Winter, 1964 - 1965: Artist's Solution

Anais Nin says that "if one is not comfortable in human life, one dreams. But these dreams can be fulfilled and create a world that is endurable."

What better way to end 2012 than by dreaming of the world you want and then starting 2013 by creating that world.

Fall, 1964: The Self

Anais Nin writes: "It is from England that America inherited its taboo on the personal. To be interested in self-development, in self-growth, in self-education and improvement is inevitably a symptom of neurosis, narcissism, egocentricity. Never had the word 'ego' been so misinterpreted as in America. The dictionary definition is: 'The self that feels, thinks, wills, and acts.' It is always confused with egocentricity, or egomania, which is altogether another thing. The only virtuous state in America is a collective spirit. Humanism should be the result of such virtue, but it is totally absent. And what can a nonexistent self contribute to the universal? This great American persecution of the self does not recognize the egomania of competition, of ambition and greed. And this so-called non-self has resulted in a people who can be brainwashed more easily than any other because without the self there is no power of discrimination or evaluation."

Summer, 1964: Deep Disappointment

Anais Nin suffers "another deep disappointment, when I least expected it" when the film script for Spy did not materialize.

Disappointment is inevitable. It can occur at various levels on a daily basis. We set ourselves up for it by having expectations, hopes, dreams, wishes that don't come true. What is the cure? Should we stop having these expectations, etc., or should we modify them, expect less? Or should we control our disappointment by forgiving those who let us down, remembering that we too have let others down when we don't even realize it?

Spring, 1964: Fame

Anais Nin meets Marguerite Duras in Paris, where they talk of adapting A Spy in the House of Love for the screen.

Her novels appear in bookshop window displays.

She is interviewed and photographed.

Radio Canada records a program on her life and work.

Anais is realizing every dream she ever wished but says she is not made for public life because of her stage fright. However, she says the acceptance she receives in Paris makes her feel less lonely.

Winter, 1963 - 1964: Too Much Information

Anais Nin in this diary entry speaks of biographers and asks, "What race of men feeds on other's lives?" She is concerned with the letters that writers of her era wrote each other, filled with secrets and sacred trusts, that if they fell in the wrong hands, could make public what had been personal and intimate.

Anais speaks of historians in much the same way: "Many lies will be told, many inventions, distortions, in spite of documentation, as are told in fiction."

In today's world, with all the various avenues of social media, people are free to feed on their own lives, share too much information with anyone who will listen, tell lies, invent, distort, turn themselves into someone they want to be or wish they were, someone they think is better than themselves, someone they think others will find fascinating, interesting, a rock star.

What would Anais Nin think of all the boorish details that people today provide the world, the me, me, me focus that makes average people feel like celebrities?

Fall, 1963: More on LSD

Anais Nin is drawn to the fact that people understand her novels when they are under the influence of LSD whereas when not under the influence, this understanding eludes them. LSD could instantly open their senses and unconscious, while with other methods such as analysis, this opening was not so quick or easy. Many artists naturally have access to the visions, senses, dreams, feelings, imagination, invention, creation that LSD makes available to the masses. Anais feels that the real culprit is "a culture which made drugs necessary, a culture of false values, slavery to commerce, taboos in the dream, aesthetics and the senses, taboos on imagination and freedom of the individual."

Summer, 1963: LSD

Anais Nin experimented with LSD in the fall of 1955 under a doctor's supervision, and now, almost eight years later, she's meeting Timothy Leary and others, discussing the pros and cons of its use. Her experience resembled a "waking dream very closed to the states I reached by writing. I did not realize that America with its pragmatic culture had no access to this inner world." Anais says further that no one except neurotics and psychoanalysts paid attention to dreams and that many people had never been taught to dream, "to transcend outer events and read their meaning. They had been deprived of all such spiritual disciplines."

She ends this entry of her diary with columns "for" and "against" LSD.

For LSD: it's a shortcut to the unconscious, expanded consciousness, greater awareness of the unconscious self that children and artist have and is useful for those who've become out of touch with their deepest self. It can provide inspiration, creativity, imagination, spontaneity.

Agaist LSD: it should not be used carelessly by people seeking "kicks" and without supervision because it can be dangerous to people with heart or liver problems, and people should not drive, swim, or go to work under its influence.

Spring, 1963: Friends

Anais Nin's friend says to her, "To have a sensitive, understanding friend, or not to, makes all the difference in the world, I now think. When you are cared for and loved by someone else, suddenly you find yourself so precious and worthy of being alive."

Do you have at least one of these friends?

Winter, 1962 - 1963: Diary of Others

Anais Nin reveals in this entry of her diary that from now on, her diary will be called the Diary of Others. "I have decided to retire as the major character of this diary," she proclaims. She says further that she is transitioning away from herself, shedding herself.

Anais is often referred to as a narcissist, as are many who keep a diary, with the focus on the self. Is self discovery and development so bad? Isn't psychological deep sea diving into the depths of yourself not okay? Isn't venting in your journal a good way to release emotions and say what you really feel without hurting anyone or having regrets about what you say to someones face? And it's fun, documenting your life and your development, your likes and dislikes, the good times and bad times, so that you can remember it all.

Fall, 1962: Reunited with Henry Miller

Anais Nin last visited Henry Miller at his home in Big Sur, California, in 1947, nearly 15 years earlier. She writes, "Our mutual interest in Roger Bloom [a man serving a life sentence in the Missouri State Penitentiary] renewed our friendship. Henry gave me a present of the copyright on his letters to me."

Henry tells her his success is meaningless. What gives his life meaning is a few special letters he receives from people like Anais, who writes, "I do not think of him as a lonely man. His relationship to the world was always more important to him than his intimate relationships. He never loved anyone more than himself. He would never die of a broken heart."

Summer, 1962: Anais and her Diary

Henry Miller said Anais Nin's diary would be a great contribution to literature for the next hundred years.

Is anyone still reading it besides me? Does it affect anyone else as it does me? Do you identify with Anais as I do?

It was a great undertaking to get her diaries, her true life's work, published, to turn her dream into reality. During her 50's, 60's, and 70's, when many people think it's too late to take on a big project, to make a contribution to future generations, Anais does just that.

Spring, 1962: Editing the Diary

Anais Nin started her diary when she was 11 years old and on her way to America in 1914. She has continued it since, and it's now in its 103rd volume. She uses it as a notebook or sketchbook and at times, draws from it for her novels. She is now editing it for publication, typing and revising 175 pages to date. She believes she will be at work on this project for the rest of her life.

Winter, 1961 - 1962: Contagion of Indifference

Do people have power to create their destiny?

Or are they prey to their moods and the moods of others?

Do they act or wait to be acted upon?

Is their passivity the cause of withering and isolation and solitude?

What is the cure - desire, passion?

How can you get the cure if you are too bored and empty to even try?

In this diary entry, Anais Nin watches a film that explores the above themes. Then, she has the opportunity to go to Paris yet again - staying at the Hotel de Crillon, exploring the Louvre, dining at the Jockey Club.

Fall, 1961: Loneliness

Anais Nin believes that loneliness occurs when we do not have a person who will listen to us, a person we can confide in, a person with whom we can be intimate. She believes when we do not have this person, when we have to go to a therapist or to a group to voice our confidences instead, loneliness occurs because the intimacy is lacking.

Summer, 1961: Mystery of Self-Undoing

When Anais Nin meets someone who is suffering, she can't help but try to figure out where their life went wrong, where order turned into chaos, so that she can help them change the downward spiral of their life.

Spring, 1961: Hemophilia of the Soul

Anais Nin writes much about anger. Here is an excerpt from a letter she wrote to a poet in prison:

"My only concern is your unhealed anger, and your pessimism, what I call, when I'm guilty of it, hemophilia of the soul, unhealing wounds caused by others' cruelties.... The moment an artist becomes bitter he has ceased to possess his own world; he has gone over to the enemy camp, the enemies of his work, who had intended to embitter him, knowing it kills creativity.... Destruction is going on all around us but so is creation. We can choose sides.... All of us have been at some time or other humiliated, betrayed, but our real life depends on how we react to such experiences."

Winter, 1960 - 1961: Bitterness

"Bitterness is the thing to watch - toxic. I watch it in myself; when I see it forming like an abscess, I operate fast. Da Vinci's life, filled with frustrations, humiliations, a million projects defeated by others - but each time one failed, he picked up another. If he could not get a mural order he wanted, he took up the study of anatomy; when his airplane failed, he took up the study of birds; when his patrons poisoned his life, he designed a church, or took up astronomy. We all have plenty of causes for anger, but if we let it grow it becomes war and leads to death of all life," Anais Nin writes in a letter to a poet in prison.

Fall, 1960: Resistance to Writing

"I at times enjoyed printing, bathing the dog, stacking wood for the fireplace, etc. more than writing. But when I am typing a diary (now volume 79) the entire life is re-created and it is such an intense pleasure to re-create a moment of life and love that it is worth the struggle. Often I did not know what I had done, or that I had done it. It was when I seemed most careless and casual that I would miraculously give the sensation I had experienced sur le vif. Writing is a curse only when there are no readers. Almost every other occupation gives more pleasure: cooking, sewing, gardening, swimming, but none of them gives you back the life which is flowing away from us every moment," Anais Nin admits.

Summer, 1960: Letters to Prison

In 1960, both Anais Nin and Henry Miller began correspondence with Roger Bloom, who was serving a life sentence in the Missouri State Penitentiary for holding up a bank with a toy gun when he was 17. Anais and Henry feel Roger is a sincere, changed man and should be given parole. He reads and writes and gives lectures against crime, and at Christmas, he was allowed out with guards to distribute toys to children in orphanages. The joint effort helped to renew the friendship between Anais and Henry.

Spring, 1960: Beloved Paris

In this entry of her Diary, Anais Nin records her trip to Sweden to read and lecture from two of her novels published there, then her return to the U.S. via Paris. She is in love with the small, intimate cafes and the personal, intimate conversations in which people in Paris engage.

