The Mystery of Everett Ruess
Page 14
Love from Everett
October 31
San Francisco
Dear Father, Mother, and Waldo,
I have just returned from a concert, which I heard with Uncle Emerson.[16] He is as jolly as ever, and it was an intensely enjoyable evening I had with him. He sends his regards to you all. The concert was the music of Italy, chamber music at the Community Playhouse. There was a very fine piece by Pizetti, a modern Italian composer.
Uncle Emerson lives just two or three blocks away from me. He is in the city now for the first time in three weeks. We talked about music, conservation, and economics. He is so busy that I probably shan’t see much of him. He expects to leave soon again, too.
Today I made a few unsuccessful attempts to hawk my wares. People admired my stuff, however, and gave good criticisms. Uncle Emerson gave me something to chew on, too; his was quite a thorough criticism. Ansel Adams waxed very enthusiastic about my black and white work.[17] He could not exhibit it in his gallery, but he gave me a number of suggestions which I am following out. He is going to trade me one of his photographs for one of my prints. The photograph I chose is of a mysterious lake at Kaweah Gap, where I was this July. Sheer granite walls shelve into a dark lake with ice at the base of the cliff. It is very fantastical.
I finished the first volume of Steffen’s autobiography. You were telling me about Kristin Lavransdatter. What sort of book is it? I have been wanting to read one of Sigrid Undset’s books, but did not know which one to begin with. They are written in a sequence, are they not?
I did a little writing last night, and this morning I made another plan for a print, a bold design of Banner Peak at sunrise.
Tomorrow night I shall have dinner with the Ormonds, people whom I met in Yosemite. They are people full of vitality. Mr. Ormond is in the Education Department in some capacity.
On Thursday I have a sitting with Dorothea Lange, who wants to make some photographic studies. On Sunday I am invited to dinner with the Jory’s in Mill Valley. Mr. Jory works for the American Trust Company here. I met him and his wife in Kern Canyon in July. They were vacationing with a couple of pack burros from Mineral King.
It’s hardly likely I shall continue to be in such demand, but for the present I am quite busy, and full of plans and ideas to keep me going some while. Whenever I stop working, I have plenty of reading I have been wanting to do.
The climate has been cool and bracing. It rained hard yesterday. I had to wear my sombrero and slicker.
The children had a Halloween parade down Polk Street tonight. They were having a gay time with much excitement.
Love to all, Everett
November 2
Dear Family,
Your letters have been a pleasure to read. Often, if I am in my room all day, old Julius brings them up to me, and the other day he brought me one from Waldo.
I sold a couple of prints the other day, but what with concerts, rent, and art materials, it was gone in less time than it takes to tell. I took Cornel to see Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, The Golden Cockerel. I was not able to go with him on his trip up the coast. Yesterday I had a delightful time at the Schermerhorn’s. Tonight I am taking George Brammer to see Dr. Faust, a puppet play of Perry Dilley’s. I traded a couple of prints for the tickets.
I have been having worthwhile experiences here in the city, and I’m very glad to be here instead of in Hollywood. I’ve had the opportunities to know this city fairly well, in many aspects, but much remains to be discovered. As yet I’ve not had time to go back to Berkeley, and I probably won’t for some while. I have to get busy with my linoleum cuts now. I’ve cut one, but three more remain, and also two or three small things that must be done before Christmas. I hope you have more of the envelopes, cardboard, and mount paper that I used last year, as I shall need them soon. I may send you a small block to print on post cards for me. It was Waldo who borrowed Ulysses. Ask him to return it to Mrs. Southard. I went to Paul Elder’s today, and they haven’t even got around to putting my stuff up, so naturally they hadn’t sold any.
Of the list of books you sent, I have read and enjoyed South Wind, Candide, Green Mansions, O’Neill’s Place, The Brothers Karamazov, The Dance of Life, Magic Mountain, Arabian Nights, and others. Some on the list, like The Golden Ass, I do not consider literature.
