Understanding, And One's Own Home

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_ It's TERRIBLE when one can't get understanding
in one's own family!

Papa has very little real sympathy for my
advanced ideas. And as for Mamma!

Sometimes I think I shall WRITE!

Express myself, my real Ego, in Song.

Not rhymes, of course. If I worked a year I
couldn't make two lines rhyme.

But rhyme is going out, anyhow.

Vers Libre is all the rage now.

We took it up not long ago -- our Little Group
of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and I feel
confident it is My Medium of Expression.

It is so untrammeled, isn't it?

And one should be untrammeled, both in Art and
Life, shouldn't one?

Often I ask myself, at the close of day: "Have I
been untrammeled today? Or have I FAILED?

If I could put my real Ego -- and how wonderful
the Ego is, isn't it? -- into vers libre, even Papa
might understand me.

I have always yearned to be understood!

I have drawn back from matrimony again and
again because I thought: "Will he understand me?
Will he see my real Ego? Or will he not?"

Only the other evening I was talking to the loveliest
man, who has been misunderstood by his wife.
It is FRIGHTFUL!

He is a sculptor. A cubist sculptor. But he
looks quite respectable -- really, some very good
people receive him.

And he has the most wonderful eyes -- sympathetic,
you know, and psychic -- but oh! so pure, too!

He dotes on purity. He told me that.

His wife does not understand him. She does
not see his real Ego.

He said to me: "I can read you like an open
book. You are yearning. You are yearning for
real understanding. No one has EVER understood you.
Is that not so? Is that not your secret?

Alas! It was. I could not deny it.

I said to him: "But is real understanding EVER attainable?"

He sighed and said: "Alas! The Unattainable!"

I knew why he sighed--there is so much of it --
the Unattainable!

"What one attains," I said, "is often so intangible --
do you not find it so?"

"Alas!" he said, "the Intangible!"

And I felt, somehow -- in a queer psychic way
that is elusive, you know -- strengthened and
sweetened spiritually by our sad little talk.

Our real Egos had been in communion. That's
what he said.

He has nine very commonplace children, and his
wife is very difficult socially.

She insists on filling some sort of commercial
position, although he says her place is in the home.

So they have grown apart. People don't invite
her places. Only him.

Oh! to be understood! _

Read next: Thoughts On Heredity And Things

Read previous: How Suffering Purifies One!

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