The other day I called M. from Bardstown—first time in months—since the end of June I believe. It was a sad sort of call and in the end she was crying. She is moving to Miami. I felt we really weren’t communicating: she was trying to tell me I ought to leave and “reach out for happiness.” No way of explaining to her that life in some city would be for me utterly meaningless. And also that I could not live happily with a woman—and that with her it would be a disaster for both of us. Yet I wish I could have a decent talk with her. But what would be the use?
November 14, 1967
Today I went in to Louisville with Naomi B. and at Tommie O’Callaghan’s we signed the Trust agreement—and I am glad that is done. It had to be done, and now it is a weight off my mind. Whether or not everything is perfectly taken care of, at least I have done what was necessary. And I think the agreement is about as practical as anything could be. John Ford was very efficient and cooperative about it.
Yesterday I had a quiet afternoon talking to Naomi and we went over to St. Rose’s Priority—she wanted to say a prayer for some Dominican election—and I liked seeing that church—first time I have ever been in it (passed it at night once a few years ago). It rather fascinates me, up on its hill, with its own kind of Kentucky Gothic, and it has a lot of character. And a sort of austere loneliness that I know from the old Gethsemani and from Loretto too. Something that has become very much part of my own experience in twenty-five years here.
Moonlight night. Whump whump of guns at [Fort] Knox shake my windows.
A letter from Br. F[rederic Collins] in Chile asked: if they elected me Prior, would I accept. I said no. But I wouldn’t object to helping out in Chile.
Having put all my writings in the hands of this Trust I am much less concerned about getting anything “done”—still less about getting it published, obviously! I feel much freer and readier to forget all that, and make more out of solitude.
November 18, 1967
Another bright cool fall day. I have a cold—or an allergy attack or something—and the dust in the hermitage doesn’t help it: so I went out in the sun and took a few pictures. Today a letter came from AFSC (The Friends) in Philadelphia asking me to form part of an unofficial peace team that is to meet and talk with representatives of the NLF (Viet Cong) and try to get up some concrete proposals for Washington. A most unusual invitation, so unusual that if I were left to myself I’d have no alternative but to accept—and in my case I could not take it upon myself to refuse. I can’t, in conscience, refuse. So I decided to turn it over to the Abbot. Was not able to talk to him, he was busy. Gave him the letter and I know very well what he will do! I don’t think there is a chance in a million of his seeing the importance and significance of it and he won’t think for 10 seconds of letting me go. And I’ll probably have to put up with one of his unreasoned sermons. All of which poses a problem. It really raises the question of my staying here. It seems so absurd to go on year after year putting up with such utter nonsense. And yet frankly, I see no alternative that is any less nonsensical for me. That certainly does not justify anything—it is a sign of confusion that I perhaps don’t know how to get out of. I am certainly committed to the solitary life and to “contemplation” and the way I can have these most effectively is here. Or is it? In any case, being here, I have forfeited all freedom to do things that perhaps I should do—and this is a real problem. All I can do is trust blindly that there is some solution which I don’t yet see or know and that it will come by surprise at the right time, just as the hermitage itself did. But I certainly can’t feel complacent or secure about leaving this entirely in the hands of someone who can’t comprehend it and has all kinds of psychological reasons for not letting himself even try. It is a sick situation.
The cantors from our U.S. monasteries were up at the hermitage yesterday—end of a meeting they’ve had here! A naive sort of bunch, earnest, well-meaning, caught up in the usual binds and preoccupations. Still, I liked them, and they were, for better or worse, clearly Cistercians—i.e. not only in black and white, but also—simple, earnest, wanting something intangible and expecting to get it, and not too well endowed with ideas. But nice guys, and I was glad to see Fr. Paul from Vina [New Clairvaux Abbey, California]. He had been a novice of mine here and somehow we’d had a hard time getting on when he left. But I realized now that I really like him and he is a good sort. Also had a short talk with Fr. Methodius from Conyers [Holy Spirit Monastery, Georgia]—who talks so fast he can say plenty in a short talk. About June Yungblut, to whom I must write, and so on. (She wants to come here again and I’d enjoy seeing her and talking ahollt her thesis on Beckett.)
