What If Anais Nin Was A Social Media Queen?

Social media has been good for Anais Nin! Twitter has facilitated a huge surge in her popularity due to her many quotes being tweeted on a nearly daily basis.  But what if social media existed in the 1930's? What if Anais, her lover Henry Miller, and his wife, June, all had the internet and their complex interactions were not recorded in letters but instead in Facebook statuses and Tweets?

The first magazine ever devoted to Anais Nin was called "Under the Sign of Pisces," which she described as "A Cafe In Space" because writers and readers could connect through reading the magazine which was the next best thing to meeting in person as they did in the cafes of Paris. I feel like the internet in general is a cafe in space because it's a place where people can "meet" and talk to each other regularly. But where does it exist? Technically, only in space.

After reading nearly every Anais Nin diary that exists, I'm convinced Anais would LOVE the internet! It would be her thing! But I also believe it would have added to her turbulence during those Miller/June years, because they'd have loved it too, and she would have to keep up with THEIR social media activity in addition to her own!

Henry's wife, June, lived in New York while Henry lived in Paris. Anais found June to be a fascinating person, and whenever June returned to Paris to visit Henry, she'd often spend time alone with Anais. Of course, June didn't know her husband was having a love affair with Anais. Regardless, June was a naturally flirtatious person and soon Anais was under June's spell as well.

Henry's apartment was not far from Anais and her husband Hugo's house at Louveciennes. By the way, Anais' husband, Hugo, would either not have been on social media at all or his involvement would have been very limited because he would have been way too busy with his job at the bank. As Anais said in "Henry and June," the brilliant 1990 indie film which dramatized their relationships: "You are even beginning to SMELL like the bank!" This physical separation between Henry and June would have taken on a different meaning if they had use of the internet. Even more so, the relationship between Anais and June. They would be internet buddies, and I believe their regular internet chats would have kept them in constant contact and made them closer than they ever were in real life. The internet would have ensured that they never lost touch as they did once June and Henry split up.

For Henry, social media would be his playground: thousands upon thousands of scantily clad to naked young women for him to not only look at but also to interact with. As much as Anais tried to accept Henry's life outside her own - not just with June but also in relation to his penchant for frequenting street prostitutes - Henry's social media activity would drive her crazy because it would be right in her face, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There'd be no end to her speculation about how many of these women whose Tweets he favorited, whose Facebook statuses he liked, and whom she could see chatting with him publicly would also be involved in his private life behind her back too. I can just imagine the subtweets:


Anais Nin @anaisensorcelled
Tomorrow I shall plunge myself face-down into my make-up palette. Surely, this is the look you prefer since clown faces are the only ones you follow.


As you can see above, Anais' Twitter handle would be "Anaisensorcelled." We all know "ensorcelled" was one of her favorite words and one which she used frequently in her diaries. She also would like the fact that it means "to enchant" or "to bewitch."  She'd be great at the selfie game (the pictures for this entry are what I surmise would be closest to the selfies Anais would take of herself and post. Just imagine one of her arms extended to take the selfie as opposed to hanging down at her side). Since Anais preferred mental connections with the men she was attracted to, she would keep her public account sexy, yet tasteful. She wouldn't post nudes, or near-naked pictures of herself in her bra and underwear. Anais was more of a "sexy-in-private" person. Although an extremely sexual person, she wouldn't have wanted to be DEFINED by her body. She would have identified herself as a writer first and foremost and would want to be treated that way. Having strange men post comments like: "Hey, chicky, I love your hot ass," would grate on her nerves.

While Anais would use social media to promote her writing, the internet would enable June to quit the dance hall forever and to start a lucrative business as a Cam Girl. June would not use her own name on Twitter as Anais did. She would drop her last name, "Miller," because she wouldn't want the men who were paying for her cam girl services to know too much about her. She'd simply be "June" with an xxoo after it for kisses and hugs to make her name look more cutesy and good for business.

