Sunday, June 19, 1921.
S. S. Monterey. En route for Vera Cruz.
Dick and I are so happy. It is calm as a lake and gets better every hour.
The first day the color of the sea was a deep Prussian blue. The next day it was pure sapphire. To-day it has been the same color as the sky, so you could not tell where they met on the horizon. and so transparent that one could see the fishes deep down. There were flying fishes too. They rose up at our ship’s prow and skimmed over the sea surface like little silver aeroplanes!
The ship seems so small and the sea so large and we seem to be going so slowly, so leisurely, as if all the time in the world were at our disposal and we simply didn’t care where or when we fetched up.
Last night it was agreed that Dick should stay up late as a great treat. He wanted to see how night comes on the ocean. Almost as if it were for Dick’s appreciation, night played up in the most dramatic fashion. From behind a cloud bank there appeared a tiny speck of orange. It grew in as short a space as could be counted in seconds into a big round moon, a cloud that drooped over it was lit up like a human face by firelight. Dick asked: “Who is the figure in the sky?” It looked like a giant Destiny gazing into an orange crystal. The reflection made a golden rippling pathway straight across the sea to us. Dick, who was sitting on the ship’s bow with his legs dangling over and one arm tightly clinging round my neck, suddenly kissed me, fervently, which was exactly what I felt about it! On the opposite side there was a lightning display for our benefit. It came from one point, always from behind the same cloud bank. It turned the sky into the most perfect Valkyric background. When Dick asked me what the stars were like to touch: “Are they soft, or do they burn?” I had to tell him they were great big worlds like ours. Dick felt very small—we both did.
Whatever Mexico may or may not have in store for us, the journey alone is well worth while. The contrast after four bewildering months in New York is extreme. The peace and the beauty are reviving and one gets back one’s sense of judgment, which one is apt to lose in the crowd.
How unimportant it is, whether anyone thinks I am or am not Bolshevik, how little it matters if someone has turned their back on me at dinner, or unduly praised whatever work I’ve done. How completely nothing matters except to be on speaking terms with oneself, and one cannot be unless one is living one’s own life, and not playing a part. All of which sounds very pedantic. I believe one is apt to get pedantic if one is alone.
No one on board is the least interesting, but one young man has insisted on attaching himself. He is a Mexican architect, who has just graduated from the University at Philadelphia. He will be very useful at Vera Cruz with the luggage. There is a middle-aged American who inspires that unfailing American reliability. When I told him what I had heard of Mexico and Mexicans: “Forget it!” he said; and so I am facing my destination with a blank mind.
My feelings at leaving New York were conflicting. In a sort of way I felt I was leaving home. The compliment (for it should be a compliment) has two sides: Home of course is Home; but one is always rather pleased to get away. The U. S. is so conventional and comfortable, so proper and business-like, so well regulated, so absolutely just what it should be, it is like married life! To leave it, to launch out into the blue unknown is exciting and stimulating. It seems to me I belong to two rather prosaic countries. I, who love color, song, romance! There is no reason why one should have to choose between them, each supplies something the other lacks, and I might as well own them both. But Old World and tradition have become museum preserves. They are no longer working concerns; and the word “Imperialism” gives me a pain in my head. So much for my father’s land. In my mother’s country I find a heap of things that irritate me, but it’s a “live-world,” efficient, and infinitely large. There is space, without Imperialism, a new world, without decadence, and without tradition. Although it is reactionary and conservative on the surface, it is at heart young and progressive and opens wide areas to new ideas.