July 5, 1968
Attack upon Christendom. How can one laugh and shudder at the same time? The book is so incontrovertibly true. And to find myself a priest. And to find my own life so utterly false and trivial—in the light of the New Testament. And to look around me everywhere and find people desperately—or complacently—going through certain motions to prove that they are Christians. (And far more people not giving a damn and not even paying attention, so that “proving one is a Christian” comes to mean begging for just a little attention from the world—some grudging admission that a Christian can be an honest man.)
At least this: I have enough self-respect left to refuse to be abbot and to refuse to go around to meetings and lectures and functions. And I have felt a little compunction about continuing to proclaim a “message” just because that is what people expect of me. It is not easy to talk of prayer in a world where a President claims he prays for light in his decisions and then decides on genocidal attacks upon a small nation. And where a Catholic Bishop praises this as a “work of love.”
Paralyzing incomprehension—what does one do when he realizes he is part of an organization whose members systematically try to “make a fool of God”? I suppose I begin by recognizing that I have done it as much as the best of them.
But then a “God is dead” Church is no better, nor are the “God is dead” Christians an improvement over the others. Just the same established flippancy and triviality. And even more successful. They make a good living out of God’s death.
(Evening)
What a difference between Fr. Flavian, as abbot, and Dom James. And what a difference in our relationship. I get a real sense of openness, of possibilities, of going somewhere—and at times it is almost incredible. I seem to be dreaming.
He is very interested in perhaps starting something out on the Coast. And today, in so many words, he asked me if I were willing to start it: i.e. to go out there and get some sort of small hermit colony going. I said I certainly would do that any time. When he goes out for the Vina election he will go over to Redwoods and look at the various places: Bear Harbor, Needle Rock, Ettersburg…. It is fantastic. I don’t know if he intends to buy Bear Harbor—or if Jones will sell it. But the mere fact that he goes ahead and thinks of it! One slowly comes back to life, with the realization that all things are possible.
I don’t know where this will end up—on the coast, in New Mexico, or where. But I am certainly ready for anything in that line. It would mean going out and occupying the place and living there, preparing for the time when he himself might retire and come there. The proposition seems to be a small laura for four or five hermits, not a separate institution, not with new rules, canonical statutes, etc., but a place to live in solitude, perhaps within the framework of the Order. For that side of it—I leave it to him. He is a canonist and has good sense.
I told him frankly that I thought we had gone as far as we can go here. The real solitude is not possible here, at least for me. The area is getting very crowded. I am too near the road. Today again a couple of retreatants showed up on my porch—just wanting to “see” me, etc.
July 9, 1967
Strange thing, this morning: after Mass (St. Albert—hermit) [Feast Day], and coffee and light breakfast and article on Panama Canal in BuJJetin [of the] A[tomic] Scientist, tried to work on Gordon Leff and the Franciscan poverty business (Heretics in Late M[iddle] A[ges]) and couldn’t keep my eyes open. Fell asleep on it. Went and lay down dopey for ½ hour, then got up and looked for something new. So Darcy O’Brien on The Conscience of Joyce. Not a marvelous book itself (a bit obvious—and limited perspectives), but Joyce himself woke me up again and now I am very involved in it. Dedalus’s aesthetics. The essentially contemplative vocation of joyce. His revolt is that of the contemplative and creative man called to self-transcendence and “held down” by the prosaic, legalistic, provincial Catholicism of the Irish middle class—the bourgeois Catholicism of the 19th century—which continues in another form in the 20th—liberal, pragmatic, pedestrian, “practical,” exalting matter and science, etc. and still putting down contemplation as “gnostic,” “unchristian,” enemies of the imagination, but not really earthy either. O’Brien tends to give Joyce this same stereotyped business: “rejection of the faith” (the girl standing in the water), “hatred of life.” (How can he say such a thing? Surely he’ll take that back.)
Perhaps the power of my response is due in part to the fact that I had to read and comment on two indifferent, typical, contemporary stories about sexual overkill—including the Raniere one in Latitudes. Opposite pole to Joyce—matter above all of ethical taste, of standpoint and implicit judgment. Joyce is [indecipherable], reasonable, Christian, free; the others reflect an attitude that is to me sick, barbarian, irrational, in effect swinish. America is a swinish culture. And yet it isn’t. All this is broadcast everywhere and yet people remain “nice” and halfway decent. Or do they? How deep does the decency go? A curious thing. And I can’t judge. But “officially” in literature, etc., there are no more bounds-not that the most outspoken and far-out are the most degraded. They are perhaps more healthy (the underground paper bunch) than the ones who are ½ way reputable. It’s the Playboy mentality that seems to me sickest.
I’m frankly on Joyce’s side (and he was once thought to be the ultimate in “filth”)—and [François] Rabelais’s. True priestly mentalities—“monks” in the old Celtic style—free from the littleness and nastiness of the moralizers without imagination and without real morality.
A lot of dreams last night I can’t remember.
July 12, 1968
Hot again. Man and boys in the field in the bottoms, surveying for the sewage disposal plant. I passed them, sweating heavily, at the end of my walk this afternoon. And it is the first chance I have had for a walk this week.
Phil Stark, Jesuit scholastic, is here. He offered to help with typing and I took him up on it, in order to get the next two issues of Monks Pond done. But now the electric typewriter has broken down.
