Look: “She danced, laughing and sighing and breathing all for herself. She danced her fears, stopping in the center of every dance to listen to reproaches that we could not hear, or bowing to applause that we did not make. She was listening to music we could not hear, moved by hallucinations we could not see.”
Nin prefaces her novella with the following anecdote which i truly luv:-
The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed.
Something wascoming out of my throat: it was strangling me.
I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out.
I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my
heart.
There is an instrument called the quena made of human bones.
It owes
its origin to the worship of an Indian for his mistress.
When she died he
made a flute out of her bones.
The quena has a more penetrating, more
haunting sound than the ordinary flute.
Those who write know the process. I thought of it as I was spitting out
my heart.
Only I do not wait for my love to die
“Significance stares at me from everywhere, like a gigantic underlying ghostliness.” “I walk ahead of myself in perpetual expectancy of miracles.” “I kissed his shadow and this kiss did not touch him, this kiss was lost in the air and melted with the shadow.” “I cannot be certain of any event or place, only of my solitude.”
******** ********* **********
The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart.
[Photo courtesy Google]
