Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Anais Nin - Henry and June

Recently, I've been reading a book Henry and June by Anais Nin. I was quite reluctant to read it until now, since all of the people who read her work said that it is feministic and/or erotic prose written by promiscuous and easygoing/frivolous/fickle woman.

Now I feel they could not have been farther from the truth.

As I see it, we may not have the ability or even the inclination to question or understand somebody else's motivation, but we can all acknowledge the difficulty of somebody else's position. We may not understand the why, but we can all see the how.

Reading this book has really proven to be quite a task - I can only muster up the will to read about ten to twenty pages at any one time, it is so filled with meaning, with heartache, with courage, with existential angst. Line between joie de vivre and escapism becomes so blurry and dissipates into nothingness.

Surely, it really must BE nothingness. As it, ultimately, should be. That line. That chasm.

And further I read, more I become conscious that this experience will ultimately end. That the book will be read, returned to the shelf. So I read it slowly, I take notes, read paragraphs out loud, talk about it, think about it - growing myself a copious rain forest of engrams to preserve the memory.

Ingrained irony.

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