Anais Nin wrote this short story in late 1930, but it wasn't published until about the time of her death in 1977. It's also known as "the boat story," and tells a story about Alain Roussel who symbolizes the unattainable. She had difficulty getting it published when she first wrote it; it was rejected by the Adelphi literary journal and Vogue magazine. Her friends who read and commented on the story gave her such feedback as: "I like your manner of not overdeveloping, of indicating and suggesting, so that you get the reader's imagination creating," Her husband suggested she develop the story, say more, make it more clear, but she felt she had said all there was to say.
In the story, a woman attends a party at a friend of the great writer Alain Roussel's house, but he was not in attendance. In the garden was a boat, which the woman untied from a tree. The boat drifted down a river, like a person drifts around in life, like a person who wants to just get away from everyone and everything. Twenty years later, the woman decides to stop wasting time and get on with her life, begin anew, as she ties the boat back to the tree in the garden. She has lived like wisteria, persistent in her stubbornness, refusing to behave differently. She's been searching for a world that will conform to her philosophy; she's been looking for something better, something that's been missing. She's trying to escape her current life and come back completely changed. Until now. Now, she realizes you can't always have magic; you can't always live an uncommon life; you can't always escape ordinary living. If you chase happiness, it becomes elusive, unattainable.
You have this life. Go live it.
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