Painful and beautiful. Like watching the birth of a butterfly. "We choose not randomly each other. We meet only those who already exists in our subconscious." Sigmund Freud ..."strength is a rhythm, not an absolute." "Life heals you if you allow it to flow, if you do not allow it to trap you." Diary of just before and during WW2. Again an again she plays the role of creative mother, muse, lover to _many_ all the while undergoing analysis to understand why she is afraid to receive a love equals her own capacity to love. "The human being we relate to best is the one who reflects our present psychic state." Her entries are rich and poignant - here her dieing / dead love for Gonzalo More: "lt is the old passion, the old love which guides our steps, which orders the drinks, guides our talk; it is the old passion which makes pale gestures with familiar warmth. The spark is not there, only a human, lingering echo of the past." She is not easily categorized. My provincalism wants to make judgements and then she writes this about her relationship with a young Gore Vidal: "...,Gore, my love, I see you so clearly now. I see you insecure and leaning for support on external values, because you don't yet know your inner personal values. I love you deeply for this true inner self revealed to me in your sincerity. This that you do not yet see or know clearly is the most valuable part of you. You need external proof of love, of your value, but they will count as nothing if you do not acquire faith in the core. There alone lies strength. Your faith in the hidden core, the best, where feeling and creation and deep values issue, that is what we must seek together..." "Gore, my love, I lie here listening to music and so filled with you that I marvel that an incomplete love should seem so complete. I ask myself whether you feel this, the intensity of a full love, the sense of completeness, of fulfillment. (Gore read this and wrote in his own hand, "Yes.") "This was the hardest of all surrenders: to give up being his analyst, the needed one, for the sake of the strength he will get. I want him strong. I want him to suffer less than I have. This is his reward for his own courage, his own capacity to love, his responsiveness, his constant truthfulness. He is so truthful, so direct, so worthy of being given all. I want to give him all the strength, all the power that comes from self-knowledge." "strength is a rhythm, not an absolute." "Life heals you if you allow it to flow, if you do not allow it to trap you." "l am free, as long as I don’t look too long at his mouth."(Gore Vidal) Incredible read. Yes she names names and gets into a degree of erotic detail in spots - but the most incredible thing to watch through her diary is her emerging (healed) self.