She visits Sylvia Beach who owns the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop. She meets a friend at the Deux Magots cafe. She has lunch at the restaurant Paul on the Ile de la Cite. She walks alone the Seine and through the Left Bank. She sits at a cafe on the Place de la Contrescarpe. She walks between Place Clichy and Place Blanche and reads a review at the Moulin Rouge. She takes in an art exhibit on the walls under the bridge at Pont Neuf. She passes by the fountains at Rond Point. There is a concert playing in the Salle Gaveau where her father used to play.

Ahhhh, Paris in the spring.

Winter, 1959 - 1960: Oatmeal People

Anais Nin will sometimes contrast the artists with what she calls the oatmeal people. A letter from a friend says, "Your life was formed in the artist's world. In your childhood and throughout your life, you have been forced to reject the ordinary, the subordinary, the "oatmeal" people as you call them."

Artist: bohemian, full of curiosity, notices everything, needs to create, has imagination, needs beauty, likes to dream, lives intensely, full of energy, interesting, charming, adventurous, colorful, rich in experience, unconventional, hungry for life, free.

Oatmeal Person: boring, plain, empty, ordinary, conventional, one-dimensional, voiceless, spectator, invisible; basically, everything opposite of the artist.

Which are you - artist or oatmeal or a little of both?

Fall, 1959: Cutting off Relationships

After a session with her psychoanalyst, Anais Nin says,"I discuss with Bogner the unfortunate habit I have of cutting off friendships as soon as someone hurts me or betrays me. If they damage, disappoint me, I pack off and leave, and this is no solution. Even my novels are full of "cuts." "Cut!" says director Nin, as if it were a film being made, and one could cut out people's cruelties or thoughtlessness."

Dr. Bogner explains to Anais her need to relate to other people, but how everyone eventually commits "treachery," as Anais calls it. She has many friends who ask her for money or help of another kind, and these become burdens, demands for her. She feels hurt, used, and withdraws from the relationship.

Anais realizes that "by cutting off friendships, you create your own solitude." This can happen with family members as well. Those who are closest to us tend to hurt us the most. After we spend time with them or live with them, we expect them to love us perfectly; we hope that they will understand us completely, but they are only human and cannot do this.  We set ourselves up for disappointment because no one can deliver what we need, this unconditional love. We want it; we try and try and try to get it, then we are disappointed when we don't receive it. But as Anais says, it is no solution to pack up and leave. What is the solution?

Summer, 1959: Potion of Indifference

Anais Nin attends a party in the summer of 1959 that she anticipates will the the greatest party ever, but it turns out a dismal failure. All the people were sitting around, not talking to each other, not even showing any interest in each other. There was no laughter, no energy; it was dead. She says, "It was as if they had drunk a potion of indifference."

Have you attended parties like this? I have, and I have been the person who drank the potion of indifference. I suppose it came from a feeling of not belonging to the group, like maybe they all had some connection to each other that I didn't have. I just wanted to slip away or disappear or just get it over with as soon as possible. I think acting any other way would have been phony. Is it best just to avoid people you don't care to learn more about? Or should you make a greater attempt to actively participate and engage yourself in the conversation by expressing more curiosity about them? Is some of the responsibility on them as well?

Srping, 1959: Meaningless Experiences

Anais Nin makes a comment near the end of this diary entry: "Now will I construct a chaos of meaningless experiences as Kerouac does?" It made me wonder whether or not any experiences are meaningless. I have often said or thought, at least past the age of 30, that I'd rather have experiences than possessions. Life is a gift, meant to be lived and enjoyed, and to me, that means having fun and adventures. In other words, experiences.

So last year, I went to something like 30 movies in the theaters. Yes, some of these were not worthwhile, and I suppose they could be categorized as meaningless experiences. There are a few books I have read that have been meaningless for me. Sometimes I try a new recipe, hoping for a winner, and if it's not, does that make the experience of trying, experimenting meaningless? Is a meal more meaningful when shared with companions? When is going to the opera or a play or musical or ballet or symphony meaningless? When is traveling anywhere meaningless? Is visiting friends or family ever meaningless? Is it meaningless to get a massage or facial or manicure? What about visiting a museum or exploring an unfamiliar part of the city?

It's been said that it's better to regret what you do rather than what you don't do. To me, this means that it's better to have an experience and find it meaningless or not worthwhile than to never even try something in the first place. What do you think?

Winter, 1958 - 1959: Poverty of Life

Anais Nin writes in a letter:

"I understand loneliness better than anyone in the world, that is why I do answer letters and when you speak of your poverty of people I remember the times and places which were not lifegiving. Must you stay there? One should make a courageous effort to leave empty or lonely places. Life is much too precious. Looking back I can see how we create our own destiny, the negative aspects by our passivity. We should never accept poverty of life. I know it's difficult to face the unknown, to create another job, or another way of life. But if it is up to you, do not accept the void."

Anais is hospitalized with double pneumonia in March of 1959 but recovers in time to do a reading at Harvard.

She puts her continuous novels together into a collection called Cities of the Interior, which includes Ladders to Fire (which opens with This Hunger), Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love, and Solar Barque (which later become the opening section of Seduction of the Minotaur).

Summer, 1958: Soil of France

Anais Nin continues to reminisce about her recent trip to Paris in a letter to friends there: "I was beginning to think I was an eccentric and no one else thought as I did. But as soon as I stepped on the soil of France I realized I had a whole continent behind me." She thrives in the human, intimate, alive atmosphere of Paris whereas she has shriveled in the rigid, narrow, limited atmosphere of New York.

We all have times and places when we are with "our people" and are comfortable, alive, most ourselves and other times when we are not with "our people" and feel like an oddball, outcast, weirdo. Who are your people?

Spring, 1958: European Way of Living

Anais Nin has a "romantic fantasy of becoming a roving editor," makes arrangements with magazines to do articles on the Brussels World's Fair, then makes plans to get to Europe. She contrasts Europe with America; in Europe, there is a human scale with small cafes and restaurants, small theatres, small train stations, small streets. People have intimate conversations about their dreams and ideas instead of gossip, politics, business, crime, and exploring empty planets. In Europe, everyone knows the meaning of his life and lives for spiritual values; they are all artists at heart and care more about books and paintings and music than they do about the economy and the affairs movie stars are having. They talk deeply, personally, passionately. People take time to sit in cafes and talk and dream. Billboards are absent, and gas stations are hidden away.

Winter, 1957 - 1958: Jack Kerouac

Anais Nin read Jack Kerouac's On the Road in the summer of 1957 and loved the lyrical passages, alive with primitive beauty. She then meets him in the winter of 1957, but unfortunately, he was drunk and blubbering, and she found it impossible to talk with him because of her incurable prejudice against drunks. "A failed meeting because I am not a drinking partner," she says.

She has often felt alienated because she doesn't believe in drugs or alcohol, although she did try LSD under the supervision of a doctor, and she does drink limited quantities of alcohol. Anais does seem to understand the need some people have of drugs and alcohol because they need these substances to reach a place, a state, which she can reach on her own through dreaming and awakening her senses.

Fall, 1957: Art of Dressing

Anais Nin writes a "Letter from New York" for Eve magazine. In it, she discusses music, theater, books, parties, and the art of dressing:

"The distinction between colorless dressing and dressing to express character, a mood, the richness of a personality is the same one which separates a uniform from the art of dressing. The last originates from a knowledge of one's identity, an awareness of moods, a care for eloquence of body as well as of words. It is inseparable from the art of relationship or the art of living. A choice of scarf, a style of hair, the form of a shoe, a certain color, can play this lyrical note which reveals a woman's inner riches. The art of dress in living is not less valuable than the art of dress on the stage. The art of living is renewal, inventiveness, exploration, an openness to the unexpected, a love of surprises. Eve is not a spectator watching a fashion parade. She knows that even among textiles, she must choose with a feeling for the meaning of her life, the motifs and the patterns, the textures of her life and of those she loves, a harmonization of moods, temperaments and indications of the hidden selves which cannot appear badly dressed."

She is saying that the way you dress reveals the way you approach life and relationships, whether you invest yourself and spend energy be it on dressing, making love, or playing the role of wife, mother, daughter, employee.

Summer, 1957: Reflections on Living

Anais Nin reflects on life:

She believes the first defeat, the first loss is the one which stamps itself on your soul. From then on you obey the pattern. You inflate it. It becomes a part of your belief system until you become aware of it and overcome it.

She believes it is only the neurotic who drags his past around and decides his life is like a novel which, once written, cannot be changed. However, if you live a rich and beautiful life, you can forget the ugly moments.

She believes some remember only the wrongs society has done them, never the kindnesses they have received. But she also believes you can dispel or laugh away a grudge instead of sinking into it.

Spring, 1957: More on Anger

Anais Nin continues to explore her anger, which she realizes she is full of and has been holding back. She writes about revelations she has during / after her discussions with Dr. Bogner, her psychoanalyst.

"I fear my anger. The real problem is what to do with the anger. I have stifled it so long that I have packed it like dynamite. I have stored it and now it threatens to come out in explosions I fear. The day we discussed my anger I could only express bodily pain: a constricted throat, backache, headache, tension, tightness. I was using all my energy to suppress it. And I left Bogner with this rising tide of anger controlled. It is my conviction that anger is corrosive. So I displace it, attach it to peripheral places or people. After this I felt lighter. Just to have acknowledged the anger."

I identify with Anais in that I have felt that displays of anger are to be avoided, but then the anger is still there and it grows inside you like a cancer. You get to middle age and realize you are full of it and don't know how to express it or get it out. You have headaches and wonder if this is part of the mind-body connection. Some of the things you are angry about date back 10 plus years.

I guess it boils down to free will. We largely create our own experiences and can decide how we respond to anything: with love or with hate. Responding with hate leads to anger, bitterness, cynicism. OK, so we responded to something with hate 10 years ago, and the feelings have grown into a huge, ugly monster inside of us - how do we get rid of that now?

