Friday

.. Banish the word 'escape' ..

{photo by Miroslav Tichý}

"Q. Unknown: I am interested in so many things, and I have a terrible fear because my mother keeps telling me that I’m just going to be exploring the rest of my life and never get anything done. But I find it really hard to set my ways and say, “Well, do I want to do this, or should I try to exploit that, or should I escape and completely do one thing?”

A. Nin: One word I would banish from the dictionary is “escape.” Just banish that and you’ll be fine. Because that word has been misused regarding anybody who wanted to move away from a certain spot and wanted to grow. He was an escapist. You know if you forget that word you will have a much easier time. Also you’re in the prime, the beginning of your life; you should experiment with everything, try everything…. We are taught all these dichotomies, and I only learned later that they could work in harmony. We have created false dichotomies; we create false ambivalences, and very painful one’s sometimes -the feeling that we have to choose. But I think at one point we finally realize, sometimes subconsciously, whether or not we are really fitted 
for what we try and if it’s what we want to do.
You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you’re not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now."
...
side notes ..
{ The three summer reading books that I am rotating are ... The Burroughs File by William S. Burroughs that I picked up at City Lights Books on my last visit to San Francisco .. Marcel Duchamp ~ The Afternoon Interviews that a friend sent to me after reading it .. And The Diary of Anais Nin ~ Volume Three 1939-1944 .. 
A 1969 first addition that I found in a local bookshop .}  
{Woman holding opium pipe , Mexico City 1930s ,
by Miguel Victor Casasola ..
Notice the tail.}