The Other Side of the Mountain

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The Other Side of the Mountain Page 15

by Thomas Merton


  In the earthenware mug—“mug.” I tell Father Roger, “not a cup, a mug.”

  Yogi [Fr. Roger’s dog] and the cats. He fought them over his meat. He let them have his milk. Yogi used to belong to Diane. She asked about Ashrams, Diane!

  Yogi romping over from unit one across the grass in the mist. I am going to the end of Lauds and to the whole-wheat bread and coffee and breakfast.

  The long low monastery—its significance in the mist—ehimneys—ventilators, like gray signs—the tops of the redwoods lost in the mist.

  Chickens in the evening roosting in a line on a branch over the drinking fountain. No use.

  Water in the drums of gasoline. Loggers explain to Father Roger as they siphon rust out of his engine—We do not go driving into the hills, drops of rust on the rusty ground.

  I told them Sidi Abdesalam (the Sufi from Morocco) had asked me about my dreams, about my Abbot, and had said, “Within a year, there will be some change.” And indeed, there was a change—for the better.

  Then I arrived back here in Kentucky in all this rain. The small hardwoods are full of green leaves, but are they real trees?

  The worshipful cold spring light on the sandbanks of Eel River, the immense silent redwoods. Who can see such trees and bear to be away from them? I must go back. It is not right that I should die under lesser trees.

  While I was coming back, the students at Columbia were flying the Viet Cong flag over each building and each building had its own commune.

  Leslie knew the name of every flower between Eureka and the monastery.

  Cold spring light on the sandbanks of Eel River. Communes, gasoline drums, burned stumps of the redwood trees big enough for houses. I told them in the store I came from Kentucky and they were pleased. Not so, in the airport bar. There is no point in living ten miles from Jim Beam. Who needs Kentucky?

  Rain. Work. Talk. Meetings. And a curfew on rioting Louisville.

  End of Terce. I walk into the sacristy listening for the lovely Alleluias of Dominique. I leave the door half open. The nuns’ voices, the tall trees outside the big window. The mysterious sky above the frosted sky-light. I pick up the amice to begin to vest for concelebration.

  Putting it all back after Mass. The folded [altar] cloths in the drawer, the table. Diane walking outside the enormous window, looked up into the sunlight and seemed happy.

  Climbing to the top of the high ridge before the sea: tall firs reaching into the sun above smokes, mists. Then down into the ferns!

  I drove back with Gracie. We met the logger at a crossing in his white helmet in his pickup. Therefore Father Roger’s truck broke down Thursday because this was the day after.

  Looking down from the steep height, I saw Gracie, very small, very far, carrying her blanket from the dead tree to the car.

  Winifred, her spring painting, a larva or fetus inspiring white reeds.

  As we climbed the steep road, Winifred’s hair was wet and stringy as if she had been swimming. And I opened letters.

  Gracie told me about her son and his school. One of the little white bastards wrote “nigger” in the toilet. Others told her son they were sorry such a thing could happen in San Rafael.

  The towhee in the wet Kentucky wood. Void. Nightfall. My meetings are temporarily over.

  Hisamatsu: natural, rational and Zen spontaneity. “This is true self,” he says, “going beneath spontaneity.”

  Hisamatsu also says, “There is a big difference between the ultimate self and the self discussed in psychology. When one reaches ultimate self, spontaneity is changed into ultimate spontaneity. Zen spontaneity comes from ultimate self…formless self which is never occupied with any form.” And he adds, “In western music, great silence is not found.”

  In our monasteries, we have been content to find our way to a kind of peace, a simple undisturbed thoughtful life. And this is certainly good, but is it good enough?

  I, for one, realize that now I need more. Not simply to be quiet, somewhat productive, to pray, to read, to cultivate leizure—otium sanctum [holy leisure]! There is a need of effort, deepening, change and transformation. Not that I must undertake a special project of self-transformation or that I must “work on myself.” In that regard, it would be better to forget it. Just to go for walks, live in peace, let change come quietly and invisibly on the inside.

