Because I am to myself someways dissatisfying and exasperating often
this thing I write is dissatisfying and exasperating.
It is a true account of what is inside me. ‘The wine must taste of
its own grapes.’
It would be easier to make it an untrue account, for fiction is the
most effortless of writing. So I have found it. And I am very clever.
I could write myself as a pretty dainty harmlessly purring one--the
leopard with claws clipped and fangs drawn.
When my dynamos rest I am like that, doubtless.
But the wears and tears of breathing and the influences of varied
life-details and of clothes worn and food eaten start me moving
devilishly.
Phases of a score of persons, men and women, come to light in me.
To be one human being means to be monstrously mixed.
I write me out not as I might be, nor as I should be--whatever that
may be--: but merely as I am.
As, Just Beneath The Skin, I am.
So my written account must come out someways dissatisfying and
exasperating. Logically dissatisfying and divinely and ethically
exasperating.
--a passage in Vergil tells of a Mist that is all over and about
this world from the human ‘tears that are falling, falling, falling
always.’ Something, and it may be that Mist, makes one’s view of
everything--everything in life--a little blurred. It may even blur
one’s view of oneself. So it may be I do not see myself with entire
clearness--