the all-seeing

by anais nin
(slightly abridged)

     when i rang his bell i could hear the parting of the beaded curtains of his room, and i knew he could see me through a little glass eye in his door through which i could not see him. through this glass eye the hallway appeared immeasurably long and the person standing before the door many miles away and small, but extraordinarily distinct like a personage out of the past seen through the telescope of memory on a day of clear visibility.
     as he appeared in the dark hallway he illumined it with his eyes, his own eyes like the aurora borealis, a waving of luminous chiffon, such an immense and deep phenomenon of light like the eye of the universe.
     at first a blue softness, like a melting of snow and light, then lightning which revealed lucidity, and then a transparency like a dawn opening the worlds of divination. his gaze came from the remotest worlds of light and silence, piercing through our exterior, exposing instantly the naked soul and remained there before the exposure, full of surprise and wonder and awe.
     they had in them the roving gaze of the mariner who never attaches himself to what he sees, whose very glance is roving, floating, sailing on, and who looks at every person and object with a sense of the enormous space around them, with a sense of the distance one can put between one's self and one's desires, the sense of the enormousness of the world, and of the tides and currents that carry us onward.
     women were at times deceived by the hunger in them. the hunger and avidity of them, they believed he wanted them, and gave themselves, and found his hunger unchanged, and the distance increased; his eyes seemed as horizonless as the ocean itself, as unfixable, as mutable and unconquerable. . .
     he was never dressed, but costumed to suit some mood of a new self. he was in disguise. . . there were furs on the bed, rugs on the walls. in one corner stood a blue sled like a small bark sailing heavenward towards the planets. inside the sled a reindeer fur. hung on the walls, reindeer boots and gloves. the boots with their curled toes did not point earthward but airily out towards adventures and difficulties. inside the sled a small lamp shed a blue nordic light.
     a violin hung on the wall.
     his violin nailed to the wall and never touched since the day his mother had said to him: 'so you failed to get the prize you struggled for? you're hurt, you're humiliated, but i'm happy. now you will stop playing the violin and wasting your life. you will be a man like your father, not a fiddler. i'm very glad you did not win the prize. you would have gone to paris to study and become a good-for-nothing. we never had musicians in our family.'
     with one phrase she had destroyed his first passion. he hung his violin on the wall. the strings snapped gradually and hung dead.
     seeking this that he had lost without knowing it, he became restless and a rover, a prober, he became the archaeologist of his own soul, he searched and wandered looking blindly for the source of that music killed by the mother. he was possessed with restlessness, timelessness, forgetfulness. he lived in a labyrinth and a haze. he feared to look backward and seeing the shadow of this that had been killed in him but he also feared to stay where he was and lose it altogether. so he pursued it blindly to the farthest corners of the world, returning each time to the violin which hung on his wall crucified and muted.
     the music that was in him was never silenced, it flooded his place and every object vibrated with it. wherever he went the place was filled with resonances like the inside of an instrument. the harmonies of his being lay concealed in the very shell of his misery as the echo of the sea inside the sea shells, and while he talked about the loss of his violin, the loss of music, one could place one's ear against any object in his room, against his walls, against his rugs, against his pillows, and hear distinctly the music his mother had not been able to kill.
     each time that he embarked on a new transformation, or disguise, or voyage, he was driven not by pleasure or curiosity, but by the sight of the crucified violin. it wounded him, to see the broken strings. so he rushed again into multiple changes, to return loaded with new objects like votive offerings to the violin. . .
     to catch him at the moment of departure it was clear from his haste and anguish that it was a wound driving him, the pain of his silenced hands aching for the bow and strings, the shaft of the violin bow which had entered his soul like a splinter.
     just before he talked he seemed like a very soft animal, sensitive and porous, just before he talked, when his malady was not perceptible. he seemed pregnable and without taint, sailing freely like a ship without moorings.
     it was only when he began to talk that one saw how chained he was to his obsessions. every step he took was marked by a gasp of anguish. only while actually in movement was he lulled.
     no sooner had the marvelous befallen him than he grasped it with his peasant hands with the violence of a man who was not certain of having seen it, lived it, and who wanted to reassure himself of its palpability. everything which befell him would be ripped apart, analyzed, commented. as if he felt that behind all his possessions, some diabolical substitution was being offered him, as if he knew that what he desired did not lie in all the treasures that might be offered him.
