6. The present policies of the U.S. make clear that a semblance of world peace and order depends on a revolution in the U.S. which will align this country with Third World revolutionaries, not against them.
7. But such a revolution cannot possibly succeed. At least not with the present line-up, Black Power—Hippies—Peace Movement—Acid-heads and Poets against the U.S. army, government, police.
8. Johnson will attempt some sort of compromise gesture that may effectively lull the awakening suspicions and questions of “good ordinary folks” and draw the sting out of much of the resistance. Then when he is re-elected—step up police repression and control by force, subtle and overt, perhaps withdrawing to some extent from vast foreign involvements—a more fascist idolatrous idea.
9. A lot depends on what happens to American money. If there is an economic collapse…
No pronouncements. No statements. No fuss. No “action.” Sit quiet and use your eyes and ears and your head. Try to understand the meaning of events in these next months. This is a critical year for the U.S. and for the world. Everything is crystallizing out much more clearly and uncompromisingly than at any time since World War II. We’ll see what happens! Meanwhile, let no one imagine Johnson is merely an uncouth idiot. He has both the clearsightness and the fatal blindness of the operator who manipulates for immediate pragmatic ends and cannot see the ultimate human consequences of his manipulation. And he controls more power at the moment than any human being in the history of the world-though he can’t make that power do what he really wants. It is the power of a Saul and of a Goliath. Vulnerable to some black David, maybe. But that one is not yet on the scene as far as I know.
That demented woman, Marie Tadie. is threatening to sue the monastery for $15,000, because I finally persuaded Dom James to drop her as agent before he retired—rather than pass her on to the next abbot. Who could be expected to handle such a porcupine? Her megalomania, autism and greed are unlimited. I was very imprudent to let her start selling books for me in France. When? Perhaps in 1960 or 61. She then began putting herself forward as my “exclusive agent and translator.” Trouble began seriously in 1963 or 64 when she sold the Black Revolution separately in France and then in Italy, then in Barcelona (Catalan!). I began, too late, trying to control her, and to prevent her from taking over everything I had. I did manage to keep her hands off the German rights. In 1965 when I moved to the hermitage I wanted to break off all business with her and let the publishers handle everything. Dom James would not do this. Instead he started to deal with her himself and got into untold difficulties, complicating matters still further. I had trouble persuading him to drop her even when he planned to retire. When Naomi came in November it was finally decided to put the whole thing in the hands of Kraemer-Rains in Paris and that is where it now is. (He is a good lawyer and a friend of Maritain’s, recommended by Doris Dana.)
February 10, 1968
Bitter cold again—below 32 all day and now rapidly getting down toward 20. It will be another cold night. In late afternoon, after finishing some mail, I walked out to say Office. The moon was up (it will be full in three or four days) and two deer were standing motionless out in the middle of the field, watching me, their big ears spread out, their grey winter coats almost green against the field. The farmers meanwhile are farming with fire, burning the alfalfa fields to kill weevil. Roaring of the flame throwers in St. Teresa’s field circled my place, and acrid blue smoke floating through the pines.
I just learned a day or two ago about the big drive of the Vietcong in Vietnam—they almost took a lot of cities at once by guerrilla action, and gave a great show of revolutionary strength, so that although they did not hold on to much of anything they completely changed the picture. It is the beginning of the end in Vietnam because there is just nothing left for the Americans to “support” except themselves. Morally the country belongs to the NLF, because of the stupidity and inefficacy of the technical ideas of Americans—strategic hamlets, crop-burning, etc. It is a great failure of power, and a victory, whether you like it or not, for human spirit, even if that spirit is ruthless, totalist, etc. It is a victory of people and of authentic human concern over a technological and military machine. But the war is not over yet. Is there going to be another Dien Ben Phu, this time for America? I am not so sure. But the war cannot be won by the U.S. now. Or the military objectives of the U.S. cannot be attained.
