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114 Monday, April 23, 1928 a cage will not be happy set free if he has become accustomed to the cage! It so happened that the very night he came in, looking the full Glemby wealth in his green and yellow dressing gown, that I was happy. I was happy with the idea of living — living to me then seemed only to mean being happy oneself and giving other people happiness. I felt joyous at being able to talk and breath and laugh. But [[strikethrough]] such [[/strikethrough]] this was not his idea of living — and it was too feeble and idealistic to pierce his armour. The day before I left he left — for a two month vacation. I wonder how he will feel during these eight weeks; I wonder if when he returns to Mt. Sinai [[strikethrough]] after [[/strikethrough]] on the chart saying David Glemby, Dr. Moscowitz, Em [[?payene]], No Visitors, the No will be Yes. This was the person who used quarters sometimes to telephone, who read and listened to a radio, and hated his brother, and didn't want to like people. And then there was Bob Jacobs. I came to one conclusion .... or perhaps it is not a conclusion. I used to think that ones life was a line, and that if some mathematician were to draw it it would resemble a temperature graph, straight lines going up and down, broader and [[?nanceent]] angles between, longer and shorter lines, but finally and always one continuous 115 Tuesday, April 24, 1928 line. All of a sudden it came upon me that this conception of ones life is wrong. And the very fact that I believed it may explain why I have been [[strikethrough]] so [[/strikethrough]] perhaps foolishly unhappy about the end of my surely foolish "love" affairs, unhappy about the end of any pleasant experience, and even perhaps why I have had a sorrow of dieing. I think now that life is a series of incidents. Therefore, if one were to draw a graph-like picture there would be one large circle, representing the physical length of life. This, I feel, is a circle because I do not believe in another life and therefore after life must be similar to the period before life. In this large circle there would be a myriad of smaller shapes — circles, elispes, large ones, small ones, flatened ones, irregular ones, full and complete ones, hundreds of different types. Once any one of these geometric shapes is started it is impossible to change it. Therefore it is impossible to extend any incident beyond its natural growth. It is impossible to force it to take the shape of [[strikethrough]] an id [[/strikethrough]] a dream incident. Unhappiness about it will not help. The only thing we can do is to try and make it a full and rich incident, worth the space it consumes. After all, since civilization itself is a cycle, since the physical duration of life is a cycle, so is every experience in life. Nature itself is built in just such
