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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Dorothy Olsen
[On the stationary of the Nouvel Hotel de L'Oasis]
Tuesday 9 A.M. 3 Nov. 1925 e.v.
No, no, darling, I really can't keep it a secret any more. Any why shouldn't I tell you after all? I do not like Gabes. There, the murder's out! Can't exactly say why it is, unless that the spirit is mean—unfriendly, just like Aumont's [Gerard Aumont] complex. (He was born here, you remember) And I can't even tell you exactly why it strikes me like that. But one isn't welcome, somehow, in the gardens; and the folk seem to looks on one with averted eyes. Of course, there's this: the weather has been rotten: a great storm Sunday night, and all yesterday windy, with showers. I went about an hour's walk, and got pretty wet for my pains. Last night it blew great guns, but this morning it's beginning to clear. I can't settle to work of any kind. Nor can I go on anywhere, as Aumont is coming down in a day or two. I want to have a couple of days really alone with him, out of his ghastly atmosphere of Tunis. The boy is being strangled by those old women, that's the root of it; he more or less admits it. But he can't see that it's his duty to cut loose. I kind of half slept through all this bad weather, and got some of the tiredness out of me. In fact, this morning I feel really fit—fit to write, paint, or go for a long walk—anything. BUT—there's nothing I care to do, nothing that I shall feel glad to have done after I've done it. Your fault! My aim to achieve is higher than it ever was in my life; that makes me hesitate to start anything, lest the subject be not key enough and so disgust and disappoint me. I only hope this means that when I do get started it will be a real splash. One trouble is that my soul is so full of you that I can bother about nothing else: yet I can only use you for pure lyrical praise, and that is not the kind of work I have in mind; at least, I am actually doing that, by fits and starts, in one way or another. But what I want is narrative or dramatic ideas; and you are too sacred to me to be used as material. I can only approach you in direct ecstasy of worship; I can't think about you at all. That would profane you.
I wish you would send along that idea of yours for a scenario: I'm sure I could work on that.
Another thing that bothers me is the problem of winter. With a mind so desperately active as mine it is utterly necessary to have a companion when the nights are long, something to do after dark. It wouldn't be so bad if I were wandering through the desert, forging myself out every day marching. But I can't cut loose from my base, expecting a cable from you as I am every day. This isn't a good place to start from, either. There are lots of Arabs, but no Arab atmosphere—it's most curious and unpleasant. I do hate the nondescript! Well, there's nothing for it but to carry on till you've sold a scenario or two for me—or the Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]—and I can bowl along under a freshening breeze to the Bahamas, or join you at Algiers, and dream away the days in a dahabeak, as the Fates decide. I'm hoping for a letter or wire to-morrow, not much chance to-day, as I couldn't give Amexco my forwarding address till I got here. (By the way, Amexco Tunis for all letters and telegrams till further notice). The 3000 francs I still have should last me easily, with what is coming, til the end of the year, when (I hope) I can get my trustees to let me have the whole year's income in advance in a lump. They ought to be decent, as I've kept my word, and not bothered them, and made good generally. But of course I have to stay down in these parts, and save every centime; there's nothing to spare for travel, or luxuries; anyhow, I don't need them. That is, until a sum really worth talking about comes along; in which case, I must see about feeding my mind. The Ideal is to have you in some place where we have both got plenty to do of the kind that leads to things better still. I have just got to take my proper place in the world, and that's all there is to it! I'm getting tired of loneliness, or mixing with 3rd rate people. That is all very well for a while; but the best of us needs to sharpen his wits against other good minds now and again. Oh my darling, I'm terribly anxious about you; I do hope things are going well. You don't know how a cable would lighten my spirit!
I'll quit now, to catch the mail, and write again this evening.
Your own lover
Aleister
Xcuse bad writing: I'm nervous.
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