“We may be well,” said my soul. “Why are we not well?”
“How may we be well?” I asked.
“We may throw away all our vanity and false pride,” said my soul.
“We way take on a new life. We may learn to wait and to possess
ourselves in patience. We may labor and overcome.”
“We can do none of these things,” I cried. “Have I not tried all
of them some time in my short life? And have I not waited and
wanted until you have become faint with pain? Have I not looked
and longed? Dear soul, why do you not resign yourself? Why can you
not stay quiet and trouble yourself and me no more? Why are you
always straining and reaching? There isn’t anything for you. You
are wearing yourself out.”
My soul made answer: “I may strain and reach until only one worn
nerve of me is left. And that one nerve may be scourged with whips
and burned with fire. But I will keep one atom of faith. I may go
bad, but I will keep one atom of faith in Love and in the Truth
that is Love. You are a genius, but I am no genius. The years--a
million of years--may do their utmost to destroy the single nerve.
They may lash and beat it. I will keep my one atom of faith.”
“You are not wise,” I said. “You have been wandering and longing
for a time that seems a thousand years--through my cold, dark
childhood to my cold, dark womanhood. Is that not enough to quiet
you? Is that not enough to teach you the lesson of Nothing? You
are not a genius, but you are not a fool.”
“I will keep my one atom of faith,” said my soul.
“But lie and sleep now,” I said. “Don’t reach after that Light any
more. Let us both sleep a few years.”
“No,” said my soul.
“Oh, my soul,” I wailed, “look away at that glowing copper
horizon--and beyond it. Let us go there now and take an infinite
rest. Now! We can bear this no longer.”
“No,” said my soul; “we will stay here and bear more. There would
be no rest yet beyond the copper horizon. And there is no need of
going anywhere. I have my one atom of faith.”
I gazed at my soul as it stood plainly before me, weak and worn and
faint, in the fading light. It had one atom of faith, it said,
and tried to hold its head high and to look strong and triumphant.
Oh, the irony--the pathos of it!
My soul, with its one pitiful atom of faith, looked only what it
was--a weeping, hunted thing.
March 17.
In some rare between-whiles it is as if nothing mattered. My heart
aches, I say; my soul wanders; this person or that person was
repelled to-day; but nothing matters.
A great inner languor comes like a giant and lays hold of me. I
lie fallow beneath it.
Some one forgot me in the giving of things. But it does not matter.
I feel nothing.
Persons say to me, don’t analyze any more and you will not be
unhappy.
When Something throws heavy clubs at you and you are hit by them,
don’t be hurt. When Something stronger than you holds your hands
in the fire, don’t let it burn you. When Something pushes you into
a river of ice, don’t be cold. When something draws a cutting lash
across your naked shoulders, don’t let it concern you--don’t be
conscious that it is there.
This is great wisdom and fine, clear logic.
It is a pity that no one has ever yet been able to live by it.
But after all it’s no matter. Nothing is any one’s affair. It is
all of no consequence.
And have I not had all my anguish for nothing? I am a fool--a fool.
A handful of rich black mud in a pig’s yard--does it wonder why it
is there? Does it torture itself about the other mud around it, and
about the earth and water of which it is made, and about the pig?
Only fool’s mud would do so. And so, then, I am fool’s mud.
Nothing counts. Nothing can possibly count.
Regret, passion, cowardice, hope, bravery, unrest, pain, the
love-sense, the soul-sense, the beauty-sense--all for nothing! What
can a handful of rich black mud in a pig’s yard have to do with
these? I am a handful of rich black mud--a fool-woman, fool’s mud.
All on earth that I need to do is to lie still in the hot sun and
feel the pig rolling and floundering and slushing about. It were
folly to waste my mud nerves in wondering. Be quiet, fool-woman,
let things be. Your soul is a fool’s-mud soul and is governed by
the pig; your heart is a fool’s-mud heart, and wants nothing beyond
the pig; your life is a fool’s-mud life, and is the pig’s life.
Something within me shrieks now, but I do not know what it is--nor
why it shrieks.
It groans and moans.
There is no satisfaction in being a fool--no satisfaction at all.
March 18.
But yes. It all matters, whether or no. Nature is one long battle,
and the never-ending perishing of the weak. I must grind and grind
away. I have no choice. And I must know that I grind.
Fool, genius, young lonely woman--I must go round and round in the
life within, for how many years the Devil knows. After that my soul
must go round and round, for how many centuries the Devil knows.
What a master-mind is that of the Devil! The world is a wondrous
scheme. For me it is a scheme that is black with woe. But there
may be in the world some one who finds it beautiful Real Life.
I wonder as I write this Portrayal if there will be one person to
read it and see a thing that is mingled with every word. It is
something that you must feel, that must fascinate you, the like of
which you have never before met with.
It is the unparalleled individuality of me.
I wish I might write it in so many words of English. But that is
not possible. If I have put it in every word and if you feel it
and are fascinated, then I have done very well.