i’m posting this for one reason.. this is the first thing that made me think about writing.. i found this in 1988 or so.. i was thinking about this last night, as i was thinking about the “so i was leaning..”
Anais Nin,
from Diary, Volume 2
I love the world so much, it moves me deeply, even the ordinary world, the daily world, even the bar table, the tinkling ice in the glasses, the dog tied in the coat room….
Levels and levels. It is as if i were in an elevator, shooting up and down, hundreds of floors, hundreds of lives. Up to heaven, terraces and planetariums, gardens, fountains, clouds, the sun. the wind whistles down the shafts. On the next to the last floor, dance halls and restaurants, and music. In the rooms, bars of shadows on the walls from the casement windows. A bower. A confessional. A couch to lie on. Something to lie on, to rest on, to cling to. Faith. Red lights! Down! Down! The telephone announces: a man who limps, a man who’s hand is paralyzed, a man in love with his mother, a man who cannot write the book he wants to write, a woman deserted, a woman blocked by guilt, a woman crying with shame for her love of another woman, a girl trembling with fear of man. Free the slaves of incubi, of ghosts and anguish. Listen to their crying. A tough political partisan says: “I feel soft and iridescent.” Another one says: “It is a weakness to listen to the complaints of the child in us.” I say: “It will never cease lamenting until it is consoled, answered, understood. Only then will it lie still in us, like our fears. It will die in peace, and leave us what the child leaves to the man – the sense of wonder.” The telephone announces: “A cable for you, shall I send it up?” “Yes, yes.” “Happy birthday, happy birthday love.” Red lights! Down! White lights! Going up! Playing at being God, but a god not tired of listening, all the while wondering how the other god can watch people suffer. Music, the solace. Through music we rise in swift noiseless elevators to the heavens, breaking through the roof. Red lights! Down! At the drug store I buy stamps, mail letters, ask for a coffee. Physically I am cracking. It is not the changing of floors, the sudden rise and descents which make me dizzy, but the giving. Parts of my energy are passing into others. I feel what they feel. I identify with them. Their anguish tightens my throat. My tongue feels heavy. I wonder whether I can go on. I have no objectivity, no indifference. I pass into them to illumine, to reveal, but I cannot remain apart from them, be indifferent to their bad nights, or their hopes, or their cries, or even their happiness. I look out of my window as Rank looked out of his window. People are skating in the Park. The band is playing. It is Sunday. I could be walking through the streets of Paris, joyous, lively streets where people are in love with life and even with their tragedies. I could be walking along the human and beautiful Seine. I did not recognize my happiness then. I yearned for adventure. The children’s laughter rises to the twenty-fifth floor, to the window at which I stand. Red lights! Down! All the way down I am thinking of the problem of emotional symmetry. People’s need of retaliation, revenge, need to balance anger against anger, humiliation against humiliation, indifference against indifference.