  But I do have a past to break with, an accumulation of inertia, waste, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk, a great need of clarification of mindfulness, or rather of no mind-a return to genuine practice, right effort, need to push on to the great doubt. Need for the Spirit.

  Hang on to the clear light!

  PART III

  Preparing for Asia

  May 1968–September 1968

  May 21, 1968. [Gethsemani]

  This morning I got back to the hermitage from California and New Mexico. I arrived in Louisville on a slow propeller plane from Dallas, with long stops at Memphis and Nashville, at about n last night. Slept at the O’Callaghans’ and drove out with Ron Seitz this morning—also Ed Ford with his hair like Bob Dylan’s and his paintings, drawings, poems and fairy stories in the back seat. Actually a very good surrealist type of poet.

  On the flight from Dallas—Northern Texas and Arkansas—(Red River, Arkansas River)—there were floods everywhere, calligraphies of birds and oxhows and lakes and flooded fields. Later—the lovely patterns of lighted towns. Everything greener and greener, and today, with all the grass knee deep and the young trees having grown a foot in two weeks, I scarcely recognized Kentucky. The Bardstown Road was almost unfamiliar, and I had a hard time adjusting to it. This evening—it is a wonder to see the cumulus clouds over the green hills in the south, and to live again in a forest of hardwoods, of oaks, elms, maples and hickories.

  Northern California was unforgettable. I want very much to go back. Especially to Bear Harbor, the isolated cove on the Pacific shore where the Jones house is and which, I think, can be rented: the barrier, the reef, the eucalyptus trees, the steep slopes crowned by fir, the cove full of drift-redwood logs—black sand, black stones, and restless sea—the whole show, those deserted pyramids, the hollow full of wild iris, the steep road overhanging the sea, Needle Rock. I seem to remember every vale of that shore where I spent four days—and on the last day met Jones the owner and his wife in their red pickup and talked about perhaps renting their guesthouse. (The idea: that the convent of Redwoods would rent it as a place of solitary retreat, and I would perhaps go for Lent or for a month or two sometime in the year.)

  In the other, small notebook I have notes I made on the spot, in California and New Mexico. Now I just put down what occurs to me this evening, now that I am home again: to try to establish the shape of an experience, a pilgrimage, memories of which keep coming back in recurrent flashes and impressions.

  Such as the landing at Eureka, after looking down on the slashed redwood lands from the plane (after the first impression of San Francisco as a city I was immediately in love with as I was with Havana). Eureka: the feel of the desolate, calming Pacific winds. The emptiness of an incredible little town, with a Japanese freighter landing redwood to take to Asia. Sister Leslie in her grey habit and black stockings and glasses and her gentleness, driving the station wagon. Fr. Roger glad that I wore a beret (since he is Belgian). Sister Leslie admitting she once went to Vassar and wanting a certain root beer (instead of which we bought Olympia beer). Then the barns. Stories of the big flood in the Eel River Valley two (or three) years ago. And then the Redwoods. It was evening, and a cold wind blew in their immense shadows. We got out of the car and walked toward the river, and slid in a deep bank of sand down toward the water. The vast silence of the trees. Nothing. Immense girth and trunks going up forever. I have never seen anything so exciting as a big grove of them: but there are too few big groves left.

  Then as we got nearer the monastery the deprived valleys and hollows looked something like Kentucky. Place where the convicts were clearing along the road to slow down fores
t fires. Then, behind big trees, the monastery itself, like a long, low, Japanese building. The big window of the chapel looking out at your redwoods, and the chickens perching on a low branch over the drinking fountain. (This made Fr. Roger furious and it was funny to see him chase them off. They made a lot of noise.)

  Late dusk, and I had an immense supper of vegetables and bits offish. Then I went to bed in the room that was to smell of oranges for ten days. And instant coffee, made with the Japanese bent coil in an earthenware mug of water. Reading first part of a book on Sartre which I abandoned, and then bits of [André] Ravier La Mystique et les mystiques, some of which not bad, much of which useless.

