I had a tooth out the other day, curious and interesting like a little lifetime—first, the long drawn drag, then the twist of the hand and the crack of doom!

Women write them. They’ve nothing else to do but die into diaries . . . subside like unpillowed fluff.

Sunday, March 8th. I intend no introspection. I mark Henry James’ sentence: observe perpetually. Observe the oncome of age. Observe greed. Observe my own despondency . . . I will go down with my colours flying . . . Suppose I selected one dominant figure in every age and wrote round and about. Occupation is essential. And now with some pleasure I find that it’s seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat I think it is tare that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.

I intend no introspection. Mark that. Occupation is essential. When I had written what I had written; when I had reached the present the dead end of history—to find it empty as an empty pantry;

then I had fallen

into the finis of my book: into its calm (all right, cold) yet angry conclusion; because it ceased in a silence which had silence for its fanfare; the blank page beyond did not even say “blank,” any more than death itself says “death,” or “over,” or “finis,” or “done.”

I should not have liked to sup upon poor Virginia’s sup. Did she mark how her own sentences secretly sentenced her? did she observe how her watery grave was foretold by the very self she sheltered and lent her pen? her petticoats, perhaps, like wet flags, her pockets weighted with stones, and the March of her suicide with an 8 in it, like this entry? What did that other dame—Colette—command? Regarde! Conrad, Chekhov: see! they said. Sniff, pry, peek, peer. Look. Scrutinize. Ah, lovely, lovely, tender little . . . Look and love God and get lucky. Et tu auras la grâce des grandes choses. Well, I intend no in . . . Out is all of it. Out of the print and over the cover . . . to grandmother’s house we go. I study all other methods of desperate disappearance.