Winter, 1956 - 1957: Holiday Neurosis

With the holidays approaching, we may as well talk about Anais Nin's description of "the holiday neurosis. The one time of year when your memory is forced by associations to return to the past. The superimposition of other Christmases, other New Years, the awful sense of time passing, all this causes sadness, regrets, or revulsion. A forced gaiety is expected of me which I do not feel."

Not only this, but there are also expectations of receiving Christmas cards and special gifts, celebrating family traditions, and creating memories, all of which often lead to disappointments. These then feed into next year's memory when it is forced to return to the past. The older you get, the greater the accumulation of sadness and regrets you have to work with. Ugh, this way of thinking is not for me!

Fall, 1956: Aging

Anais Nin, now 53, writes about aging: "there is a difference in the aging of men and women which I hope one day we can eradicate. The aging of man is accepted. He can age nobly like a prehistoric statue; he can age like a bronze statue, acquire a patina, can have character and quality. We do not forgive a woman aging. We demand that her beauty never change."

Sags, wrinkles, menopause, watching your looks fade, competing with the 20-somethings and their sharp minds and technical skills. Sometime around age 50, you realize that death applies to you whereas at 20, you were immortal.  It's time to eliminate the unessential, the irrelevant, the waste, the unimportant, and at 50, you can identify all of this. Can you identify the emphasis on beauty to be unessential, unimportant and eliminate it?

Summer, 1956: Hollywood

Anais Nin moves from the sleepy town of Sierre Madre to Hollywood in the Summer of 1956. It is actually Silver Lake where she lives and will live for the rest of her life, in addition to maintaining a residence in New York with her husband. She lives in this Los Angeles district with Rupert Pole who left his job with the forestry service to teach junior high. She has been married to both men since March of 1955.

She meets new people, one whom she describes as transforming "this world into one livable for her, how she could create something out of it." It sounds as though Anais has found another person who believes in the power of the artist.

She reads new books, among them Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins, which describes how "people use political ideas to hurt and fight each other, that it is not a dedication to the hungry or the poor, but to an ideology which would make each man the enemy of the one who does not think as he does." It sounds like politics today.

Anais also reads an autobiography called Tiger of the Snows about climbing Mount Everest. Some argue that such ventures are taken on simply to satisfy one's ego. Others say is provides a good example of courage and endurance. Anais writes, "I read it as a metaphor. It seemed to me that all of us are trying to climb Mount Everest. That we do risk wounds, falls, precipices, frozen feet and hands, snow burn, snow blindness." What is your Mount Everest?

Spring, 1956: Fewer Children

Anais Nin reflects on an afternoon of babysitting three children:

"I have now known community living. But I am still convinced that these people who are so proud of giving birth and raising three children are giving less to the world than Beethoven, or Paul Klee, or Proust. It is their conviction of their virtuousness which distresses me. I would like to see fewer children and more beauty around them, fewer children and better educated ones, fewer children and more food for all, more hope and less war. I was not proud at all of having helped three children with faces like puddings or oatmeal to live through a Sunday afternoon. I would have felt prouder if I had written a quartet to delight many generations."

I'm with Anais. Talk of strollers and fertility treatments bores me. My friends with kids display a restrained fascination with my weekends exploring the city or my trips to NYC, where people have more to talk about than their kids. To each his own; we all have our own visions of what we want our lives to look like.

January, 1956: Mea Culpa

Anais Nin gives every month of her diary a title, and this month's title is "Mea Culpa." I confess, I had to look "Mea Culpa" up. I found it is a Latin phrase that translates to "my mistake" or "my fault." It is an examination of conscience for Catholics who wish to repent.  Anais writes about examining her friendships and judging herself at fault in all of them, which is a heavy realization to bear. She feels ashamed of herself.

She is not the only one repenting. Edith Piaf and Enigma have songs entitled "Mea Culpa" that you can listen to on YouTube. The latter features images of a Victoria's Secret model to add interest and further engage you to realize it is your fault, your error, your guilt. And this week, after Romney's defeat in the presidential election, a Colorado University professor called his earlier prediction of a landslide victory mea culpa.

Winter, 1955 - 1956: Vision of the World

This is a long diary entry by Anais Nin, and there are several points which struck me:

- she still has an obsession about having an expanded life. She rebels against mediocrity and wants a life in depth.

- she is wondering if she is well, saying she cannot pretend lightness, realizing she must have a desire to get well in order to actually get well.

- she has found ways to lighten, minimize, and accelerate housework. She has more energy for it when she doesn't fret over it. She wants to rid the house of all nonessentials. She doesn't want her energy resources to be drained by work on the house and garden.

- she reflects on Henry Miller who never strained, took everything as it came, made no efforts, did not feel responsible.

- she says we select our vision of the world by selecting what we see, record, observe. She says it's your choice; you create the vision.

- she wants an artist's life with few possession, simple surroundings, a simple way of life requiring little money and little compromise. She dreams of a simple, uncomplicated economic life, with finances in the background, not the foreground. She says it takes courage to live this way, committed to no one, subjected to no restrictions.

Fall, 1955: Analysis In, Neurosis Out

Anais Nin is high on analysis as she says:

"To sum up an extraordinary change caused by analysis. A month without depressions, anxieties, or nervousness. I feel installed in the present. I give myself to it. I no longer feel angers, walls, hostilities in relation to the world. My criticalness has lessened. I enjoy what comes. I am not nervous beforehand. I am gay and free. The fears have decreased, the fears of being unable to earn a living, the fears of losing love. There is less rebellion, more smoothness and lightness in living. There is an ability to throw off anxiety. There is no bitterness, no friction, and my anger against America for not accepting my work has gone. Having fewer conflicts I get less tired and accomplish more. I can do housework half a day, write half a day and still go out at night. Lightness and a feeling of strength. It all consolidated this month. It is true I may die without seeing Bali but then I have other things to make up for that. I can make one human being happy. I am close to one human being and closer than before to others. My genuine gentleness is coming back. I do not expect others to love or understand my work. I am not bitter or hurt. So much accomplished. I went to a party; in the past a part of me would hold back because the people were not interesting; this time I entered uncritically, accepting it on its own level. Contentment. It took me a lifetime to learn that happiness is in quiet things, not the peaks of ecstasy. I am grateful for what I have. I feel reintegrated into the human family. I see Americans as people in trouble, not happy on a deep level. I want to help, to teach. To share and impart the wholeness I feel and the strength. I feel strength from my effort to learn first aid. I have overcome the neurosis at last."

Fall, 1955: LSD

Anais Nin participates in an experiment involving taking the drug LSD under the supervision of a psychiatrist and in the presence of two other participants: a biologist and a painter. It was thought that a writer, Anais, could describe the experience more articulately than a previous experience described by another painter had been.

It took about 20 minutes to take effect, then everything started liquefying. Other images such as split selves and standing alone on another planet were experienced. At one point, everything turned to gold, including Anais.

After the experience, Anais contemplated whether these experiences were new, unfamiliar, unknown, and concluded that they were not; most of the images were either in her writings or the writings of other authors. She determined that the drug did not reveal a new world but it did shut out the interferences of the real, known world so that one could be alone with one's dreams, fantasies, and memories, which made it easier to gain access to the subconscious life.

The bottom line for Anais is that drugs provide a passive experience whereas real living provides an active experience, which is preferred so long as we have courage to act out our dreams.

Summer, 1955: Small Talk

Why do we talk about ________ (fill in the blank: the weather, politics, sports, our kids)? Aren't there more important or interesting things to talk about?

Anais Nin is intent on enhancing, heightening, adding charm to daily living and enjoys discovering like-minded companions. Instead of exchanging photos of kids, why not exchange photos of castles you once lived in? Instead of talking about the weather, why not talk about the masquerade you attended?

Spring, 1955 Claustrophobia of the Soul

Anais Nin frequently confronts and discusses her neurosis. She says:

"For a neurosis such as mine, to take roots means to be rooted to a situation of pain. To have a fixed home, a fireplace to sit by, a view, seemed dangerous (concealing as they do the bars of a cage). To take roots to me means cutting off avenues of escape, avenues of communication with the rest of the world. So that against the wish for repose, there is an impulse to remain mobile, fluid, to change surroundings."

She continues: "At times I do feel like a snail who has lost his shell. I have to learn to live without it. But when I stand still, I feel claustrophobia of the soul, and must maintain a vast switchboard with an expanded universe, the international life, Paris, Mexico, New York, the United Nations, the artist world. The African jungle seems far less dangerous than complete trust in one love, than a place where one's housework is more important than one's creativity."

Some take comfort in having roots, staying put, feeling secure. Others, like Anais, feel like caged animals with a loss of freedom and must constantly explore, shake things up, get out of the box. Which side do you relate to?

Winter, 1954 - 1955: Anger

Anais Nin's psychoanalyst, Dr. Bogner, has insights on anger. "Dr. Bogner's concept is that if you are already angry you tune in on what feeds your anger and on the experience of other angry people. The anger is increased and multiplied. If you examine it at its source, the origin of it, you can deal with it alone, but not with a magnified anger out of one's control," Anais quotes the doctor.

"I spend a great deal of time trying to find the culprit, the origin of my angers. Dr. Bogner said it was because I cannot bear to see myself as a person capable of anger. I always tried to divert it, by understanding, by compassion, by justifying others' behavior. But repression of anger causes intensification of it," she continues.

"You pick up the waves you want to pick up. There is always hostility and cause for anger in the air. But like radio waves, you pick up what confirms you in your anger, what harmonizes with the image you wish to make," Dr. Bogner tells Anais.

Anais works to remove the power of what makes her angry. She knows that the anger must be dissolved because it is toxic and corrodes joy. How do you stop being angry? Even if you know the source of your anger, how do you stop thinking about it, feeding it? Is it simply a matter of replacing angry thoughts with happy thoughts whenever you realize what you are thinking about? You are what you think, so put good thoughts in your mind - is that it?

