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.

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?