J. Laughlin came Thursday. In two days we got a lot of work done on the Trust, copyrights, permissions, etc. Friday—were in Louisville all day—first at Bellarmine, then John Ford’s office. John Ford, J., Tommie and Fr. John Loftus and I had lunch at The Old House—a good one, too. That is a place I like (Cunningham’s has been sold and things are happening to it). Then back to John Ford’s. Maybe all the rules for permissions, etc., may complicate my life but in the end I hope they will prevent some legal snarl that would frustrate publication or use of my stuff. Libraries and publishers like rules as much as monks do, in fact more. J. is full of stories about people pirating Ezra Pound, etc. By 3 p.m. I was exhausted. But Tommie wanted us to stay for dinner and I had got permission (as J. did not want to return—so I needed someone else to drive me back). Then began a long drag between 4 and 10:30. First-lying down, trying to rest in the guestroom at O’C. ’s. Traffic noise. Dog barking. Kids playing. Not unpleasant. Then trying to get some news on TV—only local at that time. Then a rush down to the Pendennis Club—a big idiot place, dinner in a large, green, classical kind of a dining room with absurd music (the kind of stuff they played for the dansant [dancing] on the Cunard Line). The food was OK, but I did not feel like eating. The place was just ludicrous and all I could think of was getting out of it. The tedious, oppressive world of the wealthy.
What I really wanted, and finally got—was to go down to the new place that has opened in a warehouse building on Washington Street. Very good jazz there. Clark Terry, a trumpeter who was with Ellington, is there for four days. It was very satisfying. The only problem—Tommie had invited a lot of people who were not really interested in jazz and who sat around garrulously talking when I wanted to listen. One man kept asking me to justify it, explain what could possibly be good about it, instead of listening to it. Still, it was good. The players were stacked up on a high stage in the middle of everyone but facing a wall, practically. It is a long high narrow cellar. Power and seriousness of the jazz. As if they were playing for their own sake and for the sound’s sake and had no relationship to the people around them. And yet for the most part everyone seemed to like it. Without understanding that here was one place in Louisville where something was definitely being done and said. Ron Seitz came with Sally, and Pat Huntington was with me so we formed an enclave of appreciation—maybe. Anyway, that was one place where I felt at home, if only I weren’t in a crowd of uninvolved people. It would have been better at a table, two or three with nothing to say.
When we got out it was very cold. I didn’t get back to the woods until nearly two, fell into bed and slept five hours. Then got up for Office and Mass, etc. The quiet of the hermitage is good. The sound of the jazz was good. In between—a vast morass of nonsense, babble, riding, talking, pretending, etc. For a moment I thought: nice if I had my own car, could simply drive out of here about seven and come back when I felt like it and not depend on people who want to entertain you by the hour.
Actually, of course, this is an exception. Once was enough. And it was exhausting.
February 12, 1968
Zero yesterday and below 20 tonight. Spica, Vega, Arcturus; brilliant. Frost shines on the ground in the light of the setting moon. Very cold, very silent, when I was out during meditation—only a distant train—to have only one far noise is now equivalent to silence.
I finished [Ronald] Segal’s badly written but perceptive survey The Race War [New York: Viking, 1967]. It really clarifies the situation—shows how serious and how irrational it is. These are elementary truths—and people like Johnson evidently can’t see t
hem. To think that a society as complex and sophisticated as the U.S. seems to be, should bog down, finally, is something as trivial, as stupid, and as self-defeating.
One conclusion: the real importance of resistance within the U.S. Not only for ourselves but for everyone else—for the human race. Yet the hangups are now so inexorable…
Thinking too of the meeting in Bangkok—the AIM Meeting of Asian Superiors in December to which I may or may not eventually go. What sense can monastic renewal and “implantation” in Asia have if the (Christian) monasteries are implicitly identified with Western power? Dom Leclercq sees this of course. Utility of the meeting could be in clarification of this problem first of all.