Fall, 1954: Return to Paris

Anais Nin had not been to Paris since she left in 1940, and she returns in the fall of 1954.

She once lived overlooking Montparnasse Cemetery, and since that time, she has lost both her father and her mother as well as Dr. Rene Allendy and Dr. Otto Rank.

She sees a cafe with small round tables, just big enough for two people and two glasses of wine, just right for intimacy. The cafes are crowded with people who have time to sit outside and have interesting, engaging conversation.

She stays in Hotel Crillon, where, like the cafe, it is not new and glossy as it would be in America, but lived in, human, with the feel of people who had lived richly, deeply.

She walks along the Seine, where she sees hobos and a small bookshop and barges and boats on the water.

She seeks out her houseboat, La Belle Aurore. It had been moved from Paris to Neuilly by her before she left Paris in 1940. It was no longer in Neuilly, so she looked in Bougival but couldn't find it.

She walks the streets for hours among the small and intimate art shops, bookshops, antique shops, bookstalls, with their displays of creativity and style.

The Paris Anais Nin knew is still alive and well.

August, 1954: Loss of a Mother

Anais Nin's mother dies. The pain of irrevocable loss. The torment of regrets and guilt. The feeling that part of you has died with them.

You never know that when you see someone, it could be for the last time.

Did you love them enough? Will you still feel their disapproval of your life, independent from theirs, your life of freedom? Why weren't you able to get closer to them? What images of them will you preserve?

Summer, 1954: Earthquakes of the Soul

Anais Nin reflects on friendships and relationships in this entry of her Diary:

"Mourning days for failed friendships are over. I am not victimized by neglect, less prone to earthquakes of the soul, to tidal waves of anguish. Quarrels at one time were prophetic of separation, loss (since the largest quarrel of all led to the separation of my parents and the loss of the father, country, a musical world). Jealousy was once a messenger of divorce (my mother's jealousy of my father). Today I can live for months without the strangulation of anxiety, I have occasional minor attacks of nervousness, or panic; no nightmares, less guilt for living my own life according to my own nature. Very little of that excruciating fatigue which tightens my neck like a vice until I do not rest, nor eat or sleep well."

May, 1954: Psychological Deep Sea Diving

As soon as Anais Nin returns to New York from her vacation in Acapulco, the peace and tranquility she felt are erased. She is reminded of her need to be a writer and her failure to be accepted as a serious writer. She rereads her own work and is still proud of it and still has faith in it; she cannot understand why others don't get it.

In a letter to Maxwell Geismar, she elaborates on the purpose of her work: "I am continuing the work of Freud, which I believe more valuable than the work of Marx." Freud knew the source of evil and war and was attacking it at its inception, she believes. "Our failures (wars, racial prejudice, greed, corruption) prove the error of Marxism," she says. "I want to change human beings at the source. That means psychological deep-sea diving," she continues.

Spring, 1954: Life and Death

Anais Nin loves Acapulco and spends another 20 days there vacationing. Life there is like a dream where her body and spirit are at peace. Fiestas abound. People dress in vibrant colors. She spends days at the beach, swimming and suntanning, and evenings, dancing at night clubs. She feels the "Latins and Negroes are right. Happiness is in the physical life, and sorrow is in thought. At least I can say I have possessed all physical life. But I wish I could devote myself to it, live only for it." Acapulco is the home of beauty and feeling to Anais.

Back in Los Angeles, Anais says, "Sometimes when I think of death, I think merely that it would be too bad, but I have not yielded up all the treasures I have collected. The chemistry I am producing of turning experiences into awareness is not yet finished." She is only 51 years old and already thinking about the end. It seems as though age 50 is a turning point for many people on this topic.

February, 1954: Why Does One Write?

Anais records her response to a question about why she writes in this entry of her Diary:

"Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me: the world of my parents, the world of Henry Miller, the world of Gonzalo, or the world of wars. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and re-create myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. The artist is the only one who knows the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it, he hopes to impose this particular vision and share it with others. When the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself you make a world tolerable for others."

She continues, "We also write to heighten our own awareness of life; we write to lure and enchant and console others; we write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth; we write to expand our world, when we feel strangled, constricted, lonely. We write as the birds sing. As the primitive dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write. Because our culture has no use for any of that. When I don't write I feel my world shrinking. I feel am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire, my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave. I call it breathing."

Winter, 1953 - 1954: Fire

Anais Nin looks out the window and sees the mountains behind the house in Sierra Madre on fire. Horses are lead out, and old people from isolated cabins are rescued. She makes coffee and provides blankets to evacuees and rescuers. Her main concern is packing the diaries for evacuation.

Besides making sure people and pets are safely out, what would you pack for evacuation from a fire? Of course, it depends on how much time you have. Forest fires in the western U.S. come with more advance notice than a fire in your home or apartment. Even so, what is most important to you? What would you save?

December, 1953: Movie Star

Kenneth Anger makes a film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, in an apartment, and Anais Nin plays the part of Astarte. He was inspired after attending a Halloween party called "Come as Your Madness" dreamed up by Paul Mathiesen and Renate Druks, which was also attended by Curtis Harrington, Samson de Brier, and Katy Kadell. It is a 38-minute film that brings historical, biblical, and mythical figures together.

Fall, 1953: Notes on Living

Here is what is going on in Anais Nin's life in the fall of 1953:

- Under a Glass Bell is on the Columbia University reading list. The Four-Chambered Heart is sold to a Swedish publisher.

- How can we get inside another's mind? It takes honesty on their part. What about reading their diary, if they are truthful, and if they allow it?

- There is value to individual development - it contributes to awareness in society as a whole.

- Horrors of aging - deafness, false teeth, restrictions of all kinds.

- Mother's human qualities - generosity, devotion, sacrifice.

- Father's qualities - artist who re-created human condition, transformed reality.

 - Human condition - domestic life, chores, nursing the sick, marketing, mothering others, cleaning house.

- If you contemplate future travels and dazzling friendships, it can make the human condition more beautiful by diverting it towards a beautiful aim.

Summer, 1953: Random Thoughts

A few key thoughts Anais Nin reveals in this entry of her Diary:

- clutter interferes with freedom of thought

- "the most tragic moment in human relationships is when we are given to see, accidentally, by a revealing word, or a moment of crisis, the image which the other carries within himself of us, and we catch a glimpse of a stranger, or a caricature of ourselves, or an aspect of our worst self aggrandized, larger than nature, or a total distortion."

- some escapes are constructive

- you can disagree with someone but still like and respect them

- the artist is a type of adventurer, going through hells most people are not willing to explore

- often times, your conflicts are not with others but within yourself

Spring, 1953: Passion

Moments of passion are the highest moments in life, Anais Nin says. All of her best moments are born of passion, she says, and the other moments, she does not dwell on. Passion is a way of life that creates awareness, aliveness, an absence of automatically plodding through a routine.

Anais goes further in discussing the role of awareness in psychoanalysis. She says that awareness alone does not make a person change behavior; it takes analysis to re-live and confront situations and feelings and find the original wound. This process enables a change from within; a heightened awareness leads to realizations of aspirations.

Anais has recovered from the surgery to remove her ovary, and rewards herself with another trip to Mexico.

February, 1953: Tumor

Just a few weeks before her 50th birthday, a tumor the size of an orange found on Anais Nin's right ovary is removed during an operation. To make this experience more palatable, Anais wears her red wool burnoose as she is wheeled to the X-Ray room.

She has recently paid for the printing of A Spy in the House of Love herself, having not found a publisher to back her. She continues to be aware of her "failure as a writer. The publishers won't publish me, the bookshops won't carry my books, the critics won't write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies and completely neglected."

This causes her psychic pain in addition to the physical pain she has felt related to the tumor in her ovary. Writing helps her transcend the pain and brings her into a self-created world which is not only tolerable, but often, beautiful.

Winter, 1952 - 1953: Loyal Love

Anais Nin recognizes her mother as being a "fixed, stable point of loyal love." It seems as though she is referring to unconditional love. How many people can you count as having unconditional, loyal love for you? If you are like me, probably just one - your mother. There may be one other one who comes close, who sees your dark side and remains by your side. These people deserve a huge display of appreciation for our gratitude for their deep love of us.

Fall, 1952: Ostracized

Anais Nin feels ostracized by the American literary community, left out of anthologies, poetry readings, and magazines. And yet, she does not sacrifice or surrender her values. She has an ideal for which she has fought, dreamed, envisioned. She is searching for happiness and fulfillment through her writing. Her happiness comes from the achievement of her values and her wisdom, brought to life in her novels. Her work is the purpose of her life. Her joy cannot come by compromising her values. She is dedicated to her principles. The fire inside her does not go out. So let them ostracize her; she will endure.

Summer, 1952: A Spy in the House of Love

Anais Nin decides to rewrite A Spy in the House of Love, making the "lie detector," which is supposed to represent the personification of the conscience, more clear. As with all of her novels, she draws from characters in her diaries, (thinly) disguises them, and turns them into fictional characters, seemingly unable to create from scratch out of her imagination.

A Spy in the House of Love is about an unfulfilled woman who seeks relationships with a string of men. It is about Anais and her inner reality and struggle to find an ideal relationship. There is some feeling of guilt, but it is overpowered by the need to find personal fulfillment and satisfaction. Does she want to be free, or does she want to be caught? Does she want to be judged, or does she want to be accepted?

Spring, 1952: Restlessness

Anais Nin writes a letter and includes a quotation from an unknown source: "The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favor with the social man we are obliged to be. Those two sorts of life are incompatible; one we hanker for, the other we are obliged to."

We  want to be free, and yet we get married and have children have responsibilities to our families and work in conventional jobs and are involved in the community, each of which comes with a "cage" of sorts. This creates conflict and restlessness within us. If we live our lives with no regard to others, we are called "selfish." When we consider others as we live our lives, we may feel resentful and controlled. What is the answer?

