ABSTRACT
Wednesday, 4.11 [sic]: First half of day in Gusaweta; normal routine: got up late after bad night, had conversations with Bill about photography, etc. Examined films (after breakfast), cleaned camera, finished developing. Washed and shampooed. At 1 ready to leave; rain; wrote E.R.M.1 All that morning I was energetic, felt well, in love with E.R.M.—In the afternoon, instead of reading novel or idling, I read my old diary. Reflections: I asked myself whether my present life achieves the maximum of intensity obtainable in view of my health and good nervous condition. No:2I interpreted the doctrine that best work is done during leisure hours as doctrine of following line of least resistance, as taking it easy. Doubts à la S.I.W. [Stanislaw I.Witkiewicz]3-is it worth while to eliminate fruitful sources of inspiration (which every thinker and artist will find by following the line of least resistance)? But it is a fact that when you eliminate one form of inspiration you gain another, and that to eliminate line of least resistance is above all to eliminate pure waste of time (reading novels, sitting extra long in company, etc.). For instance, my present mode of life: I turn in too late, I get up at irregular hours. Too little time devoted to observation, contact with natives, too much to barren collecting of information. I rest too frequently, and indulge in ‘demoralization’ (e.g., in Nabwageta). I also thought about problems of keeping a diary. How immensely difficult it is to formulate the endless variety of things in the current of a life. Keeping a diary as a problem of psychological analysis: to isolate the essential elements, to classify them (from what point of view?), then, in describing them indicate more or less clearly what is their actual importance at the given moment, proportion; my subjective reaction, etc. For instance, yesterday afternoon: First version: ‘I went to Sinaketa in Raf.’s waga.’4 (I could give hundreds of examples of such versions.) Second version: (a) external impressions; landscape, colors, mood, artistic synthesis; (b) dominant feelings in respect to myself, to my beloved, to friends, to things; (c) forms of thought; specific thoughts, [programs], loose associations; obsessions; (d) dynamic states of the organism; degree of concentration; degree of higher awareness; [resulting] programs.—Concretely: (a) after departure from Gusaweta (I had a comfortable seat, the waga was heavy and stable), gray and dark blue clouds. Definition of the mood created by the flat coastline of Losuya, Kavataria: ‘afternoon holiday mood and rest’ (a smiling relaxation and promise of changes); flat and long coastline indented by shallow bays; today jetblack under the luminous distant clouds and a clear dark blue sky with the characteristic appearance of emptiness-like a blackened-sky effect in an old master. Then the landscape disappears; I read the diary, sailing between mangroves. Then the green lagoon of Oburaku. Oh yes, Boymapo’u manche: the water dun-colored with intense violet reflections (the dark-blue of the clouds blending with water). Oburaku lagoon: mat, pale green, like a naked chrysoprase, on that, the intense violet; above, dark blue clouds and intense goldish
green mangroves and other trees. (b) Feelings for E.R.M. steady, am continually referring to her, but I am above all alone. I am entirely caught up in creative thoughts, seized by a wave of concentration. (c) Clearly defined ideas: the nature of psychology and to what extent introspective analysis modifies psychic states; also, is introspective analysis discredited because it modifies states?—Historical problems (?)—associations: memories of my life in Samarai; memories of Paul and Hedy5 suddenly come to me out of nowhere. (d) Dynamically, I am in a state of concentration; I resolve not to read novels, to go to bed and get up at regular hours, to write letter to N.S., to write regularly, every day, to E.R.M.; to attain absolute mental faithfulness to her, as well as to aim at achieving ‘a strong will’ in the sense I gave this term previously.
