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.

March, 1938: Noah's Ark

"Hitler marched into Austria," begins this entry of the Diary of Anais Nin. She is aware of the world around her but has created an "individually perfect world" in which she can continue to influence and guide others and keep her dream alive, escaping the tragedy of daily life. At times she feels weighed down or trapped by the problems of others and the problems of the world, but she is still able to focus on the dream and continue writing Winter of Artifice.

Anais' new houseboat is La Belle Aurore, which she calls "Noah's Ark." She purifies the bookcases, ordains it into order. The simple life nourishes her, makes her happy. She owns little, only what has meaning. As the world crumbles around her, she burns incense in Noah's Ark and forgets everything, feels peace, rescues herself, is safe.

January, 1938: If Anais Were Rich

Anais Nin says if she were rich she would:

1. Send Helba to a sanatorium where she might get well
2. Give Jean a radio-phonograph because he likes to write music
3. Give Henry rare Chinese art books he has been hankering for
4. Pension old Lantelme so he would not work anymore
5. Sustain all Henry's publications
6. Buy a press for herself

She feels poor. She has reduced life to its simplest basis. She waivers between feeling happy and not. She has finished the main cutting of the diary. She works 2-3 hours in the morning, has lunch at one of the little cafes nearby, works 2-3 more hours in the afternoon, has coffee at the Cafe Flore, works more, then has dinner with Henry or Gonzalo. Hugh is in London.

These days, we say, "If I won the lottery, I would..." What would you do? How would you spend your money? It is interesting and telling how Anais says she would spend her money: only one item for herself. She is a giver. Her purpose is living for others.

November, 1937: Conflict

In this entry of her Diary, Anais Nin speaks of how everything is divided into warm or cold. Warm people, like Anais, respond to others and are able to make personal sacrifices for them. Cold people, like Henry, respond out of selfishness, an instinct to reserve the self. Cold people are disconnected from human spontaneity, human feeling, pity, sympathy. Anais feels that she is never cut off, never disconnected. On the other hand, she identifies herself with Don Juan, always wanting to be at the beginning of a relationship, when everything is high and smooth and beautiful, before it starts a natural deterioration. The struggle is in the balancing act and how to be in a long-term relationship, feel empathy for the other person, yet still be an individual.

Gonzalo is fighting for Communism, and Anais, usually one to avoid politics, finds herself caught between the individual world and the collective world. In the past, she has wanted to avoid being a part of a mass movement, but now she begins to understand what Gonzalo is doing, even though at times she feels as though its a lost cause. Should she continue to dream, or should she accept what is real?

October, 1937: Centered

Anais Nin has a center, and she wants to live from this center. She is relationship-centered, views relationship as an art, and her life revolves around intimate friendships and affections. She knows who is at the core - Hugh, Henry, and Gonzalo, and who is at the periphery. Relationships are her lighthouse that governs her growth and happiness. Belonging, acceptance, and popularity are crucial with her peripheral friends; she is fearful of embarrassment or rejection. She yearns to be completely understood as she was by Dr. Rank who made her feel like a princess who did extraordinary things.

Anais is aware that she has peripheral friends who come to her with their troubles, expecting a cure, using her. They drain her, go off happy and satisfied, and leave her depleted, making no contribution to her life. Those at her core disappoint her as well, and at times, she just needs to enter into solitude and take care of her own basic needs. This usually involves writing, editing, re-writing, re-living her diary.

Fall, 1937: Friendships

Anais Nin says in this entry of her Diary that she finds happiness in friendships when they are new. As time goes on, she finds out where they live, what they do, who their spouse and children are, and she sees a different person which causes the friendship to die. The same is true with romantic relationships; when they are new, there is a flare of passion which fades with time.

Do relationships die natural deaths? Do they die from nonacceptance of anothers' flaws and faults? Do they die because the other person is insufficient? Do they die because we form a romantic illusion of a person that is far from reality? No matter how they die, the result is that Anais could end up alone except that she is able to continue to develop new friendships. Anais seems to be intent on following her pursuits, her ideas, her dreams, and because of this, friends come and friends go, but she seems to be fine with that.

August, 1937: Introspection

Anais Nin describes introspection as a monster who chews too long on a morsel, only to achieve mastication and wither all it touches.

During her stay in New York, it was all action, as she had no time for thought or meditation. Thinking too much or thinking of the wrong things or in destructive ways leads to anger, jealously, self-doubt because our imaginations take over. If instead, we seek out intimate friendships, dancing, laughing, talking with others, sleeping, we avoid this constant examination, awareness, consciousness, depression.

Just live, love, become absorbed in the world outside yourself, give yourself up, forget introspection.