From what lips--what do I care?--: so they be eager and live and -tenderly false. - ---come some of the Thousand glowing on my pink lips, and my white -fingers, which were tense, relax-- - ---come more of the Thousand, and my rigid hard-riding thoughts grow -drowsy and pliant and negligible. - ---come more of the Thousand, and my knees and the marrow in my bones -are gently aware of most logical opiate ease-- - ---come more of the Thousand, and my midriff is full of cream-and-chocolate -casualness and my smooth arms are washed down with mists of custom. - ---come more of the Thousand, and my seven senses start to melt at the -edges-- - ---come more of the Thousand, and the palms of my hands wax merely -pleasant-feeling and the soles of my feet fatly comfortable-- - ---come the last of the Thousand in a swirling silly lovely -lightly-insane shower--and I feel exactly like a woman in the next -street who goes forth clad in mustard-and-cerise with a devilish -black-and-white Valeska-Suratt parasol: and more--much more--I feel -the way she _looks_-- - -For this Wanton-thing is not amour but psychology: in it I am less -the maenad than the philosopher: less the Cyprian woman than the Muse. - -I am a deeply gifted woman. - -I am not prone on my green couch, frayed, frazzled, bowed-down in -spirit from a day of frightful stress and cross-purpose. - -Instead, hair-triggerishly alive, with definite desire beating -hotly this moment in my throat: the wish for Kisses--Kisses far -removed from Death and Graves and Coffins: Kisses of this present -clock-tickingness, Kisses useless, meaningless, sweet--oh, _sweet_!-- - ---in number, a Thousand: in kind. Wanton. - - - - -_A fluttering-moth wish_ - - - To-morrow - -A wish that God would come personally to see me flutters in my -thoughts ever and anon like a restless moth. - -I am in a prison-mood and coldly content to be in it. For how long -content--content is not the word: despairingly acquiescent--there's -no word to express that--I can noway tell. But now I live and breathe -aloof and strange-mooded. And with it I wish God would visit me a -moment. - -It is not a strong wish. Yet restless and persistent. - -I want to be free from myself and away, loosed in the little broad -big narrow World: but first and more I want God to visit me. - -I want people again, those away from here who are my friends--some -glowing-spirited ones who appreciate my Mind and cater to me: I want, -I think, a poet to love me with some unobvious madness: but first and -more I want God to visit me. - -More than I want strength of spirit and flesh, more than I want a fat -mental peace, more than I want to know John Keats in star-spaces: -more than I want my dream-Child: I want God to visit me. - -More than I wish this appalling tiredness would leave me: more than -I wish this I write to be a realization, a _de-fait_ portrait of the -thin-hidden Me, my self-expression achieved: more than I want to be -quit of my two black dresses and back in the wide sweet frivol of -variegated clothes: I want God to visit me. - -God must know all about that. He must have known it a long time. He -still does not come. If he would come and tell me one thing, one -_certain_ thing, it would be enough. It would show me a direction and -I could keep on in it by myself. If God would tell me even a sheerest -matter-of-fact, for _sure_--like What O'Clock by his time it really -_is_: that would be a spark from which I could build an eternal fire -for myself. Forever after I could dispense with God as a personality. - -I am strangely weak. Strong of will, strong of mind, but weak of -purpose: damnably, damnedly. I shall never be able to write in words -one one-thousandth of the dramatic drastic weakness which is in me. -But I hate weakness with so deep and strong a hatred, and to know one -eternal certain thing would be so roundly restful, I could then go -on: I could vanquish the potent pettinesses which beset me. - -I do not want from God a passport, a safe-conduct into heaven. I -don't want to get into heaven. I don't know what it is, but the word -has sounds of finality, as if all winds, sweet nervous petal-laden -winds, had stopped blowing forever. For cycles and centuries to come -the Soul of me will be too restless to live where winds can not blow. - -I love the journey: so that only I might have one dim torch to go by. -I love the pitfalls and ditches--all the dangers--black-shaded woods -and wolds, and lonesome plains and briery paths, and very wet swamps, -and strong whistling gales which chill me: so that I could feel but -one tiny bright-bladed truth, within and without, pricking and urging -me to struggle on through it all till I might emerge at last like -a human being, rather than linger indifferent and inanimate like a -jaded wood-nymph in drearily pleasant spaces. - - - - -_Twenty inches of ajarness_ - - - To-morrow - -God might come to visit me on a Monday afternoon. - -He would come in at the door of my blue-white room which had been -left about twenty inches ajar: for I cannot imagine God, the aloof -and reticent, opening a shut door to visit anyone. It is as if God -purposely lacks all initiative. If I wish to meet God I must first -suffer deeps of terror and passion and loneliness to make the mood -that wants it. Then I must train my life down to two plain frocks. -And to crown all my room-door must be left ajar on the day he happens -to come or he will not come in. _That_ seems certain: but for twenty -inches of ajarness at my door he will not come in. - -In it God is quite fair. I do the reaching-out and I live out the -despairs: he furnishes a fact to go upon: I go upon it, in some -anguish doubtless: but then mine, not God's, are the lights and the -translated splendor. It is a 'gentleman's game' God plays. It is -because I feel that to be true, more than for that he is the Dealer, -that I would have a word with him. - -On a Monday afternoon-- - -He might come in the figure of a precise mystic-looking little old -man, punctilious of dress and manner like an English duke on the -stage. He might wear overwhelmingly correct afternoon attire, with -spats and a monocle on a wide ribbon. It someway fills my peculiar -trivial concepts of God: mystic-seeming because he is the God of the -dead dusty hosts of Israel, and punctiliously modern because he is -also the God of new-poeted radium-gifted Now. A God like a druid or -like Aladdin's genie, such as I fancied as a child, or like Jove or -Vulcan, would seem an inadequate and unsuitable God. What would such -a one know of the shape and fashion of my two plain dresses, and of -my shoes, and my breakfasts, and the charmed surface joy in the back -of a magazine? God, to be God to me, must know all those things. - -And if he only bespoke me in thunderous preludes touching souls' -triumphant apotheoses--bold and intolerable ecstasies beyond heaven's -last poignantest door--it would be nothing to my purpose. Those my -poet-brain can make for me if I wish. But I'd like God to explain me -the little frightful puzzles which thrive all around me in the wide -daylight of this knife-and-fork-ness. - -God might come walking lightly in and perhaps seat himself -fastidiously in my chastest chair. He might cross one knee over -the other. He might adjust his monocle and regard me through it -speculatively or sadly or politely-wearily. I should be outwardly -calm but I might feel an inward panic: lest he go away again without -having told me a fact. - -I might say to God: 'God, if you please, this small blue vase on my -window-sill--I see it and I touch it and I love it--will you tell me, -you who know, _is_ there a blue vase there or is there no vase?' - -And God might merely glance at the vase through his glass and -daintily hold his white handkerchief crumpled-up in his gray-gloved -fingers and might merely say: 'Madame, you have eyes with which to -see the vase and hands with which to touch it and sentiments to lend -it charm for you, no doubt. Then why not let them inform you as to -its actuality?' - -And then I might say, with a weariness equal to God's: 'My senses are -pleasant--they are sweet--but they do not inform me, or they inform -me wrong. Because they don't plainly tell me whether it's a Blue -Vase or a Blue Shadow--just for that I burn in little disconcerting -hell-fires, and vulture-thoughts with beaks and talons come and tear -me in the night, and I starve and decay trivially, and my life is a -flattish ruin and a tasteless darkness and a slight shallow death, a -death in the sunshine--I am fed-up with a sense of _death_ because of -pricking doubts as to my blue vase's realness.' - -To which, again, God might reply with his head tilted to one side, -tranquil and impersonal: 'As to that, Madame, there may be less death -in doubt than in certainty about your vase. You might in discovering -it discover in yourself no right whatever to the sunshine--no right -to live in it, no right to die in it.' - -And I might answer, with some insolent feeling: 'I should wish to -discover the _fact_ about it though it proved to me I don't exist -and never existed--that I'm a dust on a moth's wing, and at that -alien--not belonging there.' - -Upon which God, for what I know, might only shrug-the-shoulders. - -In that identity he might shrug-the-shoulders or break-the-world with -equal omnipotent plausibleness. - -But I might try again. I might say: 'One thing _feels_ realer than my -blue vase--this blue-and-green Necklace which my Soul wears. It is -rare and recherche but my beautiful Soul is very tired from wearing -it. Will you please unclasp it for me?' - -And God might say, deprecatory: 'Pray, Madame, do you consider what -portion of the beauty you mention may be in the Necklace? Should I -unclasp it--it is doubtful whether you would recognize your soul -without it.' - -To which I might answer, with more insolent feeling: 'I don't know -anything of that and I don't care for it. I only know I want the -Necklace off. To wear it makes me languid and frenzied and worn--full -of wild goaded saneness and the wish to go violently mad.' - -And God might answer: 'Permit me to express my regrets for those -sentiments which, I should add, I neither concur in nor refute nor -deny nor share.' - -There I might be: conversationally whip-sawed.