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Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s
Page 165
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mistake made at the gastroenterostomy, and that, - I was permitted to come out from under the anesthesia. I hoped one day not to think this the unfortunate business, I did then. It is strange how we hang on when oblivion promises such peace. To one, it somehow does not make sense. It is not reasonable that this be so. Yet strangely enough, the more difficult the struggle the more tenaciously we seem to cling to life - to stay with the fight. Why this mighty effort to maintain and continue the status quo (?) when oblivion at the same time offers such peace? Is it always in the hope that the miracle may be around the corner, that something better is on the way? If we could not take the scrimmage piecemeal and could see the whole road unfolded ahead, I wonder just how many of us would stay with it to the bitter end? Now take me [heavens?], for example, I am not conditioned to tranquility; to serenity; to the cessation of dissonance and contention. Therefore I cling to the one thing I very well know - and struggle ceaselessly; violently, to maintain what is. This is exemplified, first of all, in the struggle of the organism, merely to exist; to survive; to be. Then after that comes the intense; the violent scrimmaging; the convulsive tearing asunder of the organism to project itself in creative effort. Always there is within, the fissuring; clefting; splitting, shifting process which is conducive only to a seething unrest; unceasing turmoil; turbulent periods of elated flying; followed by [delictous] depressions. It is really harder to live than not to have come back at all. One should never be sorry for the dead. They are at rest. It is to the living we should turn our gravest concern. For a while I certainly thought death might have been the kindest way out. There are many worse tradegies than death. I fell that perhaps I was finished any way and dead timber shouldn't be permitted to clutter up the landscape but should be cleared away and burned. And the the hope that somehow can never be successfully extinguished, the hope that survives all [illegible] and defeat, raised its head defiantly to all the world. The hope that I should someday do monumental painting, claimed the victory and clinched the
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mistake made at the gastroenterostomy, and that, - I was permitted to come out from under the anesthesia. I hoped one day not to think this the unfortunate business, I did then. It is strange how we hang on when oblivion promises such peace. To one, it somehow does not make sense. It is not reasonable that this be so. Yet strangely enough, the more difficult the struggle the more tenaciously we seem to cling to life - to stay with the fight. Why this mighty effort to maintain and continue the status quo (?) when oblivion at the same time offers such peace? Is it always in the hope that the miracle may be around the corner, that something better is on the way? If we could not take the scrimmage piecemeal and could see the whole road unfolded ahead, I wonder just how many of us would stay with it to the bitter end? Now take me [heavens?], for example, I am not conditioned to tranquility; to serenity; to the cessation of dissonance and contention. Therefore I cling to the one thing I very well know - and struggle ceaselessly; violently, to maintain what is. This is exemplified, first of all, in the struggle of the organism, merely to exist; to survive; to be. Then after that comes the intense; the violent scrimmaging; the convulsive tearing asunder of the organism to project itself in creative effort. Always there is within, the fissuring; clefting; splitting, shifting process which is conducive only to a seething unrest; unceasing turmoil; turbulent periods of elated flying; followed by [delictous] depressions. It is really harder to live than not to have come back at all. One should never be sorry for the dead. They are at rest. It is to the living we should turn our gravest concern. For a while I certainly thought death might have been the kindest way out. There are many worse tradegies than death. I fell that perhaps I was finished any way and dead timber shouldn't be permitted to clutter up the landscape but should be cleared away and burned. And the the hope that somehow can never be successfully extinguished, the hope that survives all [illegible] and defeat, raised its head defiantly to all the world. The hope that I should someday do monumental painting, claimed the victory and clinched the
Iowa Women’s Lives: Letters and Diaries
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