“John was looking for me from his window.” Junho 17, 2020

“June 17, 1940

John was looking for me from his window. He was tense, highly strung, overwhelmed. We talked a little, and then he came over and kissed me. He took all my clothes off. He was amazed by my body, the body of a girl, yet more than a girl…ageless. I felt his fear, but to tell the truth, I was afraid too, as if this were my first love affair. I was intimidated because I knew what his imagination had made of me—a mythical figure. I knew he was overwhelmed and that I could not live up to my reputation of an experienced European woman of the world. It felt unreal, and I told him so. I was quiet, timid, passive, feminine—my own humanness put him at ease. He became impulsive, dynamic, violent, and our caresses were entangled in strangeness.
He is truly Henry’s son, a young savage, with the same blue eyes, same white skin, a laughing face, but with great strength. He is only twenty-six. I pushed aside the literary aura, the past, so that we could breathe. I said this was something happening in space. I wanted life…and there is life in John, an abundance of it. At first I dreaded my age—thirty-seven—but when we talked I realized I have no age in his eyes. John said he could tell everybody’s age, but not mine. He knows, for instance, what his wife will look like ten, twenty years from now, but he cannot tell about me. He feels I will live forever and that I have had many lives, far into the past. He said many poetic things—he is full of faith and ardor. Henry and I have expanded the world for him. I know this is to be a creation, and for that I am sad. I wanted something else, but I am so grateful for John, for his worship and his youth—he is a young giant, a force to come, full of potentialities. He is explosive, alert, violent, active, a strong personality. I enjoy his electric youth. It is better than living in the past, clinging to Gonzalo’s heaviness and inertia, to the tragedy of France’s death. A few days ago I was dying with France, dying with Gonzalo. Today I went to John’s room and forgot all about death. I felt my own youth; there was music again. At least my body is not dead. I told Eduardo I was going to pose for John, and Eduardo said: “It’s dangerous. He has his Moon over your Sun.” John says poetic things about my voice, is awake to my hair, my clothes, my skin. Is the current of life set in motion again, by John? He is tender, worshipful, too excited to sleep. Because he is romantic and idealistic, there is the danger of him mistaking this for love.”

Anaïs Nin, “Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939 – 1947”