Yesterday before Concelebration Dom Flavian handed me a blue envelope from the BBC—invitation to an interview with Malcolm Muggeridge for TV. Obviously turned down. I am suggesting to Fr. Flavian that Muggeridge should nevertheless stop by here for an informal visit.
February 13, 1968
Bright morning—freezing, but less cold than before—and with a hint of the smell of spring-earth in the cold air. A beautiful sunrise, the woods all peaceful and silent, the dried old fruits on the yellow poplar shining like precious artifacts. I have a new level in my (elementary) star-consciousness. I can now tell where constellations may be in the daytime when they are invisible. Not many, of course! But for example: the sun is rising in Aquarius and so I know that in the blue sky overhead the beautiful swan, invisible, spreads its wide wings over me. A lovely thought, for some reason.
I am really turned on by social anthropology and cargo cults. Jarvic’s book The Revolution in Anthropology is, I think, important, though I distrust Popperites. But he very smartly shows how Cargo has found anthropologists in an impasse and thrown them into a crisis—and their response has been a ritual methodological celebration which has, itself, the qualities of a Cargo cult. This is useful and instructive and leads somewhere! Where? I hope to discover.
Yesterday—finished a first draft on the question of Monastic Discipline. More to be done!
Since Hayden Carruth’s reprimand I have had more esteem for the crows around here and I find, in fact, that we seem to get on much more peacefully. Two sat high in an oak beyond my gate as I walked on the brow of the hill at sunrise saying the Little Hours. They listened without protest to my singing of the antiphons. We are part of a menage, a liturgy, a fellowship of sorts.
February 20, 1968
Still bitter cold.
Yesterday in rain and sleet Parrish’s workmen poured the foundation for an addition on to the hermitage: a lavatory and a room for a chapel. Right now I am eager and anxious for the chapel to be finished, to have the Blessed Sacrament reserved, and to go into a kind of Lenten retreat with much more quiet prayer and less of a log jam of conflicting activities.
Monday, 1bmmie O’C. came out unexpectedly with some relatives, so the whole afternoon was gone and then I foolishly decided to go in to Washington St., which meant the night gone, too. Only value—talking to Melvin Jackson, the bass player, a really dedicated artist. And the combo turned on and really played in an all but empty place. Power and unity and drive. It was very fine, very real. But again, exhausting to get back here, sleep four hours, and try to salvage something from the next day. All I did accomplish finally (and that wasn’t much) was to talk to Joseph Mulloy (formerly accused of “sedition” in Pike County), who is resisting draft induction this Friday. I gave him a letter of support—on moral rather than political (resistance) grounds.
February 22, 1968
Zero again. Heavy frost. Very cold night. I had a dream that President Johnson was assassinated in Louisville. It seemed like a rather trite event and few paid much serious attention, though of course the police and military went about finding the assassin. He was found almost immediately. This fact was heralded by a long, bizarre, sadistic bugle call. I asked a passing soldier who it was (three soldiers, dark silhouettes on a sloping lawn) and he said “some British Pastor in Israel.”
After that I lay awake and listened to the hard ice cracking and hardening some more in the rain-barrel outside.
There is very little real news of Vietnam—guesses, opinions, surmises. There is evidently hard fighting in Hue but we’re not told, and the Vietcong are massed around Khe Sanh. Yet at the same time Khe Sanh does not seem to have any special meaning (strategically) for either side. It is another symbolic position. And both sides are looking for a big propaganda victory by killing as many of the other side as they can—if possible by simply exterminating the others. Not to gain any significant objective, just to clobber the enemy. Just simply to kill.
I still haven’t been able to really straighten out the messed-up text of the Journal of My Escape. Impossible to get stencils run off. Bro. Martin and the novices are all tied up in liturgical texts that are being turned out in hundreds. I can see where I can just about forget further mimeographing or offset duplication for my own stuff here. If I can get out my four issues of Monks Pond that ought to be enough, and that will be a problem in itself.
