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