Balance the life of the adventurer with the life of the social being at a level that makes you comfortable. The feeling of restlessness will never go away completely or forever, but you can keep it at bay and feel happy and contented most of the time. And don't keep a "Ledger of Guilts" as Anais did. Any thoughts?

Winter, 1951 - 1952: Rejection

Anais Nin is trying to get A Spy in the House of Love, the fourth novel in the continuous novel called Cities of the Interior, published. She is angry yet tries to remain positive, though she feels isolated, rejected. She is omitted from anthologies, and her manuscripts are returned by magazines. Publishers either don't like her work or don't understand her work, especially the "lie detector" in Spy.

She describes what it takes for her to write: "No one else can do what I have done, I know that, because it took a spiritual vision allied to sensuality to clothe in flesh such deep meanings, and it took a life in hell and many lives of painful explorations, and it took even a dangerous sojourn in the world of madness and the capacity to return to tell what I have told."

Anais includes in this entry her idea for a project for which she applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship, the first half which has already been accomplished by the three novels she has already written (Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, and The Four Chambered Heart). The second half of the project is to be three more novels which will cover "a philosophic demonstration of the understanding and mastering of the neurosis." In this project, she will prove "the relationship between the state of the world and the inner psychological conflicts." The project was rejected.

Fall, 1951: Detox in Acapulco

Anais Nin heads to Acapulco, her favorite vacation destination, once again, to experience another healing process. She says, "to me, Acapulco is the detoxicating cure for all the evils of the city: ambition, vanity, quest for success in money, the continuous contagious presence of power-driven, obsessed individuals who want to become known, to be in the limelight, noticed, as if life among millions gave you a desperate illness, a need of rising above the crowd, being noticed, existing individually, singled out from a mass of ants and sheep. It has something to do with the presence of millions of anonymous faces, anonymous people, and the desperate ways of achieving distinction."

Of course, one of her hang ups is that she has not achieved distinction; she has not been noticed; she has not risen above the crowd in the literary world. She is frustrated and goes to Acapulco to just forget about it.

What are your favorite destinations, and what draws you there? I enjoy Santa Fe for the art and beauty, and I love New York for the energy and excitement.

July, 1951: Film vs. Literature

Anais Nin does enjoy taking in the occasional film, but in this entry of her Diary, she says, "I find a danger in watching films. It is like passive dreaming. It requires no participation, no effort. It induces passivity. It is baby food; no need to masticate, no need to carve. There is no need to learn to play an instrument, to learn to read a book. People stretch on specially inclined chairs and receive the images in utter, infantile passivity."

I have a similar wish when either watching a film or reading a book - that it moves me emotionally, whether it inspires me, makes me mad, makes me laugh, makes me cry, makes me think, or teaches me something. I feel that when a film or book does this for me, it has achieved what I wanted it to achieve. I view film and literature as equal, although a book tends to take longer to read than a film to watch.

Which does more for you - film or literature?

June, 1951: Economic Independence

Anais Nin turns again to psychoanalysis when she feels "fruitless anger" from frustration about the difficulties in publishing her work sapping her energy, doing her harm, corroding her. She doesn't feel she can publish her own books as she did in past because of the time it takes away from her writing.

Anais feels that life in Sierra Madre is dull, and life in New York is too full of activity, and there must be a third way she could live. She realizes she is dependent upon her husband for money, and this makes her feel helpless. She wants to achieve economic independence so that she can live her own life, but America does not seem to want to accept her work, which makes her bitter.

She visits Dr. Inge Bogner, a female psychoanalyst she can be more honest with because she is not trying to charm or seduce, to let off steam. She feels some peace and serenity and courage after these talks.

Spring, 1951: Sierre Madre

Anais Nin is 48 years old. She takes another trip to Mexico and experiences shabby hotel rooms where one had a water closet inside the shower and another had a chamber pot under the bed.

The doctor advises Anais to find a warmer and drier climate than San Francisco, so she settles in Sierre Madre, a mountain village one hour from Los Angeles. She finds it sunny, dry, and beautiful, and of course, Rupert Pole is stationed there with the Forestry Service.

Winter, 1950 - 1951: Living Outside the Diary

"I wanted to live on the outside, to see how it was to stay outside and never re-enter the cave of the interior life. I stayed outside, in cars, in buses, in planes, and never stopped to write in the diary. I did work on the novels," Anais says in this entry of her Diary.

Certainly, she is writing much less in the Diary these last three years than ever before. She has learned to drive, she tried skiing, she's had several trips to Mexico and several flights back and forth between Los Angeles (via San Francisco where her mother and brother live) and New York, she's had several bookshop parties to attend and shows to see (Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo).

Has the lack of analyzing and interpreting her life by reflecting on it in the Diary been good for her? Is she happier now? Or is her life so full of activity that she has no time or energy to reflect on it?

Summer, 1950: Coast to Coast

Anais Nin flies from New York to California, a 12-hour trip in those days, to live her double life with her husband Hugo in New York and her lover Rupert in California. It is no wonder she does not write nearly as much in her Diary as she has in the past - she is exhausted. The writing she does have time and energy for is letter writing. She appears to be in survival mode.

She nurtures herself by swimming in the pool. She relaxes herself with the occasional trip to Mexico. She comforts herself by letter writing and reading. She hasn't learned to say no. She doesn't seem to want to simplify her life.

Winter, 1949 - 1950: Writers and Artists

In New York, Anais Nin goes from bookshop party to bookshop party, signing copies of The Four-Chambered Heart. She gives six lectures. And, she finishes A Spy in the House of Love. No wonder she isn't writing in her Diary as much as she used to.

Anais includes the following ideas in her notes for lectures:

"Our senses tend to be dulled by familiarity, tend to become mechanical and automatic. What the artist or writer seeks to do by exaggeration, or distortion, is not only to make us notice a difference but to reveal a new aspect," she writes. "This is the rule of the artist, to seek to renew and resharpen our senses by a a new vision of the familiar," she continues.

Anais speaks to people in conventional jobs and lives: "Perhaps behind our occasional hostility toward the artist and writer there may be a slight tinge of jealousy. The man or woman who for the sake of family life, children, takes up the work he does not like, disciplines himself, sacrifices some fantasy he had once, to travel or to paint, or even possibly to write, may feel toward the artist and writer a jealousy of his adventurous life. The artist and the writer have generally paid the full price for their independence and for the privilege of doing work they love, or for their artistic rebellions against standardized living or values," she writes.

Conventionality is boring to some people as it suffocates us, kills our spirit, buries our creativity. Other personalities need the security of conventionality to prevent anxiety in their lives. Are you conventional or non-conventional? Which do you want to be?

October 20, 1949: Her Father Dies

"My father died this morning, in Cuba. The hurt was so deep, the shock so deep, the sense of loss so deep, it was as if I had died with him. I felt myself breaking, falling. I wept not to have seen him since Paris, not to have forgiven him, not to have been there when he died alone and poor in a hospital," Anais opens this entry in her Diary.

Loss, unfulfilled love, death of a part of herself, disbelief, pain are felt by Anais even though she viewed her father as selfish and disconnected from other human beings. She cannot accept it because the relationship was unresolved.

This is a sad situation when someone you love and care about dies unexpectedly, without warning, before you had a chance to make peace or say your goodbyes. This is why you must not waste time or hold grudges or procrastinate because you never know when an interaction with a person will be your last opportunity.

Summer, 1949: Return to Acapulco

Anais spends the summer of 1949 floating between San Francisco with Rupert Pole and New York with her husband, with a vacation to Acapulco in between.

Since she had been in Acapulco last, there have been changes. The good changes are that a new road has replaced the dirt road, and flowers have been planted everywhere. The bad changes are that the Mexicans now bring radios to the beach and chew Chiclets while they dance.

Perpetual air of fiesta. Slackening of tension. Anais Nin will visit Acapulco again and again.

Spring, 1949: San Francisco

Anais Nin gives us a peek into a day in her life in San Francisco ~

     She washes her face and combs her hair and buttons her dress and sweater.

     She starts the coffee and lights the oven for the rolls.

     She turns on the button that provides heat and opens the Venetian blinds.

     She washes the dishes, cleans the apartment at 258 Roosevelt Way, and markets.

When she needs "drugs, when the present is unacceptable," she rereads all her French books, a healthy way to deal with life with things get tough. Personally, I like to pop popcorn and read fashion magazines.

"Occasionally, I think of death. I can easily believe in the disintegration of the body, but cannot believe that all I have learned, experienced, accumulated, can disappear and be wasted. Like a river, it must flow somewhere. Proust's life flowed into me, became a part of my life. His thoughts, his discoveries, his visions, each year visit me, each year bring me deeper messages. There must be continuity," Anais says. Anais Nin's life has flowed into me.

Winter, 1948: Personal Responsibility

"We cannot always place responsibility outside of ourselves, on parents, nations, the world, society, race, religion. Long ago it was the gods. If we accepted a part of this responsibility we would simultaneously discover our strength. A handicap is not permanent. We are permitted all the fluctuations, metamorphoses which we all so well understand in our scientific studies of psychology," Anais Nin declares.

As mature adults, we can revoke any imprints, reverse any patterns our parents programmed in us. We are not responsible for their actions or the actions of others, only for our own. We can accept that responsibility, make responsible choices for ourselves, and be truly free.

Fall, 1948: Fusion of Creation and Life

Anais Nin rents a little Japanese teahouse in San Francisco. She feels she can work better here where she is "not dissolved in nature." She says, "I remember D.H. Lawrence complaining that nature was too powerful in Mexico, that is swallowed one. If I lived there, would the need to write disappear? When the external world matches our need, our hunger, our inner world, might not the need to create cease? Morocco did that. It made me contemplative, content with a spectacle of life so vivid that it stilled all needs. Would a mere change of culture put an end to our restlessness, our dissatisfaction, our need to create what is not there?"

Anais wonders when creation and life will fuse for her and when she will be equally at ease in both.

It has been said that artists create in order to create a world in which they can live because they are uncomfortable or unhappy in the world as it exists. They create an outer world that matches their inner world. Have you done this in your life?