I hope that in Lent I’ll be able to go into retreat and keep visitors out—or at least away from the hermitage. One or two engagements: I hope to see [James] Baker, the Ph.D. candidate from Florida, Ash Wednesday, Winston King later in March, and Donald Allchin before Easter. Also have a date to see Jim Wygal in March and should see Dr. Ryan March II. Hope I can keep it down to that! If Tim Hogan gets in the habit of coming over from Nazareth it will be a real nuisance. Might as well let him know clearly. (He and Jim Gorman brought Joseph Mulloy here Tuesday.)
February 24, 1968
A magazine in English—in Burma or somewhere (India?)—has an article by a Buddhist lay-woman on her practice of meditation—emphasizing mindfulness of suffering in its existential reality, not escaping into ecstasy, etc. On one of the pages with this article—the following advertisement.
If you use Balm
use only the strongest Balm
de Songa’s Dali Brand
BURMA BALM (picture of jar-radiating light)
So powerful yet only K1 a jar
Relieves all pain—and quickly!
From de Songa’s, of course.
Bitter cold all the time. Waning moon, almost at its end, we probably won’t see any more of it tomorrow. Year of the Monkey is what this is, I learned the other day from some news article on Vietnam.
Yesterday: I went to a Council Meeting, as I am now back on the Council. Quiet, reasonable, a very good atmosphere of peace, charity, sense. Fr. Flavian is impressive as Abbot, quiet, simple, definite, completely honest, not extending himself beyond his limits but functioning within them in a dedicated way. I think he will be sane and good. Of course the tough times have not yet begun. Under Dom James my struggles and exasperation led me to do wrong and unwise things without clearly seeing what I was doing—and thinking myself justified. Under Dom Flavian I am interested in being more honest and more serious—and a better hermit. It will be a struggle, because I have let things get potentially out of hand by thoughtlessness and carelessness with people, visitors, drinking, etc. Just to aim at moderation does not really work. Well, I should do that, but more than that. In the end, something more absolute is required—and a more real solimde. I really think that the idea of “helping others” and “being open” has led me into a real illusion.
February 25, 1968. Quinquagesima
From a letter of Hans Magnus Engenberger resigning a job at Wesleyan University and leaving the U.S. for Cuba in protest against the war and the whole simation:
I believe the class which rules the U.S. of America and the government which implements its policies to be the most dangerous body of men on earth…a threat to everyone who is not part of it. It is waging an undeclared war against more than a billion people.
Its aim is to establish its political, economic and military predominance over every other power in the world. Its mortal enemy is revolutionary change.
This letter was written on m
y birthday.
Yesterday I wrote a short piece on Wilderness (the Nash book) in the afternoon. Importance of the “ecological conscience.” (Same war as above!!)
Though it is still cold (with a bitterly biting wind) there were a few moments this afternoon when the coming of spring might almost be credible—perhaps because I so desire it after this cold winter. Out in St. Bernard’s field, just as the clock was striking two, the sound of the bells came clear in a lull of the wind, and with the wind down the sun was suddenly warm. Fern-like walnut trees in the hollow stood as if ready for summer, and I looked at the distant valley and at the slight haze in the sky. Perhaps warm weather will once again be possible.
Then in the evening—the bare trees had a certain way of beating themselves up against the blue late sky, as if they knew for sure the promise of sap in them. I sang the Te Lucis and realized it is a lovely hymn.
As I was ending my conference Bro. Kevin gave me a telegram from Jim Forest saying he was not coming. But I had not even heard he was coming. It was from Atlanta. Maybe he was intending to bring [Thich] Nhat Hanh here. There may be a letter about it tomorrow.
February 26, 1968
In spite of the bright, bitter cold (below 20) the whistling of the cardinals gives some hint of spring. It, too, is confident.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 8