I AM a fascinating creature.
I move in no stultifying ruts. There's no real yoke of custom on my shoulders. My round white breasts beneath their black serge are concurrent with nothing settled or subservient or discreet.
My Mind goes in no grooves made by other minds. It lives like a witch in a forest, weaving its spells, revelling in smooth vivid adventure. When I look at a round gray stone by a roadside I look at it not as a young woman, not as a person, not as an artist, nor a geologist, nor an economist, but as Me—as Mary MacLane—and as if there had not before been a round gray stone by a roadside since the world began. When I look at a chair with my somber eyes I say to the chair, 'What other persons may see when they look at you, chair, I don't know—how could I know? But I well know what I see and that what I see is uninfluenced by other eyes that may have looked at you, were they Aristotle's or Galileo's or an archangel's.' There may be equally egotistic viewpoints—in Waco-Texas, or Japan, or Glasgow-Scotland or the Orkney Islands, where not? I don't know—I don't care. What is it to me? I know my own virile vision and that it thrills and
