Underground in Virginia
Get “Sketches in Italy and Greece” by Symonds.
It is hard to know what I want, underground in Virginia in March, after a full day of bookstore work. I can’t clutch a pen like I used to be able–it becomes quite an effort–to write even a single line. a headache ensues. I am nearly blind as far as reading & writing goes–without lenses. I feel that I have come to certain dead ends and writing is no longer a necessity or a pleasure.
I’m in a horribly tense, paralyzed mood–my days go well at the bookstore–and I have my health–but I think I have no center at the moment–from which to write with integrity. STill, I want to insist on being a writer–and therefore force the pen across the frictioned page. Listening to a Mozart quartet & waiting to put on one by Beethoven–
I just read more letters by Symonds. I can’t see people now–last night I got too irritated with Oui–unexplainable but something in me doesn’t want to be with her, doesn’t trust her. When I am not writing I can too-easily scorn it and give up on it–that is, give up on myself and my dreams. to be a great writer.
Now I am letting Beethoven work on me, that grand, benevolent doctor–venerable master of the muses, even though deaf, as Homer saw, even when blind. I cross the wine-dark sea, the fern-scented frontier, to arrive at the other side of spring, in a new mood and better off than before.
Still I have my travelling dreams–to go to Italy and suckle the teats of beauty directly from the paintings & architecture–seascapes and city views—-
Of course I realize there are effects to be gotten here in the town where I am–but I have the restless urge to move on–to travel into the distances of which I’ve dreamt.
To sacrifice my integrity or to remember
the divinity of the passing day–
Oui as prostitute, anger on the street–
My soul nestling in conviction of beautiful eternity.
Natures such as Beethoven’s were so rich that they plumed forth in a natural abundance, like pine trees by the sea.
I must get my blood checked soon.
There not so much those intimate, tense, power struggles in my dreams as there used to be when I was closer to home.
Now I think I need to derive a wholly new set of ambitions.
–unlaced with the pressures I used to bear–
The most interesting road to self-development & self-realization seems to me now to be in reading & writing, in walking & talking & seeing–
The kinds of questions that are best asked are those most willingly & self-forgetfully answered. About art or ambition–
If I become a genius–that is–if I catch on to something.
The Nietzsche I read 2 days ago is still sitting in my blood digesting–That is part of the reason my head is dark & inconclusive.
There is something good for me in listening to this music.
I could write essays maybe, and I must already, write about S–to leave successful this year–
I will–I will, but not right now, please–I just don’t feel like it–
I don’t believe in lit crit, and I’m poor–and things have gone wrong in my emotions with Hongtao and with Oui–Things will not be the same–as they once were–