Everything that composed the kernel of his life went on in secret while everything that was false in him was on the surface.--Anton Chekhov, Lady With the Little Dog

What an extraordinary line to google, word by word. Someone did so yesterday evening - a man, I imagine - landing on a previous post of my blog.

I can and can't relate. I live outside society really, I have no position. But I get weirdly tongue-tied in public - my mind jams up. There's some disconnect between who I am as a blogger - I step out on a ledge - and the placid image I project (or the way I imagine I'm received) in public.

There's a melancholy to that line, it seems to me. Or perhaps it's the translation, and that what Chekhov wrote, intended, reads subtly but crucially differently in Russian.

It's a good description of what the right/left brain divide feels like, an eternal disconnect, separate spheres. Right brain = true; left brain = false. That is, to the extent that "emissary" left brain heeds right brain, hearkens to the call...

I have my poetry to protect me - Simon & Garfunkel sing at this very moment, on KZE. I am a rock. I am an island.

I personally relate to that better than to the Chekhov line.

I have an aversion to hypocrisy, instantly liked Mark Twain. It wasn't really possible for me to have such a bifurcated self. But (& I don't mean to sound smug or preachy or satisfied, etc.), integrity - truthfulness - was always important to me. False fronts. My father was good at that. He would make nice to the neighbors. Meanwhile he was a raging violent drunk alcoholic and we were tormented and beaten by him mercilessly for many, many years. The neighbors loved him though. Friendly guy - to them. Maybe that's why I have such an aversion to utterly lying false fronts. My mother would tell me, when I was a girl, that I shouldn't tell others of my problems.

I've dug out a paper I wrote in 10th grade, for English 10-0, March 1975, on Huckleberry Finn. A concluding line: "Huck the irreligious 'heathen' is virtuous and good, the religious devotees are a bunch of hypocritical and un-Christian sinners." [My English teacher crossed out a bunch of - !]

Darling, and who ever the Arkansian googler was, I hope you're happy - truly - even if we're required to put up false fronts and keep our secret lives to ourselves. It's our culture that's so impossible. How is one to cope? (Yes, I know - yoga, meditation - yes, but - ?)

Someone googled an image I had posted a long while back. I'll post it again. I like it.

Very many kisses darling, XOXO -