     by moving, escaping, and distilling for himself only the essences and legends (he turned every woman into a mirage) he did not reach the freedom and ecstasy he sought, but anguish, an abysmal anguish. after he pursued so ardently only the atmosphere of the dream, and by prestidigitations, transformed everything into a mirage, then he lamented the absence of warmth and humanity. the further he cut himself from the ugly, the sordid, the animal, from sickness which he overlooked, from poverty which he disregarded, from his body which he maltreated, from human ties he would not submit to, from protection which he disdained, the more anguish he felt.
     the dream did not give him contentment.
     he was lonely.
     so he fell in love with the unknown woman of the seine, who had drowned herself many years ago and who was so beautiful that at the morgue they had made a plaster cast of her face. it was this picture he carried about. around her he embroidered the most luxurious enchantments which she could not destroy, as other women destroyed the enchantments he cast around them. her silence permitted the unfolding of all his inventions. in death alone could love grow to such an absolute. one of the lovers must be dead for the absolute to flourish, this impossible, unattainable flower of the infinite. in death alone there is no betrayal and no loss. so jean gave his infinite love to the drowned unknown woman of the seine. his spiritually autocratic love found no rival in death.
     but he was lonely.
     we locked ourselves inside his dream, with the objects he had chosen, and first there was contentment like a drug, enveloping and dissolving. . . the deer horns protruded from the walls holding open erotic books traversed by a knife. two hunters' knives were crossed over our heads. delicate sea plants bloomed in unexpected places, starfishes were glued on the mirror and skeleton leaves on the windowpanes. the windowpanes were painted so that one could not see the street, and so the glance was thrown inwardly again into contemplation.
     'when i went to lapland,' said jean, holding an empty opium pipe, 'i found the country of silence. people gathered together, sat in circles, smoking and smiling, but they do not talk. the reindeer has no voice with which to lament or cry. i looked everywhere for the secret of their speech and found it only in the trees. the trees talked for them. the trees had tortured arms, gaunt legs, the faces of totem poles. they talked and complained and sighed and threw imploring arms up towards the silence.'
     essences and flavors began to fill the room. we sat on tiny children's chairs from greece, before the fire. jean caressed his empty opium pipe and said: 'do you think we will ever find our twin in love?'
     'people who are twins,' i said, 'there is a curse upon their love. love is made of differences and suffering and apartness, and of the struggle to overcome this apartness. two people who love the dream above all else would soon both vanish altogether. one of them must be on earth to hold the other down. and the pain of being held down by the earth, reality, that is what our love for others will be.'
     'you know how i live, by what i call the alternating currents. sometimes i am afraid to get cut off altogether. but when i do love, what anxiety i feel, what doubts.'
     'doubts not of love, but of reality. you live in a mirage and you seek to be incarnated through the body of your love. with your gift for metamorphosis you can remove yourself so far that in love you seek the warmth and the reassurance of your very existence. you float too easily, you are too easily cut off. then when love holds you in bondage for a moment you feel anguish. but at some time or other you will have to accept having a body, a reality, being in bondage. you will have to enter the prison of human life and accept the suffering.'
     at the word suffering he took his air of flight and departure. his eyes alighted on the north pole. then his eyes returned and rested on me, knowing from me no pain would strike at him. 'don't you describe my transparence,' he said, 'because you yourself are like rainbow, an easily vanishing color. you only appear when the atmosphere is propitious. you can walk over the waters, you are so light. others will see you do it and they will want to follow you but they will drown. you are also a mirror, a mirror in which people see themselves fulfilled, the free self. i see myself free when i look at you. you are the perfect mirror without flaws which gives the reflection of the future self. but will i be free before it is too late? i feel that other people are sewn together loosely, naturally, with a space in between the stitches for breathing. i am sewn too tightly, with too many stitches overlapping, so that i suffocate.'
     'here we breathe freely.'
     'yes, because in the maze of the dream we cannot see our human sorrows.'
     jean stood now before the blurred and covered window which did not open into the street. he said: i am behind the window of a prison. i am a prisoner. there is always a window, and i am always behind it, looking out, and desiring to escape to countries and places which i imagine to be light, wall-less, illimitable. and you are a prisoner of another kind. you are barred behind your loves and your compassions. when the doors open, and you are on the verge of freedom, you take the fatal glance backward and see the one behind you who is not free and you retract your step and enchain yourself to this one while the prison doors close again. you are a voluntary prisoner who will not walk out alone. you are always preparing the flight for others. and so time passes.'
     'but of course, jean, we have the dream, this drug given to prisoners of distinction.'

