The Story of Mary MacLane | Page 2

it is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether my father, Jim MacLane of selfish memory, lived or died.
He is nothing to me.
There are with me still a mother, a sister, and two brothers.
They also are nothing to me.
They do not understand me any more than if I were some strange live curiosity, as which I dare say they regard me.
I am peculiarly of the MacLane blood which is Highland Scotch. My sister and brothers inherit the traits of their mother's family which is of Scotch Lowland descent. This alone makes no small degree of difference. Apart from this the MacLanes--these particular MacLanes--are just a little bit different from every family in Canada, and from every other that I've known. It contains and has contained fanatics of many minds--religious, social, whatnot. And I am a true MacLane.
There is absolutely no sympathy between my immediate family and me. There can never be. My mother, having been with me during the whole of my nineteen years, has an utterly distorted idea of my nature and its desires, if indeed she has any idea of it.
When I think of the exquisite love and sympathy which might be between a mother and daughter, I feel myself defrauded of a beautiful thing rightfully mine, in a world where for me such things are pitiably few.
It will always be so.
My sister and brothers are not interested in me and my analyses and philosophy, and my wants. Their own are strictly practical and material. The love and sympathy between human beings is to them, it seems, a thing only for people in books.
In short, they are Lowland Scotch and I am a MacLane.
And so, as I've said, I carried my uninteresting existence into Montana. The existence became less uninteresting, however, as my versatile mind began to develop and grow and know the glittering things that are. But I realized as the years were passing that my own life was at best a vapid, negative thing.
A thousand treasures that I wanted were lacking.
I graduated from the High School with these things: very good Latin; good French and Greek; indifferent Geometry and other mathematics; a broad conception of History and Literature; peripatetic philosophy that I acquired without any aid from the High School; genius of a kind, that has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent strong young woman's-body; a pitiably starved soul.
With this equipment I have gone my way through the last two years. But my life, though unsatisfying and warped, is no longer insipid. It is fraught with a poignant misery--the misery of Nothingness.
I have no particular thing to occupy me. I write every day. Writing is a necessity--like eating. I do a little housework, and on the whole am rather fond of it--some parts of it. I dislike dusting chairs, but I have no aversion to scrubbing floors. Indeed, I have gained much of my strength and gracefulness of body from scrubbing the kitchen floor--to say nothing of some fine points of philosophy. It brings a certain energy to one's body and to one's brain.
But mostly I take walks far away in the open country. Butte and its immediate vicinity present as ugly an outlook as one could wish to see. It is so ugly indeed that it is near the perfection of ugliness. And anything perfect, or nearly so, is not to be despised. I have reached some astonishing subtleties of conception as I have walked for miles over the sand and barrenness among the little hills and gulches. Their utter desolateness is an inspiration to the long, long thoughts and to the nameless wanting. Every day I walk over the sand and barrenness.
And so then my daily life seems an ordinary life enough, and possibly, to an ordinary person, a comfortable life.
That's as may be.
To me it is an empty damned weariness.
I rise in the morning; eat three meals; and walk; and work a little, read a little, write; see some uninteresting people; go to bed.
Next day, I rise in the morning; eat three meals; and walk; and work a little, read a little, write; see some uninteresting people; go to bed.
Again I rise in the morning; eat three meals; and walk; and work a little, read a little, write; see some uninteresting people; go to bed.
Truly an exalted, soulful life!
What it does for me, how it affects me, I am now trying to portray.

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January 14
I have in me the germs of intense life. If I could live, and if I could succeed in writing out my living, the world itself would feel the heavy intensity of it.
I have the personality, the nature, of a Napoleon, albeit a feminine translation. And therefore I do not conquer; I do not even fight.