--God is full of works -of beauty, serene and miraculous: Gray Lakes and Blue Mourning -Mountains and Deserts beneath the Moon. Those have quietly ravished -me many and many a night and day--and will again, and still again, in -pacing To-morrows. - -But I can't tell What O'Clock it is by them. And if God were by me -and I asked him the time the odds are all that he would look at the -toy-face of my little ivory toy-clock, which sets on my desk where I -can see it myself, and tell me the time by that. - -But though he is thus perplexing he knows the right time and could -tell me it. - -For that restlessly I wish God would make me one brief visit. - -I wish that though he should so godlily baffle me and divinely bore -me. - - - - -_A profoundly delicious idea_ - - - To-morrow - -It is nineteen minutes after one on a summer night. And if only I -felt a bit hungry this is what I should wish--spread out on a damask -cloth before me in a few gold-medallioned Chinese dishes, with no -forks or knives: first of all, two thin _foie-gras_ sandwiches, four -grilled snails and maybe a little alligator pear: on top of those, -two truffles: on top of those, two slim onions: on top of those, two -thin salted biscuits: on top of those, a bit of Camembert cheese: on -top of that, two cigarettes: on top of all a hollow-stemmed glass of -sparkling Burgundy. - -I'm not hungry, but it is comforting to think how delightful that -supper would taste if I were. Food is a so magic rich gusty gift -bestowed on the human race: and is besides a profoundly delicious -Idea. - -I like food better to imagine than even to eat. If I were hungry I -think I could obtain that chaste supper item for item, and eat it: -swallow it down magic and all, and thus vanquish it magic and all, -and there an end. So I am glad I am not hungry. It is much more -delectable to sit here and think that if I were-- - -_if_ I were-- - -a Hollow-stemmed Glass of Sparkling Burgundy. - -two cigarettes. - -a Bit of Camembert Cheese. - -two Thin Salted Biscuits. - -two Slim Onions. - -two Truffles. - -two Thin _Foie-Gras_ Sandwiches: Four Grilled Snails: and maybe a -Little Alligator Pear. - -If I were a bit hungry: oh, the idea of a little supper! It would -then be blestness, benediction--fruit of the very garden of Paradise! - - - - -_A mountebank's cloak_ - - - To-morrow - -I am so _Clever_. I am the Cleverest human being I know. - -I have thought my Cleverness an outer quality, a mountebank's cloak, -and as such not belonging in this book of my own self. But there are -no outer qualities. Everything in and about me is my own self. - -My Cleverness is of high quality--even supernatural, I have -thought--and is of unobvious tenors. - -To any essentially false nature, such as mine, a quick and positive -Cleverness is its needfulest resource in coping with this pushing -world. To any un-sanely sensitive nature such as mine Cleverness is -its fender against human encounters and onslaughts. - -There is no Cleverness in this I write. There is writing skill and my -dead-feeling genius. But my Cleverness is beside those points. - -I use Cleverness when I encounter people. - -Sometimes I like people and wish to impress them. - -Always I am vain and sometimes I wish my vanity catered to. - -And I can get from people whatever tribute I choose. - -I mostly choose to bewilder and half-fascinate which is easiest: -I talk about anything, nothing, everything with a tinsel-bright -complexity which captures average intellects. And even very Clever -people seem not Clever to me because I feel so exceeding Clever to -myself. I am a little more intuitive, a little falser, a little -lightning-quicker than the most artistically antic mentalities I have -known. - -I am a lady with the ladies, a woman with women, a highly intelligent -writer with writers, a loosed fish with the loose fish: being all -the time nothing but my own self, unspeakably incongruent. Having -never found anyone remotely matching me in barbaric and devastating -incongruity of nature I use in human encounters whatever phase makes -the occasion most gently befit me. I cater, or I thrill some bastard -dull brain, or I grow roundly versatile: all with a sudden coruscant -Cleverness which is not in itself any of Me but is my mountebank's -scarlet cloak. - -But its main cause and reason is not vanity nor a fancy for piquant -trickery, nor the wish to try my superior wings in glowing human -atmospheres--the preponderant impulse to fly because I can fly. It's -none of those, but a need of protection, of a bright armor to keep -other people's superficialities from touching me. There's a human -effluvium which I feel from people which would touch, wrap, enclose -me in a harsh vapor--a half-froze, half-stinging worldly cloud. It -hurts with thin cruelness like a corroding spray of acid on my skin: -unless I send out the sudden air of my own Cleverness to keep it off -and away. - -It is long months since I have encountered people with any impulse -save hastily to avoid them. But if I should meet, with an aggression -of mettle and mood, some woman or man or little group of human -sorts (except children of and for whom I have always a fear and a -respect) I should then suddenly be casual and half-fascinating and -phosphorescently glowing and insolent: being inside me haggard from -solitude, wistful from a bereftness and a beauty-sense, suffering and -lost. - -Ah, I'm notably Clever! - -I write a letter of Clever delicate surprisingness--it is the only -Clever writing I do. There are twenty people, now long outside my -life, to whom a Mary-Mac-Lane letter is the agreeably-vividest thing -that could come into a day. The letter, which is an unapparent -cater, is not real Me who am someway a strong and contemptuous -spirit--but instead one tinsel facet. And it makes people--people! -people!--admire and defer to me in a subtlest human aspect: an -unwilling antagonistic homage. It stays me, buoys me for the time. - -I am profoundly Clever in that I who am in reality so futile, so -wavering, so sensitively lyingly artistic, can still show myself -aggressively Clever to other persons. I must, being false, be Clever -in order to get by. - -It is at its best a trickster's quality: and so much the more am I -Clever in stretching it out over my shaded life like a strong bright -cloak-of-mail. - -Just to be Mary MacLane--who am first of all my own _self_!--and get -by with it!--how I do that I can not quite make out. - -I'm by odds the Cleverest human being I know: more than likely one of -the Cleverest who ever lived in this world. - - - - -_A familiar sharp twist_ - - - To-morrow - -I have--a Broken Heart-- - -It is nearly a year now. - -It feels strange to be writing it. What _is_ one's Heart? But it is a -plain fact of me. - -I have not had a Broken Heart in the years before. I have had silly -fancies--I have wasted the outer tissues of my Heart, and it has been -bruised and battered. But nothing pierced deep enough to break it -till this. - -My Broken Heart is the outstanding inner item of my life: and it -still is a very small thing even in my own reckoning. It tortures me -minutely all the minutes and moments and hours. And yet my all-round -life moves on beside it and often passes it on the road. - -My Broken Heart contributes nothing, no cause and no urge, to the -writing of this song of my Soul and bones. It rather is a handicap. -It makes me sit and brood. It makes my eyelids heavy and my head -droop. It makes my shoulders ache. It makes me sit longish half-hours -with my head on my lonely hands. It fills me with foolish wasting -despair. - -Its foolishness is the foremost thing about my Broken Heart. It is -not a foolishness of worldly reasons nor of outer causes but of -all the surprising folly of myself crowded into my Heart and into -that which Broke it. The foolishness would not be so noticeable -if the Brokenness were not so hideous and genuine and actual and -matter-of-course. It was foolish to lay myself open, who am humanly -starved, to the possible Breaking of my Heart: and doubly foolish -to let it be Broken. And being left in possession of a Broken Heart -I feel it to be a triply insanely foolish thing: but complete and -absolute and natural. - -I am so oddly a fool. - -The proper price for such or such a thing in the Market might be -one-and-twenty drops of red human blood. But I headlongly pay for it -one-and-ninety drops: each one touched with fire, shot with purple, -tinctured with hottest spirit-essence. The proper payment for Love is -to pay back value received--which is enough. But I in addition dip -my white bare foot into red world-and-hell flames by way of quixotic -bonus. When other persons emerge from Love with the old-fashioned -accustomed wounds and scars I emerge with besides an immensely -useless futilely ruined foot. - -It is wildest foolishness. Not merely folly. Folly is something -picturesque--a bit romantic. - -I am oddly a fool. It is that consciousness that rushes over me with -each sad black thought of my Broken Heart. - -My Broken Heart--it feels half-false to myself as I write it. And -the written words look half-false to my eyes. But it is realer than -my fingernails: than my palms: than my aching left foot. - -My Broken Heart, besides being a triviality is a mistake, and will -pass in time doubtless, but is long about it. - -It is one thing I do not dwell upon in this book of me. A Broken -Heart is sharply immediate like a newly-bitten tongue. It may bleed -at a touch. To dwell on it connects me strainedly with the world -around, and the world is really gone from me. This book is I as I -breathe alone. I cannot write in it the silly shadowy Breaking of my -Broken Heart. This writing is I Just Beneath My Skin. My Broken Heart -is beneath bones and flesh. And though my M.