The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane (free reads txt) 📖

relating to the outer genius. But these will answer. These to any one who knows things will be a revelation.

Sometimes you know things, fine brave world.

You must know likewise that though I do ordinary things, when I do them they cease to be ordinary. I make fudge—and a sweet girl makes fudge, but there are ways and ways of doing things. This entire affair of the fudge is one of my uniquest points.

No sweet girl makes fudge and eats it, as I make fudge and eat it.

So it is.

But oh—who is to understand all this? Who will understand any of this Portrayal? My unhappy soul has delved in shadows far, far beyond and below.

*

March 23

My philosophy, I find after very little analysis, approaches precariously near to sensualism.

It is wonderful how many sides there can be to just one character.

Nature with all those suns, and all those hilltops, and all those rivers, and all those stars, is inscrutable—intangible—maddening. It affects one with unutterable joy and anguish, but no one can ever begin to understand what it means.

Human nature is yet more inscrutable—and nothing appears on the surface. One can have no idea of the things buried in the minds of one’s acquaintances. And mostly they are fools and have no idea themselves of what germs are in themselves—of what they are capable. And in most minds it is true the dormant devils never awaken and never are known.

It is another sign of my analytical genius, that I, aged nineteen, recognize the devils in my character. I have not the slightest wish, since things are as they are with me, to rid myself of them. There is in me much more of evil than of good. Genius like mine must needs have with it manifold bad. “I have in me the germ of every crime.” I have no desire to destroy these germs. I should be glad indeed to have them develop into a ravaging disease. Something in this dreadful confusion would then give way. My wooden heart and my soul would cry out in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly.

They want something—they know not what.

I give them poison.

They snatch it and eat it hungrily.

Then they are not so hungry. They become quieter.

The ravaging disease soothes them to sleep—it descends on them like rain in the autumn. And so.

When I hurry over my sand and barrenness my vivid passions come to me—or when I sit and look at the horizon. When I walk slowly I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings, to poison thoroughly this soul of unrest and this wooden heart so that they would never more be conscious of too-brilliant Lights, and to make myself over into a quite different creature.

A little evil would do—a little of a fine, good quality.

I should like a man to come (it is always a man, have you ever noticed?—whatever one contemplates when one is of womankind and young). I should like a man to come, I said calmly to myself to-day as I walked slowly over my barrenness—a perfect villain to come and fascinate me and lead me with strong gentle allurements to what would be technically termed my ruin. And as the world views such things it would be my ruin. But as I view such things it would not be ruin. It would be a new lease on life.

Yes. I should like a man to come—any man so that he is strong and thoroughly a villain, and so that he fascinates me. Particularly he must fascinate me. There must be no falling in love about it. I doubt if I could fascinate him but I should ask him quite humbly to lead me to my ruin.

I have never yet seen the man who would not readily respond to such an appeal.

This villain would be no exception.

I would then jerk my life out of this Nothingness by the roots. Farewell, a long farewell, I would say. Then I would go forth with the man to my ruin. The man would be bad to his heart’s core. And after living but a short time with him my shy, sensitive soul would be irretrievably poisoned and polluted. The defilement of so sacred and beautiful a thing as marriage is surely the darkest evil that can come to a life. And so everything within me that had turned toward that too-bright Light would then drink deep of the lees of death.

The thirst of this incessant unrest and longing, this weariness of self, would be quenched completely.

My life would be like fertile soil planted thickly with rank wild mustard. On every square inch of soil there would be a dozen sprouts of wild mustard. There would be no room—no room at all—for an anemone to grow. If one should start up, instantly it would be choked and overrun with wild mustard.

- But no anemone would start up. -

My life now is a life of pain and revolt.

My life darkened and partly killed would be more than content to drift along with the current.

Oh, it would be a rest!

The Christians sing, there is rest for the weary, on the other side of Jordan, where the tree of life is blooming. But that rest of course is for the Christians. My rest will have to come on this side of Jordan. Let the impress of a thoroughly evil and strong man be stamped upon my inner life and I am convinced there would come a wonderful settled quiet over it. Its spirit would be broken. It would rest. Why not? I have no virtue-sense. Nothing to me is of any consequence except to be rid of this unrest and pain. Yes, surely I might rest.

The coming of the man-Devil would bring rest. But am I fool enough to think that marriage—the real marriage—is possible for me?

