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108
Tuesday, April 17, 1928

Jan 22, 1930

It seems queer to me, every time I read any part of this diary, that I am sentimental enough, or silly enough to write all that I do write.  It is perfectly all right to think such foolish things, but when I read them months afterward, they seem so assinine. This whole diary is really nothing more than the account of the "puppy-love" of a perfectly ordinary person, who would like so very much to be more than that. If I am really cherishing the hope of uniting, I should make it my aim to write nothing without trying to compensate for its ideas with literary merits.  Al, Dan, Orvil, Peanuts, Tommy, are all in here — and yet not one of them is really here ... not one of them is really real for me either, because I have distorted them so for myself, by idealizing and creating dramatic situations. Most natural is the part about coming home for Europe and finding it difficult.  That is decidedly true.  And I am still laboring under the strain of being cleverer in some things than most of the people I know, and not clever enough in others.  I still see the futility of successive Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays in movies and in theatres and at dance-places. I see how interesting Math, English, German and especially History can be ... I see the strain under which the "necking" business puts one — the childishness of it .. and the difficulties .. and the decisions. More and more I see the need of really


109
Wednesday, April 18, 1928

working hard and trying to do something. Preferably uniting.

Every now and then I wonder about Tommy.  I get very sentimental and rather sad. I wonder if it is the real Tommy I miss, or my Tommy.  I wonder, at my sensible moments, what would have happened if he had never written the second letter, and we were still on good terms.  Would I love him, now that the glamor [[strikethrough]] was [[/strikethrough]] has gone, and both time and space have set themselves as barriers between a rather fragile affection? Would I still plan the silly things I do plan, in those few glorious moments between being awake and asleep, and asleep and awake, and hope for all incredible things?  Would pen and ink and the post-office and realism make it all common-place and obvious, and rather long-drawn out and boring? Will I ever be content with what I have, or will I always want that which is just beyond?  If + times "Tommy" is nothing more than the symbol of days on board a ship, a purely abstract period, where there is no real time or latitude or longitude or even any sense of space, because [[strikethrough]] everything [[/strikethrough]] when there is no actual boundary, how can there be real space?  At other times he is the symbol of a rather completeness — or rather an [[strikethrough]] thing which [[/strikethrough]] agent who completed for me — happiness, intrigue ... tenderness ... excitement.  And then [[?long term]] he is Tommy as he is — six feet tall, blue eyes, and straight yellow hair — broad and big and conventional.  Tommy with his big smile. Tommy with the purple blazer and the southern accent. Tommy as I knew him - part of those ten days —