I have been enjoying my poetry anthology and lending my other books. I am reading now a book of Nine O’Neill Plays which Charles Schermerhorn lent me. I have a phonograph in my room, lent me by the plumber, so I am enjoying my music and sharing it.
I went over to Cornel’s early this afternoon, and after some fun at his place, we climbed from Telegraph Hill to Russian Hill, and have been listening to music in my room. I just let him take a bath in the tub here, as he has none in his shack.
Edwin Markham is speaking here tonight, but I won’t be able to hear him.
The Hospital Association wants me to pay them $1.65 December 1. Their physician told me that my complexion is due almost entirely to overaction of the skin glands, and has nothing to do with diet. He, like the other doctors, thinks the condition is unavoidable. Raw carrots, he said, are extremely hard to digest, and should not be eaten.
Clouds are gathering here, but it has not rained yet. The moon is nearly full.
Love from Everett
November 2
Dear Mother and Father,
I was glad to find your letters, yesterday and the day before.
Mother asks about my room; I have just acquired a Japanese print, an old one of Hiroshige, for it. I traded one of my prints to the Ormonds for it, and mounted it yesterday. Three of my prints are up also, and before long I shall have a photograph or two. My sombrero, too, is on the wall.
In a corner are my kyaks, and on the floor is my Navajo saddle blanket. The table at which I work is between the two big windows, which overlook the street. At night, the reflection from a neon light casts a rosy glow on the curtains.
There are no cooking possibilities, and I do not have to eat out all the time either. I have eaten three cooked meals in the last two weeks. I get along famously on fruit, sandwiches, and milk.
I have now made about a dozen India ink sketches for blockprints. Half a dozen of them are worth cutting, I think. Yesterday I met Stanley Helmore who has a blockprint press and will print mine for me if I say. What are Mr. Bryant’s rates for my five by seven blocks?
I am all out of the prints of the Morro Bay oaks. Look in my file of prints, and send me eight or ten. Also a few of Radiation, Monument Valley, and several of Wild Conthine (the last Monterey print, like yours). You might send two or three more linoleums with blocks, also one small block and piece of linoleum, about this size. Send also the Kitikata papers in my files. It might be well to send more too. It may be difficult to obtain here.
I have done two good watercolors and a couple of black and white crayon sketches. I use a china marking pencil and it gives plenty of gradation without smudging. There is a studio on Telegraph Hill where they hold life classes for fifty cents an evening. It is good practice, and I may go sometime to brush up on my drawing.
I met Mr. Burrell, who won the prize last year for the fifty best prints of the year. (I’m not sure what prize. His was an etching of a windmill.) He admired my stuff and said I should have had it exhibited in the American Etchers and Print Makers Society.
The other day I went through the Legion of Honor Building. Nothing outstanding, though, except some things of Warren Newcombe, most of which I saw down South. (Los Angeles is way down South, now.) Wolo’s stuff is being shown at Courvoisier’s.
I bought two little glasses of blue and purple, made in Mexico. They are like wine for the soul when held up to the light, the colors are so beautiful.
Love from Everett
November 5
Dear Mother,
The other day I had perhaps the best art lesson I ever had; a lesson in simplicity from Maynard Dixon. That time I really did learn something, I think, and I have been
trying to apply what I learned. The main thing Maynard did was to make me see what is meaningless in a picture, and have the strength to eliminate it; and see what was significant, and how to stress it. This he showed me with little scraps of black and white paper, placed over my drawings. You should try it and follow up the suggestions it gives you.
The Dixons are going to move into a house in a month or two, and I may help them and earn a room in it. They have a phonograph, but hardly any records, so I wish that you would send me my album of the twelve or thirteen records which I bought this spring, unless you are really using them yourself. I’m enclosing half a dollar for postage; I hope that will be enough. Insure them for twenty dollars, and, naturally you will try to pack them so they don’t break. You might wrap them in my black trousers.
