Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/155

 from standing foolishly near some foolish human melting-pots.

No matter for any of it. I want to plunge headlong into life—not imitation life which is all I've yet known, but honest worldly life at its biggest and humanest and cruelest and damnedest: to be blistered and scorched by it if it be so ordered—so that only it's realness—from the outside of my skin to the deeps of my spirit.

It is not happiness I want—nothing like it: its like never existed since this world began.

I want to feel one big hot red bloody Kiss-of-Life placed square and strong on my mouth and shot straight into me to the back wall of my Heart.

I write this book for my own reading.

It is my postulate to myself.

As I read it it makes me clench my teeth savagely: and coldly tranquilly close my eyelids: it makes me love and loathe Me, Soul and bones.

Clench and close as I will the winds flutter and stir and crumple and twist my petals as they will:—as I sit here tiredly, tiredly sane.