-MacLane heart intact is -wildly individual, my Broken Heart is merely human: made not alone by -me and not alone by God. Its place in this I write is just outside -the margins. - -At times my Broken Heart feels far off while I'm feeling it hideous -and wan inside my breast. Myself is Me, and much of Me had nothing -to do with my Heart when it Broke: though I loved with all of Me. I -loved with all of Me one who lives in New York--and I lost and lost, -all the way. There was mere human ordinariness about which I built -up a strangely sincere temple-of-grace which I looked to see shed -light on my life like the new eternal beauty of a Day-break. I gave -the best I knew to it, from the distance, and I lost. The day was -a little day and broke at last only like my Heart. All was broken -without so much as clasp-of-hands. - -I am realest, strongest, passionately-sincerest in my essential known -falseness-- - -It was all foolish and petty and someway false but I felt foolishly -and shudderingly that I could live no more. But I am singularly brave -from life-long custom. I have no pleas and surrenderings in me. I -shudder but live on. - -One Thursday I felt suddenly oppressed and beset and something in my -throat cried out to the absent God to help me and guard me. - -It was something in my throat which shrieked it dumbly in the -deafening silence in my room. It was not I myself: for I am -unsuppliant toward everyone human and divine though there often come -such Thursdays. - -Harder than Thursdays are Fridays and some other days when comes a -familiar sharp twist beneath my chest-bones without the cognizance -of my remembering thoughts: and when though I strive against it my -Broken Heart makes me sit longish half-hours with my head on my hands. - - - - -_A dark bright fierce fire_ - - - To-morrow - -I am Lonely. I am so Lonely that I can feel myself rattle inside my -life like one live seed in a hollow gourd. - -I am on fire with Loneliness. - -I am living this month alone in this house. The solitude is pregnant: -Doors and Door-knobs and Curtains and Tables have silently come alive -in it and have taken on identities like those of tamed wild beasts. - -I do housework--I dust window-sills and water flowers. I gather up -newspapers and brush the floors with a dust-mop. I wash my dishes. I -cook my breakfasts. I look out of windows. I linger at screen-doors. - -I answer the telephone: I say, 'They're not at home.' - -I change my frock and put on a hat and a cloak and gloves and go -softly out the door and front gate on an errand. - -I meet people on the street whom I know, whom I may speak to, whom I -may avoid: who may speak to me: who may avoid me: for I am at best -well hated in this Butte. - -I come back again, softly unlock the door and come in. I come -upstairs, take off the out-door things, give a hasty side-glance in -my glass and go downstairs. - -I read awhile. To-day I read an old-fashioned short story whose soft -wondrous prose cadences fed my senses--the Parable of the Prodigal -Son.--for this my son was dead and is alive--was lost and is found--. - -But I am very restless and cannot read long. - -I am on fire--dark bright fierce fire with Loneliness. - -I move about again from room to room. I look out of windows and -linger at doors. - -I close my eyes and open my eyes. - -My Soul-and-bones! I'm afire with Loneliness! - -It is Loneliness not made of the Empty House and the tamed wild -Door-knobs and Doors and Curtains and the Lonely Errands. Those are -its small-fruits. Itself is my ancient daylight Loneliness dating -from Three-Years-Old when I first began whisperingly analyzing things -and finding little life-items to be of a fierce bitter importance. - -If I were living among people, friendly people, then the Loneliness -though unchanged would be disguised and vested with a padded muffling -power--false, belike, and a mistake (but everything _is_ false and a -mistake: only there are wrong mistakes and right mistakes)--but made -of the world-stuff that lets a human being get by in this nervous -life. - -But it would be of no use now. I must face Loneliness: and outface -it. I do, and with no effort: for I am Lonelier than Loneliness's -self. So it feels. This locked-in mood--soon it may be worn down and -outgrown, and the husks blown away in the winds. - -But may come after it a wilder Loneliness of being free, fearfully -free: flavored with the heaviness of rain at night and draggledness -of beggar-women's skirts.-- - -Meanwhile bright and black among Doors and Door-knobs and Curtains -and Tables burns the fire of this Loneliness with strong, strong -flame. It is mystic agony. There is no thinking in it. There is an -utterly irrational wish, an aching yearning for people: not people -to see, or listen to, or talk to, but--humanness I could _feel_ with -familiarity. I wish for hands and bodies near me: breath for mine -faintly to mingle with: the feel of their human garments in the room -around me: the feel of the pulsing blood in their veins remotely -vibrant in the air: the feel of minds and spirits and throats and -rich warm virile hair of human heads keeping me warmly company. I -have heard one may step rarefied out of this living-place into the -Fourth Dimension, where one feels everything without the efforts of -feeling, and knows everything without the weights of knowing. It -might be that I grope for in this black bright anguish. - -Yet I feel rarely rarefied, heavily rarefied, wornly rarefied in this -living-place where Loneliness burns me in strong fire and where I can -shake my life like a hollow gourd and hear the eerie rattling sound I -make in it. - - - - -_Late afternoon_ - - - To-morrow - -Last night as I slept I dreamed a vivid dream. - -I dreamed it was late afternoon and I was locked in a condemned -cell, sentenced to die. I would be led out and hanged on a gallows -the following morning at day-break. I dreamed I sat beneath a narrow -window in the cell through which shone the light of the waning -afternoon. The light was very pale, as of sunshine long dead. I -dreamed I held on my knees a small block of paper which had a -half-inch blue border at the top to mark a perforation, and in my -hand I had a red pencil. And I dreamed I had cheated the gallows and -was writing a little ballad about it in sudden rhymes and rhythms -quite alien to my waking forms. When I awoke the song was still -beating time in my brain. And with my black awake-time pencil I -wrote, except for two words, the rhyme, title and all, as I dreamed: - - LATE AFTERNOON. - - They'll think when I pass through that door - To-morrow in the dawn, - I'll then be going to my death. - _It's I've already gone._ - - They'll watch me walk serenely out, - Still-nerved and somber-eyed, - 'So strong,' they'll say, 'to meet her death.' - _To-day it is I died._ - - There'll be my pulses quick with life, - My white sweet throat, my breath: - But flesh and bone are all will hang. - _This noon I met my death._ - - For days I charmedly dwelt on death-- - I raved at death--I swore-- - Till vexedly death waived the date: - _And came this Day-Before._ - - From being lured with artful thoughts - My life abortive grew. - From being broached in livid mood - _My death aborted too._ - - To-morrow they'll remark my calm-- - No fuss, no fright, no swoon. - They'll kill a wench to-morrow dawn - _Was dead to-day at noon._ - -Three oddnesses are in that dream: - -that it is true to life in that I in my lightning Mary-Mac-Lane-ness -_would_ manage to cheat a gallows. - -that it is untrue to life in that instead of writing of it in the -true twilit poetry of my own sufficient prose I wrote it in the -shallow trick-phrasing of rhyme, a little serenade to the gibbet. - -that it catches and holds my Shadow-self who lives not _in_side me -but _be_side me: the resembling dissembling shadow I cast when I -stand between the daylights of the actual world and the quivering -films of the region of dreams.-- - -My owned mysteries thrive apace. They are poetry and beauty and -loveliness yet they bruise and batter me and split me to atoms. -Withal are terrifyingly superfluous: they violently kill the wench -to-morrow dawn who died restfully to-day at noon. - - - - -_An ancient witch-light_ - - - To-morrow - -Also I am someway the Lesbian woman. - -It is but one phase--one which slightly touches each other phase I -own. And in it I am poetic and imaginative and worldly and amorous -and gentle and true and strong and weak and ardent and shy and -sensitive and generous and morbid and sweet and fine and false. - -The Lesbian sex-strain as an effect is reckoned a prenatal -influence--and, as I conceive, it comes also of conglomerate -incarnations and their reactions and flare-backs. Of some thus -bestowed it makes strange hard highly emotional indefinably vicious -women, turbulent and brilliant of mind, mystically overborne, -overwrought of heart. They are marvels of perverse barbaric energy. -They make with men varied flinty friendships, but to each other they -are friends, lovers, victims, preyers, masters, slaves: the flawed -fruits of one oblique sex-inherence. - -Except two breeds--the stupid and the narrowly feline--all women have -a touch of the Lesbian: an assertion all good non-analytic creatures -refute with horror, but quite true: there is always the poignant -intensive personal taste, the _flair_ of inner-sex, in the tenderest -friendships of women. - -For myself, there is no vice in my Lesbian vein. I am too personally -fastidious, too temperamentally dishonest, too eerily wavering to -walk in direct repellent roads of vice even in freest moods. There -is instead a pleasant degeneracy of attitude more debauching to -my spirit than any mere trivial _trainant_ vice would be. And a -fascination in it tempers my humanness with an evil-feeling power. - -I have lightly kissed and been kissed by Lesbian lips in a way -which filled my throat with a sudden subtle pagan blood-flavored -wistfulness, ruinous and contraband: breath of bewildering demoniac -winds smothering mine. - -Lesbian essence is of mental quality. There are aggressively endowed -women whose minds are so bent that they instinctively nurture -any element in themselves which is blighting and ill-omened and -calamitous in effect. There are some to which the natural inhibition -of their own sex is lure and challenge. There are some so solitary by -destiny and growth that the first woman-friend who comes into their -adolescence with sympathy and understanding wins a passionate Lesbian -adoration the deeper for being unrealized. There are some so roiledly -giftedly incongruous in trait that they are prone to catch and hold -any additional twisted shreds afloat in human air-currents. - -Each of those influences biases the Mind of me, which is none the -less a clear-visioned mind which rates no thing a truth which it -knows to be a lie: though it batten on the lie. - ---often here and there around this human world the twisted and -perverted and strongly false concepts are the strong actual working -facts and the straight road is myth--myth--existent but in visions-- - -I don't understand why it's so: I know it is so. - -Not only so with me: so with millions whose stars jangled. - -Not always. But often.-- - -The deep-dyed Lesbian woman is a creature whose sensibilities are -over-balanced: whose imagination moves on mad low-flying wings: whose -brain is good: whose predilections are warped: who lives always in -unrest: whose inner walls are streaked with garish heathen pigments: -whose copious love-instincts are an odd mixture of mirth, malice and -_luxure_. - -Its effects in me who am straight-made in nothing, but strongly -crooked, is to vivify tenfold or a hundredfold or a thousandfold in -my shaded vision the womanness of any woman whose inner or outer -beauty arrests and stirs my spirit. - -I see in some woman, some girl, any who attracts me--be she a casual -acquaintance, or a Victorian poet dead fifty years whose poetry and -portrait live, or an actor in a play, or a sweet-browed friend, or -an Old Master--I see one such as if all her charm were newly painted -and placed near me shining wet with delicate fresh paint. It is -bewitching to look at: it has a deep seductive fragrance of smell: -it is luxuriantly aromatic to all my known senses--and two senses -unknown float from my deeps and rise at it. The Stranger becomes a -dearly poignant fancy to dream over. My Friend turns into a vivid -goddess whose fingers and hair I would touch tenderly with my lips. - -Because of it a little flame, pale but primal, leaps from the -flattest details of life. In such a mood-adventure a window-shutter -blooms: a hair-brush glows: a sordid floor has gleams upon it. These -bewildering frightful beautifulnesses in this life--. - ---withal the same inherence which makes me someway Lesbian -makes me the floor of the setting sun--strewn with overflowing -gold and green vases of Fire and Turquoise--a sly and piercing -annihilation-of-beauty, wonderful devastating to feel--oh, blighting -breaking to feel--oh, deathly lovely to feel!--It is the bewitched -obliquities that run away with me: grind, gnaw, eat my true human -heart like bright potent vitriol. - -What God means me to do with such gifts and phases--I don't and don't -understand. I never get anywhere as I think it out. I don't know -shades of rights and wrongs since that ancient witch-light has found -more trueness of human feeling in me than has any simplicity my life -knows. - -It began, they say, with Sappho and her dreaming students in -the long-ago vales of Lesbos. It may be, I daresay. I know it -did not stop there. And I know that--Greek, French, Scotch, -Indian--Welch--Japanese--_all_ women sense its light lyric touch. For -myself, I know only it is part and parcel in my tangled tired coil. - -I don't know whether I am good and sweet in it or evil and untoward. - -And I don't care. - - - - -_The gray-purple_ - - - To-morrow - -Close at the east edge of this Butte is a barren ridge of Rockies -that is sudden and big and breathing-looking, barbarously personal, -touched with varying gifted color-moods and glowering morose -color-passions: at the south the snow-topped Highlands lie long faery -solitary miles away, caressed at their summits by thin soft sun-rings -and sun-vapors of salmon and sea-green and turquoise and mauve: at -the west a gray-shadowed desert burns red-gold in the setting sun -and sleeps in pearl-and-ashen stillness under midnight stars: at the -north smaller spurs of the range break into foothills and bluffs and -gulches, restful wastes of lonely stones and blurred radiances of -tawny sand: on top of all the rarefied air of these plateau heights -refracts the light into hot dazzling prisms at any vagrant flash of -sun on a trailing storm-fringe. This Butte is capriciously decorated -with sweet brilliant metallic orgies of color at any time, all times, -as if by whims of pagan gods lightly drunk and lightly mad. - -St. Paul-Minnesota looks a greenlier-prettier town: the Arizona Canyon -looks vastly more fearfully beautiful: Wichita-Kansas probably looks -more a regular town: Akron-Ohio doubtless looks more Americanly -reassuring: Rome-Italy must have a more 'settled' look: New York is -much larger and much brighter-looking. - -Only this Butte looks deeply and exactly like Butte-Montana. - -Its insistent charm is that it goes on strongly resembling itself -year after year. - -There is love in me for this Butte. - -I am profoundly lonely in it: my life-tissues are long-familiar with -the feel of it: its mournful beauty has entered like thin punishing -iron into my Soul: and my love for it is made of those things. For no -_reason_ I feel love for this Butte. - -As much as for the mountains in their mourning intimateness I -feel love for all the outsides and surfaces of the town itself: -the stone streets full of houses and shops and stores and brick -walls and laundry-wagons and persons: the vacant lots where boys -play ball: the school-buildings which for twenty years have needed -the same green grass around them and the same playgrounds for -school-children to play in (and will go on twenty years needing -them): the little mines in unexpected midtown blocks with their -engines and hoists and scaffolds and green coppery dumps: the big -mines on the Hill busily working day and night, a bristling citadel -of smoke-stacks and tall buildings above the treasure-drifts and -tunnels that come down honeycombing the town under its streets -and hoses and yield up wealths of monthly millions: the desolate -wind-swept cemetery on the Flat: the Timber Butte: the School of -Mines: the Brophy grocery-window full of attractive grocery-food: -the St. Gaudens statue of Marcus Daly: the few sweet green trees on -North Montana Street by the court-house: the edge of Walkerville: -Ex-Senator Clark's old-fashioned closed house in Granite Street: the -stone Episcopal Church with the memorial windows: the surprising -steep Idaho Street hill: the old Reduction Works reminiscent of the -bygone Heinze and the bold buccaneering days: the Montana Street -cemetery at last kempt and nurtured green as Beloit-Wisconsin: the -little rocky Missoula gulch: the North Excelsior Street neighborhood -where I wrote my Devil and Gray-dawn book: the Butte High School -where I studied and meditated youngly: the old Library where I used -to get a variety of books in my gangling girlhood: the electric -ore-trains going to Anaconda: the vegetable Chinamen: the Post-Office -News-stand: the Mexican tamale venders in the early night: the sweet -green trees and other greenness in people's yards garnered and -cherished in a way which would astonish Toledo-Ohio: the brilliant -sparkling look of the town from far out on the Flat late in the -evening, like a mammoth broken tiara of starry diamonds, twinkling -points of blue and orange and cerise and violet, fired and flung -against a mountainside of dark velvet,--an aspect intensely Butte: -the cool mosquitoless summer nights: the Anaconda Standard: the -sulphurous smoky deadly-cold winter mornings: the Cornish and Irish -and Austrian and Finn miners: the little slim green onions in the -markets: the noise and color and morale of the crowds on a Miner's -Union day: the markets on the afternoon shade side of West Park -Street full of crabs and lobsters from Seattle and shining fish from -California, and mushrooms and froglegs and squabs and hothouse things -from hereabouts: the Parrot smelter: the Chinese gardens at Nine -Mile: the Italian village of Meaderville: the fortified battlemented -look of the town at the east of South Butte: the mystic familiar -sand-and-barrenness-- - -All of it has a feel of something aloof and metallic and distinctive -and gray-purple and Butte-Montana. Gray-purple is the color of the -town, its spirit-tone. Its odor and fascination are gray-purple. - -This Butte is bodily a young rich present-day city of a -hundred-thousand population, all told: miners who bulwark -its foundations: masses who make and manage its business: -millionaire-members who spend most of their lives and dollars in -New York: all are Butte-made. But its soul is still the soul of the -frontier mining-camp which sprang into copper being when the Comstock -mine in Virginia-Nevada failed of its silver-ish promise. - -A very few years ago--what one could count on one hand's -fingers--there were no lids in this Butte. Every summer bony -thoroughbred horses from Juarez and Denver raced round the oval track -on the Flat, watched by a shrieking betting throng of Butte citizens -and citizenesses, ridden by silk-bloused black-booted jockies, their -finish-spurts