This I write is a strange thing.
So close to fact: so far from it.
So close to truth: so surrounded by lies.
It does not contain lies but is someway surrounded by a mist of lies.
A strange thing about it is that it _is_ expressing the Self Just
Beneath My Skin.
That Self is someways trivial and outlandish and mentally nervous,
flightly, silly--silly to a verge of tragicness. I know that to be
true from a long acquaintance with me. It is oddly intriguing to read
over some chapters and find it _shown_.
Some unconscious exact photography aids my writing talent.
Some chapters are bewilderingly and mysteriously true to life.
My everyday self that casually speaks to this or that person is
nothing like this book. My absorbed self that writes a letter to
an intimate acquaintance is not like this book. My heartfelt self
that deeply loves a friend, and gives of its depths, and thrills
answeringly to other depths, is not like this book.
This book is my mere Hidden Self--just under the skin but hid away
closer than the Thousand Mysteries: never shown to any other person
in any conversation or any association: never would be shown: never
could be.
How Another, any Other, would come out: what Another would show:
photographed Beneath the Skin--what do I know?
Perchance ten times more trivial and inconsequent and mad than Me.
If Another thinks Me someway mad, let him look at Himself Just
Beneath the Skin.
Perchance Another every day as he thanks a janitor for holding open a
door, would much prefer to drive a long rusty brad-nail deep into the
janitor’s skull.
Perchance Another has a brain like Goethe, a Soul like a
humming-bird, a Heart like a little round nutmeg.
What do I know?