Hermione and her Little Group of Serious Thinkers | Page 6

came to me all of a sudden: "Yes, physical suffering may be relieved -- but what is there to relieve spiritual suffering like mine?"
Though, of course, it improves one.
I think it is beginning to show in my eyes.
I looked at them for nearly two hours in the mirror last evening, trying to be quite certain.
And, you know, there's a kind of look in them that's never been there until recently. A kind of a -- a ----
Well, it's an INTANGIBLE look, if you get what I mean.
Not exactly the HUNGRY look, more of a YEARNING look!
Thank heaven, though, I can control it -- one should always be captain of one's soul, shouldn't one?
I hide it at times. Because one must hide one's suffering from the world, mustn't one?
But at other times I let it show.
And, really, with practice, I think I am going to manage it so that I can turn it off and on -- if you get what I mean -- almost at will.
Because, you know, in certain costumes that look will be QUITE unbecoming.
Quite out of Harmony. And Inner Beauty only comes through Inner Harmony, doesn't it?
Harmony! Harmony! Oh, to be in accord with the Infinite!
Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, "have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today, or have I failed?"

UNDERSTANDING, AND ONE'S OWN HOME
It's TERRIBLE when one can't get understanding in one's own family!
Papa has very little real sympathy for my advanced ideas. And as for Mamma!
Sometimes I think I shall WRITE!
Express myself, my real Ego, in Song.
Not rhymes, of course. If I worked a year I couldn't make two lines rhyme.
But rhyme is going out, anyhow.
Vers Libre is all the rage now.
We took it up not long ago -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and I feel confident it is My Medium of Expression.
It is so untrammeled, isn't it?
And one should be untrammeled, both in Art and Life, shouldn't one?
Often I ask myself, at the close of day: "Have I been untrammeled today? Or have I FAILED?
If I could put my real Ego -- and how wonderful the Ego is, isn't it? -- into vers libre, even Papa might understand me.
I have always yearned to be understood!
I have drawn back from matrimony again and again because I thought: "Will he understand me? Will he see my real Ego? Or will he not?"
Only the other evening I was talking to the loveliest man, who has been misunderstood by his wife. It is FRIGHTFUL!
He is a sculptor. A cubist sculptor. But he looks quite respectable -- really, some very good people receive him.
And he has the most wonderful eyes -- sympathetic, you know, and psychic -- but oh! so pure, too!
He dotes on purity. He told me that.
His wife does not understand him. She does not see his real Ego.
He said to me: "I can read you like an open book. You are yearning. You are yearning for real understanding. No one has EVER understood you. Is that not so? Is that not your secret?
Alas! It was. I could not deny it.
I said to him: "But is real understanding EVER attainable?"
He sighed and said: "Alas! The Unattainable!"
I knew why he sighed--there is so much of it -- the Unattainable!
"What one attains," I said, "is often so intangible -- do you not find it so?"
"Alas!" he said, "the Intangible!"
And I felt, somehow -- in a queer psychic way that is elusive, you know -- strengthened and sweetened spiritually by our sad little talk.
Our real Egos had been in communion. That's what he said.
He has nine very commonplace children, and his wife is very difficult socially.
She insists on filling some sort of commercial position, although he says her place is in the home.
So they have grown apart. People don't invite her places. Only him.
Oh! to be understood!

THOUGHTS ON HEREDITY AND THINGS
Isn't Heredity wonderful, though!
We've been going into it rather deeply -- My little Group of Serious, you know.
And, really, when you get into it, it's quite complicated. All about Homozygotes and Heterozygotes, you know.
The Homozygotes are -- well, you might call them the aristocrats, you know; thoroughbreds.
And the Heterozygotes are the hybrids.
Only, of course, they don't need to be goats at all.
Not but what they COULD be goats, you know, just as easily as horses or cows or human beings.
But whether goats or humans, don't you think the great lesson of Heredity is that Blood will Tell?
Really the farther I go into Philosophy and Science and such things the more clearly I see what a fund of truth there is in the old simple proverbs!
People used to find out great truths by Instinct, you know; and now they use Research -- vaccinate guinea pigs, you know, and all that sort of thing.
Instinct! Isn't Instinct wonderful!
And Intuition, too!
You