In a sweet break from election anxiety, I visit my memories of Anais Nin. I never met her, though I lived close to her in L.A. at the height of my adoration and always regretted not visiting her. She would have welcomed me as she did all the women drawn to her home in Silver Lake (L.A.). I discovered her diaries in my late teens. The abridged diaries reveal a goddess. That’s what I aspired to be. When I veered into my angsty most depressed state, I melted into those diaries. Of course, after her death, her real self began to emerge … now fully revealed. I was shocked numb to learn about the incest and adultery. But she is the one who inspired my own fanatic diary keeping, now filling drawers in my home as the evidence of my emerging craft. I miss my sterling Parker ballpoint pen with 18K gold nib, and my creamy paper. They were the talismans of my passion to become a writer. When she died, I was having breakfast alone in Tallahassee (FSU) at a restaurant, reading the paper. And there was her obit in the Democrat. My molecules rearranged with the shock and awe. I can’t recommend the diaries that enthralled me because they are auto-fiction presented as biography. And really, she was a fabulist and a real blood-and-guts woman. I went on to write on keyboards and become a PR writer, a “hack” as my journalist friends snicker.