"I mastered the mechanisms of life the better to bend it to the will of the dream. I conquered details to make the dream more possible. With hammer and nails, paint, soap, money, typewriter, cookbook, douche bags, I created a dream. That is why I renounce violence and tragedy. I have made poetry out of science, I took psychoanalysis and made a myth of it. I mastered poverty and restrictions; I lived adroitly, intelligently, critically; I sewed and mended, all for the sake of the dream. I took all the elements of modern life and used them for the dream. I subjected New York to the service of the dream. And now it is all again a question of the dream versus reality. In the dream nobody dies, in the dream no one suffers, no one is sick, nobody suffers," Anais Nin begins this entry of her Diary.
I love this. Anais makes a conscience effort to form and mold her life to match her vision of it. She wants her world to be perfect for her. She wants to "build an individually perfect world." It does take a strong vision and much effort and perseverance to do this. She recognizes that the bigger world can sometimes interfere when things like war or other events out of personal control occur. It makes it hard but not impossible to protect the individual world.
Anais has also become aware with the publication of Henry Miller's works and subsequent notoriety, that she may not be as great a writer as him. She knows the Diary is her form, where she feels most natural. She modifies her dream of becoming a great writer to writing slender little books outside of the Diary and perfecting what is natural, the Diary.
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