The Red Notebook

Music: none. written in absolute silence

The Journals of Anaïs Nin, Volume 5, 1947-1955

On the cover, Anaïs Nin is a fragile, yet strong-looking woman. She looks fearlessly into the camera. She looks at me.

She was a writer, and she lived in wonderful places like Paris and New York, and wherever she went she attracted people like writers, artists, composers and film-makers. Which I have never known (and may never know), but some of the things she says make me feel that I know her.

It says she lived between 1903 and 1977. I’m reading her book and I love it and I can’t believe she died before I was even born!

In winter, 1948, she wrote that we receive a fatal imprint in childhood, at the time of our greatest plasticity . . . she writes of the fallibilities, the errors, the weaknesses of parents . . . and more besides. I only half understand this . . . I will keep reading.

I wonder if I read enough about the lives of other women whether I would find out how to live my own. Whether I’d feel surer about what I wanted to do with myself. Everything that has happened to me up to now has been by chance. I feel that I have been waiting my whole life for something to happen. For someone to come along and change me. Or for a grand event, like in an opera –lots of shrill singing and fancy costumes.

But now, I want to choose the way I live my life.

The big question is, How?

The Blue Notebook

All right, Blue. Your turn.

Things are said to come out of the blue. It heralds the unexpected. It is the colour of the sky and Anastasia’s eyes. Of rosemary flowers, and memory.

You look like a trustworthy colour. I can tell you everything. Can’t I?

I remember . . .

I remember nothing.

The Yellow Notebook

Yellow is said to be the colour of cowardice, but to me it is the colour of optimism. Sunshine. Sunflowers. Egg yolks (which become chickens, if they are permitted to).

I have no idea what I will write next. I will just write.

A girl (tall, with smooth blonde hair caught back with a clip) is walking through a tunnel in the city.

Concrete floor, old tiles on the walls. Grimy. People on either side of her, rushing to and from the trains. She walks slowly, in a pair of dark shoes with high heels (tippy shoes, she teeters slightly). She wears a charcoal-coloured suit –a jacket and tailored skirt. I can’t see her face, only her back, as she walks purposefully to the trains.

She’s a girl who works in an office. A serious girl. At least, a girl with a serious job –an interesting job. She carries a soft leather briefcase bulging with papers (but not bulging too much). Some work she’s taking home?

Where is she going? Who is she?