  First day I went over the ridge into the valley which turned out to be “inside the enclosure.” Some giant firs and redwoods, but only a few. And a small orchard with a high fence around it (15 feet) to keep out the deer. I wonder how the photos will turn out that I took of old logs with strange abstract patterns on them.

  Fr. Roger’s dog Yogi, which belonged to Sr. Diane before she entered. Yogi liking to go for walks, running from the guest house, expressing delight, chasing the cats away from his food.

  I gave talks on “the veils,” on Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, the “contemplative mystique,” the “feminine mystique” (a curse), and then on Sufism. In the room with big windows looking on a tiny yard with a sort of Zen garden in it. And the big blinds that the Sisters found hard to manage. A lot of good discussion. Mother Myriam especially very smart. All the community excellent. And I remember their liturgy. I would come in at the side and see the end of the choir only, perhaps Sr. Leslie, perhaps Diane, perhaps another, as they changed around. Some with veils, some not, and Sr. Veronica the big lovely Flemish cook who made me good meals and said ritually “enjoy your dinner” and gave me picnic lunches to take to the shore of the ocean.

  I had the days to myself mostly, and all the work was in the evenings: Vespers at 3:30, then from 4 to 6 a conference, or “workshop” or whatever—then more after supper, the late session being more informal.

  Couple of times went across the road and drank a bottle of Heineken’s at Al Groth’s house.

  Concelebration every morning with Fr. Roger, sometimes preaching a homily. The voices and chants of the nuns very good. I cannot forget the Alleluia for Tierce, composed by Sr. Dominique. A lovely melody all involved in my memories of the Pacific, as I went out there after Mass. I went out first the second day (Wednesday 8th) driven by the postulant Carole, in her Volkswagen. The mist, the immense drop of the slope down to the invisible sea. Then, as the road wound down, the sea appeared. The bare pines where the slope had burnt. More turns. Sheep. The ranch, far below, by the surf, and finally the abandoned house, the barn, the dead tree at Needle Rock. The steep path down to the black sand. The piled driftlogs. The court of logs with arbitrary, ceremonious buildings. The tripod rocks with gulls and pelicans sitting on it. I walked barefoot in the sand until after three hours I discovered the sand was all volcanic glass and my feet were cut to pieces. Huge undertow of the Pacific. In any case, the gray waters could be seen to be very cold, and as I walked in the surf a sudden big wave soaked me up to the thighs and I did not dry all afternoon. After that walked on the high pasture over the sea and did not, on any of the other days I was there, go to the beach again. Friday I drove out with GracieJones (many stories of Vina) and this time climbed high up on the slope. It was a bright day and the sea was calm, and I looked out over the glittering blue water, realizing more and more that this was where I really belonged. I shall never forget it. I need the sound of those waves, that desolation, that emptiness.

  I finished the talks on Sunday 12th (after Fr. Roger and I drove to Ettersburg—the Indian woman in the house, and the goats). On the 13th and 14th I was out all day at the shore—13th near the Pyramids, and the 14th I found Bear Harbor.

  The 40 acres—stripped of redwood and fir, which the convent bought. But I am not concerned with a place near the convent. I must stay by the ocean—at least for a couple of months. I need the silence and the emptying. Radical change in my ideas out there. I must give up a lot of the useless activity I am engaged in—especially correspondence.

  On Wednesday 16th Mother Myriam and Sr. (the dancer) Katryn and I drove down from the convent to San Francisco—through Garberville, the Eel River Valley, then Willits, Ukiah, “Conservative Cloverdale” with its oranges, Santa Rosa, etc., to San Francisco. They went to Penney’s where Portia, that big sweet postulant, works. I meanwhile went for a walk and had some beers in a hotel bar where a Filipino fairy talked about his days in the Coast Guard and the barkeep was full of witticisms. I called Ferlinghetti who came and joined us all in an Italian restaurant and then took me to North Beach to an espresso place and eventually let me sleep in the City Lights Publication office, halfway up Telegraph Hill. Pictures in the stairway of René Daumal’s Mount Analogue cover. A good collection of H. M. Engensbuyer’s verse in the office, which I read in the morning waiting for the nuns to return.

