Buses, milans, mflrtres, rat;ers,
Et les funebres jarandoles,
Se tiennent aux endroits sfluvages.
[Buzzards, kites, martens, ratters,
and funereal farandoles
keep to primeval places.]
It takes me back to the summer of 1966 when I was so much under his spell (along with all the other spells of that time!).
I am a bit annoyed at the fussy, importunate efforts of Fr. Basil (of Spencer) to involve me in his editorial project and in a symposium which is connected with it. I half consented to go to this, and then the next step was to try to involve me in a debate with Louis Lekai on “Dteaux and Eremitism.” Nuts! I wrote and said I only intended to go insofar as it might be necessary for the publication project and not as a member of a debating society. As I see it now I won’t go at all. The decision is apparently up to me. So I feel much more peaceful about it. I have no need whatever to please or accommodate these people. The whole thing seems to me useless and silly. Others who want an excuse to get out and talk can go. I have no interest whatever in any of it.
It is impossible to go near the monastery without having to stop and talk to five or ten people. Idiotic. Without being brusque, I try to cut it short and get away as fast as I can.
June 17, 1968
The novice masters of the American monasteries are having a meeting here, and since I am an item, a tourist attraction on the grand tour of Gethsemani, I am to give them a paper in the hermitage tomorrow. And of course the following day they go onto Dom James. Reports are of enormous rattlesnakes (“Bigger than your arm”) being shot around DomJ’s hermitage by monastery vigilantes. And also of brothers being tired of driving Dom J back and forth on that rough road. I am very glad I had the sense not to get involved in the Laura project [colony of hermits] that was at first (1964) considered for Bell Hollow and the rest of Edelin’s place.
On the contrary-Ping Ferry speaks of getting land at Big Sur and intimates that there could be a place for me on it. But Big Sur sounds too popular. Not only are the hippies moving there, not only are the Camaldolese there, but also several ex-Gethsemani Trappists are priests in that vicinity.
I finished an article on silence (“Creative Silence”) which against my better judgment I undertook to write for a Baptist Student magazine. The decision was made in the guest room at the Redwoods—perhaps after returning from the beach. When I had finished it I was content enough, but I had trouble getting started!
June 23, 1968
Very hot. Steamy, heavy, soggy. It will be a dreary night—especially if [Andy] Boone lets his dogs out again to chase foxes in the hollow behind my place! (Which he did the other night.) But it doesn’t matter. I am fortunate indeed to be in the woods.
This afternoon I found a tolerable breeze in the woods near the cottage, on the SW, on the hill before you get to the sheepbarn. Walked there content in the afternoon before conference. Suddenly a big deer started up very nearby (did not hear it come). When you are used to only rabbits, squirrels and woodchucks, a deer at 50 ft. seems enormous. Big as a house!
The flycatchers nesting on my waterpipe (from the roof gutter) are charming and keep busy with the flies that are so annoying.
John Wu’s son came with his wife Teresa-on their honeymoon-the other day. I said Mass for them in the hermitage chapel on the Feast of the Sacred Heart and they are two very charming young people-but I have had so many visits I am mortally tired of them. The last two free days have been a blessing. So too was the sunny afternoon of the feast when I went off to the far end of a beanfield on Linton’s and took my shirt off and meditated in the sun-(on the Yoga Vashista-exelent). Realize more and more that what really matters to me is meditation-and whatever creative work really springs from it.
Though there is very little enthusiasm at Doubleday over Journal of My Escape [from the Nazis]. Naomi has been authorized to make me an offer and I am accepting it. Maybe I’m wrong. I think Doubleday is a bunch of nitwits. But Naomi likes the book and has fought hard for it-will continue to—and New Directions has several other jobs on hand. Geography of Logaire—tentative first draft (with more to come, I hope) has gone to be typed.
Election in France today. A critical situation!
It looks as though Fr. Flavian will approve my going to Bangkok, as well as Indonesia, if Thailand doesn’t get into complete war-as I am afraid it will. In any case I am planning on Indonesia (and scarcely believe it possible!) hoping also for Japan and some Zen monastery. If I get to the Asian Abbots’ meeting I will probably be involved in several retreats, or conferences, in Asian monasteries. What I really want is, however, to meet Buddhists. But what I want most of all is to spend a couple of months entirely alone somewhere on the shore of the Pacific.
June 24, 1968
I decided I had better take this occasion to go to town before going into a (relative) period of retreat for part of July-August. Did not go to any doctor-everything more or less OK in that regard-but spent the day in the U. of Louisville Library-trying to find something useful on structuralism. Nothing. No Lévi-Strauss, no Barthes, Lacan, etc. I raked through several bound volumes of the NRF and found a good article by Foucault.’
However, with the help of one of the reference librarians I did find some practical information on visas, shots, vaccinations, etc. for travel in SE Asia and Indonesia. Marco Pallis’ has sent one good address in Japan and Amiya Chakravarty’ does not exclude the possibility of getting into Burma even!! That could be exciting (great xenophobia there-understandable-you can only stay 24 hours).
