July 1922

Sierre. This is a damning little note-book, quite in the old style. How I am committed ! To-day is Tuesday. Since leaving Montana I have written about a page. The rest of the time I seem to have slept ! This, of course, started all the Old Fears : that I should never write again, that I was getting sleeping sickness and so on. But this morning I nearly kicked off, and this evening I feel perhaps a time of convalescence was absolutely necessary. The mind was choked with the wrack of all those dreadful tides. I wrote to K to-day. It seems to bring things nearer. It's only now I am beginning to see again and to recognise again the beauty of the world. Take the swallows to-day, their flutter-flutter, their velvet- forked tails, their transparent wings that are like the fins of fishes. The little dark head and breast golden in the light. Then the beauty of the garden, and the beauty of raked paths. . . . Then, the silence. I wage eternally a war of small deceits. Tear this book up ! Tear it up, now ! But now I am pretending to be making notes on a book I have already read and despise. . . . What dreadful, awful rot! I should like to write the canary story to-morrow. So many ideas come and go. If there is time I shall write them all. If this uninterrupted time continues. The story about this hotel would be wonderful if I could do it. If there is a book to be read, no matter how bad that, book is, I read it. I will read it. Was it always so with me? I don't remember. Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.