Comforting
I was looking at top-selling writers Substack newsletters (so this, but not this because this is the least top-selling thing ever). A couple of them hadn’t written in months. One guy wrote every single day like a really long and eloquent diary entry. This is very Anaïs Nin of him, really.
This, of course, sent me into a wormhole where I found this except from one of her diary’s.
“As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. A startling white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness. By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power. She killed my admiration by her talk. Her talk. The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing. She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience. Her role alone preoccupies her. She invents dramas in which she always stars. I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose. That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be. She is an actress every moment. I cannot grasp the core of June. Everything Henry has said about her is true.
“I wanted to run out and kiss her fantastic beauty and say: ‘June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childlike pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses.’”
There is so much to think about here. There are her words and her ability, of course, but then also the Junes that we create in our lives. And what it is to be an actress in every moment.
THE RECIPE
The link to that site herbivore.
BONUS COMFORT
I just found this and I thought I’d share it. I do not know if I’ll ever get the time to make faux moths, but it’s nice to think I might.
QUICK NOTE
Thanks for being here with me! If you’re new, this is just my Substack that comes out once a week. It is not journalism. It isn’t writing tips. It is probably barely helpful. It’s just me looking for comfort in a world that feels scary sometimes. Okay. A lot of the time. But it feels wondrous, too. And that’s what I try to hold onto.