I, Mary MacLane/Chapter 44
THIS I write is a strange thing.
So close to fact: so far from it.
So close to truth: so surrounded by lies.
It does not contain lies but is someway surrounded by a mist of lies.
A strange thing about it is that it is expressing the Self Just Beneath My Skin.
That Self is someways trivial and outlandish and mentally nervous, flightly, silly—silly to a verge of tragicness. I know that to be true from a long acquaintance with me. It is oddly intriguing to read over some chapters and find it shown.
Some unconscious exact photography aids my writing talent.
Some chapters are bewilderingly and mysteriously true to life.
My everyday self that casually speaks to this or that person is nothing like this book. My absorbed self that writes a letter to an intimate acquaintance is not like this book. My heartfelt self that deeply loves a friend, and gives of its depths, and thrills answeringly to other depths, is not like this book.
This book is my mere Hidden Self—just under the skin but hid away closer than the Thousand Mysteries: never shown to any other person in any conversation or any association: never would be shown: never could be.
How Another, any Other, would come out: what Another would show: photographed Beneath the Skin—what do I know?
Perchance ten times more trivial and inconsequent and mad than Me.
If Another thinks Me someway mad, let him look at Himself Just Beneath the Skin.
Perchance Another every day as he thanks a janitor for holding open a door, would much prefer to drive a long rusty brad-nail deep into the janitor's skull.
Perchance Another has a brain like Goethe, a Soul like a humming-bird, a Heart like a little round nutmeg.
What do I know?
I know what I am.
Another may know what he is.
But I can't tell Me to Another and Another can't tell Himself to Me.
I can tell Me to myself and write it.
Another if he reads will see Me: but not as I see Me. Instead, through many veil-curtains and glasses, very darkly.