9/27/32 Ltr. from [
849]:
My dear Mr. Cayce:-
I hardly know how to begin a letter that must, by reason of
the condition of its source, be somewhat confused. In all of
my short life I have never been so inarticulate, and never
have I had more to say. But when it goes off, my friend, I
fear it will blow me all over the earth, and make a
detonation that will tumble several turrets in heaven and set
not a few crowns askew with the jar. Something, whether it
be diabetes, the devil or the deity, is happening inside of
me.
This is the third week of my return from vacation, and it is
the nearest I have come to being explicit. It seemed that
every day I stayed home I felt worse, for my nerves were only
slowly untightening. I had to keep going, so that after
revising a short story I took over the column in the local
newspaper and did it for a friend who was on vacation. When
time came to return I was at the ebb, and arriving in the
city in that state was pretty close to suicide for one of my
temperament.
For the first two days I covered the Eighth Avenue subway,
which was preparing to open. The dust in the new passage did
something to my sinus I know (I rode on the trains before the
tube was opened, just when they were cleaning up) for
afterward I seemed to have a dry catarrh rather than a wet
catarrh - and believe me I'll take the moist variety anytime,
the other is torture. Then the regular transit expert came
back and I did some interviews, for which I received by-lines
and praise. The night the subway opened I did a feature on
the first ride, in the manner of a dramatic review, which
pleased everyone immensely. For a week thereafter I rode on
a crest of splendid stories, but I worked unmitigatingly and
without a single moment's respite. I brought up at the end
like a horse that has run its heart out and begins to quiver
before dying.
I've been that way for a week now, never quite knowing
whether my kidneys were going to collapse or my stomach,
whether my hands would shake themselves off or my head
tighten so that it would burst. Every now and then I felt
that, unless something happened in a hurry, I would fall on
my face and be picked up in little pieces.
I am inclined to credit it all to nerves, and to believe that
a tonic and perhaps an osteopath will set things right. But
there is something else which is aiding the trouble, a sort
of nigger in the woodpile which only a few people like you
can understand.
In my letter to Hugh Lynn under this date I explained that my
life reading pointed these two years (25th and 26th years) as
the period of my crisis in the affairs of Venus, and as the
years during which my life went awry in the last appearance.
Miss Adams predicts them as the years of change, the
beginning of a successful writing career, and the years when
I shouldn't marry and should beware of a dark-haired lady
(that doesn't give me much of a lead, as I've never cared for
blonds). Many times as I trot about the city I run into
amateur psychics and fortune-tellers, and for amusement I let
them read cards and palms for me. All of them seem to hit
the same line. Travel is imminent (over water) and success.
There is always a dark lady mixed up and a red-haired man who
is the agent of my travel. The years of change are always
indicated. One palmist became angry when I refused a further
fee for a more detailed reading and said I was not making the
most of my artistic abilities. I laughed at her, but I
thought about it for several reasons.
Please don't think I place stock in these amateurs and
fakirs. I merely cite them as a curious phenomena, and I
realize that most of them have a slight leaning toward such
things, and that I am an easy person to contact from that
angle.
Anyhow, the period of change is obvious to me - so obvious
that I am sure it has a lot to do with my physical condition,
perhaps is all of it.
I am only emerging from adolescence, and I have so many
curious strains and influences in my life that the change is
a painful procedure. In early years we never feel the result
of anything we do right away - it is later they begin to take
effect. I have so many things that weigh against me -
supersensitiveness that treasures hurts in the subconscious,
Celtic mysticism and melancholia, Catholicism, the influence
of my contact with you and your work, the southern influence
of [..., Va.], and now New York. My soul has been a
battleground for a long time, and there have been experiences
we won't mention that haven't helped the result any. The
debacle is therefore all the more bloody and the fruits, if I
live through it, will be all the more rich. I think it is a
inherent decency and recognition of the truth that is
twisting me so badly in an effort to get rid of the poisons
that I planted there with my own foolishness.
Perhaps you can feel what I mean - my expression of it is
terrible. I am still strangled economically under the same
$100 a month salary, and I still work so hard that play is
for me a matter of bed, long baths that soothe a little, and
light reading. Now, when I can look to easier things after
election, I feel a tremendous power surging in me, and a
great desire to write - in song and in story as my reading
says. But what I don't know. I only knew a great power is
developing, is welling up in me, is destroying my vitality in
its effort to get loose. When it does, as I said, I feel it
will be tremendous - and good.
I have come almost to the top of the hill of understanding -
that is why the final effort is so painful, and I know that I
have a power of expression ready to let go when I get there -
and never before in my life have I been able to say this with
certainty - it will be good, and it will be beautiful.
If you read Hugh Lynn's letter you may find some of these
incoherences explained - and vice versa. I can't anymore
tell what I'm going to say, or whether it will be what I want
to say, than a baby learning to talk.
I wonder if you will have time, someday when you are doing
that sort of thing, to give me a check reading? I am at home
in the morning always, and I only want to know what in the
world ails my nerves and my stomach, why the sides of my
forehead ache and feel tight, why my catarrh seems dry
instead of wet, and why I am certain at times I shall fly to
pieces like a wheel that has reached its point of fatigue.
For the rest - my work and its future, I think the best thing
to do is wait. To make a slightly bawdy but very true
simile, I feel like a mother with child - and I am sure it
will be nothing less than a president.
There are many years ahead of us, but the next few will tell
a swift, terrible, and glorious tale. The world is on the
toboggan slide - and when it hits the bottom someone must be
there to pick it up and drag it back up again. I have a
feeling we'll be a few of the pullers. I've never had more
faith in you, in God, and in myself. What I said to Hugh
Lynn goes for you and for me - and for all the family and
friends of the work -
Sometimes the dice come seven. [
849]
10/10/32 See his next Ck. Physical -
849-10.
3/19/35 See his Mental-Spiritual Rdg.,
849-11.
11/04/49 See [
849]'s letter under
849-76 Reports in re [
1102],
their marriage, etc.
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993, 1994, 1995 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation