Iconography: Anaïs Nin

(image taken from Scriblets)

(image taken from Style Destination)

(image taken from Hi Lo Brow)

(image taken from Tumblr)

(image taken from I Am Not A Gun)

Today, the unforgettable Anaïs Nin would have been one hundred-ten years old, an age that seems simultaneously impressive and yet irrelevant for a woman who, over the years, through her writing and her style and her aura, has become essentially timeless and mythic in proportions. While she is certainly a potent and beautiful writer, philosopher, and dreamer in her own right, invariably, I nearly always think of her in the context of her passionate and exhilarating and, depending on the direction of the moral compass, illicit relationship with Henry Miller, one of my favorite authors. Their letters to one another are some of the most beautiful works of art I have ever had the pleasure of encountering, unforgiving and unrelenting in the truth of visceral emotion, raw and yet completely contained and wielded, as only writers who are lovers can attain. When I indulge in their textual personalities, sacred and illusioned phantoms of the living, flesh personalities, I am overtaken with a desire to flee to Europe, a desire that is already inherently subcutaneous and rather easy to bring forth. Regrettably, I still have her acclaimed and intimate diaries on my impossibly long list of books I must read; a volume may be the perfect accompaniment as I head off to London next week.