It rains. The blue sky is weeping. But it is not weeping because
I am unhappy.
I hate the blue sky, and the rain, and the wet ground, and everything.
This morning I walked far away over the sand, and these things made
me think they loved me--and that I loved them. But they fooled me.
Everything fools me. I am a fool.
No one loves me. There are people here. But no one loves me--no
one understands--no one cares.
It is I and the barrenness. It is I--young and all alone.
Pitiful Heaven!--but no, Heaven is not pitiful.
Heaven also has fooled me, more than once.
There is something for every one that I have ever known--some tender
thing. But what is there for me? What have I to remember out of
the long years?
The blue sky is weeping, but not for me. The rain is persistent and
heavy as damnation. It falls on my mind and it maddens my mind.
It falls on my soul and it hurts my soul.--Everything hurts my
soul.--It falls on my heart and it warps the wood in my heart.
Of womankind and nineteen years, a philosopher of the peripatetic
school, a thief, a genius, a liar, and a fool--and unhappy, and
filled with anguish and hopeless despair. What is my life? Oh, what
is there for me!
There has always been Nothing. There will always be Nothing.
There was a miserable, damnable, wretched, lonely childhood. Itself
has passed, but the pain of it has not passed. The pain of it is
with me and is added to the pain of now. It is pain that never lets
itself be forgotten. The pain of the childhood was the pain of
Nothing. The pain of now is the pain of Nothing. Oh, the pathetic
burlesque-tragedy of Nothing!
It is burlesque, but it is none the less tragedy. It is tragedy
that eats its way inward.
It is only I and the sand and barrenness.
I have never a tender thing in my life. The sand and barrenness
has never a grass-blade.
I want a human being to love me. I have need of it. I am starving
to death for lack of it.
Bitterest salt tears surge upward--sobs are shaking themselves out
from the depths. Oh, the salt is bitter. I might lay me down and
weep all day and all night--and the salt would grow more bitter
and more bitter.
But life in its Nothingness is more bitter still.
It is burlesque-tragedy that is the most tragic of all.
It is an inward dying that never ends. It is the bitterness of
death added to the bitterness of life.
What hell is there like that of one weak little human being placed
on the earth--and left _alone_?
There are people who live and enjoy. But my soul and I--we find
life too bitter, and too heavy to carry alone. Too bitter, and too
heavy.
Oh, that I and my soul might perish at this moment, forever!
April 13.
I am sitting writing out on my sand and barrenness. The sky is pale
and faded now in the west, but a few minutes ago there was the same
old-time, always-new miracle of roses and gold, and glints and gleams
of silver and green, and a river in vermilions and purples--and
lastly the dear, the beautiful: the red, red line.
There also are heavy black shadows.