Summer, 1948: Depression & Anxiety

Anais continues to be plagued by depression, mainly because she spends so much time re-reading past entries of her diaries to get material for her fiction, and it keeps past pains alive in her present. She wishes she could create fiction out of her imagination, but she seems unable to and must draw on her own experiences.

She also continues to be filled with anxiety, doubt, and fears. Anais says that "anxiety is the one thing we cannot place on the shoulders of others, it suffocates them. It is the one contagious illness of the spirit one must preserve from others, if one loves." She discusses her anxiety with various analysts over the years, but doesn't reveal it with her close friends.

Anais is splitting her time between California and New York these days. She believes life to be less toxic in Los Angeles than in New York. The people seem to be more relaxed and carefree, with life revolving more around the beach than with money and success. Californians are influenced by the lifestyle of the Mexicans (siestas and celebrations) and the Japanese (gardens).

She is learning to drive and feels freedom and a quest for health and beauty as she spends time suntanning and swimming, but still wonders, "Am I not made for happiness?"

Sprint, 1948: Self-Created Loneliness

"The self-created loneliness which nothing can assuage, the self-enclosed walls separating him from human beings. One can only feel compassion for that incurable illness of the soul," Anais writes as she reflects on Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf.

Hesse feels that his book has been misunderstood. In his preface to the book, Hesse speaks of how people "recognized themselves in Steppenwolf, identified themselves with him, suffered his griefs, and dreamed his dreams; but they have overlooked the fact that this book knows of and speaks about other things besides Harry Haller and his difficulties, about a second, higher, indestructible world beyond the Steppenwolf and his problematic life. The "Treatise" and all those spots in the books dealing with matters of the spirit, of the arts and the "immortal" men oppose the Steppenwolf's world of suffering with a positive, serene, super-personal and timeless world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of grief and needs; still it is not a book of a man despairing, but of a man believing."

February, 1948: Dissolving Depression

Anais Nin gives advise for how she dissolves her depression: "I begin to look at what happens to me as a storyteller might look at it. What a good story it makes! I take my distance. I look at the dramatic possibilities. Try that. The depression falls away, you are changed into an adventurer faced with every obstacle, every defeat, every danger, but as they increase the sense of adventure increases too."

Anais turns 45 on February 21.

She reflects on the similarities and differences between Acapulco and Los Angeles. Her months in Mexico "loosened chains, they dissolved poisons, fears, doubts, healed all the wounds." She could "see people who could dance, sing, swim, laugh in spite of poverty, and be reassured of the existence of life and joy. To see and hear joy."

Anais says that "Los Angeles is not as deeply natural or joyous as Mexico," but she observes a lightness and carefree attitude as the people prefer going to the beach to going to an exhibition, concert, or theater. They drive with the top down. They live, awaiting roles and stardom.

Winter, 1947-1948: Acapulco, Mexico

Lying on a hammock, on the terrace, surrounded by green foliage and beauty, with the sun shining, in the warmth, Anais Nin finds no need to portray or to preserve in her Diary. She says that in Mexico, they see only the present. People see each other and smile, unlike New York, where one feels invisible.

Guitars, festivities, fiestas, holidays, celebrations, rituals - the Mexicans always find a cause to enjoy life. Anais feels at home here because she knows Spanish and spent her early years in Spain with a similar culture. She achieves a state of being which is effortless, "a flowing journey," as she calls it, which leads her to endless discoveries. She feels that life blooms in Mexico as it did in Morocco, where life force is vital and expansive.

Anais Nin feels reborn. She longs for a simple life where she can cook over a fire, sleep outside in the terrace on a hammock, walk barefoot, have a dirt floor in her hut, wash her hair in the sea. She feels so strongly that she buys a little house in Acapulco, where she can "watch the whales play, without need of books, concerts, plays, provisions of any kind."

Acapulco is a place of joy and health and beauty for Anais.

Summer, 1947: Anais Goes West

Rupert Pole drives Anais Nin in a Ford Model A with the top down from New York to Los Angeles:

Holland Tunnel, Washington DC, Smokies National Park, Roanoke, Virginia, caverns of Luray in the Shenandoah Valley, North Carolina, Winston-Salem, South Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, New Orleans, Lake Ponchartrain, Delta country, Mississippi River, Little Rock, Arkansas, Oklahoma City, Texas, Pecos, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Santa Fe, Taos, Denver, Colorado, Boulder, Rocky Mountain National Park, Continental Divide, Fraser, Colorado, Central City, Royal Gorge, Grand Junction, Colorado, Colorado National Monument, Colorado River, Utah, Moab, Arches National Monument, Blanding, Bluff, Mexican Hat, Monument Valley, Tuba City, Lee's Ferry, Bright Angel Point, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angeles.

In LA, Anais meets Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work reinforces individuality rather than uniformity and monotony, as did his father's. His work relates to the personality of the individuals residing in its structures. He crusades for quality and has a sense of eternity and history. His work endures.

Anais wants her work to endure as well. She believes it will if it is first transformed into a myth and possesses a magic quality. She has spent most of her lifetime creating the myth of herself and her life.

May, 1947: Barriers

Anais Nin believes there are three barriers between her and successful American writers:

1) drinking, which she does only moderately.She tends to spend her time with young writers who don't drink as much as the older writers do.

2) she is not rough, straightforward, tough, or plain-spoken. Anais has been influenced by Isak Dinesen, a Danish author who has had success here, and would like to meet her. She has written to her without response.

3) she is not a native American. She came to America as a temporary visitor, with a permit to be extended every six months. Now that the war is over, she has to leave America and re-enter as a permanent resident.

Sometimes we turn our barriers into excuses which serve us well by keeping us stuck. How can we bring these barriers into the light and break them down when we realize it's only our imagination that limits us?

April, 1947: Conventional Matters

Anais is at a dinner at her editor's apartment. She describes the setting: "Homeliness, bourgeois solidity, comfort, a love of conventional matters. I am bored."

Conventional matters bore me as well. What could be more boring than conventional jobs, conventional people? Convention is suffocating for a creative person. It slowly kills the soul, the spirit.

March, 1947: Politics & Economics

"Why  does everyone here believe that by all of us thinking of nothing else but the mechanics of living, of history, we will solve all problems? I don't think the American obsession with politics and economics has improved anything. Politics is not the only task there is to do! Everyone must do his own well, and it will influence politics indirectly: the doctor, the psychologist, the social worker, the priest, the poet, the writer, the musician," Anais declares.

February, 1947: Another Birthday

Anais throws another party, complete with candlelight and charades. The party goers get drunk and trash her place - spilled wine, candle wax dripped on the floor, cigarettes, crumbs of sandwiches everywhere.

She has an awareness that many of the writers with whom she associates are filled with hatred which paralyses them and makes them unable to create.

Anais works on the ending of Children of the Albatross.

On her 44th birthday, she goes to a Haitian Carnival, dances all night, then goes to the Soho cafe.

January, 1947: New Year, New Life

Anais Nin is working on the second novel, Children of the Albatross, of her continuous novel, but she still has time to give parties where her guests sit on the floor in candlelight.

She has moved to a new apartment at 35 W. 9th St. in New York.

She continues to be invited to colleges to speak.

She is about to turn 44 years old.

And, she is about to meet Rupert Pole.......

December, 1946: Lecture Tour

Anais is invited to speak at several colleges and universities - Harvard, Dartmouth, Goddard College, Amherst. Rooms overflowed with absorbed people.

She develops her idea of the "ultimate novel" - one free of unnecessary detail.

Anais discusses with Gore Vidal his writing that focuses on faults and ugliness. She believes the basis of her writing is love which results in beauty, faith, extraordinary life, magic reflected in her writing.

She writes a short autobiography about how she creates her own world through "myth and a legend, a lie, a fairy tale, a magical world." She goes on to say, "I am more interested in human beings than in writing, more interested in lovemaking than in writing, more interested in living than in writing. I am gifted in relationship above all things. I have no confidence in myself and great confidence in others. I need love more than food."

November, 1946: Friendships

Anais says, "Five o'clock is the hour of my depression. Because the active day is done, during which I subdue and conquer my disillusions or disappointments. But five o'clock is the fatal hour, end of work, beginning of awareness..... I feel this wave of chocking anguish, of homelessness, rootlessness, loneliness."

She goes on to say, "Every friend I reach out to here seems incapable of a big friendship. They all shred, dissolve into minor friendships. Instead of writing in the diary, I have been trying to talk with someone, to write to someone. They write tight, meager letters, ungenerous, small, parsimonious."

Is it more difficult to develop friendships when you are in your 40's? Is it more difficult to develop friendships with people who have families when you are childless?

October, 1946: Ladders to FIre

Ladders to Fire was officially published by a commercial publisher, E.P. Dutton, after years of printing and publishing her own books. There were bookshop parties at Gotham Book Mart, Young's Bookstore, Lawrence Maxwell's, and Four Seasons in New York. People approached Anais with several copies of her book, wanting her to sign not only for them, but for their friends. It was a dream come true for her. Ladders to Fire was the first in a series of five continuous novels collected in Cities of the Interior, a study of women.

Summer, 1946: Easthampton

This summer, Anais spends a week in Easthampton as Gore Vidal has a house there and asked her to visit. Just like Southampton, she does not enjoy her time there and describes the homes and lawns as monotonous and uniform and the people as one dimensional with dead eyes. She dreams of good times in San Tropez while there, then returns to New York unrenewed.

June, 1946: Emotional Algebra

"My basic theme is that of relationship. To explore all the variations, the subtleties of relationships. As it is in moments of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most deeply, I choose to write more often about such moments. I choose the heightened moments because they bring to bear all the forces of intuition," Anais reveals in this entry of her Diary. "I choose the extraordinary moments of heightened revelations, the heightened ones because they are the moments of heightened revelations, of illuminations, of the greatest riches. They are the moments when the forces of the unconscious rise to the surface and take over. By this choice of the strongest moods, exaltations, states of being, I accentuate the reality of feeling and senses. I use the language of emotion and the senses, which is different from that of the intellect.

