And so I await the Devil’s coming.
January 18.
And meanwhile--as I wait--my mind occupies itself with its own
good odd philosophy, so that even the Nothingness becomes almost
endurable.
The Devil has given me some good things--for I find that the Devil
owns and rules the earth and all that therein is. He has given me,
among other things--my admirable young woman’s-body, which I enjoy
thoroughly and of which I am passionately fond.
A spasm of pleasure seizes me when I think in some acute moment of
the buoyant health and vitality of this fine young body that is
feminine in every fiber.
You may gaze at and admire the picture in the front of this book.
It is the picture of a genius--a genius with a good strong young
woman’s-body,--and inside the pictured body is a liver, a MacLane
liver, of admirable perfectness.
Other young women and older women and men of all ages have good
bodies also, I doubt not--though the masculine body is merely flesh,
it seems, flesh and bones and nothing else. But few recognize the
value of their bodies; few have grasped the possibilities, the
artistic graceful perfection, the poetry of human flesh in its
health. Few have even sense enough indeed to keep their flesh in
health, or to know what health is until they have ruined some vital
organ, and so banished it forever.
I have not ruined any of my vital organs, and I appreciate what
health is. I have grasped the art, the poetry of my fine feminine
body.
This at the age of nineteen is a triumph for me.
Sometime in the midst of the brightness of an October I have walked
for miles in the still high air under the blue of the sky. The
brightness of the day and the blue of the sky and the incomparable
high air have entered into my veins and flowed with my red blood.
They have penetrated into every remote nerve-center and into the
marrow of my bones.
At such a time this young body glows with life.
My red blood flows swiftly and joyously--in the midst of the
brightness of October.
My sound, sensitive liver rests gently with its thin yellow bile
in sweet content.
My calm, beautiful stomach silently sings, as I walk, a song of
peace.
My lungs, saturated with mountain ozone and the perfume of the
pines, expand in continuous ecstasy.
My heart beats like the music of Schumann, in easy, graceful rhythm
with an undertone of power.
My strong and sensitive nerves are reeking and swimming in sensuality
like drunken little Bacchantes, gay and garlanded in mad revelling.
The entire wonderful, graceful mechanism of my woman’s-body has
fallen at the time--like the wonderful, graceful mechanism of my
woman’s-mind--under the enchanting spell of a day in October.
“It is good,” I think to myself, “oh, it is good to be alive! It
is wondrously good to be a woman young in the fullness of nineteen
springs. It is unutterably lovely to be a healthy young animal
living on this charmed earth.”
After I have walked for several hours I reach a region where the
sulphur smoke has not penetrated, and I sit on the ground with
drawn-up knees and rest as the shadows lengthen. The shadows lengthen
early in October.
Presently I lie flat on my back and stretch my lithe slimness to its
utmost like a mountain lioness taking her comfort. I am intensely
thankful to the Devil for my two good legs and the full use of
them under a short skirt, when, as now, they carry me out beyond
the pale of civilization away from tiresome dull people. There is
nothing in the world that can become so maddeningly wearisome as
people, people, people!
And so, Devil, accept, for my two good legs, my sincerest gratitude.
I lie on the ground for some minutes and meditate idly. There is
a worldful of easy indolent, beautiful sensuality in the figure
of a young woman lying on the ground under a warm setting sun. A
man may lie on the ground--but that is as far as it goes. A man
would go to sleep, probably, like a dog or a pig. He would even
snore, perhaps--under the setting sun. But then, a man has not a
good young feminine body to feel with, to receive into itself the
spirit of a warm sun at its setting, on a day in October,--and so
let us forgive him for sleeping, and for snoring.
When I rise again to a sitting posture all the brightness has focused
itself to the west. It casts a yellow glamor over the earth, a
glamor not of joy, nor of pleasure, nor of happiness--but of peace.
The young poplar trees smile gently in the deathly still air. The
sage brush and the tall grass take on a radiant quietness. The high
hills of Montana, near and distant, appear tender and benign. All
is peace--peace. I think of that beautiful old song:
“Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade----.”
But I am too young yet to think of peace. It is not peace that I
want. Peace is for forty and fifty. I am waiting for my Experience.