I am extraordinary.
I have tried longingly, passionately, to think that even this sand and barrenness is mine. But I can not. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it, like all good things, is beyond me. It has something that I also have. In that is our bond of sympathy.
But the sand and barrenness itself is not mine.
Always I think there is but one picture in the world more perfect in its art than the picture of me in my sand and barrenness. It is the picture of the Christ crucified with two thieves. Nothing could be more divinely appropriate. The art in it is ravishingly perfect. It is one of the few perfect pictures set before the world for all time. As I see it before my mind I can think only of its utter perfectness. I can summon no feeling of grief at the deed. The deed and the art are perfect. Its perfectness ravishes my senses.
And within me I feel that the picture of me in my sand and barrenness—knowing that even the sand and barrenness is not mine—is only second to it.
[March 11.]
SOMETIMES when I go out on the barrenness my mind wanders afar.
To-day it went to Greece.
Oh, it was very beautiful in Greece!