November 21, 1967
Presentation—a Feast that has all but disappeared. Enjoyed the Mass alone in the hermitage in spite of my bad cold. I wonder if Smith’s allergy shots are helping or making things worse. Yesterday I had to go to Lexington to the dentist. First time in the Medical Center at the Dental School. Esoteric new dentistry—everything different. Instead of the old spittoon with its private whirlpool, a tube that sucks your spit voraciously into the wall-and maybe your teeth too if you are not careful. It is more fun with a girl holding a tube in your mouth while the drill destroys your teeth, vaporizes them or something. After all the leveling I found five teeth had been reduced to little points on which presently were edified new temporary teeth, smooth and clear, that do not tear pieces out of my tongue. Gold caps are said to be coming next week. All this happened while I lay on a kind of dental divan covered with white leather. Or probably some good imitation. I was on this for two and a half hours and glad to get off. John Loughlin, the dentist, very efficient and solicitous, took me to lunch in the doctor’s cafeteria later. After which I went to the University, could not find Carolyn Hammer in the Library, ended up reading about Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee massacre (dreadful!).
After that, returned to the Medical Center to wait for Brother Clement to come down with five stitches in his jaw, and while waiting met and spoke to Governor Breathitt (whose wife was having her teeth fixed too). A nice quiet guy. We spoke a little about conservation, strip mining and all that.
Then it turned out Fr. Abbot was upstairs in the hospital waiting for an operation that is minor—or perhaps not so minor. We went up to see him. By that time it was late. We drove home in the dark.
I learned today his resignation had been accepted in Rome.
Obviously no chance of my going to Cambodia! (A long note about that was in my mail when I got home.)
November 22, 1967
Rain and mist all day for St. Cecilia [Feast day]. Hugo Rahner on the sacred dance in refectory. His book on Man at Play is very good. Other day when Rahner was talking of homo ludens [man playing], the witty Brother Isidore (in refectory near me) whipped out a box of cough drops and pointed to the name Ludens. Monastic humor.
My cold is better. Rest of the allergy not so. For some reason I have a sore tongue.
Today I did a little work on the article promised a long time ago to The Journal of Ecumenical Studies—Monasticism and Ecumenism. Got off to a slow, difficult start, but it was good to get some real work done at the typewriter for a change, instead of just writing letters, or trying to. Some people keep insisting that I reply to them when it is obvious that I am not going to. There are others whose letters I don’t even read. Yet still others are very honest and human and touching, like the college girl who complained of her boyfriend deserting her at parties. And then how she wouldn’t say “I love you” when he came back. I felt very sorry for her (and of course will write!).
In two weeks the nuns will be here. I started making notes of things to talk about.
Pasternak’s Georgian letters are good. Real love for his friends, and contagious enthusiasm about Tiflis, etc. There is a great newness and freshness about P.—his own bright and living world. A paradise man, full of wonder, and even the Stalinists never stamped it all out of him. Never silenced him really.
November 25, 1967
All day it has been deceptively like spring. Not only because of light and cool-warm air (warm with a slightly biting March-like wind), but because I fasted and it felt like Lent. Then in the evening (I had my meal about 4 instead of supper at 5) it was suddenly much lighter, as though it were March.
At noon, when I was not eating, I was out by St. Bernard’s lake (which is surprisingly low) and the sky, hills, trees kept taking on an air of clarity and freshness that took me back to springs twenty years ago when Lents were hard and I was new in the monastery.