                Maria de Medeiros, Fred Ward and Uma Thurman in "Henry and June" film


But on Facebook, June would use her full real name because all of their Facebook accounts would be private, and they'd already personally know all their Facebook friends in real life. All these friends they connected with on Facebook wouldn't know of the affair between Anais and Henry nor would they have known that June was a Cam Girl. Anais would interact very little with Henry but would instead put her friendship with June front and center. Here is the Facebook status for Anais and June, posted the morning after they spent a night out on the town alone together on one of June's visits from New York to Louveciennes:


Feeling: Loved (imagine the happy face with smiling eyes and two hearts above the eyes and one under the face):

"Had a blissful time with June Miller last night!  I learned so much from her even though she thinks I am the teacher!  We talked until midnight!  We talked all about her wonderful husband, Henry, who is SO lucky to have her!  Dinner was amazing -- the Anjou was flowing, and I couldn't have asked for a more perfect evening if I tried!  Thank you, June! And thank you, Henry, for allowing me to "borrow" her!"


So, as I said, Anais would LOVE social media and would embrace it the same way she did all the voluminous letters she wrote to those she loved over the years. But I think it may just have changed the course of history. As I said earlier, I believe she and June would have never lost contact, especially through Facebook. She would never lose touch with Henry either. Because just by logging in, he would always be there.
























The tradition of Anais Nin's Literary Journal "A Cafe In Space" is still alive! My essay: "Anais Nin - A Recipe for Immortality" is featured in its newest volume of the magazine, Volume 13, available in both Paperback and Kindle at Amazon.Com:

http://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Space-Anais-Literary-Journal/dp/0988917076/

Don't Treat Summer Like Another Item On Your To-Do List

I find it curious that several of my friends are walking around saying, "Isn't it a shame that summer is almost over?"  They've been making these comments since the first week of July. For me, summer always begins on July 1 and finishes on September 1, so how can summer be almost over during the first couple of weeks of July?

Lately, I've been finding that time seems to go by faster than it used to.  Sometimes, I'll be on Facebook, and it will seem like I've looked at so many statuses and scrolled through so many profiles (and wasted so much time), but then I'll go back to the Homepage and see something I commented on, and I'll be happy to know it had been only six minutes earlier! I think it's because we are all so busy these days.  We need to cram so many things into one day that now suddenly a week feels like a month. I think it's all the multitasking.  More time seems to pass by than actually has because not only do we still need to do our chores and all the things we used to do, but now we have added the extra tasks of checking our e-mails, our Facebook Page, and, of course, the most necessary responsibility of all: keeping up with our cell phones, I-Pods, and our various gadgets. We've added all this technology and all these gizmos that we supposedly NEED, yet meanwhile, we'd lived perfectly fine before any of them had even been invented.

When feeling overstressed, it wouldn't hurt to get out of ourselves and get immersed in the way life was lived before we had a To-Do List that measured from the ceiling to the floor. For example, in Anais Nin's Diaries, Anais discusses a typical summer night in her life similar to this:  "I went for a walk with Henry.  Then we read some of our writing to each other while we sat on the chaise lounge.  After that, I cooked dinner, and we opened a bottle of wine and talked."  They didn't have TV then.  Her journals give lengthy descriptions of each day, and when she writes down July 12, she knows it's July 12, which is the BEGINNING of summer.  She had no problem keeping track of the days.  Unlike those who think it is August 31 when it is only July 17!

So next time you find yourself lamenting that the summer is almost over, instead of checking off yet another thing on your To-Do List, I advise dropping everything and spending one whole day at the beach.   Feel the sand on your feet and the sun on your shoulders. Maybe you'll find that the day felt just like a day, and then a week can once again feel like a week, a month like a month, and a summer like a summer.