This afternoon I had a delightful ride with the Jorys along the coast near Muir Woods and back at sunset over a shoulder of Tamalpais. They have a pleasant little home in a wooded canyon in Mill Valley. I came back in the moonlight, across the bay.
Last night Melvin Johnson, a friend from San Jose whom I took on a pack trip in Sequoia, stopped in to visit, and we had dinner together in Chinatown.
In a few days, I’m going to start cutting my designs.
Love from Everett
November 12
Dear Family,
I have been reading of late: Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba, a swashbuckling historical story of the Russian Cossacks on the border marches of the Ukraine; Green Hell, an Englishman’s narrative of exploration in tropical Bolivia; the Jurgen of James Branch Cabell, full of sparkling satire; and the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Elinor Argile.
This afternoon I walked up the hill to the park between Laguna and Cough streets. On the way I passed a splendid array of fuchsias in bloom. There were many varieties, and I was quite interested, as I had never observed the plant before. On the hill I started work on a study of an old water tower and a eucalyptus, but was forestalled from my colors by sunset.
Last night, having spent a dollar for standing room in the balcony, I too went to Grand Opera, Tristan und Isolde. Between the acts I threaded my way among the plutocrats of society, studying orchids and roses. I had never seen so many orchids before. The theatrics and staging of the opera annoyed me. To feel the full beauty of the music and the voices, I sat on the floor with my back to the wall and closed my eyes. The final song of Isolde mourning Tristan’s death always seems to me the finest thing in music when I am hearing it.
As to the duration of my stay, I am not yet certain. It depends partly on when I go to the desert, and how much time I spend in Hollywood before leaving. I would like to spend a whole year in the desert, but I might not go until March or April. While I am here I would like to take a jaunt up the Del Norte Coast, where the redwoods meet the seacliffs. Probably I shall be here through January at least.
Love from Everett
December 4
Dear Father,
I have been asking myself some questions latterly, and I wrote some of them down, thinking you might be interested. Most of them I can answer one way or another to my own satisfaction. But you would probably have a different reaction, and I would like to know how you would answer them, so I enclose a list.
I spent Sunday with the Schermerhorns, and in the evening, Charles and I went to Fiske’s church, then with him to another church where a Socialist Methodist spoke on what religion could do and had to do if it were honest to its own tenets, for a better order. His name was Roy Burt, or Burke, I think, and he spoke very stirringly. Afterwards I asked him what limits, if any, there were to the patience, tolerance, apathy of the mass of American people with their present abominable situation. He said candidly that he thought there were none, and though some might resist feebly, we were headed hopelessly for fascism. If the people are hungry and weak with suffering, they have not the strength to revolt, and if any modest lessening of their hardships occurs, they at once resume their former complacency. He pointed out that the N.R.A. [National Recovery Act] is an effort made solely for the maintenance of the owning class and of the things that contribute to their welfare.
He said he had known of many men with no religious professions who in time of strikes made themselves and their children live on potatoes and “rock soup” because they were willing to sacrifice for a principle, and that by comparison, most “religious” people should be ashamed of themselves. He also told of an old fellow who, criticized for his cynicism, replied, after a tug at his moustache, “Wal, I’d rather be a pessimist than a liar.” How many people would?
Love from Everett
The unusual letter that follows was written not by Everett, but by his father. It is Christopher Ruess’s answers to a number of astonishingly deep philosophical questions that Everett had asked in the previous letter. Christopher’s equally well thought out and well-expressed answers give us some measure of the type and depth of communication between father and son. In each case, Everett’s question is listed first, followed by his father’s answer.
December 10
Is service the true end of life? No, but rather happiness through service. Only as we play our part, as a part of the whole, aware of the interrelationedness, do we really and fully live. You and I are like the right hand or the right eye or the big toe—we are grotesque when living apart.
