I can't put myself into my work just yet. There are too many things lingering around me. I am thinking of the 1968 Romeo and Juliet, and my poor heart is taken with sensibility for my sixteenth year. It is one decade since, and perhaps that is why sixteen has been so much with me the past few months. I am not longing for the past, but I want sunlight and long moments to dream as I did then. I will work, because I know there is no other agreeable path to noon and Lucrece, but I am dying a little with this longing for high passion and reverie. Shelley, you are not far from me nor are my other dreams. You are the merest thought, just a moment away.
I finished Marion Harland's guide tonight and I wonder ceaselessly at two things. 1. She is so down on America! Even more than I am. She complains of things in which I am so well-steeped I could not see them for what they were. In particular, American style and cookery. It is true that our food, which we count as so much more generous in portion than the overseas counterpart, is as coarse and indecorous as it is plentiful, but as an American woman I cast up my hands and declare I would rather spend my time on something else. She makes an interesting point about American women's fashions. In France women wear what looks good on them, and in America women wears what comes off the manufacturing line in the latest style. It is very conformist, and I have to admit I feel it in myself, for I would be embarrassed to wear something that is "out" even if it flattered me better. 2. Harland's other point I feel clearly from last night's experiences. I looked in my journ...