"My only structure is based on three forms of art - painting, dancing, music - because they correspond to the senses I find atrophied in literature today; and these forms are those most directly connected with life: the eyes, body, emotions," she continues.

"I write emotional algebra. All my life I have promised myself to begin at the beginning and tell the whole story very simply, step by step," she explains.

May, 1946: Rise above the Storms

"There is a way of living which makes for greater airiness, space, ease, freedom. It is like an airplane's rise above the storms. It is a way of looking at obstacles as something to overcome; of looking at what defeats us as a monster created by ourselves, within ourselves, by our fears, and therefore dissolvable and transformable," Anais says in this entry of her Diary.

April, 1946: On Writing

Anais says that psychoanalysis is the basic philosophy of her work; she accepts its premise that the unconscious rules and shapes our lives. She is inspired to write and says that the arts of symphony, ballet, and painting serve as symbols for things that cannot be said in words. For Anais, there is no separation between her craft and her life; the form of her writing is the form of her life. Nothing is artificial. The story she is trying to tell in her novelettes is how childhood creates characters and patterns of neurosis, and life becomes a symbolic play.

March, 1946: Relationships

Maya Deren is making a film, and Anais gathered up several friends to create a party scene for it. It was supposed to be spontaneous but undirected. It was expected that things would happen, and people would dance and talk.

Anais observed that nothing happened because "there was no connection of thought or feeling between the people acting, and so no tensions, no exchange of dramatic or comic moments. It was empty."

It reminded her of what she has often wondered about, what she has found lacking in America compared to Paris: vital relationships and passion are missing. These things can't be forced; they happen naturally.

February, 1946: Theme of America

In this entry, Anais says, "The theme of America is gigantism, grandiosity." She believes we make things and ourselves bigger to cover our weaknesses and helplessness. She thinks that anger leads to power which leads to this theme.

Anais does recognize the flip side of anger, its positive side, even though she tends to identify anger as negative and evil. The positive side is that it can lead to creation, change. You get tired of things being the way they are, and your frustration and anger give you energy and fuel you to do something about it or at least express your feelings through some art form.

January, 1946: Cure for the Problems of the World

This is a recurring theme in Anais Nin's diary writing - to rid the world of war and greed, each person must work on their own hostility, prejudice, and distortion of others because this is where hatred, and ultimately war, begin. This is the only solution.

She attempts to describe similar themes in her novelettes by focusing on neurosis and a world of blurred vision and broken connections that create drama and elusive problems. She believes there is neurosis in each of us, and if we become aware of our collective neurosis, talk about it, explore it, we will bring back into the world the alienated ones. With this awareness, we will be able to feel the poverty and hunger of others, and we will evolve and progress as caring human beings. Without the awareness, we are neurotic, self-centered, self-contained, blind to the problems and others and the world because we are stuck in our own dramas and depressions.

December, 1945: Gore Vidal

Anais recently met Gore Vidal, and she spends a great deal of time in this Diary entry developing his portrait, outlined below. He was considerably younger than she - 20 to her 42; in fact, he recently died, July 31, 2012.

-they slide easily into sincere, warm talk as he drops his armor, defenses
- intellectually, he knows everything
-psychologically, he knows the meaning of his mother abandoning him when he was 10, cheating him of a carefree childhood, happy adolescence. He and Anais bond as both were badly loved children who raised themselves, both stronger and weaker by it.
-he moves among men and women of achievement
-his demon is pride and arrogance
-he wants to be president of the United States
-he suffers from black depressions
-he is a boy without age who talks like an old man
-he responds quickly, never eludes, holds his ground, is firm and quick-witted, has an intelligent awareness, is attentive and alert, observant
-his father financed Amelia Earhart's fatal trip
-he has a feeling of power, feels he can accomplish whatever he wishes, has clarity and decisiveness, is capable of leadership

November, 1945: Facing Fear

Anais is invited to speak in public, giving a short lecture, and reading a passage from This Hunger. It is her fear, speaking in public. She wears her favorite outfit. She stands, rather than sits, to give her performance.

In her Diary,  she analyzes the ordeal and the mastery of shyness. "As children, we are made to feel we will only be loved if we are good (in the parent's terms). As soon as we begin to affirm our real selves, parents begin to reject us. We grow up with the idea that if we are ourselves we will be rejected. So, as artists, in our work we express our real self. But we keep the fear of not being loved for this real self. And timidity and shyness are the symptoms. A timidity we can overcome with those who understand and accept us. Now when I have to face the world with my real self exposed in the writing, there is a crisis. Am I going to be accepted, approved, loved, or punished and rejected? Hence the fear. Last night I took this chance and won," she says.

October, 1945: World of the Artist

Anais Nin describes the world of the artist as being one of joy, creation, freedom, and altruism. She contrasts this with the world of reality, one of greed, power, war, self-interest, corruption, dullness, and hypocrisy.

She encounters people who come from both worlds; she seeks the world of the artist and avoids the world of reality. Artists haven't forgotten how to dream and maintain the innocence of the child. They understand the abstraction in her writing because they are poets. They seek harmony, as she does, and have no need to argue to prove they are right. Artists are romantic, intuitive, spontaneous people who create beauty.

September, 1945: Joyless People

How and when does one become a heavy, joyless, one-dimensional, cynical, bitter person?

Anais complains about people, men in her day, who are focused only on politics, work, money, greed, and power. She spends time with adolescent men and realizes that some day, they will become like their fathers. Now they are carefree, living in the world of music and art, pleasure and adventure-seeking, but soon, the reality of the real world will catch up to them and weigh them down.

She is attracted to the youth's positive attitudes towards life, their hope and optimism and dreams. Anais is 42 years old now and has not lost sight of her dreams whereas others her age dismissed them years ago. I think that is the difference between joyful people and joyless people: whether or not they still have dreams.

August, 1945: Examine the Present

"Rank did not believe in going back. He felt the same drama would manifest itself in the present; all one needed to do was examine the present. So in the present I was experiencing a conflict between the openness of the young, their curiosity, exploration, receptivity, playfulness, nimbleness, as against the heavy, opaque, solid, immovable mass of maturity I meet at parties," Anais declares.

Japan surrenders, and Anais relates war in the world to hostility in the individual. "We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing agression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there." she says.

July, 1945: Intuition or Analysis?

Which should we live by, rely on, intuition or analysis? Anais Nin says, "But I see clearly now, that both are necessary: to live passionately and blindly, to take risks; and then to interpret later, in order to rescue one's self from disaster if it turns out to be an illusion rather than a creative intuition."

She goes further to say, "There is an analogy between the bombardment of the atom and the bombardment of the personality by the method of analysis, the dismemberment, separation of the elements of the psyche which may release new energies. I believe scientific principles can be applied to the life of the psyche."

June, 1945: Spiritual Quest

"What I leave out of my work I leave out, discard, and overlook in life as well, because I do not think it is important. It weighs people down, and kills vision and spiritual perceptions. Too much upholstery. We are limited enough as it is without weighing ourselves down with facts which do not inspire, nourish, or liberate us," Anais says. "Everything else to me are obstacles, interferences, clutterings, inessentials," she continues.

Her friends says Anais is driven by a spiritual quest. She is aroused by life, always looking for meaning, and leaving out the superfluous. She constantly tries to make sense of her experiences by asking herself, what does this mean?

May, 1945: "The Double"

Anais Nin recalls a discussion she had with Dr. Otto Rank about what he termed "the double:" our need to project a part of ourselves onto others. Another doctor spoke about the same concept and how we play a persona to the world. Anais took notes:

"The acceptance of this social role delivers us to the demands of the collective, and makes us a stranger to our own reality. The consequent split in the personality may find the ego in agreement with general community expectations, while the repressed shadow turns dissenter. Failure to acknowledge this dark alter ego creates the tendency to project it onto someone in the immediate environment, the mirror-opposite to one's self. This redeems the masked self from total annihilation."

The doctor went on about the need to accept the shadow in human relationships. It is a wonderful thing when someone sees everything about you, your light parts and your dark parts, and accepts it all. It is an even more wonderful thing to accept the dark side of ourselves. Acknowledgement and acceptance of the shadow results in being conscious of the whole personality.

April, 1945: Portrait of her brother Joaquin

Anais spends a lot of time in this entry speaking of her brother Joaquin and his music. She says, "It was he as a musician who accomplished what I dreamed of, and I followed as well as I could with the inferior power of words. The ear is purer than the eye, which reads only relative meaning into words. Whereas the distillation of experience into pure sound, a state of music, is timeless and absolute."

Anais admires her brother's character and says, "He drew his strength from his love, never from hatred, and later is was his capacity for love, understanding, and forgiveness which kept the family from estrangements. He was always trying to reunite and reconstruct the family unit. He never took sides, judged, or turned a hostile back on anyone."

March, 1945: Boy Friends

Anais spends this entry of her Diary with her young boy friends, "Pablo," an Irish boy she met at a Village coffeehouse, and Leonard W., who conducts hypnosis sessions with some of her other friends. Leonard goes to war a a few weeks. So, for a while, his "real life," "the dream," begins as he hangs out with Anais and her friends, discussing books, listening to music, talking about various topics.

Anais is attracted to the young, with their curiosities and willingness to try new things. Older people fall into patterns and set ways, and they feel rigid and tight to her. Even though she is now 42 years old, Anais sees herself as young and wants to stay that way.

January, 1945: The Sameness of People

Anais Nin is writing portraits of characters for her novel, and she tends to draw from people in her Diary. Her shortcoming is that she doesn't know what goes on inside their minds, so the women start to lose their separate traits and merge into one another. In fact, they become intermingled with Anais herself. She begins to feel that at a subconscious level, people are all the same - they all have emotions and dreams and instincts. She prefers to write from this level as she feels she is not writing intellectually, not writing with her mind.