Happy Father's Day To Those Whose Fathers Never Grew Old

Freddie Rumsen from "Mad Men"

Father's Day has been a bittersweet day for me ever since my dad passed away when I was fifteen. My mom was concerned about me and my brother not having a father figure to help raise us since we were both teenagers.  My brother found a mentor in college, but I didn't think I needed one. Even though I was so young, I felt my personality had fully formed by then, and I knew that I was the person I was because I had my father to teach me for fifteen years.  My brutal honesty comes from him.  Probably part genetics and partly from observing his behavior.  My mom used to say to him, "Why can't you put on a smile for our friends? Why do they have to know you're in a bad mood?" and my dad would answer, "Because I AM in a bad mood.  Why should I have to be phony and pretend?"  Whenever we went out for dinner, and the waitress was OVERLY bubbly, my dad would raise his left eyebrow inquisitively as if to ask: "Is she for real?"  I immediately knew exactly what he was thinking.

Besides being honest, my dad was also very moral. His best friend, Hans, told me a story once of how my dad got upset when one of their mutual friends had a girl sitting on his lap.  He exclaimed to Hans, "Why is he letting her sit on his lap?  He's engaged to another woman!"  I share his love of music, and he helped me study for the Co-Op Test so I could ace it and get into Hill, the highly-esteemed high school of my choice. After that, I believed I had truly completed my childhood, so I found the idea of a replacement dad insulting.  I would never want to replace my father. I would never need to.  I felt that way for a really long time.

Speaking of Hans, he was very helpful to me when my dad died. When my father went out of remission, Hans brought in some cassettes of my dad's original songs into the hospital. He played a song called "Shadows Falling."  It had lyrics that reminded me of my dad as a young boy growing up: "Wish I could return somehow to walk upon the sand, catch the wind and rainbows and feel a welcome hand."  The lyrics made me cry after we left the hospital room, and all the way down the elevator, continuing into the parking lot.  No one knew how to comfort me.  Hans said, "Joan and I have fixed up the house.  We have the guest room finished.  You should come over and stay with us on weekends."  He, his wife, Joan, and son, Eden, took me in for many weekends, and Hans told me endless stories about my dad.  But I knew he couldn't replace him. 

Hans and I always remained in and out of touch.  A few years ago, we hadn't spoken to each other for a while.  We'd let too many years go by.  I didn't even know if he still had the same phone number, so I did a Google search.  I found a picture of him outside a school where they were testing for asbestos.  He was wearing a Bluetooth. Cellphones and Bluetooths were still new.  I asked my husband, "What is that thing people wear in their ears?  They're like cellphones, right?" and he answered, "They are Bluetooths.  Old men wear them."  Something about that statement just got to me: "Old men wear them."  I kept on recalling the image of Hans wearing his Bluetooth, and I knew then I had to get back in touch with him, and I was lucky to find him on Facebook.  We've been in touch ever since, and I now call him my Second Dad.

Another example of my longing for a father comes from an unlikely place:  My favorite TV show, "Mad Men." I've been faithfully watching since Season One, and I've seen most episodes at least twice.  One of my favorite characters, Peggy Olson, had started Season One as a secretary, but one day after participating in a focus group where the secretaries tested lipsticks, she makes a comment in front of "old-time ad man" Freddy Rumsen. She hands him a wastebasket where women had dabbed their lipstick onto tissues, and she tells him, "Here's your basket of kisses."  He asks her where she had heard that, and she says "I just thought of it."  Then she tells him that she didn't choose any of the shades of lipstick because someone already took her shade, and she says, "I don't think anyone wants to be one of a hundred colors in a box." Freddy sees potential in Peggy and suggests she be promoted from secretary to junior copywriter because she is creative and has a natural way with words. Peggy's career has soared since Season One, and it was really all thanks to Freddy Rumsen.  Even late in the current season, Freddy and Peggy have dinner, and he encourages her to go for a better copywriter job at a competing ad agency.  Their friendship has lasted.  I never knew why I was so drawn to this story until I realized that, in my mind, the Freddy/Peggy friendship/mentorship is like a father/daughter relationship.  Freddy is considered old-fashioned and out of date. My dad never became that.  He was always young. I never thought I'd have a need for an older father, or even a father figure at all since becoming an adult.  But between Hans's Bluetooth and Freddy Rumsen's belief in Peggy, I realize it must be something innate.