Can a strong mind maintain independence and strength if it is not rooted in material independence? Yes, as many great souls prove. They were not independent. Dependence and independence are alike harmful to the best life. No dependent or independent man can play a high part in life—but only the interdependent man. Great souls today have issued a Declaration of Human Interdependence.
Do all things follow the attainment of Truth? No, not unless you create a new definition of the truth. It takes all three “ideas of the reason” to define the whole of culture or to define God. He whose life is exclusively devoted to Truth, or to Goodness, or to Beauty, is a very fractional man. This age is in trouble because it has exaggerated truth—it is lopsided. There is no ultimate conflict when all three are stressed and, as Aristotle says, we “. . . see life sanely and see it whole.”
Is bodily love empty or to be forgotten? No, it is a part of life. It is not all of life. I do not see that it should ever be outgrown, but it changes form; it begins animal and always remains healthily animal, but it is refined and sublimated.
Can one ask too much of life? Yes, many do. We should have faith in life, in cause and effect, in action and reaction. We owe much more to the past than any one of us can give to the present or to the future. It is not for us to play highway robber and hold up life. The great souls probably never ask such a question. But the greatest givers have got most from life, whether Jesus or Edison.
Does life have infinite potentialities? Yes, so far as we can conceive infinity. Certainly incalculable, immeasurable is the contribution and joy open to you or to me. As Tagore says, Life is immense.
Must pain spring from pleasure? Not always. Not equal pain from equal pleasure. Psychologically, we seem to know pleasure largely by contrast and contrast seems necessary for our minds to make distinctions. No black, no white. No high, no low.
Are pain and pleasure equally desirable and necessary? They are both good for us if we have the will to extract the sweet from the bitter. No one need seek pain, he will get plenty without searching. He need not seek pleasure, he will get more if he gets it indirectly. He needs rather to go his way regardless of both pain and pleasure. Pleasure is perhaps the wrong word—joy or ecstacy may be better. Ecstacy is the highest of this family of words. It means such happiness that we literally seem to stand outside of ourselves in exaltation.
Is pleasure right for all, but selfish for one? There is no sin or wrong in pleasure except it be at the cost of another soul or life, to aggrandize ourselves by the degradation of another. Selfishness is not evil, it is good, but it must be the larger and not the narrower selfishness. A man’s re
al self includes his parents, his wife and children, his friends, and neighbors, his countrymen, all his fellowmen. He should be selfish both at the center and at the circumference, selfish for all. I doubt that there is a real conflict, but there is a harmony. It is not beautiful for a man to sacrifice himself for his child and thus spoil his child. Parents who do not practice give and take, fairness, in this relation make pigs and tyrants out of their children. These children are not being brought up to face reality, are they?
Can one be happy while others are miserable? Yes, a callous man can have a callous happiness. But a noble man cannot be nobly happy while others are miserable. In that sense a man like Jesus never except for moments of rest and retreat can be happy, for he had compassion upon the multitude. Great lovers have a happiness higher than our ordinary happiness. There is a happiness in identification of oneself with others, in bearing their burdens, even their sins. Great souls are not worried much about happiness. “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Jesus and Socrates and Lincoln were not constantly concerned about their pleasure or their happiness.
Can one be fine without great sacrifice? Not the finest. For such a one has been spared great experience. Such a one has not really lived. He has just played at life. Yet he need not be maimed by sacrifice to know reality. Sacrifice is in quality as well as quantity. Sacrifice may be so great as to amputate life and may be silly or futile. There is sacrifice and sacrifice. One need not be sadist or masochist; neither are sound persons.
Can one make great sacrifices without submerging oneself? Yes, wives of many great men, mothers of great sons, teachers of leaders, have found their lives by losing their lives. “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it,” says Jesus. You would now begin to find great things for your opening soul in a good modern version of the Gospels. Get one and read it slowly like any other book, and receptively. A seed fulfills itself by losing itself in the ground. So did the men at Thermopylae.