October, 1940: The Artist

"The artist is tutoring the soul, civilizing the savage in us, necessary to a humane society," Anais Nin says. "He has been the eyes, the ears, the voice of humanity. He was always the transcendentalist who X-rayed our true states of being," she continues. The artist dreams, imagines, invents, experiments, and gives meaning to everything, she believes.

September, 1940: Reverie of Europe

Anais Nin continues to compare America to Europe. She is disillusioned by the study of the masses rather than the individual. She feels that if an individual were understood, this would give insight into human beings as a whole. She does like the activity, the intensity, the tempo of New York, although she says it prevents the experience from seeping in due to a lack of time for reflection, which she needs so that understanding is born. Anais says that New York is the opposite of Paris where everything is designed for intimacy whereas in New York, people are unconcerned with intimacy, development of friendship, and self development.

July, 1940: Charisma

Anais Nin visits Caresse Crosby at her home in Bowling Green, Virginia. Anais describes Caresse:

- She moves with airiness and freedom.

- She is filled with femininity and charm.

- She consents, invites, assents, agrees, is receptive and yielding and draws everyone around her.

- She has a gift for friendship and is happiest when all of her friends are sitting around her table.

- She talks intimately and tells delightful stories.

The atmosphere changes when she is away. Now that's charisma.

May, 1940 Life in the Village

Anais Nin has rented a furnished apartment in Washington Square West. The Village is filled with artists and writers, before and after Anais's time there - Henry James, Edith Wharton, Edward Hopper, Mark Twain, Leonard Bernstein, Khalil Gibran, Edgar Allan Poe, e.e. cummings, Marlon Brando.

Meandering streets, speakeasies during Prohibition - Chumley's played host to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, literary ambiance, give the Village its Bohemian tone. Anais loves its charm, character, atmosphere: old houses, small shops, trees, patios, back yards, studio windows, small theaters, people strolling about, sitting in the park.

It sounds as though Anais has discovered New York's version of Paris.

April, 1940: Spiritual Needs

Spiritual needs can be met by dancing until 5:00 a.m. at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.

Spiritual needs can be met by being out in the world, living fully, getting ideas for a book to write, then plunging into writing it.

Spiritual needs can be met by finding an Italian espresso place on Macdougal Street, sitting at a small table with tottering chairs, watching the Italians play chess, not feeling rushed, talking over coffee.

That's how Anais Nin meets her spiritual needs; how about you?

February, 1940: Freedom

Anais Nin says, "There are only two kinds of freedom in this world: the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and monk who renounce possessions." She has lived in both worlds. She has lived a life of luxury, traveling, going to the Elizabeth Arden spa for a day of pampering, enjoying fine dining. She has also lived a life of poverty, wearing worn out shoes and stockings, eating fried potatoes for dinner with Henry, drinking sour wine out of a plastic cup with a friend. Anais wants both worlds for herself. She wants to be an artist, but she wants to be a famous artist with the accompanying fortune. She wants it all; she doesn't want to choose between the two worlds.

In this entry, Anais also tells about the death of Dr. Otto Rank and gets philosophical: "In the face of death, one asks oneself invariably: Did I see enough, hear enough, observe enough, love enough, did I listen attentively, did I appreciate, did I sustain the life?" Thank goodness for freedom. Anais can see, hear, observe, love, and appreciate to her heart's content, either with or without money.

Winter, 1939: Return to New York

After arriving in Paris in December, 1924 from New York, Anais and Hugh return to New in December, 1939 from Paris.  The media says the war will be over soon. She longs for Paris where life is rich, creative, and human, full of love and friendship. She would rather be eating meager breakfasts in a Paris bistro with small tables and tottering chairs and sleeping in unheated rooms than living in the lap of luxury in New York, far away from fear and anxiety surrounding the war. In Paris, people are eager to enter into conversation and get to know you; in New York, conversations lack substance and are shallow. She feels empty, lifeless.

Nonetheless, Anais meets new people; the phone is ringing; her social life is beginning in New York.

September, 1939: War

Warsaw is bombed. Sandbags are piled against windows and doors. Valuables are hidden in cellars. Cities sit in darkness at night with lights concealed. Gas masks are handed out. War is declared September 3, 1939. This is the end of peace and the end of Anais' romantic life.

Anais continues to begin each day as before as she powders her face, paints her eyelashes, brushes her hair a hundred brush strokes, dresses simply but beautifully, reads the newspaper, listens to the radio.

She feels the war is caused by selfishness and egos and hatred and corruption. She does not feel part of the crime, though she is forced to share in the punishment. She watches the beautiful, individually perfect world she created for herself crumble. She watches as individual wars between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters culminate in a collective war between nations.

Her husband is ordered back to the United States; it is time to leave for New York.

Summer, 1939: Anais in Paris

Anais travels to St. Tropez with Gonzalo and Helba in the summer of 1939 while Henry travels to Greece. She experiences the beach, the ocean, grilled meat over wood fires, heat, sun, pleasure. She wears shorts and bathing suits, she dances, she swims, she bicycles, she eats fruit, she sits around campfires at night, she watches sailboats. She returns to Paris in a train full of soldiers. Her Paris days are coming to an end.