Before leaving I had a long wait at the steel building and watched two of the Farm establishment (Bro. Christopher and Bro. Alban) playa fast game of handball against the wall of the horsebarn. The new look in monasticism! Bro. Irenaeus drove me in and took Bro. Chrysostom to the airport-he is going to a cantors’ workshop at Spencer.
I have sent the whole first draft of Lograire to Paula Hocks for typing (minus a few pages of Ghost Dance yet to be done). And also I have accepted an offer from Doubleday for Journal of My Escape from the Nazis, though they are very cool towards it for the most part. Yet Naomi is for it and so is one other senior editor. I think I’d better leave it to them rather than give it to New Directions, which will normally have Lograire.
June 26, 1968
Don Devereux wants me to come to New Mexico to see some of the Indian festivals! I wish I could go!
1 NRF refers to La NouveUe Revue Franfaise, a French journal Merton researched at the University of Louisville library. Vol. 12 contained two articles by Michel Foucault, the French psychologist, “La metanior prose et Ie labyrinthe” (1963) and “La prose d’Actaeon” (1964).
2 Marco Pallis was born in Liverpool, England, in 1895, of Greek parents and was educated at Harrow and Liverpool University. He is best known for his 1939 book about his experiences in Tibet, Peaks and Lamas, which made an enormous impression on Merton. He visited Merton while touring the United States with the English Consort of Viols.
3 Amiya Chakravarty was for many years a philosophy professor at State University College, New Paltz, New York. He was a long-time friend, correspondent, and adviser for Merton’s reading in Asian religions; Merton dedicated his hook Zen and the Birdr of Appetite to him.
An invitation came today to preach a retreat (next January) at Our Lady of the Genesee. Of course, I’ll refuse.
Another invitation to go all over the country speaking—all expenses paid and $6,000 beyond that. Nuts. This sort of thing would be useless and absurd for me. The fact that one might do some good etc., is no argument. No matter what you do, you might do some good.
Anselm Atkins was here (from Conyers) briefly yesterday. We had a short talk on the library balcony.
I once again went over the mimeo of Journal of My Escape, rearranged the chapters (still mixed up after Marie Charron got the whole thing in confusion) and think I finally have it in good enough shape for the editors at Doubleday.
Tran
slated a couple of poems of René Char and put them on tape along with the notes I made about the May Journey to the West (the stuff in the small notebook, not this one).
June 29, 1968. Saturday. SS Peter and Paul
More invitations. Yesterday the Esalen Institute—to conduct a seminar at Big Sur—and to speak in San Francisco. This is more attractive than most but I can’t accept it either. Bishop Breitenbeck who is going around trying to help nuns get organized wants me to join in that. But Fr. Flavian isn’t having any. Etc. But I do look at maps of the Pacific, study flights: San Francisco-Manila-Singapore, Jakarta—I do think it is best to give my efforts to the most “abandoned”—and remote—and those in Asia and Africa from whom there is also so much to learn.
I am reading [Frantz] Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks—a really extraordinary book. From every point of view—as a piece of existentialist philosophizing, an analysis of the race question, as a work of literature (got it from Jim Lowell at the Asphodel Bookshop in exchange for Monks Ponds).
Also reading Vance Packard’s Naked Society—timely enough! The new crime bill now permits all kinds of bugging, wire-tapping, evidence so obtained can be used in court, etc. A big step towards a Police State. Not towards: we are in many respects already there. All these new things (bugging equipment, gasses, armored cars, etc.) will be used more and more against forces of change and dissent. And less against criminals than against dissenters.
I am spending the afternoon reading Santi Deva in the woods near the hermitage—the oak grove to the SW. A cool, breezy spot on a hot afternoon. (I changed my mind about going across the road and out to the small pond in the knobs—or—on the way there yesterday I ran into too many people.) Quiet—except for someone firing a gun at the pond across the road: typical!
Thinking deeply of Santi Deva and my own need of discipline. What a fool I have been, in the literal and biblical sense of the word: thoughtless, impulsive, lazy, self-interested, yet alien to myself, untrue to myself, following the most stupid fantasies, guided by the most idiotic emotions and needs. Yes, I know, it is partly unavoidable. But I know too that in spite of all contradictions there is a center and a strength to which I always can have access if I really desire it. And the grace to desire it is surely there.
It would do no good to anyone if I just went around talking—on matter how articulately—in this condition. There is still so much to learn, so much deepening to be done, so much to surrender. My real business is something far different from simply giving out words and ideas and “doing things”—even to help others. The best thing I can give to others is to liberate myself from the common delusions and be, for myself and for them, free. Then grace can work in and through me for everyone.
What impresses me most at this reading of Santi Deva is not only the emphasis on solitude but the idea of solitude as part of the clarification which includes living for others: dissolution of the selfin “belonging to everyone” and regarding everyone’s suffering as one’s own. This is really incomprehensible unless one shares something of the deep existential Buddhist concept of suffering as bound up with the arbitrary formation of an illusory ego-self. To be “homeless” is to abandon one’s attachment to a particular ego—and yet to care for one’s own life (in the highest sense) in the service of others. A deep and beautiful idea.
