Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1914–1920 / Anaïs Nin

June 5. Oh! Little Diary, what an adventure—You made the 3- hour trip with me from New York to Sheffield, Massachusetts, in my suitcase with my fairy-queen dress, etc. Now it is nine o’clock in the morning and I am writing in the nicest little room imaginable, in a cottage in the style of the little house at Lake Placid. But let’s tell things in order. The train stopped at. Sheffield about noon. In Stamford, I met Marcus’s aunt, a nice, pleasant lady.
        Marcus was waiting at the station. They brought us here in an automobile, we had lunch, we talked a little together, then Marcus left and the “ladies” dressed for the Declamation. Berkshire School is a long way from here and entirely surrounded by mountains—a most delightful setting.
        Little Diary, I don’t know what Love is, and furthermore, I don’t want to know, so I can’t find a name for my happiness yesterday when Marcus was near me. All the rest meant little to me and the other boys were nice but unimportant, as usual.
        I was very sorry because Marcus was nervous and had to stop a moment in the midst of his eloquent speech—and in that way probably lost 2nd prize. Afterward there was a tea, a walk and dinner—and a dance in the gymnasium. The son of Madame Homer, the famous singer, danced with me often, and many others. But when I danced with Marcus, I was “thrilled”—to the point where I forgot to talk. During the day, his aunt asked him not to give me his arm, because of propriety, and I was so embarrassed—!
        We came back at 11, along dark, dark roads as at Lake Placid—a light rain whipped our faces—quickly, quickly, so quickly that I closed my eyes and again I felt that delicious “thrill” filling me so completely. At moments like that, one wonders how one can sometimes go for years and be happy without that delightful “tingling” in the blood, that sensation in the heart which seems like the last feeling before death.
        At midnight I was in bed, but a real “Sandman” was needed to put me to sleep. I would have liked to begin it all over, except the trip, and I did begin it all over—in my dreams. . . .
        I could write pages and pages more, but I am a little bit frozen, for the weather is nice and cold the way it is in the mountains. I hope that my heart is as cold as my hands. It would be better like that, so that it doesn’t suddenly melt completely and flow away like a little stream into that great Ocean—Love.
        I am not romantic but, as Maman says, I take things so dramatically, tragically. Well! I am too old to reform—let’s just they don’t understand him, Marcus is still the most worthwhile boy I know.
        I shall never forget the way he once told me how my eyes seem to him. Oh! Little Diary, that meant so much—especially that I would be very sorry if I learned that my features, my face, are Me. What do those things matter? If Marcus had never expressed anything except his enthusiasm for my eyes, he came close to the real Me—my emotions, my thoughts, my dreams, the things that don’t die and which are in my eyes as in a mirror—

{June 1920]

Anaïs Nin ~ (Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1914–1920)

Photo by Dorota Górecka