full of animal glow

excerpt from ladders to fire by anais nin:


the color of the day, he color of byzantine paintings, that gold which did not have the firm surface of lacquer, that gold made of a fine powder easily decomposed by time, a soft powdery gold which seemed on the verge of decomposing, as if each grain of dust, held together only by atoms, was ever ready to fall apart like a mist of perfume; that gold so thin in substance that it allowed one to divine the canvas behind it, the space in the painting, the presence of reality behind its thinness, the fibrous space lying behind the illusion, the absence of color and depth, the condition of emptiness and blackness underneath the gold powder. this gold powder which had fallen now on the garden, on each leaf of the trees, which was flowering inside the room, on her black hair, on the skin of his wrists, on his frayed suit sleeve, on the green carpet, on her green dress, on the bottle of perfume, on his voice, on her anxiety -- the very breath of living, the very breath he and she took in to live and breathed out to live -- that very breath could mow and blow it all down.

the essence, the human essence always evaporating where the dream installs itself.

the air of that summer day, when the wind itself had suspended its breathing, hung between the window and garden; the air itself could displace a leaf, could displace a word, and a displaced leaf or word might change the whole aspect of the day.

the essence, the human essence always evaporating where the dream installed itself and presided.

every time he said he had been out the night before with friends and that he had met a woman, there was a suspense in lillian's being, a moment of fear that he might add: i met the woman who will replace you. this moment was repeated for many years with the same suspense, the same sense of the fragility of love, without bringing any change in his love. a kind of superstition haunted her, running cross current to the strength of the ties binding them, a sense of menace. at first because the love was all expansion and did not show its roots; and later, when the roots were apparent, because she expected a natural fading and death.

this fear appeared at the peak of their deepest moments, a precipice all around their ascensions. this fear appeared through the days of their tranquillity, as a sign of death rather than a sign of natural repose. it marked every moment of silence with the seal of a fatal secret. the greater the circle spanned by the attachment, the larger she saw the fissure through which human beings fall again into solitude.

the woman who personified this danger never appeared. his description gave no clues. jay made swift portraits which he seemed to forget the next day. he was a man of many friends. his very ebullience created a warm passage but an onward flowing one, forming no grooves, fixing no image permanently. his enthusiasms were quickly burned out, sometimes in one evening. she never sought out these passing images.

now and then he said with great simplicity: "you are the only one. you are the only one."

and then one day he said: "the other day i met a woman you would like. i was sorry you were not there. she is coming with friends this evening. do you want to stay? you will see. she has the most extraordinary eyes."

"she has extraordinary eyes? i'll stay. i want to know her." (perhaps if i run fast enough ahead of the present i will out-distance the shock. what is the difference between fear and intuition? how clearly i have seen what i imagine, as clearly as a vision. what is it i feel now, fear or premonition?)

helen's knock on the door was vigorous, like an attack. she was very big and wore a severely tailored suit. she looked like a statue, but a statue with haunted eyes, inhuman eyes not made for weeping, full of animal glow. and the rest of her body a statue pinned down to its base, immobilized by a fear. she had the immobility of a medusa waiting to transfix others into stone: hypnotic and cold, attracting others to her mineral glow.

she had two voices, one which fell deep like the voice of a man, and another light and innocent. two women disputing inside of her.

she aroused a feeling in lillian which was not human. she felt she was looking at a painting in which there was an infinity of violent blue. a white statue with lascivious medusa hair. not a woman but a legend with enormous space around her.

her eyes were begging for an answer to an enigma. the pupils seemed to want to separate from the whites of the eyes.

lillian felt no longer any jealousy, but a curiosity as in a dream. she did not feel any danger or fear in the meeting, only an enormous blue space in which a woman stood waiting. this space and grandeur around helen drew lillian to her.

helen was describing a dream she often had of being carried away by a centaur and lillian could see the centaur holding helen's head, the head of a woman in a myth. people in myths were larger than human beings.

ladders to fire

"away from him she could always say: he does not feel. but as soon as he appeared she was baffled. his presence carried such a physical glow that it passed for warmth. his voice was warm like the voice of feeling. his gestures were warm, his hands liked touch. he laid his hands often on human beings, and one might think it was love. but it was just physical warmth, like the summer. it gave off heat like a chemical, but no more."

"he will die of hardness, and i from feeling too much. even when people knock on the door i have a feeling they are not knocking on wood but on my heart. all the blows fall directly on my heart.

even pleasure had its little stabs upon the heart. the perpetual heart-murmur of the sensibilities.

i wish i could learn his secret. i would love to be able to go out for a whole night without feeling all the threads that bind me to him."

"but he knew nothing of her; he was no companion to her sadness. he could never imagine anyone else's mood, only his own. his own were so immense and loud, they filled his world and deafened him to all others. he was not concerned to know whether she could live or breathe within the dark caverns of his whale-like being, within the whale belly of his ego.

somehow he had convinced her that his expansiveness was a sign of bigness. a big man could not belong to one person."

"she knew as he did, that none of the decorations or dignities conferred upon a man or woman could alter the basic talent or lack of talent as a lover. no title of architect emeritus will confer upon them the magic knowledge of the body's structure. no prestidigitation with words will replace the knowledge of the secret places or responsiveness. no medals for courage will confer the graceful audacities, the conquering abductions, the exact knowledge of the battle of love, when the moment for seduction, when for consolidation, when for capitulation. the trade, art and craft that cannot be learned, which requires a divination of the fingertips, the accurate reading of signals from the fluttering of an eyelid, an eye like a microscope to catch the approval of an eyelash, a seismograph to catch the vibrations of the little blue nerves under the skin, the capacity to prognosticate from the direction of the down as from the inclination of the leaves some can predict rain, tell where storms are brooding, where floods are threatening, tell which regions to leave alone, which to invade, which to lull and which to take by force."

-all quotes from ladders to fire by anais nin