wlotus | 8 December 1937

I am halfway through Nearer the Moon, Anaïs Nin's unexpurgated diary covering 1937-1939. I have a feeling I'll be very sorry when I finish the book. (I have to finish it by 12 June, though, because that is when it's due back to the library!) She tickles me with her descriptions of people, like this one:

Larry, I don't know why, has diminished. He abandons himself to the flow limply--does not retain his color, form, voice. He looks like driftwood--too long in water.
~ 8 December 1937

Her honesty at how she goes back and forth on various topics tickles me, as well. One day, she is completely against communism. The next, she sees the good in it and declares she believes wholeheartedly in it. On the one hand, her inability to make up her mind annoys me. On the other hand, her honesty with herself about what she is feeling at the moment of writing, even if it is opposite what she wrote just the day before, impresses me. Reading her diaries has inspired me to be freer, more honest in mine.

Strange, these women who terrify men, who devour or efface or destroy them, are the women I can handle. I do not have to disguise myself as I do for man. For man I have to act with hidden strength, indirectly, subtly. Women I face in the open. I have not yet met a man who gives me the feeling that I can stroke him, oppose him, hurl myself against him, without hurting him.
~ 8 December 1937

I feel as though I am discovering a friend.