For One Brief Moment, We Can All Live Forever

Luise Rainer is the oldest living Oscar winner.  I learned that in the recent Oscar issue of Entertainment Weekly.  She's now 102 years old.  The last time I read her name was back in the early 1990's in the diaries of Anais Nin. I used to skim through them at the World's Biggest Bookstore during my lunch breaks.  I didn't know anything about Anais Nin, but I liked how the covers of each volume of her diaries had the same picture of her face but shaded in a different color. Eventually, I read her diaries and got hooked.  She made me fascinated about what life was like for an artistic, creative female writer living in Paris in the 1920's. Whenever I read books of people who lived many years ago or see a movie made in the early 20th century, I can't help but think that their heyday has passed and most of them aren't even alive anymore.  In the early 1990's, a few of the people mentioned in the Nin diaries were still alive.  I particularly remember that Anais's youngest brother, Joaquin, was still alive and over 90 years old. It was weird to think that there was still someone around who had lived all those experiences that Anais wrote about who could possibly still remember all those things.   But years later, the next time I googled Joaquin, I found out that even he had indeed passed.  It seemed the allure of the 1920's was over.

Which is what I thought when I first watched the 1929 movie "The Broadway Melody," the very first musical made in an era of only silent movies.  It was about two singing sisters and their struggles to make it from vaudeville to Broadway.  It was SO dated. I couldn't believe the silly hand gestures the performers made as they rehearsed their numbers, and as I watched, I couldn't help but think how all of them had passed away by now. 

The next day, I googled the names of the women who played the two sisters to see when they died.  First I googled Bessie Love.   She indeed had died in 1986 at the ripe old age of 87.  Then I googled Anita Page.  I thought it was a mistake when I saw that Anita Page had no year of death next to her name.  When I read her entry, it said she was now 97 years old and living in California!  The next night, I watched the movie again, and as I watched Anita Page on the screen, I imagined her getting ready for bed in California, how the weather must be beautiful this time of year, and how she was not only living on the screen, but she was living in real life as well.

I decided to find out if she had a MySpace page.  Before Facebook hit it big, MySpace was the place to be.  MySpace was great because you could actually connect with celebrities.  I remember being MySpace friends with Danielle Brisebois of "Annie" and "All In The Family" fame.  And you could tell that she took care of her own page, so when she accepted my friend request, she actually saw my name and picture and clicked "Accept."  Many other celebrity profiles were run by fans and not the actual celebrities.  But if you were early-MySpace savvy, you could tell which was which. 

So I found Anita Page's MySpace page which only had about 20 friends total!  I friended her and wrote a very brief message saying that I had just seen "A Broadway Melody" of 1929 and really enjoyed it.  I never expected a message back and was so surprised the next day when I received this really brief message saying, "Thank you (written as one word "thankyou") for your message.  I'm so glad you enjoyed 'A Broadway Melody.'  I didn't like it back in its day and always thought it was Bessie Love's picture.  I do like it now though."  Was it from her?  A 97 year old woman?  I never found out for sure.  But when she passed away about a year later at the age of 98, this man wrote a message thanking her fans, and again, "Thankyou" was written as one word.  The same way it was written on the message to me.  Obviously my message was written by this same man.  No one writes "Thankyou" as one word. Was she mentally acute enough that when he told her about my message, she told him what to write back?  Or did he just know she'd respond that way and wrote AS her?  I'd like to think it was the former rather than the latter.

I feel that as long as there are people who are still alive from a certain era of time, their era never really leaves us, and some of its magic still surrounds us.  I watch the 1970's TV show, "Maude," at 10:00 p.m. every night. My parents used to watch reruns of it at that very same time slot when I was in grade school. Conrad Bain and Bill Macy, the two male stars of the show, are still alive. I feel like as long as they are alive, then that period of time from my childhood when I was tucked into my warm bed, feeling protected, will never go away either.  Luise Rainer is still alive, and Anita Page was waking up on California mornings the days after I watched her in all her youth in a 1929 movie.  We can pretend for one brief moment that no one really dies.   If we try hard enough, we can convince ourselves it's so.