  I could go on all night with this but I must go to bed. Fresh smell of the woods around the hermitage. A loud whippoorwill.

  Andrew Lytle writes from the Sewanee, “That’s awfully good on Blake and the New Theology.”

  May 24, 1968

  A week ago today I spent the day up among the red rocks of the Chama canyon, watching out for snakes, watched by a gang of gray jays, staring at the high red wall of cliff on the other side, hiding from hot sun under a small pifton pine—ragged but adequate shade.

  Christ of the Desert—with its elegant flop-eared Nubian goats, cared for by a Cistercian hermit from Snowmass. We had a long conversation in his hermitage, which he built of field stone, by the river. That was Sunday morning. The Church there is beautiful, but has had to be partially rebuilt since the roof started letting in rain and snow and even the walls began to be ruined this winter. Mass in the Chapter Room of the little transformed adobe farm house, which is a pleasant place. Everywhere in the monastery are good santos and bultos [images of saints] speckled like birds. New Mexico is an impressive place and I await from there the black and white and yellow Navajo rug Dam Aelred bought for my chapel (with two very small rugs I was able to afford for myself).

  Don and Eileen Devereux came up from Santa Fe Friday and stayed the weekend. Saturday Don and I and a boy who hitchhiked in from Iowa went to the site of an old pueblo on the mountain above Abiquiu. Then to Ghost Ranch. There I spent the rest of the day in the rock and scrub this time SE of the monastery. And walked back along the road in the evening toward the big bulking cliffs under which the church is half hidden. Sunday—Peter Nabokov (whose book Two Leggings I reviewed) showed up with a Puerto Rican priest and a Christian Brother (Bro. Godfrey—quite a personality), all of whom were involved in the Poor People’s March.

  Left Christ of the Desert Monday morning in the monastery jeep. Drove with Dam Aelred and Fr. Gregory to Santa Fe. They were most hospitable to me and I have an idea they would be delighted to have me join them there—which I can’t very well do, I guess. But even as a hermit, they’d he glad to have me, and said so. It is a good place, yet rather precarious at the moment (only three there, including Fr. Denis). They live on hope. But such a good site! I wonder they don’t have dozens of postulants. Can they survive on goats milk cheese and on retreats? I don’t know. But it is a great place for a monastery.

  At Santa Fe airport the plane that was to take me to Albuquerque was late and I drove there (to A.) with two women who were stranded in the airport-both full of conservative and Republican talk. In the tree-shaded suburbs of Albuquerque, talking of “Mr. Nixon” and averring that “Rockefeller and his wife” would not “make a good President,” I had lunch in the Kachina room at the airport, looking at all the ruddy, blond, WASP types and wondering how many right wing organizations they belonged to. Then off to Dallas on a Continental flight, an hour and a half in the big crowded airport, served in the Luau Room by a Baptist grandma in a Hawaiian nightgown, and then finally bac
k to Louisville on a slow prop-flight that stayed a ½ hour in Memphis and another ½ hour at Nashville. Tommie and Frank O’Callaghan met me at the airport about 11 p.m. and I sat up late with them, talking, and finally slept.

  Lonely for the Pacific and the Redwoods. A sense that somehow when I was there I was unutterably happy-and maybe I was. Certainly, every minute I was there, especially by the sea, I felt I was at home-as if I had come a very long way to where I really belonged. Maybe it’s absurd, I don’t know. But that is the way it feels. I seem to be alienated and exiled here. As if there were really no reason whatever-except a few tenaciously fictitious ones-for being here. As if I were utterly cheating myself by staying where I am only a stranger-and will never be anything else. I know how easy it is to be deluded by such things and so I try not to pay attention. In the end, I think I came to the best decision when I was out there: to try to get permission to spend Lent at least at Bear Harbor, but to maintain my “stability” here. This evening, the whole thing seems futile-as if it were not really an honest solution at all, only a compromise, and a very unreal one. As if I ought frankly to ditch the place and go where I will have real solitude, and won’t be caught in this artificial pretense that keeps me here.

 

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