Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, July 25, 2007


People living deeply have no fear of death.

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

- Anais Nin, remarkable woman, who
made the first entry in her famous diaries
on this day, 1914


Nin’s diaries began at age 11 and ended just before her death over 60 years later. She was a writer of female erotica, confessed to sexual relations with her father, and had lovers such as Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Edmund Wilson, and James Agee. She was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974. Most important, she had a fine and brilliant mind. Read her stuff. It is stimulating. Dismissing people who live outside the acceptable boxes of our chained minds is self-destructive.

Ponder her two quotes. They are, to me, core in terms of being human. Deep living dissolves fear; who has time to worry about death when living is so entrancing! Is this not the metaphorical meaning of such concepts as Resurrection? Reincarnation? Eternity?

And if we can’t love, we are inhuman. This is why we must abandon ourself to Love. If we don’t, we shrivel. Go nowhere. Can only be pitied.

Suppress the impulse to turn away from the unconventional.

Brian+