Strange feeling! Recapturing the freshness of those days when my whole monastic life was still ahead of me, when all was still open: but now it is all behind me, and the years have closed in upon their silly, unsatisfactory history, one by one. But the air is like spring and fresh as ever. And I was amazed at it. Had to stop to gaze and wonder: loblolly pines we planted ten or fifteen years ago are twenty feet high. The fire tower shines in the sun like new-though it was put up ten years ago (with what hopes, on my part!). Flashing water of the lake. Abluejay flying down as bright as metal. I went over to the wood where the Jonathan Daniel sculptures are now, and read some selections from Origen. And again stood amazed at the quiet, the bright sun, the spring-like light. The sharp outline of the pasture. Knolls, the brightness of bare trees in the hopeful sun. And yet it is not spring. We are on the threshold of a hard winter.
With my meal I was reading Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques. The most “literary” and readable of his books. He is an intelligent and fluent writer, sensitive to real problems, ironic, objective, alert, humane. I like the book.
November 26, 1967. Last Sunday after Pentecost
6 a.m. (really 5 or earlier by true sun time) still completely dark. The stars are those of a March evening sky-with the moon in Virgo. Arcturus, Spica. Overhead Leo, the Twins. The Charioteer going down in the NW. Corvus in the South. Friends! (Last year’s poem “The Lion” was written earlier in November-but I feel a lot better now! Yesterday was a fruitful day.)
Seabury Press sent proofs of a devotional book by Alan Paton. It is good-in touch with authentic realities of Christian life and traditional, a good Franciscan sense of things. Yet the kind of book I myself will no longer (I think) attempt to write. I feel strange about writing a blurb for it. To do so is to harm-again-the integrity of all that kind of literature. The integrity which the book business has made so tawdry and thin. Nothing against Seabury, I like them. But the whole business of selling this kind of thing. Devotional literature should circulate free in mimeograph. Or should be printed, smuggled around underground, like the sex books. But soon everyone would see that this too is only a further bit of craftiness, a slyer business gambit! Oh well. I’d like to encourage Paton and this is a serious Christian book: innocent looking yet dangerous, for it will induce some seminarian to throw his life away in some tragic struggle-that will never be recognized by anyone except God. For today there is no obscurity, no nonentity to compare with that of the Christian saint!
I keep thinking about Joe Carroll, who left and didn’t come back. (This is the second time.) Probably this time he is through. In a way I’ll miss him: he was part of the peculiar monastic world here and part of my own world this summer. I’ll remember our attempt to find St. Matthews by driving through Cherokee Park, and getting lost in the labyrinth of winding roads, coming again and again to the same bridges and then again and again to the University of Louisville School of Music and the Presbyterian Seminary. But it was a lovely summer morning and nobody cared!
November 28, 1967
Sunday afternoon as I was starting out for a walk to the usual place-(this year to what was to be known as Charlie O’Bryan’s Pasture, beyond cowbarns-St. Bernard’s field and lake), a jeep came out of the gate with a bunch of monks obviously heading for Edelin’s6 to see the Abbot’s hermitage. So I got in with them and off we went past the distillery and over the creek and into the hills with dogs after us. The way in is up the back road. Then through the woods on a bumpy track rutted already by the heavy cement trucks. He is out on a rocky spur, high over the valley, the place where I climbed up on the feast of St. Joseph in 1965-1 remember it well! It will be a beautiful little house, very interesting design (Brother Clement’s memoir to Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he worked for at one time) and a lot of care is going into it. High, isolated, quiet, with a big view (screened by trees, however) and the strange sunny quiet of those high ridges with the trees on the other ridges, just the same height. Only the foundation is finished, but it will be a real pretty place. The only thing is I have trouble imagining him in it. I guess he will make himself think he likes it-but is that what he wants? I wonder. But you don’t really know people here. The fact that he was able to choose such a place and get the whole thing going is a very sobering thought! It is one of the only things I have ever found in the man to admire. He has my respect at least for this: he has got himself one very fine hermitage going! And I remember too that it is because from the first time I mentioned Edelin’s to him, he got completely hung up on the place, and it was because of this that the rest of us got permission to be hermits. So there is something to the mystery!
