11 July 1921 – 17 July 1921

Went to the Palace, and had the gland punc- tured. It is very unlikely that they will save the skin. I am sure, from the feeling, that they won't, and that this affair is only beginning. I shall be back at the Palace before the week is out. In the meantime I am exhausted and can't write a stroke. Well, I must confess I have had an idle day. God knows why. All was to be written, but I just didn't write it. I thought I could, but I felt tired after tea and rested instead. Is it good or bad in me to behave so? I have a sense of guilt, but at the same time I know that to rest is the very best thing I can do. And for some reason there is a kind of booming in my head — which is horrid. But marks of earthly degradation still pursue me. I am not crystal clear. Above all else I do still lack application. It's not right. There is so much to do, and I do so little. Life would be almost perfect here if only when I was pretending to work I always was working. But that is surely not too hard. Look at the stories that wait and wait just at the threshold. Why don't I let them in? And their place would be taken by others who are lurking beyond just out there — waiting for the chance. Next Day. Yet take this morning, for instance. I don't want to write anything. It's grey ; it's heavy and dull. And short stories seem unreal and not worth doing. I don't want to write ; I want to live. What does she mean by that? It's not easy to say. But there you are! Queer, this habit of mine of being garrulous. And I don't mean that any eye but mine should read this. This is — really private. And I must say — nothing affords me the same relief. What happens as a rule is, if I go on long enough, I break through. Yes, it's rather like tossing very large flat stones into the stream. The question is, though, how long this will prove efficacious. Up till now, I own, it never has failed me. . . . One's sense of the importance of small events is very juste here. They are not important at all. . . . ! ? Strange ! I suddenly found myself outside the library in Wcerishofen: spring — lilac — rain — books in black bindings. And yet I love this quiet clouded day. A bell sounds from afar ; the birds sing one after another as if they called across the tree-tops. I love this settled stillness, and this feeling that, at any moment, down may come the rain. Where the sky is not grey, it is silvery white, streaked with little clouds. The only disagreeable fea- ture of the day is the flies. They are really maddening, and there is nothing really to be done for them : I feel that about hardly anything.