I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human DaysMacLane, Mary
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I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days
MacLane, Mary
MacLane, Mary, 1881-1929; Montana -- Biography; Women authors, American -- Biography
I am strangely weak. Strong of will, strong of mind, but weak of
purpose: damnably, damnedly. I shall never be able to write in words
one one-thousandth of the dramatic drastic weakness which is in me.
But I hate weakness with so deep and strong a hatred, and to know one
eternal certain thing would be so roundly restful, I could then go
on: I could vanquish the potent pettinesses which beset me.
I do not want from God a passport, a safe-conduct into heaven. I
don’t want to get into heaven. I don’t know what it is, but the word
has sounds of finality, as if all winds, sweet nervous petal-laden
winds, had stopped blowing forever. For cycles and centuries to come
the Soul of me will be too restless to live where winds can not blow.
I love the journey: so that only I might have one dim torch to go by.
I love the pitfalls and ditches--all the dangers--black-shaded woods
and wolds, and lonesome plains and briery paths, and very wet swamps,
and strong whistling gales which chill me: so that I could feel but
one tiny bright-bladed truth, within and without, pricking and urging
me to struggle on through it all till I might emerge at last like
a human being, rather than linger indifferent and inanimate like a
jaded wood-nymph in drearily pleasant spaces.
_Twenty inches of ajarness_
To-morrow
God might come to visit me on a Monday afternoon.
He would come in at the door of my blue-white room which had been
left about twenty inches ajar: for I cannot imagine God, the aloof
and reticent, opening a shut door to visit anyone. It is as if God
purposely lacks all initiative. If I wish to meet God I must first
suffer deeps of terror and passion and loneliness to make the mood
that wants it. Then I must train my life down to two plain frocks.
And to crown all my room-door must be left ajar on the day he happens
to come or he will not come in. _That_ seems certain: but for twenty
inches of ajarness at my door he will not come in.
In it God is quite fair. I do the reaching-out and I live out the
despairs: he furnishes a fact to go upon: I go upon it, in some
anguish doubtless: but then mine, not God’s, are the lights and the
translated splendor. It is a ‘gentleman’s game’ God plays. It is
because I feel that to be true, more than for that he is the Dealer,
that I would have a word with him.
On a Monday afternoon--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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