May, 1936: New Life

Anais Nin is back at Louveciennes after a visit to Morocco and is planning a move to a new apartment at 30 Quai de Passy by the Seine, which she needs to be modern with influences from Fez. She is envisioning and gathering orange walls, white wool rugs, chairs of pale oak and cream leather, a pine table sandblasted to resemble sand on the beach. She is still on a high from her experience in Morocco, where she went without the diary, and is feeling no jealousy or cloud of depression but seems to know that her poisonous thought process will begin again.

She has felt that she would meet a man that would deliver her from her husband Hugh and her lover Henry, and she meets that man in this entry of the diary -- Gonzalo, a guitar player, an Indian, a tiger. It is the beginning of another chapter of Anais' life where she not only has a new home, she has a new love.

April, 1936: Fez

Anais Nin records a trip to Morocco in this entry of her Diary. She fell in love with the city of Fez, feeling that it was a mirror image of herself: resembling a labyrinth, a mystery, full of layers and secrets. She felt at peace there, and her depression disappeared as she become absorbed in its world outside of herself. In Fez, Anais learned how to stop the destructive side of introspection and the wild imaginings associated with it from eating away at her. She felt it was a miracle and noted that the key to stopping introspection lies in feeding yourself with relationships, beauty, experiences, places, and creativity; in other words, keeping yourself in the present. The emotional dramas leave peace in their place.

How often do all of us work things up in our minds, imagine the worst, and feel silly when reality comes and goes and this awful thing never even begins to occur?

January, 1936: New York

Anais Nin returns to New York in January, 1936 in response to letters from her analysis patients asking her to return. She views this as playing God, saving people ("cripples") from lives of misery, which tires her, drains her. She feels a burden when she gives all her strength away. Even so, she is excited for the return to the activity in New York; Paris seems tame by comparison. She also looks forward to earning her own money to ease some of the money restrictions she feels in her life. She yearns to listen to the jazz in Harlem again. She is determined to live her own life as a woman in New York instead of her role as "mother" to many in Paris. Analysis means money; New York means adventure; money means publication; all of this is what Anais wants.

On the other hand, she believes New Yorkers (and Americans in general) fear relationships and intimacy, which leads to loneliness and isolation. They don't talk; they drink so that feelings and senses can be blurred, muted, squelched. Drinking is her enemy. Anais says Americans are victims of the ideal of survival of the fittest and let the weak fall by the wayside, which leads to loss of individuality and self-respect. Drinking and drugs give them short-term pleasure because they seem unable to find long-term happiness in this world.

October, 1935: Living Intensely

Anais Nin is one of those people who works hard and plays hard. She wants to live out her dreams and fantasies and fill her life with people, travel, action, work, creation, and enormous adventures, even if it means having a shorter life. She wants no ordinary life. She wants money, which means freedom to her. She wants luxury -- perfume, pedicures, sweet and beautiful things, which help her to dream. She wants to go to London and Venice and India.She wants to be energetic and alive.

August, 1935: Vogue

Anais continues to speak of depression in this entry of her Diary and of walking until she is exhausted to escape the depression she feels. She buys a Vogue magazine and lives out the lives she finds on the pages within it: fashion, luxury, hair, makeup, clothes, nail polish, spa treatments, travel. This helps her to recreate and find her dream during the times when she is fighting with the reality of her life.

This is an example of a temporary, harmless escape that Anais engages in until she is able to face life again. It's not a habit; it is healthy. It gets her from point A to point B. We all need some form of escape in our lives - what is yours?

July, 1935: Action

Anais Nin speaks of depression in this entry of her Diary in Volume Two. While Henry sleeps when depressed, Anais is moved to action. She even goes so far as saying that New York cured her of depression through her intense activity there. While active, she doesn't have time to torture herself with with thoughts of jealousies and fears and self-doubts. She replaces these negative thoughts with actual adventure or positive thoughts of adventure. She engages herself in nourishing activities. Sometimes, it's a simple matter of going to Elizabeth Arden to feel better.

It is said that what you focus on expands, and it seems that Anais has discovered the truth of this statement. If she focuses on her jealousies and fears and self-doubts, they grow bigger through her wild imaginings, to the point of crippling her. If she focuses on what she wants her life to be and the people, places, books, movies, music, work she wants to be a part of it, she can move forward in a positive direction, to the point of realizing her positive imaginings.