Activity

Reread my screenplay. The last section is dreadful—a post-mortem feeling. R came over to E’s for tea. Her light presence. We talked about standards in art, what it means that her mother likes Pro Hart, whether aesthetics is separate (as a study) from ordinary life. Whenever she’s with me I feel che…

Dreamt I was in a play but had not learnt my lines. Another character spoke to me expectantly and my mind was blank. I feigned a collapse, fell to the ground and lay there for a long time. Nobody came to see how I was. I looked up and everyone had gone.

We quarrel over his demand for furtiveness. I find it humiliating. He says I’ve over-reacted to a minor event. I say he doesn’t know how minor or major this incident is to me. Our wills clash. I feel the toughness and irony in him and I display my own. He says, ‘I’ve suffered horribly through all t…

V showed me a couple of American short stories he likes: Irwin Shaw, ‘The Girls in Their Summer Dresses’ and ‘Mixed Doubles’ and then one by Cheever, ‘The Enormous Radio’. They brought me up once more against the hopelessness of men and women, the vast chasms between them—the death of sexual love, …

I never knew before the difference between sadness and sorrow. Sadness is general, broad, heavy, passive. Sorrow is sharper, more focused, more active, working hard. I could even say labouring. Labouring with sorrow. When I think of his wife’s unhappiness, my own ‘indignities’ almost vanish—because…