Page 691 - women-in-love

I think of Gerald, and his work—those offices at Beldover,
and the mines—it makes my heart sick. What HAVE I to do
with it—and him thinking he can be a lover to a woman!
One might as well ask it of a self-satisfied lamp-post. These
men, with their eternal jobs—and their eternal mills of God
that keep on grinding at nothing! It is too boring, just bor-
ing. However did I come to take him seriously at all!
‘At least in Dresden, one will have one’s back to it all.
And there will be amusing things to do. It will be amusing
to go to these eurythmic displays, and the German opera,
the German theatre. It WILL be amusing to take part in
German Bohemian life. And Loerke is an artist, he is a free
individual. One will escape from so much, that is the chief
thing, escape so much hideous boring repetition of vulgar
actions, vulgar phrases, vulgar postures. I don’t delude my-
self that I shall find an elixir of life in Dresden. I know I
shan’t. But I shall get away from people who have their own
homes and their own children and their own acquaintances
and their own this and their own that. I shall be among peo-
ple who DON’T own things and who HAVEN’T got a home
and a domestic servant in the background, who haven’t got
a standing and a status and a degree and a circle of friends
of the same. Oh God, the wheels within wheels of people,
it makes one’s head tick like a clock, with a very madness
of dead mechanical monotony and meaninglessness. How I
HATE life, how I hate it. How I hate the Geralds, that they
can offer one nothing else.
‘Shortlands!—Heavens! Think of living there, one week,
then the next, and THEN THE THIRD—

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