There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life,  an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel,  a book for each person.  -  Anais Nin   {image via cosmic dust}

Character, atmosphere…

 

First a quote:

“It isn’t good to stay too long in the polluted air of history.”- Anais Nin

I love this excerpt from The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume Three.

It is taken from text written in April, 1940, when she lived in New York.

“I rented a furnished apartment on Washington Square West.  The Village has character, atmosphere.  The houses are old, the shops small.  In the Square old Italians play chess on stone tables.  There are trees, patios, back yards.  It has a history.  The university was built by the Dutch.  I love the ginko trees, the studio windows, the small theaters, Blecker Street with its vegetable carts, fish shops, cheese shops.  It is human.  People stroll about.  They sit in the park.

My bed is convertible, which means it vanishes into a closet.  I am always afraid it will do this while I am asleep.”

 

Caresse Crosby…a part of Anais Nin’s diary…

“Party at Kay de San Faustino’s and Yves Tanguy’s.  Caresse Crosby enters with the bouyancy of a powder puff, a caressing voice (was this how she gained the nickname of Caresse from Harry Crosby?), her fur hat, her eyelashes, her smile all glittery with animation.  The word on her lips is always yes, and all her being says yes yes yes to all that is happening and all that is offered her.  She trails behind her, like a plume of a peacock, a fabulous legend.  She ran the Black Sun Press in Paris, lived in a converted windmill, knew D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Andre Breton, painters, writers.  At the Quartre Arts Ball she once rode a horse as Lady Godiva.

The life of certain women dresses them in anecdotes which become more visible than fur coats or silk dresses.  Stories surround Caresse like a perfume, a necklace, a feather.  She always seems fresher and younger than all the women there, because of her mobility, ease, flowingness.  D. H. Lawrence would have called it her “livingness.”  A pollen carrier, I thought, as she mixed, stirred, brewed, concocted her friendships by a constant flux and reflux of activity, by curiosity, avidity, amorousness.”

This was just a nice descriptive piece that I read last night in Anais Nin’s Diary, book three, 1939-1944.  Anais had just arrived in New York City from war-torn Paris, and was deeply homesick for her favorite city and all her friends. The the recent publication of her book, Winter of Artifice had made her well-known, and invitations began flowing to her, like this one she mentions at Kay de San Faustino’s.  This was in the winter of 1939.

A note on the subject matter. Caresse Crosby was married to Harry Crosby, a famous poet and writer, and the two were quite promiscuous, which is an understatement to say the least, in their married life, known for their partying, affairs (seven in bed at one time), drug use…basically they would make any current Hollywood celeb’s grandiose activities seem like child’s play. Harry Crosby died tragically in a double suicide pact (or so it is thought)  with one of his lovers years before this was written, and may be one of the “stories” that “surround Caresse like a perfume, a necklace, a feather” as quoted above by Anais. Caresse’s real name was Mary Phelps Jacobs and she was known for inventing the bra.  Just love discovering little pieces of history like this.

 

And then the day came…

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk it took
to blossom.

-Anais Nin

Photo source: My exceptionally talented photographer nephew, DivineShadow218 at deviantART.

The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume Five

I’ve taken to reading Anais Nin’s Diary series, one book at a time, and a bit out of order it seems.  After finishing Volume One (1931-1934) last year, jumped to Volume Five, the last of her published diary from 1947 – 1955.  Nin was a master of diary writing, taking a notebook with her wherever she went and recording events in her life, starting at the soft age of 11.  In this Volume, Nin shares how her life is without roots, without a home-town, and instead we find her home the world of her travels and visions, from Acapulco and its languorous beauty, to San Francisco, to New York, which she finds chiseled and toxic, and her revisit to Paris.  It it amazing how she often attracts talented and creative people in her life.  Through all her anguish and happiness I find a woman who knew how to experience life and who, as a writer, could describe it with indelible clarity and wonder.  Here is a piece from Summer 1953:

New York.

A martini makes an ordinary glass shine like a diamond at a coronation, makes an iron bed in Mexico seem like the feather bed of a sultan, a hotel room like the terminus and climax of all voyages, the pinnacle of contentment, the place of repose in an altitude hungered for by all the restless ones.

Create space and order in the house.  It is very important.  It is like the empty room of the Japanese, ideal for the gestations of the imagination and inner visions. Uncluttered. Our clutter interferes with freedom of thought. Air and lightness.

Costume in New York is a white wool coat, a white dress, a white hat with two slim abstract birds in flight. A painter asked me: “Aren’t you afraid the birds will fly away?”

“No, I always fly off first and they follow me.”

Parties.  Exhibitions.

You dream of the evening and of what it will bring at twilight, it is the hour I love best and which always saddens me. You cease the day’s efforts, you recline, you bathe, you dress for some event. I love bridges best of all, planes, taxis, the diaries, the hour of dress, the in-between hours, the only moment when I exist alone.

Volume Five concludes with Anais Nin’s description of her controlled experiment with LSD, which for her reaffirmed in her mind the quality of her creativity in writing and questioned whether one needs drugs to find a heightened awareness of vision and dreams.  You can read this experience from the diary in Anais Nin’s Doors of Perception in this blog’s pages. (See header.)

Another thing I absolutely love about Anais is the fact that when American publishers declined on her work, she bought her own press and published her own books.  Under the Glass Bell was one book, which ended up getting such high praise her books eventually won publication from the very publishers who had refused her.  This gives hope to me and all other writers who are considering self publication.

More on Anais Nin at a later date…