2/22/34

[Missing page, torn out. “2213” written at torn edge.]

Although a man may have suffered some great wound or loss – the loss of father, son, or wife, or arm, leg, or eye, of time in his life span, due to illness, perhaps – the world expects a great deal of him in the way of attitude. One of the first thoughts one who has been so bereaved would have would be that his outlook on life may not be changed, that those with whom he will come in contact will not understand his great sorrow or his deficiency, whichever it may be, and will put down any unusual action as eccentricity or childish weakness. And so the world does. If a Man has lost an eye or an arm and is more than normally jocular, people say he is peculiar. If he does not try to adjust himself to his loss, he becomes morbid, and people say he is brooding – and peculiar on that account. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to heal a wound without a scar. I try to forgive Mrs. S. for her outstandingly offensive faults by realizing that she is capable of very deep feeling for emotion and the finer things of life. Sometime I intend to ask those who may know if she has changed any since the death of her husband – I belive I will find she used to be different.

What is it in my soul – if that fits the locale of the feeling best – that makes me mentally catalogue things which will be of use to me as a writer some day. Writing down all these fleeting brain children, for example, and studying words, and other writers’ rhetoric. Is this what is know as a “calling”?