Anais Nin loved Henry Miller utterly. Completely. In him she found her equal in mind. She was consumed by him emotionally, physically, sensually (and he with her). I read what she writes about him, about her love for him; his letters to her, and I warm up and puddle and melt from desire and yearning, an inexorable and hot longing.
This is what I seek. I thought I had found the connection of mind and spirit in someone I had met, the possibility for a true meeting of souls in a deep, deep connecting way … intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, AND sensually, but not so after all. I had started to think it was all a cruel delusion, wanting that sort of connection, that it was not humanly possible, an impossible dream none of us can ever reach. But to read these passages… I see it is possible.
“Later, a small dark room, so shabby, like a deep-set alcove. Immediately, the richness of Henry’s voice and mouth. The feeling of sinking into warm blood. And, overcome with my warmth and moisture. Slow penetration, with pauses and twists, making me gasp with pleasure. I have no words for it; it is all new to me. …
“My hunger is not abnormal. With Henry I am content. We come to a climax, we talk, we eat and drink, and before I leave he floods me again. I have never known such plenitude. It is no longer Henry; and I am just woman. I lose the sense of separate beings. …
I am humble before my giant Henry. And he is humble before me. “You see, Anais, I have never before loved a woman with a mind. All the other women were inferior to me. I consider you my equal.” And he, too, seems to be full of a great joy, a joy he has not known with June. “
“That last afternoon in Henry’s hotel room was for me like a white-hot furnace. Before, I had only white heat of the mind and of the imagination; now it is of the blood. Sacred completeness. I come out dazed in the mellow spring evening and I think, now I would not mind dying. Henry has aroused my real instincts, so that I am no longer ill-at-ease, famished, incongruous in my world. I have found where I fit. I love him, and yet I am not blind to the elements in us which clash and out of which, later, will spring our divorce. I can only feel the now. The now is so rich and so tremendous…
“I meet Henry in the gray station, with an instantaneous rising of my blood, and recognize the same feelings in him. He tells me he could hardly walk to the station because he was crippled with his desire of me…
“And here I stumble, because of inexperience, dazed by the intensity and savagery of those hours. I only remember Henry’s voraciousness, his energy, his discovery of my buttocks, which he finds beautiful–and oh, the flowing of the honey, the paroxysms of joy, hours and hours of coition. Equality! The depths I craved, the darkness, the finality, the absolution. The core of my being is touched by a body which overpowers mine, inundates mine, which twists its flamed tongue inside of me with such power. He cries, “Tell me, tell me what you feel.” And I cannot. There is blood in my eyes, in my head. Words are drowned. I want to scream savagely, wordlessly–inarticulate cries, without sense, from the most primitive basis of my self, gushing from my womb like the honey. Tearful joy, which leaves me wordless, conquered, silenced. God, I have known such a day, such hours of female submission, such a gift of myself there can be nothing left to give. But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough, not savage enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.”
“He sleeps in my arms, we are welded, his penis still in me. It is a moment of real peace, a moment of security. I open my eyes, but I do not think. One of my hands is on his gray hair. The other hand is spread around his leg.”
Not once in my (now becoming long!) life. But others have found it, she found it. Where is the person to match me, I wonder? Oh, to have this sensualism bought out in me … the thought makes me swoon, makes waves wash over me … I long so much, desire so much. One day I will choke on it. I wait. For the faceless, unknown man. And hope he actually exists somewhere!