under the wire chaperoned by a flock of bookmakers. -Roulette and poker and faro were wide-open in the town and flavored -the air with a taste of gray-purple hazard. Gin-palaces and -mining-camp dance-halls, highly de-luxe'd, lent their tinted breath -to the current. Noodle-ish and little bacchanalian dives flourished -in unexpected nooks. The police court on a Monday morning resembled -the debris from an alcoholic human volcano, a condemned but owned -portion of this Butte in its Butte-Montana-ness. All of it was but -one element in an isolated prosperous town of many elements, but it -someway tinctured all. - -No pagan-wild sunset burst above the west desert but suggested that -the vague lid was off the town, and vaguely lost: a lost lid. - -The gambling lid is fast on now--if they gamble they gamble under it. -And no more do ribby horses and surprising-mixed crowds disport them -at the deserted race-track. - -But the setting Butte sun suggests the same wealth and wildness as if -always its celestial chemistry were shot with essence of mining-camp: -rich, generous, feverish and virile. - -Brophy's grocery-window and the Marcus Daly monument and the -Parrot smelter and the Clark house and the Idaho Street hill--all -of it--owns the gray-purple which is not St. Paul and not Wichita -and not Pittsburg and not Spokane: not anything except intensely -Butte-Montana. - -I have felt it since I first lived here in little young short-frocked -days, and I felt it when I lived away from Butte: I feel it all these -now-days to the roots of myself. - -I have no reason: but the contrary: to love Butte as a townful of -human beings. - -I have no friends in it, no feel-of-friendship, no human friendliness. - -And the sculpturesque poetry of the outlying deserts and buttes -pushes and presses hurtingly upon the lonely and introspective gazer -in Body and Soul: I knew it as child and girl and woman. - -There is nothing benign, nothing enlightening--no gentleness, no -pity--in its barren beauty. But its hard chaste influence on the -sensitive spirit is beyond any analytic power to gauge. - -Its wonderful Aridness starves human nerve-soil till the sad -wide eyes of the Soul grow bright--fever-bright, light-bright, -star-bright--from denial and unconscious prayer: involuntary worship: -homage of the unsuppliant unhoping devotee. - -Because of that--and because of all its long-familiar outsidenesses-- -mournful, beautiful, mystic, lavish, madly-mixed, gray-purple--a -fascination beyond plaisance or pain--I feel love for this Butte. - - - - -_The subdivided cell_ - - - To-morrow - -When I was twenty I was one strong Cell firmly, primly closing many -little cells different from each other but each greenly intact. - -When I was thirty the Cell had burst in dusty worldly winds and -loosed the little cells. Those in turn had subdivided, losing -strength by the cellful but gaining in shadowed truth by a roundabout -road. And they showed me my fates and inevitablenesses as in a broad -wrecked field misty but plain to view. And thus I see me in the -subdivided cells: - -a piece of a normal woman. - -a piece of a child. - -a piece of a poet. - -a piece of a Lesbian woman. - -a piece of a writer. - -a piece of a jester. - -a piece of a savage. - -a piece of something someway brave. - -a piece of a student. - -a patriotic American. - -a lump of tiredness. - -My strength is in knowing the evil from the good and the false from -the true in it. - -My weakness is in wildly waveringly inclining toward the false. - -Except for love of my country I am ardenter, determinder, stronger -in my falseness than in any of my shadowy truth. - - - - -_Food and fire_ - - - To-morrow - -The first beauty in my life is John Keats. - -In John Keats is my faith in some resurrection. - -Without John Keats human nature feels to be something broken, -menacing, unspeakably despicable and lost--lost in the shade. With -John Keats the lights break across it and reflect the blazing yellow -sun again from eyes and foreheads and fingers and shining hair. - -There are world-and-human things which it thrills me to think about -and dwell on: Nathan Hale on the British gallows: the charge of -Pickett's Confederate infantry at Gettysburg: Henry V, prince among -kings and men, at Agincourt: Charlotte Corday in prison: Columbus -with his felon crews sailing westward: Susan B. Anthony--a woman -made in a strange still heroic splendor half-incredible: Alexander -Hamilton: Arnold Winkelried: the sea-worn Pilgrim women disembarking -into bitter Novemberness. - -Those thrill me because they are brave persons and brave things -full of idealistic strife: but they still are made of very -struggling-garbled world-stuff--they are mere human fabric--till I -think of John Keats: and at once they grow informing and eternal. - -In his light the detailed world burns and glows! - -John Keats! John Keats!-- - -Other poets have written Nightingales and Grecian Urns and Sonnets -and Mirth-and-Passion things: but _he_ wrote them in his glorious -and wistful pain. He wrote the sweet headaches of his spirit into -his delicate beaten-gold verse: the precious fevers of his mental -veins: the bone-aches and muscle-aches of his thoughts: the darling -skin-damps and palm-damps of his divine fancy:--all in the Song of -his lilied youth. - -There is no poet but writes his poetry out of inner travails and -immense wistfulness. But they all write just beside their travail, -not in it: just beside their wistfulness, not with it. A poet -who feels the throat of his soul aching and swollen and inflamed -writes--not just that astral diphtheria, not till another time: -but instead the fine smothering of a hope, perhaps, the oblique -suffocating of a love. A poet whose brain-hands throb with some -horrible dulcet-ish tiredness from handling the heavy bright tools -of his craft writes instead the throbbing of his brain-soles and -brain-insteps from walking small odd hard rutted daily ways. - -It rouses me--it heats my eyeballs with salty honeyed warmth as I -read: but it is not John Keats: who writes his own immediate magic -sickness in perfect sudden obvious blood-warm golden _Now_! - -It is always old, old-fashioned ailment, worn of ages. The drowsy -ache of the Nightingale goes a thousand years back and a thousand -years to come: the restless ecstasy of a thousand thousand -Nightingales, one for each who reads, in any age, all ages. Long, -long after the jeweled English language is gone, dead as Homer's, -Keats's Nightingale will flutter lyric-winged in the nervous jeweled -lovely _Now_. - -'Weep for Adonis,' wailed the differently-lovely Shelley, 'he is -dead.' But he isn't dead. He is terribly living, passionately living. - -Each day of my life I feel him living. He breathes. He breathes close -to me, pantingly, like a swimmer breasting waves or a playing child -in a summer day.--John Keats! - -Just Beneath My Skin he is my God-of-the-World, my Fetich and my -Lover. He has been my Lover for seven gold years. - -He is the first beauty in my flawed futile life. He is the most -beautiful thing in the living and dying world. John Keats--John -Keats!-- - -In everyone else I can feel mixed motives, tough tangled silk threads -of self woven into wonderful wefts of days and deeds: in _everybody_, -from Iscariot to Toussaint L'Ouverture, from Jeanne d'Arc to -Victoria Woodhull, from Paul of Tarsus to Aaron Burr. - -Only John Keats stands out alone, a true-breathing Poet, an Inmost -Heart bleeding outward. - -The lyric poet is the true poet. The lyric poet achieves no end in -his art. He turns fragments of light and life into terms of beauty -and sends them flying forth on flaming word-wings which translate -the smooth human flesh they brush-by into delicious flesh-of-gold, -flesh-of-petals, flesh-of-fire! But he makes no morals, teaches -no lessons, finishes nothing. It's as it should be. Nothing _is_ -finished. The mixed world is all unfinished, a glorified Mistake. -The race is a millionfold Mistake: lives it, breathes it, battens on -it--coarsely and finely and lamentably and musically and bravely. -So that all poetry which wanders from the lyric is only a play or -a picture or an airship or a cause which aims at _fait-accompli_, -attaining an object: it is limited and man-made: its beauty is lopped -off like boughs and branches after a storm: its wings are clipped. -Its distanceless spaces, little and large, are visibly engineered -by mathematic hands. But the lyric poetry is the true luminous and -bloody interpreting of humanness. - -John Keats wrote by the lights of his living and he lived all his -days in joyous lyric anguish. - -Once he wrote, 'Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home.' -It is a factful of himself--lawless, radical and non-civilized, -agleam in the mixed world. It is everybody--poets, burglars, -nursemaids: everybody. He wrote it in a hundred other ways, but it -is all in that: it is the lyric epitome of every day. Pleasure never -_is_ at home. - -And 'Heard melodies are sweet,' he wrote, 'but those unheard are -sweeter'-- - -There spoke the wild delicate wiseness of his brain and the -passionate delicate wonder of his heart.--John Keats! John Keats! - -But everything he wrote, the Grecian Urn itself, is immeasurably less -lyric than himself writing it and being it. - -He is rich bright-wet living lyric for this Me in this Now though he -has lain dead in Rome nearly the full hundred years. - -My garbled life and my thinking hunger feed upon him. - -He was the one human one who walked on in the way before him: not -around the jagged little stones and icy little pools that were in -it: but straight on through them all, though his lyric feet were -quivering shuddering sensitive, sensitive beyond knowledge of -commoner feet that walk around. - -It fattens my leanest self to keep that in my constant remembrance. - -The thought of his brave radiant loveliness reassures me to myself, -by the hour. - -I am futile: but _he_ is mysteriously omnipotently useful and I catch -some of it from him. - -I am half-full of vanity: but he is of a lustrous priceless vanity -himself that justifies mine and all the world's. - -I am fearing and false: but he is so brave, so true to infinite -form, that by it he leavens the lump of the whole world's mendacious -cowardice. - -My brain is full of wilding darknesses, snarled and knotted gifts -and penchants: but into _his_ strong brain the strong fresh -yellow rain-washed sun shines straight down--through the wide -twin-brightness of his Eyes. I look down his Eyes--twin public wells -(he belongs publicly and privately to all this mixed mad world, and -anyone may look!