Love & Lust the Dairies of Harriet E. Wagner / Porto Rico -1927

More than 30 years ago I found the Diaries of Harriet E. Wagner inside a false bottom of an old trunk lying forgotten in an enclosed garage in her house at Sea View Street in the Condado area, San Juan, Puerto Rico, just like many others diaries that have been found in dusty attics and between walls. Along with the diaries were also most treasured possessions, letters, photographs, personal notes and other remembrances of her life. If someone asks me, "It's there a plot in this work?" I will have to respond that this is a recount of a very romantic and ahead of her times woman, about her life and the events that took place in the tropics, in the island of Puerto Rico during the 1920's to 1940's. And that in order to explain and understand it, there is no other way except thru the stories within the story found in her diaries ceaselessly intertwined with the narrative. The characters are real, not dreamed or imagined, and the interconnectedness and intentions, incidents, episodes, and actions taken by the characters revolve in dense and seemingly chaotic texts, as dreams. Texts that represent themselves projecting as inhabited by energies, which ultimately evokes images of desires, which corresponds to the arousals, expectations, suspense, reversals, revaluations, disappointments, embarrassments, fulfillments, and even the incoherence's animated by the reader itself. Repetition is clearly a major operative principle of the story, shaping energy, giving a perspective form, a binding agent for the creation of cohesion - allowing the reader by logic set in motion the plot, and find out whose acts can or not be premeditated, based on a conception of the self which structures and gives meaning to the story itself. On August 27, 1926 she writes, "Elected to Porto Rico today grammar grade (upper English) at only $1,125." Seriously thinking on embarking she took the opportunity to ask various newspapers to serve as a freelance correspondent among them the Herald Tribune. As the date for her departure came close she writes, "Happiness and yet I cannot say I'm really sad. Life adds so little and so much Turned down Porto Rico for the family's sake, Glen, and because of the grade work and past salary. Want to laugh and cry. Should be happy after this vacation. Instead I smile cynically and strive with Orpheus's hands to take hold Eurydice (last year's hopeful philosophy). What the winters bring? Shall put aside diary writing for real writing of newspaper and magazine stories? One can't be utterly conquered at twenty four " Finally on September 24 or 25 1926 as she jot its down says, "Porto Rico. How can I put it into words these first days? Never in my life have I been such a victim of anything. When people spoke of the sensuousness of the tropics I had no idea what they meant. Now I know. I am so glad, glad, and glad now for my German stability. For I need a bracing something to keep me from the things I always said I'd never do..." She was selected with a group of people to come to Puerto Rico to teach on grade school. During those times throughout the island the school system was going thru various changes as the appointees by the president of the United States to the Department of Education were making their efforts to maintain the English language as the primary language of teaching. In the capital San Juan the Central High School was the school for the daughters and sons of the prominent families of the island. She writes, "I am in turmoil over Porto Rico. Hate to leave my dear Mommy, but crave adventure. Sometimes I hate Youth. It leads one to such foolish things and yet so marvelous. One can think anything, be anything, can do anything. I have come to this island to teach school but I have become the most interested pupil." Carlos A. Laster Jr, believes he was chosen by Harriet Wagner herself to discover her works, and commissioned to publish her literary work, present to you the Diaries of Harriet E. Wagner.