I must admit that in a way I envy the place he has. My own hermitage has lots of advantages and is in many ways much better (for instance it is surrounded by very pleasant woods with a big variety of places to walk, to sit, to meditate, to say office, etc.). But his place has the exciting and romantic character of a kind of hawk’s nest perched on top of all those woods, in that strange lonely area so different from our valley over here. It is remote, lonely, strange, wild. For a moment I thought again about the hollow I like so much over there, and want to see it again. Very quiet, very pleasant, unchanged. I could visualize a little place something like Niles’s house there! (Obviously not that big. But that kind of use of a hillside in a hollow!)
Yesterday afternoon I walked over to see Fr. Hilarion in his trailer. It was quiet and sunny. He is very happy and relaxed there, very much changed (as far as his mood goes-no more strain and tension) and seems completely satisfied. I was happy to see that he had settled down so well. Materially he has the least desirable set-up. His camp was thrown together for him at the last minute. But the trailer, though dull, is compact and clean. Less dirty than my place!
Yesterday too Glenn Hinson was going to come out but had to change his plans.
Today my usual routine was turned upside down-lately I have been intellectually overfed and in the mornings I read less and less. Today I read almost nothing at all in the early morning, a bit of Dorothy Emmett’s book, which is good, and a couple of pages of the Castelli volume-the symposium on hermeneutics. Like it, but I have to stop. I can’t cover much ground. The piece by G. Fessard, S.J., seems to me absolutely insane. What kind of a joker is this? A lot of other stuff is good, though: H. Mt. [Mount Athos], Ricoeur, etc.
Not having read in the morning (ended up with some projects for work-and publication-sent suggestion to New Directions, etc.) I went out this afternoon, read some of the stuff on meditation in one of Winston King’s books-on Burmese Buddhism. Good. Then came back and began a new Penguin containing Basho’s travel notes. Completely shattered by them. One of the most beautiful books I have ever read in my life. It gives me a whole new (old) view of my own life. The whole thing is pitched right on my tone. Deeply moving in every kind of way. Seldom have I found a book to which I responded so totally.
December 2, 1967
Strong wind and long storm of rain all day long, sometimes blowing up violently out of the south, bending the black pines and flooding my porch, sometimes dying off while rays of low cloud fly north under the iron ceiling. I went down to the monastery just long enough to pick up my mail and my laundry, and hurried back to change and hang my wet dothes in front of a fire (though most of my firewood on the porch is wet). I fasted, but ate my one meal a little early (about 2:30). Cleaned up my front room. I have a new vacuum cleaner, which is a help. Dust allergy finally made it neces
sary to get one: the broom doesn’t do the job.
The other day I got some rather touching fan mail. Two letters, one from a man, one from a woman, both teaching at Keele University (one of the new English universities) and both thanking me for my “Notes on Love” (in Frontier) and saying how much they agreed, how right I was, what an unusual viewpoint, etc. Well, if these notes helped two people to love each other better and with more trust in love’s truth, then all that happened between me and M. was worthwhile. I feel sad about M.-she has gone to work in M——-. What a hole! I haven’t heard from her there don’t know her phone number. I wrote her a note the other day, but I have run out of things to say: the situation is somewhat artificial and strained because evidently she thinks I should leave here and can’t understand why I don’t, as if my staying here were somehow a betrayal. But that is no longer reasonable.
Some of the pictures I took the other day when I was miserable with cold and allergy, turned out very well. Contact sheets from Greg Griffin came today.
Touching picture of little Raphael Smith, Carleton Smith’s son, my Godchild, from this summer just as their marriage broke up. Ghastly mess. The baby looks pathetic. I think of the seemingly terrible, cruel remark of Basho on the abandoned child! This poor little baby is not abandoned, but he will grow up in a hard world. And how can I be a Godfather to him in my situation? Everywhere you turn in the “religious life” you run into absurdities and contradictions. But that is also true everywhere. The whole of society is absurd, and we all contribute to it without knowing. I am unable to help C. Smith-except by rather cruel letters, trying to force him to use his own resources instead of striving to get others to solve things for him. But I understand his desperation-it is his own fault, but how understandable. I can imagine myself in the same position.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 3