The embrace of imaginings

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Genesa Grace C. Alvarado is studying Computer Science at UP Diliman. She loves reading, dreaming and not being on a schedule. She is irked by fads, religious hypocrisy and bigotry in all its forms. One of her most fervent hopes is for no one to have to give up authenticity just to gain acceptance. She observes that this happens frequently between people and their own families.

Only a few pages into the book and I wanted to weep. Recognizing myself in what was written by someone worlds apart from me was truly astounding. The fact that the journal was written more than seven decades ago didn’t matter because the emotions, thoughts and truths that were in it resonated on a deep human level. I understood completely. More than that, I recognized the feelings and embraced them as my own. People who desire to live passionately will readily grasp the nature of such yearnings and know that they are the same in this time as in whenever else.

Henry and June: From “A Journal of Love” -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin is an account of the life of Anais Nin in late 1931 until the end of the following year. She is to be swept up into a dervish of a romance between two new loves: the fierce, vivacious writer, Henry Miller, and his wife, the strange and stunning June.

Elegant and concise, the voice of Anais Nin makes for beautiful, effortless reading that manages to capture her core. She is known for her erotica but it is surprising to find how she can write so subtly and delicately. At times spirited, at times weary, but always unpretentious, we see her become the faun, the queen, the femme fatale, the broken child. She writes exactly the way people live: full of oscillations, reactions and contradictions. 

Anais recognizes her different selves and their temperaments. As a woman, she loves perfection and considers faithfulness as a perfection. However, the writer in her takes over. Being a creator, an experimenter, she thinks it unintelligent to stay enclosed in only one condition: the single phase of being a faithful wife. She refuses the self-willed confinement and says, “Perfection is static, and I am in full progress.” Her impulses are erratic and fantastic, of wanting a life of freed instincts, of wanting to taste everything. Her mind and senses are always in open anticipation and intensely aware. Simply put, she is passionate about life and love. She writes, “The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband but I will fulfill myself.”

And this, she does.

Over the course of a year, Anais, with a boundless capacity for love and sensuality, would remain devoted to her husband Hugo, keep her long-standing affair with her cousin Eduardo, charm her psychoanalyst Allendy, become obsessed with the magnificent June and give herself completely to Henry.

As a fellow writer, she loves Henry’s imagination and expression. She sees in him a genius, a literary giant. The passing of time proves her right when Henry Miller writes Tropic of Cancer among other fine novels. As his lover, she finds they fit perfectly together. To her, he is just the right mixture of intellect and emotion. When she first meets him, she thinks, “He’s a man whom life makes drunk…he is like me.”

Anais was fascinated with Henry but even more so with his wife June. Upon meeting her, she fell instantly, terribly, utterly in love with whom she called “the most beautiful woman on Earth.” The description of their first encounter was, to me, heartbreaking because I could feel how she felt: absolute passion and fatalistic surrender inspired by this woman who had captivated her. The raw, almost painful emotion was mad and helpless but, at the same time, so beautiful.

The passages in her journal run the full gamut of human emotions. There are times when she is exultant, tranquil or filled with desire. Other times she seems desperate or bewildered but her command of language remains powerful. She invariably succeeds at getting everything across so brilliantly I find myself stunned. The remarkable thing about Anais is her incredible authenticity and honesty that enable her to just let everything spill out onto the page — even her frustration and pain.

Anyone who has loved before knows that love always entails pain in one way or another. Being in love is a kind of willing suffering, which is what Anais Nin unashamedly admits in some of her most moving confessions. She says about June, “I love her for what she has dared to be...I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it…She will be June plus all that I contain. ”

Her love life, being such a complicated web of secrets and betrayals, certainly involves conflict, cruelties and fear. Whether it is of June or Henry she is jealous confuses her over and over again. Henry goes through the same ordeal, as well as June. Theirs is a strange love triangle but everything is undeniably real. The romances, the disappointments and the sensual exploits are described in wonderful detail. I find myself fascinated by their world.

I believe that what will never fail to draw us to something is the recognition of ourselves in it. In this case, the journal reached out and pulled at my heartstrings for me to witness my own feelings being reflected. When I read it, I can see my own Henry. I recall the obsession and joy I had in submitting to someone who suited me perfectly in both intellect and sensuality. I can also remember when I found my own June and with a single glance, fell in love with such abandon. I experience the tenderness, the richness, the fever and fantasies come to life. In Anais’ words, “I am so filled with my love for her…Our love would be death. The embrace of imaginings.”

Loving passionately, selflessly and, some even say, madly, means simply being human. It is following the desires to which our heart gives rise. It is risking all in spite of the constant threat of getting hurt. Our experiences of sorrow and passion can serve as the simplest common bond between two strangers. Whoever reads this, man or woman, of any sexual orientation, from any background, of any age, this journal will not fail to impress upon them two irrepressible human truths: pain and love. To speak of love in the most complete truthfulness, it is “Hell and heaven all at once.” And no one would have it any other way.