They snatch it and eat it hungrily.
Then they are not so hungry. They become quieter.
The ravaging disease soothes them to sleep--it descends on them
like rain in the autumn.
When I hurry over my sand and barrenness my vivid passions come
to me--or when I sit and look at the horizon. When I walk slowly I
consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill
off my finer feelings, to poison thoroughly this soul of unrest and
this wooden heart so that they would never more be conscious of
too-brilliant lights, and to make myself over into a quite different
creature.
A little evil would do--a little of a fine, good quality.
I should like a man to come (it is always a man, have you ever
noticed?--whatever one contemplates when one is of womankind and
young). I should like a man to come, I said calmly to myself to-day
as I walked slowly over my barrenness--a perfect villain to come
and fascinate me and lead me with strong, gentle allurements to
what would be technically termed my ruin. And as the world views
such things it would be my ruin. But as I view such things it
would not be ruin. It would be a new lease on life.
Yes, I should like a man to come--any man so that he is strong and
thoroughly a villain, and so that he fascinates me. Particularly
he must fascinate me. There must be no falling in love about it. I
doubt if I could fascinate him, but I should ask him quite humbly
to lead me to my ruin.
I have never yet seen the man who would not readily respond to such
an appeal.
This villain would be no exception.
I would then jerk my life out of this Nothingness by the roots.
Farewell, a long farewell, I would say. Then I would go forth with
the man to my ruin. The man would be bad to his heart’s core. And
after living but a short time with him my shy, sensitive soul would
be irretrievably poisoned and polluted. The defilement of so sacred
and beautiful a thing as marriage is surely the darkest evil that
can come to a life. And so everything within me that had turned
toward that too-bright light would then drink deep of the lees of
death.
The thirst of this incessant unrest and longing, this weariness of
_self_, would be quenched completely.
My life would be like fertile soil planted thickly with rank wild
mustard. On every square inch of soil there would be a dozen sprouts
of wild mustard. There would be no room--no room at all--for an
anemone to grow. If one should start up, instantly it would be choked
and overrun with wild mustard. But no anemone would start up.
My life now is a life of pain and revolt.
My life darkened and partly killed would be more than content to
drift along with the current.
Oh, it would be a rest!
The Christians sing, there is rest for the weary, on the other side
of Jordan, where the tree of life is blooming. But that rest, of
course, is for the Christians. My rest will have to come on this
side of Jordan. Let the impress of a thoroughly evil and strong
man be stamped upon my inner life, and I am convinced there would
come a wonderful settled quiet over it. Its spirit would be broken.
It would rest. Why not? I have no virtue-sense. Nothing to me is
of any consequence except to be rid of this unrest and pain. Yes,
surely I might rest.
The coming of the man-devil would bring rest. But I am fool enough
to think that marriage--the real marriage--is possible for me!
This other thing is within the reach of every one--of fools and
geniuses alike--and of all that come between.
And so I want a fascinating wicked man to come and make me positively,
rather than negatively, wicked. I feel a terrific wave of utter
weariness. My life lies fallow. I am tired of sitting here. The
sand and barrenness is gray with age. And I am gray with age.
Happiness--the red of the sunset sky--is the intensest desire of
my life.
But I will grasp eagerly anything else that is offered me--_anything_.
The poisoning of my soul--the passing of my unrest--would rouse
my mental power. My genius would receive a wonderful impetus from
it. You would marvel, good world, at the things I should write.
Not that they would be exalted--not that they would surge upward.
Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? But they would
be marvels of fire and intensity. I should no longer exhaust much
of my energy in grinding, grinding within. The things that would
come of the thorns and thistles would excite your astonishment and
admiration, though they be not grapes and figs.
And as for me--the real me--the creature imbued with a spirit of
intense femininity, with a spirit of an intense sense of Love--with
a spirit like that of the Magdalene who loved too much, with the
very soul of unrest and Nothingness--this thing would vanish swiftly
into oblivion, and I should go down a dark world and feel not.
March 25.
One of the remarkable points about my life is that it is so
completely, hopelessly alone--a lonely, lonely life. This book of
mine contains but one character--myself.
There is also the Devil--as a possibility.
And there is also the anemone lady--my dearest beloved--as a memory.
I have read books that were written to portray but one character,
and there were various people brought in to help in the portraying.
But my one friend is gone, and there is no person who enters into
my inner life in the very least. I am always alone. I might mingle
with people intimately every hour of my life--still I should be
alone.
Always alone--alone.
Not even a God to worship.
How do I bear this? How do I get through the days and days?
And, oh, when it all comes over me, what frightful rage--what long
agony of my breaking heart--what utter woe!
When the stars shine down upon me with cold hatred; when miles
and miles of barrenness stretch out around me and envelop me in
their weary, weary Nothingness; when the wind blows over me like
the breath of a vicious giant; when the ugly, ugly sun radiates
centuries of hard, heavy bitterness around me from its stinging
rays; when the sky maddens me with its cold, careless blue; when the
rivers that are flowing over the earth send echoes to me of their
hateful voices; when I hear wild geese honking in bitter wailing
melody; when bristling edges of jagged rocks cut sharply into my
tired life; when drops of rain fall on me and pierce me like steel
points; when the voices in the air shriek little-minded malice in
my ears; when the green of Nature is the green of spitefulness and
cruelty; when the red, red of the setting sun burns and consumes me
with its horrid feverish effervescence; when I feel the all-hatred
of the Universe for its poor little earth-bugs: then it is that I
approach nearest to Rest.
The softnesses are my Unrest.