--)--I look into that titanic vibrant brain, and mine -catches some of it: a blest and precious Disease, oh, a rare Disease! - -My Heart--my Heart feels strange and tired and dead, a bit of -dead-sea fruit: but _his_ heart, warm and real and boundlessly -unsatisfied, is always the deep quick fragrant Rose of this World. - -A Hero!--a Poet-at-arms!--John Keats! - -'He has outsoared the shadow of our night,' wrote that Shelley, and -wrote no truer word. - -I have read so many of the strange and splendid things--bits of them: -Vergil and Homer and Villon and Goethe and all the English poets, -and prose writers like Carlyle who in places out-poet poets,--and -moderner ones and the new poets, imagists and others: John Keats -feels a noticeably braver thing, and always, always a little way -beyond. He is purely lyric. - -When he loved a woman he loved the dubious fascinating Fanny Brawn-- -sordid-brained, worldly: to him a mixed living devilish-glowing -goddess. A higher-souled woman would neither have so tortured nor -so held him. He was purely lyric. He cared truly nothing for the -verdicts of critics and reviewers: and in the sweet-lipped boyish -beauty of his youth they truly and easily killed him. It would be -like that--it had to be. He was so purely lyric. - -He died in the sweet fierce dazzling cause of Beauty. - -I have so many thoughts and my thoughts are always my own. There -are endless written thoughts deeper than mine--finer, stronger, -anything-you-like. But mine answer for me: no written thoughts affect -them, though they thrill my reading hours. Only John Keats's thoughts -can enter in and crush and cripple mine. - -Because everybody is a little bit like John Keats I have a starry -thin edge of faith inside me. He is food for my hunger of thought, -fire for my passion of life.--John Keats! - -He is the resurrection and the life.-- - -From my desk he gazes at me in a frame of old-gold. Every day the -sunset on the glass blurs his large mournful joyous eyes with -strangest agonized sunset tears: he shows me the sweet, sweet -intoxication of his lyric grief. - -He died young, unfinished--and oh, but it's a shivering ecstasy -to think of all those lyrics in him he never wrote!--the sweeter -melodies--'Unheard.' - - - - -_The edge of mist-and-silver_ - - - To-morrow - -Hidden somewhere in the invisible unused air-plateaus is a little -Child: mine: who has never been born. - -A tenet in me is that a woman by every right and by old earthen law -should, if she will, have her child--should be the warm-winged mother. - -I am a devil and a fantasy, a jezebel and a wanderer in fields of -inverted fungi: so I seem to me. I do not know my status--I but know -my personal incidents as they happen. But I am also woman: a woman by -inherence and by fact. Being woman I am the potential mother, mother -of my Child who has not been born. - -I feel myself a fitting mother. - -I am bodily in good health--if not robust yet durable, as a mother -should be: I am always tired as if from touches and weights of -living as a loving mother should be: I am warm of blood, latently -savage-toothed like a jungle-mother, deadlier than the male, as a -brave mother should be. Though I have no child I have an ancient -right in my Child, and I want my Child. My Child _is_, but has not -been, born. Merely to want my Child makes me a fitting mother. - -My Child often is realer to me than books I read and walks I take -and the friend who writes me frequent letters. - -Sometimes my Child is a soft pink baby smelling of rain-water, milk -and flowers: lying close to the curves of my breasts in the hollow of -my arms: feeding soft insistent baby hunger and feeding soft strong -living hunger of my kissing mother-lips-- - -More often my Child is a little happy-voiced fellow, my small brave -boy three years old: he clings to my skirt with his sweet tiny hand -as we hurry along a frosty pavement in an early December morning. -We live in New York in a little common quiet apartment and are -gratefully poor, and I work in a factory for a little weekly wage for -the living of my little fellow and me. Every day in the early morning -we go out to a corner bakery to buy a long crisp loaf of French bread -for breakfast. And in the December morning my heart contracts with a -sort of happiness and a sort of grief at the sound of little feet in -stout shoes yet frail shoes pattering-pattering gaily along beside me -on the frosty flagstones. We start out hand-in-hand--his small hand -is wonderfully firm and virile--but presently I let go his hand as we -hurry along, to feel it instantly clutch the folds of my work-skirt: -it pulls and drags at my waistbands and my Heart together with -twisted sweetness that makes me ache from head to foot. 'Mother, -wait,' he says in his happy voice, 'wait for me.' But I hurry faster. -Always I hurry faster when my happy brave little fellow cries, 'Wait, -mother,' for the sweet feel of that dragging at my mother-skirt-- - -More often my Child is the little girl six years old of the shy eyes -and the sun-kissed hair and the firm child-mouth, full of high temper -and strong will. All over her is need and demand of her mother to -guard and adore and cherish her every moment of her life. We are -together in a country field with oak-trees in it, and poplars, and -daisies and bluebells and other field-flowers, and it is overgrown -with long coarse fragrant wild grass. The noonday sun is bright-hot -and I bring my Child there to dry her hair, for I have newly washed -it with a square of white soap and a porcelain bluebird bowl: the -feel of her small round wilful head was marvelously fulfilling in -my cupped hands. She wanders around in the hot-brightness through -the tall grass, gathering the hardy scentless field-flowers with -her little brown fingers, and she shakes back her beautiful thick -short damp curls. I sit on a flat stone like a Sioux squaw and watch -her. The grass brushes her bare legs: the magic sun mixed with a -faint cool breeze plays upon her head: the tragic delicate music of -rustling poplar leaves comes down from tree-tops and catches her -in a fairy song-net. She is always very new, very incredible, my -Child. She looks toward me with her shy radiant eyes and she says, -'Mother, look, my hair is nearly dry.' Her hair is thick and heavy. -In my experienced subdued mother-wisdom I know it will not be dry for -an hour. I feel the damp of her hair rheumishly keen all over me: a -menacingness for me to guard her from: a dear anxiety: an ancient -mother-note in the long human gamut of sounds. - ---it is precious wearing racking colorful romance to be her mother: -each mother-day holds gold-and-blue foreboding: each mother-day -holds thin insistent gold-and-purple sorrows: each mother-day holds -deep gold-and-gray care, incessant and absolute: an aching wealth -of beauty: no more but no less than the damp of her hair in the -noonday field. _My_ Child!--herself incessant and absolute: warm pure -palpitant gold-of-my-life-- - -Someway realer than books I read and walks I take my Child clamors to -be born. - -My Child will never be born to any other woman. While she hovers and -flutters on the edge of Mist-and-Silver--a border edge--there are -ten million fertile hot milk-teeming bodies of women each ready to -gather her in and wrap her in delicate-sweet flesh. Ten million other -children hovering on the edge will drop off into the ten million -matrix-cups--each woman mysteriously a fitting mother so only she -wants her baby--though she be, besides, a thief or a traitor or a -weakling or a murderer or a harlot or a drunkard or a fool. - -Let them come, the ten million. The chrysalid children are clamoring, -clamoring always for their birth: a wide 'melody unheard.' - -But my Child will never drop over the edge to any woman but me. She -calls with veiled and dazzling flames of eagerness for her Birthday: -but she will await my made-readiness through a long night, though it -should last till the day-break of another age. Dimly I weep for her, -my needing-me Child. I weep that she must come to this richly-cursed -me. But I weep more that I have not got her in this sterile now, -where is flawed passionate wealth of intangible life-stuff: but no -small round wilful head of hair to wash: no little fellow's feet on -December flagstones and sweet dragging at my skirt: no soft pink-baby -hunger-- - -It is hunger I feel from her. I feel her always _hungry_ where she is -and I can give her no nourishing--no warming _food_ in all my strange -unfertile passing life! - -It is that less than my empty arms that makes blurred unrests and -writhings in my Dreaming Womb. - - - - -_A right shape and size_ - - - To-morrow - -Sometimes I fancy me married--a responsible wife, a housekeeping -matron: with my window-sills full of potted plants. - -I have a woman quality which seems uxoresque: I am someway a Right -Shape and Size to be somebody's wife. My bodily and astral dimensions -have outlines apparently suitable for something in the married-woman -way. - -The wild piquance of being myself--who but for extreme saneness would -be mad--rises up and smashes that concept. - -But being a Right Shape and Size I involuntarily imagine it. - -Fleetingly