Dear Diary; Love, Padmini

"By beginning a diary, I was already conceding that life would be more bearable if I looked at it as an adventure and a tale. I was telling myself the story of a life, and this transmutes into an adventure the things which can shatter you."

-Anaïs Nin

So the next Lipstick Lunch will be all about diaries. I am really excited since a diary is a very important part of a girl's life. Tallulah Bankhead said, "It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time." A diary is a place where a girl can pour out all her feelings and deepest secrets, the one place where she can truly be herself. A diary is as much a trademark accessory of a girl as lipstick!

The most famous diarist is Anne Frank, a sweet young Jewish girl who recorded her family's hardships while in hiding during the Holocaust. I learned about Anne Frank in third grade and have been fascinated by her since then. I always thought that Anne Frank was so pretty and sweet.

As I learned about Anne Frank in later grades, I discovered that she had a dream of being a writer and kept a collection of stories later known as Tales from the Secret Annex.

Anne called her diary, Kitty. Anne wrote her diary in German and in English, in script and in cursive. She kept photos to decorate her diary. As soon as I learned about how she used photos as decoration, I started putting in stickers to decorate my diary!

I looked over Anne's diary again recently. One entry that I particularly like is her record of her thirteenth birthday where she receives her diary as a gift.
Another famous diarist is the writer,
Anaïs Nin who kept 150 diaries of a total of over 15,000 pages over a span of 60 years, from around the age of 11 to 71. Someone said that her diaries place her along the lines of Marcel Proust, whom she was influenced by and makes frequent references to. Her diaries recount her very extraordinary bohemian lifestyle. Anaïs had an extremely colorful life and affairs with many famous names in various fields of arts, such as Henry Miller. She was in an open marriage with two men clandestinely at the same time. She even shockingly had an affair with her own father at the age of thirty. Anaïs went to the famous psychoanalyst, Otto Rank for therapy, but he ended up hypnotized with her charisma, beauty, grace, and artist persona and engaged in an affair with her. As I wrote in my personal blog, I am fascinated by the trend in many gifted artists to have a weird sexual dimension. A friend of mine said that Anaïs was a coquette and detailed that aspect of herself in her writing. Indeed, the regular editions of her diaries are censored, but there are also uncensored versions later published that explicitly detailed her sexual relationships.

I am in the middle of The Diary of Anaïs Nin right now. I plan to read all her diaries, her uncensored diaries, and her early diaries from her childhood.

I would also like to discuss the diarist, Anaïs Nin as a writer. She had a masterpiece, Cities of the Interior, which is about five women that represent different aspects of herself, something that I also hope to write about. She also was a pioneer that was not afraid to write about the shocking genre of erotica, as she was a very sexual person.

I would like to end by discussing my diary and blog. I began writing in a diary when I was eight years old. I have continued to keep diaries since then, but I have unfortunately not been consistent, which I would like to have been. When I was twelve years old, I was a classical girl and had a classical fine diary and wrote in calligraphy. When I was fourteen, I wrote in regular print and started writing in different colors to make it look like a rainbow, a style that I continue to this very diary. I always pick out fine diaries, which are blue and gold or silver at the sides of the pages. I cannot wait to begin my very fancy silk blue Paperchase diary, which is silver at the sides!

I pour out all my thoughts, feelings, and reflections to my diary. I would like to get back to writing it regularly, no matter how busy I get.

I have been writing my blog for a few weeks now. In my blog, I am mostly informative on subjects that attract me and sometimes reflective. I mostly write from the left side of my brain in my blog while I write from my right side of the brain in my diary. I guess it is because I know that the blog can be read by anyone, and I do not want to share my secrets with the world. However, my goal is to loosen up my writing in my blog and write more from my right brain, which is connected to my heart.