Nelka | Page 9

and the regret or irritation I feel against many existing conditions is not wholly disagreeable. This is youth, and when I am older I will jog along at a slower rate. I am not like you, or like almost anyone I know, but I admire and respect those most whom I resemble the least. I am one mass of contradictions to myself, perhaps, supremely self-centered."
Sofia 1900.
"The freedom I have, good or bad, does not depend on the external conditions of one's life. I have enough sense of what is practical to keep in certain lines. No conditions on earth would hamper me mentally and I want to get life-proof through living."
"How I hate business! More and more I am beginning to think less and less of what one accomplishes materially in this life. What does it matter? I think it is less help to be able to help those about one a little materially and be more or less a nonentity as an individual than to be able to mean something as a person with a heart and comprehension. There are some beautiful things in this life that everything organized tries to make hideous and monstrous and I would always say 'gather ye roses while ye may.' I think that every one has almost a right to some happiness and a certain indulgence and the 'droit de temperament,' means something and need not always be selfish. If you do not think this, then there is only the other extreme of austere abnegation of self for any cause however trivial. Nature is the only guide and I don't believe Nature is bad. Of course the curse of freedom will allow one for a long time to distort and vilely modify natural instincts, but at least one can fly from the too palpable artificial. Dear Poodie, don't sigh. I only let off steam in words--that is safe. I am still a slave to this disgusting civilization and always your very devoted 'Perfect One', that is to be, or might have been, Nelka."
Sofia 1900.
"I really ought not to talk because I don't give myself the trouble to put my thoughts on general things in order and in every comment I always have the desire to embrace everything. I follow my own thoughts but love the immediate point and my brain is not in the proper condition to command its own vagaries."
Sofia 1900.
"What a delightful and full summer I have had. I can only reiterate that I am satisfied. I have had so much. Given my nature and my life, more than anyone I know. I may be mistaken in everything but I never doubt my application when I am about to act. Perhaps I will some day, but I don't think so. I have learned a certain 'science de la vie,' meaning this time the artificial, irrational life that is practiced and that I despise. Apart from this I have my own notion of real life and that is my own luxury. When I write so it sounds so big and so out of place for a girl, I always regret saying anything. If what I think means anything it will be shown in my life and so far my life is only a selfish, soft existence, so perhaps that is all I mean. I don't know that I love many things with conviction, but I know I have a contempt with conviction for many things."
"I have stopped looking at life as written with a big L. Regarding it only as an indefinite term of years is much less appalling; it does not lessen the joys and does lessen the sorrows and disappointments. The method now is to catch every minute and stretch it for all it is worth."
"You say I am not adaptive. It is difficult to s'entendre on what that means. Many sides I am, to my detriment. Too many sides for it seems to me I can fit into almost any opening with equal interest. And I find very few environments wholly uncongenial. I am not conscious of exacting in my nature any particular strain or line but what irritates and antagonizes me in any environment is the presumption on the part of the creator of that environment that theirs is the only world-view. I suppose the really strongest thing in me is an instinctive spirit of contradiction, for I always rise spontaneously against anything and everything that is proclaimed to me as being so. This is perhaps rather sweeping but it is more or less so. People influence me never by what they tell me but by the general impression they make on me and that I see them make on other people. I believe what I just wrote is nonsense. I only mean to say that I am