I imagine a flat in the West Seventies in New York, -or a bungalow on the Jersey side, or a middle-sized house in -a middle-sized town in Middle-West Illinois--whichever might -happen--with me set marriedly down in the midst of it like a suitable -maggot in a suitable nut. Suitableness, diametrically opposed to -Romance, is its keynote. - -I fancy me walking about my married house mornings after breakfast -in a neat linen dress and high-heeled satin slippers: snipping dead -leaves off my window-sill plants, dusting bits of porcelain, giving -my maid some tame household directions. My Body looks slender and -supple and newly-married and in-the-drawing in the linen house-dress. -The geometric gods regard me with immense satisfaction as being an -exact proved theorem. I go to the telephone to order some Little -Neck clams and some vermouth cocktails for dinner, and a roast and -some Brussels sprouts and the assemblings of a salad: and in it I am -ingrainedly domestic, dreadfully useful, a strong pillar of the vast -good nice world. - -Afternoons I go out to a modiste's to fit a gown, or to a mild -bridge-party along with other suitable women, or to a matinee with a -suitable neighbor. - -Everything is perfectly right in my insides and in my thoughts: -my thoughts run in little troughs in which there is no leakage or -deviation, thoughts of a dreadful niceness, thoughts which ever -presuppose potted plants on my window-sills. - -Evenings I go out with my husband, or sit around with my husband, or -take leave of him for a few hours at the hall door. - -My husband would be the sort of man that is called a Good Scout. And -he would have married me not for my wistfulness or wickedness or -weirdness but for that I am a proper Shape and Size, with a smooth -proper covering of flesh, to make a suitable sizable wife. And he -would be a heavy grappling anchor to hold me fast in an ocean of -domesticness. - -Men of the genus Good Scout are all fiercely alike. All women, no -matter what their genus, are exceptions to the rule. But men--rich -men, poor men, beggar-men, thieves: so only they are Good Scouts--are -of marvelous sameness. It comes from the want of minute lifelong -pinpricking care of petticoats and potted plants--a detailed -intensely personal sort of pain which touches dull solid tones of -individuality with vivid various spots of color. - -Men are made in 'job lots' like their own cravats. Their cravats will -differ in texture and color and quality and price. But each one is -innately necktie. Use it as a garter or a tourniquet or a strangler's -noose: it still is a man's deadly necktie. Its use may be ruined but -its necktique is deathless. Except poets--and perhaps scientists--men -are themselves like that. They cannot get away from the Adam. Nor can -women get away from the Eve. But Eve was not a type but a somewhat -pleasant human ensemble. While Adam was a type and a sufficiently -nasty one: a rotter and a welcher: doubtless the Good Scout type of -his day. - -A Good Scout is the sort of man who if a woman trusts him with one -one-hundredth of her heart will take the whole heart and twist and -batter it: and read the paper and smoke his pipe and pay the bills: -serenely unaware. - -Which is beside the point in this. For in this image all my -marriedness is a thing of outer Shape and Size and Suitableness. The -odd but natural sequence is that I make an excellent wife. Excellent -is the word. I keep a neat house with no dust left in the corners and -no dead leaves on the potted plants. My husband is well looked after -as to breakfasts and dinners and bodily comfort, and I am rigidly -square with him and chastely true to him. - -If, some dinnertime, as I sit opposite him in a soft pretty chiffon -gown, my secret thoughts overflow their troughs and I passionately -forget the potted plants and the window-sills and want horribly to -rise up and bloodily murder my husband for being such a Good Scout: -that would be a genuinely powerless matter, a cobweb trifle, compared -with my actual potent Shape and Size which are so suitable for a wife. - -I make truly and simply an excellent wife. - ---by God and my Soul-and-bones! it would be honester, finer, -sweeter--more _comfortable_ to be the dirty beggar-woman in the wet -slippery streets-- - -But it's facilely fancied because I am of Right Dimensions to be some -Good Scout's wife. - -A curious subtly pitfalled world: in it my Shape and Size, and my -Weight which is also Right, could betray me into being an excellent -wife: and by that a lying chattel, an inexpressibly damaged woman. - - - - -_Ice-water, corrosive acid and human breath_ - - - To-morrow - -I have love for two towns. One is this Butte that I tiredly love -inside me. And the other is New York that I smoothly love with all my -surfaces. - -It is some years--a little lump of years--since I have seen New York: -and it is two thousand miles away. So I see and feel its hard sweet -lurid magnetism now ten times sharper than when I lived in it. But I -felt it sudden and sharp at every turn then. A surface emotion which -hits one's flesh and spreads wide over one's area is more exciting -than a spirit emotion which pierces inward at one tiny point: an ice -shower-bath on the white skin is more anguishing than an ice-water -drink down the red throat. The spirit emotion lives longer and works -more damage and buries itself at last in proud shaded soul-reserves. -The surface emotion stays always on the surface and lives actively in -the front of one's senses and musings. - -The feel of New York is a mixture of ice-water, a corrosive acid and -human breath sweeping someway warmish against one's flesh. - -It is immensely ungentle, New York: immensely human: immensely -intriguing to all one's selves. It is too big to have prejudices and -traditions of locality: so it leaves its dwellers free, by ones and -multitudes, to be human beings. - -In South Bend and Toledo and Beloit and St. Paul and all the -tight-built inland towns they murder you with narrowness and -harshness and rancorous ill-will: they are scowlingly annoyed with -you for making them murder you. - -In New York they murder you with a large soft wave of indifferent -insolence--no annoyance, no friction. New York eats you as it eats -its dinner, rather liking you. - -And my love for New York is made of liking: a plaisance of liking. - -made of liking: a plaisance of liking. - -I like New York with a charmed restfulness for varied things in -it: subways, and Fourth Avenue, and the River, and Fifth Avenue on -a sunny October afternoon, and the statue of Nathan Hale, and old -cockroachy downtown buildings, and the soft rich whelming creamy -boiling-chocolate fragrance from the Huyler factory in Irving Place. -And mostly I like it for the people in it--People--Persons--People: -they are human beings. - -In the inland towns people are half-afraid of thoughts, half-afraid -of spoken words, half-afraid of each other, half-afraid of the fact -of being human. - -In New York they are not afraid of any humanness. Even when they -are in themselves craven-cowardly, cowardly enough to turn their own -stomachs, they still turn their humanness unfearfully face-outward -like upturned faces of a pack of cards. - -An Italian organ-grinder grinding out his loud fierce music -in a long deep New York side-street is a human organ-grinder: -he bestows his rasped melody widely on everybody in ear-shot, -not individually--since all around him is a spreading world of -strangers--but jointly. So it feels-like. - -A beggar-woman at a subway-entrance with a whine and a dirty face -and the deadly black cape and chicken-coopish beggar-odor is a human -beggar-woman. She throws out an inner savor of herself like a soiled -aura on all collectively who pass her. Each-and-all of New York by -tolerating and owning her partakes of her mean human essence. - -A stout-hearted worn-bodied Jew factory girl working at a hard greasy -little machine day after day gives all New York her bit of young -virtue which is hardy and heroic and unaware: the whole Island of -looseness and vice has an equal gift of impregnable surprising sordid -purity thriving on sixes and sevens of poor dollars-a-week. - -All of it is because New York is one Large Condition made of human -breaths and the worn scrapings of tired Youth rather than one large -town made of individuals and stone houses. - -And in that is an odd enchantment for me who am born and grown in the -places of Half-fear with an old isolated whole fear always on me. - -In New York I am a partaker of that smooth manna of humanness as I am -of the air and the sunshine and the little black specks of coal-soot: -partly from choice, partly willy-nilly, partly in the sweeping -unanalyzable pell-mell-ness of massed human nature. - -And it is in New York I have those strangest things of all: human -friendships. Not many friendships and not of spent familiarities: -for I don't like actual human beings too much around me. But yet -friendships made of the edges of thoughts and vivid pathos and -pregnant odds and ends of nervous human flesh and fire. - -It is in New York I go to the apartment of a Friend at the end of -an afternoon. In the apartment are some persons having tea, men and -women. The Friend greets me at the door. She wears maybe a dress of -thin dark and light silk, shaped in the quaint outlandish fashion of -the hour. And she has shrewd kindly eyes like a Rembrandt portrait, -and a worn New-York-ish Latin-ish brain and heart both of which are -made of steel, sparkle and the very plain red meat of living. She -says, 'Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane,' and clasps my hand, and we exchange -a glance of no real understanding at all but suggesting warmed -challenge of personality, and an oblique sweet call of depth to -depth, and of friendship which by mere force of preference and of our -separate quality and _calibre_ is true rather