Havana, Wednesday, June 5, 1912.
Feeling very much chastened, following the deepest disgust with myself and everyone, and everything else for that matter. I must state most emphatically that for the most part all that has gone before (during the past six months at least) is due to disease; not specific, but generally run-down, nervous, over-tired condition of body and mind. Therefore, although to-day again I start with hope to fight on, I do so with less wild enthusiasm, less tenseness. After all, the world does not revolve around me. I have sometimes thought it did, or at least acted as if I thought so.
Being calmer on my determination, the reactions I trust will be less violent. I have the feeling that I only have to get over this tired, nervous condition to be once and for all on the road to victory over myself.
One thing I will do—throw overboard as it were my preconceived half-formed ideas and start as a child. Too much have I stuck to convention and prejudice while congratulating myself on my radicalism.
Of course, everything is dependent on my recovery of health. Without this, life will indeed be not worth living, because the very things my heart and mind are set on accomplishing will be impossible, and a conventional, plodding life devoted to the accumulation of money is impossible for me. Death is much preferable. Art, philosophy, love of life in its nakedness, without false convention, must be my keyword, not for happiness, for that were impossible, but for sufficient interest to carry me through.