The other thing is within the reach of every one—of fools and geniuses alike—and of all that come between.

And so I want a fascinating wicked man to come and make me positively, rather than negatively, wicked. I feel a terrific wave of utter weariness. My life lies fallow. I am tired of sitting here. The sand and barrenness is gray with age. And I am gray with age.

Happiness—the red of the sunset sky—is the intensest desire of my life.

But I will grasp eagerly anything else that is offered me—_anything_.

The poisoning of my soul—the passing of my unrest—would rouse my mental power. My genius would receive a wonderful impetus from it. You would marvel, good world, at the things I should write. Not that they would be exalted—not that they would surge upward. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? But they would be marvels of fire and intensity. I should no longer exhaust much of my energy in grinding, grinding within. The things that would come of the thorns and thistles would excite your astonishment and admiration, though they be not grapes and figs.

And as for me—the real me—the creature imbued with a spirit of intense femininity, with a spirit of an intense sense of Love—with a spirit like that of the Magdalene who loved too much, with the very soul of unrest and Nothingness—this thing would vanish swiftly into oblivion, and I, a despoiled animal, should go down a dark world and feel not.

*

March 25

One of the remarkable points about my life is that it is so completely, hopelessly alone—a lonely, lonely life. This book of mine contains but one character—myself.

There is also the Devil—as a possibility.

And there is also the anemone lady—my dearest beloved—as a memory.

I have read books that were written to portray but one character and there were various people brought in to help in the portraying. But my one friend is gone, and there is no person who enters into my inner life in the very least. I am always alone. I might mingle with people intimately every hour of my life—still I should be alone.

Always alone—alone.

Not even a God to worship.

How do I bear this! How do I get through the days and days!

And oh, when it all comes over me, what frightful rage—what long agony of my breaking heart—what utter woe!

When the stars shine down upon me with cold hatred; when miles and miles of barrenness stretch out around me and envelop me in its weary, weary Nothingness; when the wind blows over me like the breath of a vicious giant; when the ugly, ugly sun radiates centuries of hard, heavy bitterness around me from its stinging rays; when the sky maddens me with its cold careless blue; when the rivers that are flowing over the earth send echoes to me of their hateful voices; when I hear wild geese honking in bitter wailing melody; when bristling edges of jagged rocks cut sharply into my tired life; when drops of rain fall on me and pierce me like steel points; when the voices in the air shriek little-minded malice in my ears; when the green of Nature is the green of spitefulness and cruelty; when the red, red of the setting sun burns and consumes me with its horrid feverish effervescence; when I feel the all-hatred of the Universe for its poor little earth-bugs: then it is that I approach nearest to Rest.

The softnesses are my Unrest.

I do not want those bitter things.

But I must have them if I would rest.

I want the softnesses and I want Rest!

Oh, dear faint soul, it is hard—hard for us.

We are sick with loneliness.

*

March 26

Now and again I have torturing glimpses of a Paradise. And I feel my soul in its pain every moment of my life. Otherwise, how gladly would I deny the existence of a soul and a life to come!

For my soul is beset with Nothingness, and the Paradise that shows itself is not for me.

*

March 28

Hatred, after all, is the easiest thing of all to bear.

If you have been forgotten by the one who must have made you, and if you have been left alone of human beings all your life—all your nineteen years,—then, when at last you see some one looking toward you with beautiful eyes, and extending to you a beautiful hand, and showing you a beautiful heart wherein is just a little of beautiful sympathy for you—for you—oh, that is harder than anything to bear. Harder than the loneliness and the bitterness—and the tears are nearer and nearer.

But one would be hurt often, often for the sake of the beautiful things. Yes, one would gladly be hurt long and often.

I shall never forget how it was with me when I first saw the beautiful eyes of the dearest anemone lady when they were looking gently—at me,—and the beautiful hand, and the beautiful heart. The awakening of my racked soul is hardly more heavily laden with passion and pain. I shall never forget.

Though I feel away from her also, she is the only one out of all to look gently at me.

- Let me writhe and falter with pain; let me go mad—but oh, worldful of people—for the love of your God—give me out of this seething darkness only one beautiful human hand to touch mine with love, one beautiful human heart to know the aching sad loneliness of mine, one beautiful human soul to mingle with mine in long, long Rest. -

Oh, for a human being, my soul wails—a human being to love me!

Oh, to know—just once—what it is to be