Laboratory, Sanctuary, Diary

Anaïs Nin in a 1971 interview in Vogue collected in In Favor of the Sensitive Man and other essays talks about the origins of her famous diary.

I began the diary at the age of eleven on the ship coming to America, separated from my father, to describe to him this strange land and entice him to come. It would enable him to follow our lives. The diary was begun to bring someone back. My mother didn't let me mail it; and it became private, a house of the spirit, a laboratory. It became a refuge, a sanctuary.

It begins with the wished for presence of an interlocutor. In a sense speech for the other predates dialogue for the self.

And so for day 522
18.05.2008