To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves. They can because they think they can. The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general. The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. It will be all over this day week - comfort - discomfort; and the zest and rush that no engagements, hours, habits give. Then we shall take them up again with more than the zest of traveling. It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. It is harder to kill a phantom than a reality. I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. |