than false. So close -and no closer may friendship be. And friendship, with-all, is closer -than any love. It is the closest human beings ever come to meeting. - -In a New York doorway I, made in broad loneliness of self, get -suddenly companion-warmed at the little pleasant twisted fire of -someone else. - -It might be so in some other town, even Beloit, but it feels only -like New York to me. - -I go in the room where the others are and they say, 'Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane,' -and I drink some tea and listen and talk in fragments of half-meanings. -And I get warmed and half-warmed and cooled and slightly scorched in -the easeful unevenly-heated humanness of the women and men sitting -around. - -In the inland towns they throw their thoughts and ideas at you at -tea-time, inland thoughts and ideas, which hit you and then drop off -like little pebbles and nuts and hard green apples. - -In New York they throw those things in the form of long ribbons, -heated from being worn next their skin, which fly out and wrap around -your skin: pleasantly or foolishly or fancifully. - -The point of it is that nobody is afraid of that. - -It is nothing fulfilling, nothing satisfying. It is merely human. It -is half-lyric. - -It reassures me as a person: it makes me feel human in all my -surfaces. - -Which are harder to humanize, in everybody, than any deepest deeps. - -And it is therefore with all my surfaces, smoothly and restfully, I -love New York. - - - - -_Rhythm_ - - - To-morrow - -Now and again I think I catch some truth by the sweat of its Rhythm. - -Often I read the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and feel their -truth in the blood-sweating tune of their Rhythm--Rhythm unspeakable -and ecstatic. - -The prophet Christ believed himself divine and was all Rhythm in his -utterances: and so sounds true as the scheme of digestion and the -laws of hygiene. - -He said, Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. - -Everybody who has tried it knows that to be true with the flawless -Rhythmic truth of health and illness. - -Mourn frightfully a day and the next day will be a day of soothed -warmth and quiet like a grateful pitiful heat current in the breast. -Mourn a week and that will come the week following. Mourn a year and -the next year will be the year of peace. For anguish: peace. For -peace: anguish. It never fails. - -The great thing lacking in Christ, the sense of humor, permitted -his perfect personal Rhythm. Humor oddly wants Rhythm. The human -race is made in Rhythm like its beating heart: but humor is an -'extra.' Everybody is so full of lies that humor, an 'extra,' always -wonderfully appetizing and out of season, and inexplicably God-given, -feels like a great keystone of the race. So it is: but in a lying -race. And Christ in his beautiful dual role _would_ lack humor. As a -God come among the human race to save it, knowing it as he did: his -measureless worldly wisdom being paramount even to his gentleness: -his mind and his personal tenor could be set only in intense terrific -gloom. - -The Rhythm in the Beatitudes is equal Rhythm of sense and Rhythm of -sound: Rhythm of music and Rhythm of meaning. Equally, half and half. - -The most Rhythm thing in it is: Blessed are the pure in heart: for -they shall see God. - -I feel it soft-prickling just under my skin. Rhythm--Rhythm and -ecstasy! - -I have read it many times since I was a child: till I know it in my -brain, in my Soul, in my hands, in my breast, in my throat, in my -forehead, in my gray eyes, in my aching left foot. I know it and feel -it by its Rhythm. There is barbarous justice in it. It cuts everybody -off from seeing God. - -Pure in heart I take to mean pure in motive. A fool has an equal -chance with a philosopher: a harlot with a horse-thief: a nasty -rag-picker with a small sweet child. But none is pure in motive. - -Of other persons I don't judge. But me I know to be murderously -un-pure of heart. - -If I could open a window or unlock a door with only the simple -mechanical motive in the act-- But I can't. There's a romantic -impurity in even the look of my hand as it touches the window-sash or -the door-key. There's a pervasive delicate infusion of impure motive -all over me, Soul and bones, as I perform the act. It is one curse in -the Necklace which God himself bestowed on me so long ago. - -It is not my fault that I am un-pure in heart. - -And it is not God's. It is a comfort to me that I can reason out -that it is not God's fault. He knew I needed the Necklace and -each blue-green stone in it to rhyme and balance me. In the wide -surprisingness of the universe everything will be rhymed and -balanced. In me, being savagely complex, that balancing took a bit -of doing: hence my unusual Necklace. It comforts me that I can reach -that analytic point. It leaves me a lightning conviction that God is -worth seeing. - -And if a day dawns for me when I can open a door with no ulterior -motive: thinking only of the door and the fine small muscular power -of smooth hand and supple wrist given me to open it: thinking only -that I want to get the door open: then back of _that_ door I know I -shall see God! - -It is so written in that barbarous blood-sweating worldly Rhythm on -the Mount. - - - - -_A prayer-feeling_ - - - To-day - -So it is finished: and I have oddly Failed. - -I have slyly Succeeded and oddly Failed in equal degree. - -I have Failed because I am too cowardly and too weak and too -dishonest to write certain bruised and self-accusing places in my -Soul and in my Heart and in my Mind which rightly come in the scope -of this: there are the Stern and Delicate Voices one closes one's -ears against: there are the starry grimy Actualities one drops from -one's hands: there are the Thoughts one Does Not Think. Yet and yet: -they too are in it, hanging cobweb-ish on my wordings and colons. - -It is not a strong tale, and that is very well. This book is less -I-written than it is I-myself. And Just Beneath The Skin no person -is strong: not Theodore Roosevelt, true fearless American: not -Bonaparte, splendid tyrant: not Joan of Arc, titanic martyr. They are -strong in their depths and strong on the outside. So are many others. -So am I, I think. But just under the skin all who are human are -roundly weak. - -Roundly weak, every one. - -And with that, in my case, False. - -This primarily is the picture of one who is made-False: False from -her fingertips to her innermost concept. - -It is belike because of that that this, as itself, oddly Fails. - -It is as if I have made a portrait not of Me, but of a Room I have -just quitted. My Gloves are left on a chair: my Hat is left on a -couch: my taken-off Shoes are left on the floor: my faint-smelling -Handkerchief is dropped by the door: my round ribboned Garter is -hanging on the door-knob: my Breath is in the air: my Grief is on the -walls clinging like smoke: my flat Despair is on the petunia-leaves -in the window: my fragrant Horridness lingers in the curtains. I am -not there! But I--_I have just Quitted that Room!_-- - -Therein I have slyly Succeeded. - - * * * * * - -My feeling at my book's-end is a prayer-feeling, both frantic and -quiet: God have mercy on me! but not unless you want to. - -And I feel barbarous and utterly solitary, solitary from here to -Jericho, solitary from here to the cool stars. - -There comes off the grim gray east hills a soft whelming taste of -Sunset, bloody and full of human marrows. - -And I feel a need of great Pain or great Sin to make and break me, -Soul and bones. - - - - -[Transcriber's Notes: - -As the first lines of the paragraphs in the original are not indented, -in some cases the presence of a paragraph break is not entirely -certain. In such cases, insertion of paragraph breaks was determined -according to the structure and content of the surrounding text. Page -images of the original are available at the Internet Archive: American -Libraries (http://archive.org/details/imarymclanediary00macl). - -Except for the following changes, spelling, hyphenation, and -punctuation have been preserved as printed in the original. - - Page 43, comma after "husband's" was deleted (my husband's temper). - Page 59, "ecstasy" was changed from "esctasy" (hunger and ecstasy). - Page 64, "I'd 'a'" was changed from "I'd' a'". - Page 82, a period was added after "bastard lacy valentines". - Page 96, "Cornwallis" was changed from "Corwallis". - Page 138, "calefacient" was changed from "calefaciant". - Page 142, "listlessly" was changed from "listessly" (I listlessly - change). - Page 160, "four-and-twenty" was changed from "four-and twenty" - (at four-and-twenty). - Page 169, "arresting ruination" was changed from "arrest - ingruination". - Page 174, "patrician" was changed from "partrician" (slim - patrician hands). - Page 194, a period was added after "remembrance of myself". - Page 205, "of" was changed from "if" (herself out of it). - Page 217, "Soul" was changed from "soul" (Said the Soul: 'Glad?). - Page 227, "philosophers" was changed from "philosphers". - Page 237, an em dash was added before "I keep on". - Page 256, "or" was changed from "of" (or a Blue Shadow). - Page 276, "highly" was changed from "hightly" (highly emotional). - Page 294, a closing single quotation mark was added after "are - sweeter". - Page 300, a comma was added after "little fellow cries". - Page 306, "opposite" was changed from "spposite" (opposite him).] - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of I, Mary MacLane, by Mary MacLane - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK I, MARY MACLANE *** - -***** This file should be named 43556.txt or 43556.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/5/5/43556/ - -Produced by Marie Bartolo from page images made available -by the Internet Archive: American Libraries - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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