Translated by Jane Appleton
Basel, Hooded Seal Day, spring tide, full moon
We sat in the kitchen until midday talking about space and housing. I said I thought I’d like to have one place by the sea and another inland. Owlie then told us about Anaïs Nin’s house in California, in the Japanese style with a huge studio where she had total peace and quiet to write. She went there often during her years in America, was married to two men and went between them, had a home in two very different houses. Well, this sure surprised me. That she’d lived such a completely double life.
Strindberg’s little cabin is out on a small island in a forest where his desk still stands, all alone, said Snoopy, who took an active part in the discussion. Somehow I feel as though the space that Strindberg sought was empty or negative, space in some kind of nowhere because he looked for his creative strength in solitude and self-pity. I think Nin looked rather for space that was shaped by vitality and memory because she seems to have drawn her strength from interaction, Snoopy said.
I don’t know which is the correct analysis but I probably need both: complete solitude and affectionate interaction. But hopefully my creativity only needs one husband! He has to be my equal. A man on whom I am not dependent and who isn’t dependent on me but who choses willingly and gladly to be just with me. And of course I want only to be with him even though I might pop south to California.
I’m on the night train, heading for Gare du Nord.
Hveragerði, wintertime day of prayer, moon on the horizon
Working here is going very well. I like working late at night best of all. Wake with a start when my brother Owl knocks, on his way from the city to official business out in the countryside. Go down in my dressing gown to open, then up to the kitchen to make buckwheat pancakes and coffee. We have a sofa in the kitchen, the old leather sofa Grandpa designed and had made. It’s good to lie down after coffee and talk about the premises for conservation areas and other fundamental matters before he rushes off, no time to waste. Often he takes the chance to poo first, the biggest vote of confidence in a home; if a person feels at ease for such a personal act in another’s dwelling then that’s a true restroom, room of rest.