Places where she and friends lived or worked: Louveciennes, Clichy (Henry), 18 Villa Seurat (Henry), 30 Quai de Passy, Montparnasse (Gonzalo), Denfert-Rochereau (Henry), houseboat called La Belle Aurore on the Quai de Pont Royal, houseboat called Nanankepichu, first studio on the Rue Schoelcher, small low-ceilinged room with two windows on a very old French garden on the Rue de Lille, Dordogne region (Henry), 7 Rue du General Henrion Berthier, Neuilly (Anais' birthplace where her father later moved), Rue Cassini, Montsouris (Henry), Vanves (Gonzalo).

Cafes and Cabarets where she ate, drank, talked, wrote: Cafe Select, Coupole, Maxim's, Cabaret aux Fleurs, Boule Blanche, the Lido, small theatre on the Rue de la Gaite, the Dome, Poisson d'Or, Melody's Bar, Madeleine, Cafe Zeyer, Deux Maggots, Cafe Flore, bar of the Martiniquaise (next to hotel), Brasserie Lipp, Rosalie's, Bal Negre, favorite restaurant La Petite Marmite, Cafe Terminus.

Streets where she wandered: along the Seine and the quays, from the Opera to the Parc de Montsouris, Rue des Saints-Peres, Rue Saint-Honore, through the Bois, Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, Champs-Elysees, Rue Jean-Dolent, Rue de Beaune, Rue Raynouard, le boulevard Suchet, Rue Boulainvillier, Rue des Marronniers, through the Ile Saint-Louis, Rue de Seine, Rue du Bac, Rue d'Odessa, Rue Vendome, Avenue des Ternes, Boulevard St. Germain, Rue des Artistes, Rue de la Tombe-d'Issoire, Bal Tabarin.

Other places she visited: the Louvre, Notre Dame, Bibliotheque Nationale, Sacre Coeur, Tour Eiffel, Tuileries gardens, Gare d'Orsay, Cite Universitaire, Palais de Justice, Prison de la Sante, Montmartre, Alesia, Sorbonne, Church of Saint-Germain, the Metro, Hotel Acropolis (160 boulevard St. Germain, room 55), Gare St. Lazare, Porte d'Orleans, Saint Raphael.

Spring, 1939: Order

Refugees from Spain hide in Paris.

Anais Nin begins work on her houseboat story. She can write endlessly about the river.

Anais establishes order in her life to combat the chaos of the world. When she is able to easily find her clothes, shoes, makeup, she feels free to dream. Disorder leads to wasting time looking for stockings, books, perfume. Anais does realize, however, that extreme orderliness leads to paralysis, and she avoids this so that she can continue living.

She sleeps late, she copies her diary, she cooks lunch for one lover and dinner for another. She writes for a few hours then gets restless for adventure, escape. She travels in the subway and in buses, eats leftovers, wears stockings with holes. She lives her life intensely as if it could end at any moment.

Febuary, 1939: Time Goes By

Anais doesn't feel that the passage of time is a tragedy. She has now known Henry for eight years and Gonzalo for three years. She and Henry read the same books, see the same films. He has pushed her and encouraged her as a writer more than anymore else. They have deeper understanding of each other than ever before. Gonzalo has remained a passionate bohemian, but they have become more alike with the passage of time. Her father is preparing to sail for Cuba, and she believes she will never see him again. This hurts her as she still loves him because time cannot kill her love for him.

Anais Nin's time in Paris is winding down. She fantasizes about an escape to America.

January, 1939: Dream v. Reality

Anais Nin says the difference between the dream and reality is prison. Her dream has been to create an individually perfect world, one in which she writes and is published, she loves and is loved in return. Her reality is that she has difficulty having her writing published or even taken seriously. She has watched from the sidelines as Henry Miller has risen to a fame she had envisioned for herself. Her reality is that she has loved three men in addition to her husband: her father, Henry, and Gonzalo, but none of them is able to give her what she needs, even all of them simultaneously. None of them is able to lead her to the perfect world of which she has dreamed. She feels trapped, imprisoned, with nowhere to go.

This happens to all of us. Even if we attain a dream, we dream a bigger dream, and a bigger dream - there's always a hunger for more. Eventually, in the end, things don't turn out as we imagined and hoped, and we feel like failures, having forgotten all about attaining our original dream(s) and successes. We try to figure out where to go next, what to accomplish next, what to do to feel better about ourselves and our lives. If we get trapped in this thinking, life can feel like a prison that we try to get out of instead of a gift that we enjoy.

October, 1938: Illusion & Poetry

The threat of war has passed for now, and Anais takes time to reflect on the veil of illusion which makes life bearable. During the threat of war, people acted like madmen, moving away, withdrawing their money, or feeling trapped if they had no money and could not go away. Peace, security, and happiness were gone.

The only world Anais knows is one of poetry and illusion, a world each person creates for himself by drawing from within to create a dream, a vision. Living this way, she can retain the wonder of a child, keep believing in magic, continue dreaming. She believes this method of creation is a much more productive method of escape than drinking or drugs. It enables her to dress gaily even if it's expected to rain. She feels beautiful and therefore, looks beautiful.

Summer, 1938: Threat of War

Anxiety, panic, fear, tension threaten to destroy the individually perfect world Anais has created with love, humanity, giving. She gives up her houseboat, ending one dream, needing to find another; Henry leaves Paris; her father moves to Neuilly, near where she was born; her mother and brother are preparing for a return to America; Winter of Artifice is put on hold; she places the Diary in the vault; crowds gather at the banks to withdraw their savings; people run away; crowds await news in front of newspaper offices; the world is threatened.