no particular importance; I know that as soon as I write the word ‘blood’, it will be giving a wrong emphasis, and even to me when I come to read what I’ve written.
And so I begin to doubt the value of a day’s recording before I’ve started to record it.
I am thinking, I realize, about a major problem of literary style, of tact.
For instance, when James Joyce described his man in the act of defecating, it was a shock, shocking.
Though it was his intention to rob words of their power to shock.
And I read recently in some review, a man said he would be revolted by the description of a woman defecating.
I resented this; because of course, what he meant was, he would not like to have that romantic image, a woman, made less romantic.
But he was right, for all that.
I realize it’s not basically a literary problem at all.
For instance, when Molly says to me, with her loud jolly laugh: I’ve got the curse; I have instantly to suppress distaste, even though we are both women; and I begin to be conscious of the possibility of bad smells.
Thinking of my reaction to Molly, I forget about my problems of being truthful in writing (which is being truthful about oneself) and I begin to worry: Am I smelling?
It is the only smell I know of that I dislike.
I don’t mind my own immediate lavatory smells; I like the smell of sex, of sweat, of skin, or hair.
But the faintly dubious, essentially stale smell of menstrual blood, I hate.
And resent.
It is a smell that I feel as strange even to me, an imposition from outside.
Not from me.
Yet for two days I have to deal with this thing from outside — a bad smell, emanating from me.
I realize that all these thoughts would not have been in my head at all had I not set myself to be conscious.
A period is something I deal with, without thinking about it particularly, or rather I think of it with a part of my mind that deals with routine problems.
It is the same part of my mind that deals with the problem of routine cleanliness.
But the idea that I will have to write it down is changing the balance, destroying the truth; so I shut the thoughts of my period out of my mind; making, however, a mental note that as soon as I get to the office I must go to the washroom to make sure there is no smell."