“Be thou jealous of thine own self when thou seest that it is at ease and thy fellow in distress, that it is in high estate and he is brought low, that it is at rest and he is at labour. Make thine own self lose its pleasures and bear the sorrow of its fellows…etc.”
Reference to be given to helping others to enlightenment, therefore helping those who are closest to it.
July 1, 1968
Very hot. One of the hottest days I can remember here. Clammy and stuffy—but with a breeze—even though hot—in the woods. I spent part of the afternoon there, beginning Heiler’s book on Prayer, which I find very moving and true. This is a good time to read it, as I hope to make July at least relatively a time of retreat, silence and prayer. I do have one or two appointments (I need to see John Ford to keep straight on contracts for these TV performances of Freedom Songs, etc.—all of which belong to Robert Williams). A call came today from Richard Walsh of NCCM [National Conference of Catholic Men] (about these songs and this silly show).
This afternoon I finally got down to the job of editing Monks Pond III, sweating all over the manuscripts and my letters of acceptance (or rejection).
Now—night falling—it is still very close, but thunder is heard in the distance and maybe it will rain and cool off during the night. Meanwhile, a loud racket of many birds in the stifling dusk (cardinals, jays, larks). And guns at the lake across the B[ardstown] road.
July 3, 1968
“Intellectual alienation is a creation of middle-class society. What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in pre-determined forms forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.”—Fanon
Yesterday I finished Fanon’s intelligent, well-written, eminently true book Black Skins, White Masks. Written earlier than the Wretched, it is more incisive, dispassionate, less angry. He still thought he could communicate with white men.
Today I begin Kierkegaard’s Attack upon Christendom. A fascinating and deeply disturbing book. All very well to smile at Bishop Mynster “living out his days to be buried with full music,” but what priest is not a Bishop Mynster? The very idea is that we will fulfill an office, in other words be respected members of an establishment and carry out our job. And the implication is that in so doing we automatically witness to the truth—become links in a chain of witnesses. What could be more false?
Yesterday (Visitation) a violent storm during dinner. I never saw such a black sky at noon or so much wind out in the front garden of the monastery.
(Yesterday) In the afternoon I finished selecting stuff for Monks Pond III, and feel happy about it. So much fine poetry: [Pentti] Saarikoski, [Ted] Enslin’s Journal, Marvin Cohen, Bes[milr] Brigham’s Mexican Tigers, I hope 3 or 4 of [Anselm] Hollo on Bears. Little Chris Meatyard’s lovely “Inner Light” poem (he is what? 12, 13?) Another fine poem by a 12 year old I am saving for IV.
(evening)
In the morning I went out early and finished cutting down and trimming the young pines still bent over since last winter’s big blizzards. The bush boundary of my yard, toward the woods, is now clear—relatively (some sumac coming up along the fence line, however!). This work made my back sore again—so I have to be careful. In the afternoon I went to the farthest end of the soybean field on Linton’s and took off my shirt to get the sun on my neck and shoulders while I meditated (Hatha and Yoga Vasishta). A quiet and profitable afternoon and God knows I need much more of this! How much precious time and energy I have wasted in the last three years, doing things that have nothing whatever to do with my real purposes and which only frustrate and confuse me. It is a wonder I haven’t lost my vocation to solitude by trifling and evasion.
One thing is very clear: all that passes for aggiornamento is not necessarily good or healthy. One has to remain pretty critical and independent about all ideas. And come to one’s own conclusions on a basis of one’s own frank experience. Both the conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism: in either case the dread of being left out of their reference group. I have to go my own way in terms of needs that to me are fundamental: need to live a life of prayer, need to liberate myself from my own “cares” and “unique” need for an authentic monastic solitude (not mere privacy), and need for a real understanding and use of Asian insights in religion.
I naturally think a lot about Indonesia, but haven’t read much yet
—have only leafed through a couple of volumes of the National Geographic—Borobudur, Bali dancers, an amphibious jeep about to cross to Bai Strait, 25 varieties of poisonous snakes, active volcanoes, etc. The traditional religious art and architecture strike me as dull. The people—beautiful. I plan dutifully to read the article on Java in the (1911) Encyclopedia Britannica in our monastic library.
New Directions sent me Bro. Antoninus’s book on Jeffers. I began reading it immediately, on account of the coast. (I never paid much attention to Jeffers before. But Ping was talking about him when I was at the Redwoods and called him in Santa Barbara, enthusiastic about the sunny day at the shore—May 13—and Steller’s Jay.)
This evening I went back and read over the parts of this Journal about California and New Mexico. May and June. And coming back here. Once again—I am uneasy about staying here. Should I go to New Mexico? That sounds foolish. (But transfer to California is legally questionable—by Church Law—as I don’t want to go to Vina.) All this had to be decided not on the basis of the old legal concepts but of something much more fundamental. I guess I am not clear just where this basis is to be sought so the time is not yet come. (If ever it will.) Meanwhile, Dom Eusebius has resigned and there is to be an election at Vina.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 17