July, 1951: Film vs. Literature

Anais Nin does enjoy taking in the occasional film, but in this entry of her Diary, she says, "I find a danger in watching films. It is like passive dreaming. It requires no participation, no effort. It induces passivity. It is baby food; no need to masticate, no need to carve. There is no need to learn to play an instrument, to learn to read a book. People stretch on specially inclined chairs and receive the images in utter, infantile passivity."

I have a similar wish when either watching a film or reading a book - that it moves me emotionally, whether it inspires me, makes me mad, makes me laugh, makes me cry, makes me think, or teaches me something. I feel that when a film or book does this for me, it has achieved what I wanted it to achieve. I view film and literature as equal, although a book tends to take longer to read than a film to watch.

Which does more for you - film or literature?

June, 1951: Economic Independence

Anais Nin turns again to psychoanalysis when she feels "fruitless anger" from frustration about the difficulties in publishing her work sapping her energy, doing her harm, corroding her. She doesn't feel she can publish her own books as she did in past because of the time it takes away from her writing.

Anais feels that life in Sierra Madre is dull, and life in New York is too full of activity, and there must be a third way she could live. She realizes she is dependent upon her husband for money, and this makes her feel helpless. She wants to achieve economic independence so that she can live her own life, but America does not seem to want to accept her work, which makes her bitter.

She visits Dr. Inge Bogner, a female psychoanalyst she can be more honest with because she is not trying to charm or seduce, to let off steam. She feels some peace and serenity and courage after these talks.

Spring, 1951: Sierre Madre

Anais Nin is 48 years old. She takes another trip to Mexico and experiences shabby hotel rooms where one had a water closet inside the shower and another had a chamber pot under the bed.

The doctor advises Anais to find a warmer and drier climate than San Francisco, so she settles in Sierre Madre, a mountain village one hour from Los Angeles. She finds it sunny, dry, and beautiful, and of course, Rupert Pole is stationed there with the Forestry Service.

Winter, 1950 - 1951: Living Outside the Diary

"I wanted to live on the outside, to see how it was to stay outside and never re-enter the cave of the interior life. I stayed outside, in cars, in buses, in planes, and never stopped to write in the diary. I did work on the novels," Anais says in this entry of her Diary.

Certainly, she is writing much less in the Diary these last three years than ever before. She has learned to drive, she tried skiing, she's had several trips to Mexico and several flights back and forth between Los Angeles (via San Francisco where her mother and brother live) and New York, she's had several bookshop parties to attend and shows to see (Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo).

Has the lack of analyzing and interpreting her life by reflecting on it in the Diary been good for her? Is she happier now? Or is her life so full of activity that she has no time or energy to reflect on it?

Summer, 1950: Coast to Coast

Anais Nin flies from New York to California, a 12-hour trip in those days, to live her double life with her husband Hugo in New York and her lover Rupert in California. It is no wonder she does not write nearly as much in her Diary as she has in the past - she is exhausted. The writing she does have time and energy for is letter writing. She appears to be in survival mode.

She nurtures herself by swimming in the pool. She relaxes herself with the occasional trip to Mexico. She comforts herself by letter writing and reading. She hasn't learned to say no. She doesn't seem to want to simplify her life.

Winter, 1949 - 1950: Writers and Artists

In New York, Anais Nin goes from bookshop party to bookshop party, signing copies of The Four-Chambered Heart. She gives six lectures. And, she finishes A Spy in the House of Love. No wonder she isn't writing in her Diary as much as she used to.

Anais includes the following ideas in her notes for lectures:

"Our senses tend to be dulled by familiarity, tend to become mechanical and automatic. What the artist or writer seeks to do by exaggeration, or distortion, is not only to make us notice a difference but to reveal a new aspect," she writes. "This is the rule of the artist, to seek to renew and resharpen our senses by a a new vision of the familiar," she continues.

Anais speaks to people in conventional jobs and lives: "Perhaps behind our occasional hostility toward the artist and writer there may be a slight tinge of jealousy. The man or woman who for the sake of family life, children, takes up the work he does not like, disciplines himself, sacrifices some fantasy he had once, to travel or to paint, or even possibly to write, may feel toward the artist and writer a jealousy of his adventurous life. The artist and the writer have generally paid the full price for their independence and for the privilege of doing work they love, or for their artistic rebellions against standardized living or values," she writes.

Conventionality is boring to some people as it suffocates us, kills our spirit, buries our creativity. Other personalities need the security of conventionality to prevent anxiety in their lives. Are you conventional or non-conventional? Which do you want to be?

October 20, 1949: Her Father Dies

"My father died this morning, in Cuba. The hurt was so deep, the shock so deep, the sense of loss so deep, it was as if I had died with him. I felt myself breaking, falling. I wept not to have seen him since Paris, not to have forgiven him, not to have been there when he died alone and poor in a hospital," Anais opens this entry in her Diary.

Loss, unfulfilled love, death of a part of herself, disbelief, pain are felt by Anais even though she viewed her father as selfish and disconnected from other human beings. She cannot accept it because the relationship was unresolved.

This is a sad situation when someone you love and care about dies unexpectedly, without warning, before you had a chance to make peace or say your goodbyes. This is why you must not waste time or hold grudges or procrastinate because you never know when an interaction with a person will be your last opportunity.