Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/171

 announces itself something outside that and different, something stronger, something masterfuler than ingenuity and savagery together. It tortures my nerves: it burns my eyes: it lames my flesh: it jerks and flays and garbles my inner body. The ingenuity of man has produced opium and cocaine which would combat and hide it all behind a heavy curtain of stupor, with effects equally damaging if less grievously subtle.

The Smell of Turpentine is a thing to bear since all its counter-things bring only solider evil.

The paint was put on the wood by a dirty little man whom I briefly inspected as something removed from my range of life. In return he covertly eyed me. I expected my wakeful hours would be punished by strong new paint and be-visioned by dirty little men. But it is all sheer Turpentine with a power suggesting nothing human nor nor divine. Just itself: a goblin virulence.

In all my Soul and bones and Mary-Mac-Laneness it is damn-the-Smell-of-Turpentine as a bastard murderous hurt.

I have an odd feeling God has no more power over it than have I.

It half-calls for a different Turpentine God.

I am shakily mad, I believe, from a so slight sticky matter.