December, 1944: Liberation

"Touched bottom again. Decided to liberate myself," Anais Nin begins this entry. "We are never trapped unless we choose to be," she continues.

You can provide yourself with the experiences you seek. You are the sum total of your choices and can be or do anything you choose. If you discover your deepest needs and satisfy them, you can be happy. If you're in a rut, change something. What you dreamt about as a girl can still become reality; it's not too late. You can decide how you want your life to be, to look. Go out there and do it - there is no substitute for action!

October, 1944: Turning the Diary into a Novel

Anais Nin attempts and struggles off and on to take what she has written in her Diary and create portraits of people to use in novels. Her biggest struggle is putting words into their mouths because she knows only what she feels, what she would say in a given situation. The novel she is currently working on is This Hunger.

She says, "trying to extract complete characters from the maze of the diary. Trying to construct a story. But a novel is the opposite of life. Discovery that characters are revealed in fragments, not all at once; and during our lifetime we rarely make a synthesis. I cannot work in the artificial form of the novel. I have to follow free associations from another source, to trace character not in the outward manifestations but in its underground life, in the development of its night life."

September, 1944: Physical as Symbol of Spiritual

Anais begins this Diary entry with: "The physical as a symbol of the spiritual world. The people who keep old rags, old useless objects, who hoard, accumulate: are they also keepers and hoarders of old ideas, useless information, lovers of the past only, even in its form of detritus?"

She continues: "I have the opposite obsession. In order to change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use. I keep nothing to remind me of the passage of time, deterioration, loss, shriveling."

I suppose the same can be said of people in your life. You tend to find people you are meant to be with at a certain point in your life, and purpose is served, after which, both parties may move on. There's nothing wrong with that. If you force yourself to stay in friendships you've outgrown, you may feel trapped and unhappy.

August, 1944: Exchanging Treasures

"You cannot learn, love, or create by stealing. You have to create yourself first, and your work, and then bonds are born of this, genuine ones, and people exchange their treasures. You can't force things," Anais explains to a friend.

Building intimacy, making a meaningful connection with another human being works like this. You have to be willing to go deeper, to be intimate, to be vulnerable and share some truth about yourself with another. After you have opened up, the other person will be more willing to open up, and the exchange of treasures is enabled.

All of us have inside ourselves a multitude of hidden treasures - hopes, dreams, wishes, desires - that we long to share with others. Do you have someone with whom you can exchange your buried treasures?

July, 1944: Sea & Sun

Ahhh... a four-day weekend retreat to Moira's home in Amagansett with friends - eating, drinking, laughing, talking, resting, and relaxing in the warm sun by the sea. Anais loves the water; it calms her and also gives her energy and restores her. She and her friends can forget about the war for a few days and be appreciative of their friendships.

June, 1944: Hope

Anais Nin has started a new book, This Hunger, whose main character is inspired in part by Luise Rainer. This is a good time for Anais as she feels she is expanding, blossoming, always recreating herself, and unblocking not only herself but also others. She feels the affects of the war and is concerned that it kills emotions and destroys feelings in others, although in her stage of emotional maturity, she is able to maintain a larger perspective. For those who have no inner life to sustain themselves or process events, it becomes difficult to maintain hope.

May, 1944: The Inner Life

Anais Nin values the inner life, a place she says is like a photographer's darkroom, like a laboratory, but she says you can't stay there too long or you become solitary, neurotic. Her Diary gives her the opportunity to relive moments, to conserve memories, to record and interpret her life, but she is balanced by passionate living and intense activity. And that is the key - balancing the inner life with the outer life.

April, 1944: Development of the Individual

Anais Nin believes the development of the individual has a more natural, organic influence on history than the development of systems (e.g. political). She believes systems fail because the individuals involved are incomplete as human beings because they do not work on self development; they are corrupt and imperfect. If people develop and grow, systems will not be needed because people will be able to rule themselves, she believes. Anais encourages us to create ourselves as individuals.

April, 1944: Anais has Arrived

With the publication of Under a Glass Bell, Anais Nin makes connections, is reviewed and photographed, receives telephone calls and letters, attends parties, becomes established as a serious writer, and finally stops feeling restless, and instead, feels happiness. Success, activity, hopeful to pay off debts, confidence is hers.

January, 1944: New Year's Eve in Harlem

1943 has come and gone. Anais Nin is celebrating New Year's Eve in Harlem. Good music, dancing, no alcohol allowed at the Savoy Ballroom nor necessary because the people don't need it to feel alive and expressive.

Anais reflects on herself and how she wants to be wise, evolved, an ideal person, and of course, this is difficult for any person as we all face anger, jealousy, selfishness, irresponsibility. She seems to be particularly hard on herself, her imagination working against her, the lack of sales from her books and continued economic pressures result in feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness, frustration, defeat.

October, 1943: More about Dreams & Reality

Many people have similar dreams: missing a whole semester of classes then realizing final exams are upon you; being out in public and realizing you are naked.

What Anais Nin says in this entry of her Diary is that even though you and I may have similar dreams, it does not draw us together; it does not create a human relationship. Whereas, if we had similar reality - you and have both have 4-year-old daughters, or you and I are both vegans - we do find that connection; we are not lonely or alone.

Does this make sense?

Fall, 1943: Anais Nin Quotes on Truth, Darkness, Stories

This entry of the Diary contains some thought-provoking quotes:

Anais is thinking about themes for her next book: "There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic."

Along the same lines, she comes up with a portrait of a person: "When one does not wish to face the darkness in one's self, one relates to the dark person who will represent this, and then one engages in a duel with that person, in place of a duel with one's own shadow self."

Anais loves listening to the stories of others and creating her own: "Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved. It is the balm of the primitive, the way to exorcise a terrifying life."

July, 1943: Southampton

Caresse Crosby invites Anais Nin to Southampton, which Anais finds ugly and snobbish, but she does enjoy the beach, the sun, sleeping, resting, friends, dinners, visiting, artists.

June, 1943: Music & Dancing

Anais says, "There are many ways to understand and to know others, and it is not only by music, dancing or talking but more importantly, by loving. Music and dancing create more intimacy than talk."

Talk, talk, talk, can be hollow, hollow, hollow. Listening to a chatterbox is very wearing. Alternatively, being with someone who has nothing to say can be baffling. With some people, it is difficult to fall into intimate talk.

Dancing until 5 a.m. at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem fires the creativity and arouses passion and life. Music, laughter, losing ourselves, flowing, dreaming, experiencing heightened living, joy.

May, 1943: Anxiety

Anais Nin calls anxiety an illness of the soul because it's an invisible drama, intangible, misunderstood, mysterious. Since it's invisible, other people tend not to have empathy. You're not physically sick or hurt; you haven't lost a loved one; there hasn't been a tragedy. It's hard to explain to others what you are feeling and why.

So what do you do? Relax, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Do something you find enjoyable - listen to music, sit in the park and watch squirrels play, take a long soak in the tub. Go to bed, watch favorite movies, and have a bed picnic. Do something physical - take a walk, do some gardening, dance.

Any other thoughts on what to do to get some perspective back?

March, 1943: Books

Ever wonder why you think a book is the best thing you ever read but your friend doesn't share your enthusiasm? Anais Nin has this to say about why certain people are drawn to certain books:

"But I am fully aware now that people do not judge literature objectively, as a work of art. A book is judged almost entirely by a person's need, and what people respond to is either a reflection of themselves, a multiple mirror, or an elucidation of their time, a concern with their problems, fears, or a familiar atmosphere which is reassuring by its familiarity."

January, 1943: Three Gods of the Deep

Anais Nin's three favorite authors and some of her notes on them from this volume of her Diary:

Fyodor Dostoevsky -  writes of a constant passion between people; studies the exaltations of instinct and impulses, the dangers of emotional passions; is occupied by the question of jealousy which brings a suffering not complicated by a feeling of hatred for the rival; seems to establish in the human soul a kind of stratification.

D.H. Lawrence - gives instinct a language; uses the phrase "livingness" to describe mobility, ease, flowingness of a person; speaks of people being "all rosy and healthy on the outside, but all ashes inside" when they hide anxieties and fears; describes intellectuals as being "all up in the head."

Marcel Proust - studies love's fragmentations; analyzes love's disintegrations and the malady of doubt and jealousy; his is the book to read at the seashore - the wavelike rhythm of his phrases are like waves of the sea; refines nuances of relationships.

Winter, 1942: Laboratories of the Soul

Laboratories of the soul: "Where essences are manufactured which defeat ugliness, poverty, debts, humiliations, defeats."

Epidemic of hatred: "The worse the state of the world grows, the more intensely I seek to create an inner and intimate world in which certain qualities may be preserved."

Selection of proofs: "Because a businessman's sympathies were with capitalism, he managed to see and hear only what made capitalism seem justified."

What is essential: "The actual world would be vital if people knew what is essential, but they confuse the actual with contingencies and petty immediacies, fads, fashions, modes, mores, all of them evanescent, puerile, futile."

The meaning of the unconscious: "I wanted to unravel the meaning of the unconscious and bring it into consciousness so that our very life could be lived in harmony with its fertile, unending richness. By unearthing the unconscious, one found an infinite source of creativity, and the problem lay simply in how well, how eloquently to express the rich diggings."

Detective story: "The most intricate and fascinating detective story in the world is the tracking down of incidents and misinterpretations which create a distortion of reality. Neurosis plants only the seeds of death in every relationship. The magic consists in the fact that the changes you affect within yourself in turn affect others. Anxiety breeds anxiety, doubt breeds doubt, fear breeds fear. As you get free of yours, there is a chain reaction on all those around and close to you. Tranquility is contagious, peace is contagious. There is the contagion of serenity and joy."

The dream: "Something always eludes the scientist, the poets, the stargazers, the biologists, the anthropologists. Something eludes the informers, detectives, police, lawyers. It is the dream. And what lies in the deformed mirrors of the dream and haunts our sleep is the secret of everything."