Steps are now being taken to get my passport and visas for Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand (I decided I’d better see my family there on the way home). Maybe also Taiwan, where John Wu will be. I am waiting for some addresses, particularly of Zen temples, from Amiya Chakravarty. I may possibly have a meeting with some Non-Superiors at Redwoods on the way out. A good letter came from Mother Myriam the other day. I hope to fly to Japan around November 1.
The Darcy O’Brien book on Joyce is simply pathetic. The man seems to have no conception of what Joyce is all about. Identifies him completely with the romantic idealism of Stephen D. in portrait. Says he was a dualist, a manichaean, etc. Found a sexy letter to J.’s wife and gloated over it, etc. O’Brien is the kind of person who feels himself threatened by the kind of idealism that was part of Joyce’s youthful character. This kind of book is simply stupid-probably a Ph.D. dissertation that got into print because of that horny letter or something. No—it’s Princeton Press-someone must have taken it seriously as “scholarship”!!
I am also disappointed in Heiler on Prayer with his black-and-white division of mysticism (bad-quietistic—world-renouncing-life-denying) and prophecy (good-dynamic—world—affirming—life—loving). This is a mere cliche. Has nothing to do with the reality of either mysticism or prophecy—except I would say both are “life-affirming” in a very strong sense—but it depends [on] what you mean by “life.”
Was in Louisville Wednesday to see John Ford on legal business. Had lunch in the cellar of the Normandy Inn which I liked. Saw Tommie—three of her big-eyed kids with wide brimmed straw hats in the train station going off somewhere with Grandma. Colleen, with a lovely smile, “How did you know we were here?”
July 19, 1968
Stifling hot weather. Airless nights. Had a lot of trouble getting to sleep last night.
During the day—when free I have been walking in the same place in the woods over the hill SW of the hermitage where it
is shady and breezy. A good place for meditation. And I am glad that I am spending more afternoons meditating rather than writing. In fact since returning from California I haven’t written much of anything—a few random short pieces—such as the bit on “Peace and Revolution” for Eileen Egan which I did Sunday (14th). A comment on the Cyclops epistle in Ulysses!
Letter from Ping who wants to take a week or so with me to explore the coast in California-in October-before I go to the Orient. More than anything I want to find a really quiet, isolated place—
—where no one knows I am (I want to disappear).
—where I can get down to the thing I really want and need to do.
—from which, if necessary, I can come out to help others (e.g. at the Redwoods). For instance I may arrange a conference for the Esalen Institute there. They invited me to Big Sur but I replied—as I now do-that I can’t do anything outside a house of our Order.
—maybe this can be a step towards the hermit colony Fr. Flavian wants. I don’t know. In this I will simply try to carry out his wishes, with him-I am not keen on it myself but it may be a way to a permanent solution of the whole question.
(The noise here, especially on weekends, is considerable. People at the lake across the road. Yelling, guns, etc. I don’t grudge them their fun, even on “monks property” (—ajoke). But still I’d like to be away from it.)
In any case, real quiet here is impossible. And even though I have cut down on visits for July—I could not refuse Wygal yesterday—afraid to hurt his feelings—haven’t seen him for a long time. He came out with anew girl friend—a sweet girl—and we wasted an afternoon driving around, drank a couple of cans of Budweiser. We ended up at the Tobacco Barn where [Fr.] Raymond was drinking Budweiser—colder and out of bottles—with friends from Louisville, a politician and a priest. We got on to Vietnam and the priest-who had an operation on his throat and talked in a hoarse undertone-growled “they ought to drop the bomb,” as if a criminal negligence were being perpetrated.
And these visits are supposed to be “charity.” True, I did it entirely to please Jim: but is that charity? Or just being sociable. There’s a difference.
July 19 [20?], 1968.
My right arm is sore with a cholera vaccination. My left arm is not sore though it bears a smallpox vaccination. Next week: yellow fever. Today too I had passport pictures taken-at a sort of clip joint where the nice lady suddenly had me going for portraits-no obligation, of course, just see if you like them. We’ll give you a good discount, etc. Probably end up with my portrait in their front window.
Running back and forth between Tom Jerry Smith’s in St. Matthews and the Health Department Office downtown.
I bought a little book on Nepal in the Readmore, when I was getting a book of Japanese phrases. Nepal is breathtaking! Could I even get there?
A letter came from Mother Myriam. Jones, owner of Needle Rock, etc., has been chasing hippies, etc., off his property. Evidently he’s going to sell in September. (But if Fr. Flavian bought it we’d have to chase people off too??)
Back in St. Matthews-a sandwich and a couple bottles of Heineken’s at the Canary Cottage-and inane TV over the bar. Ludicrous crap! The all-pervading stupidity of a universal day dream: people can be their own uninteresting image without trouble or cost! The mystery is why anybody bothers.
O the Mountains of Nepal!
Stopped at Tommie’s to cadge a hamburger and a ride downtown. She was “rushed”-exaggeratedly this time. Great play of woman in a rush. And she did have to get more kids on a train to Grayson-and then get up a dinner for 8 people. I realize that. (But she was taking the kids downtown anyhow.)
In the Mountains of Nepal, no trains.
Got home and scrambled some eggs-supper of scrambled eggs and rye bread and cold beer (very hot evening) and I read an article in the New Yorker about what the senior class at Dartmouth thinks of the Viemam War. They are not in favor.
Downtown I got a handful of McCarthy buttons at his Campaign Headquarters on Chesmut, before taking a bus to St. Matthews.
I mailed the ms. of Vow of Conversation to Naomi today.
A very hot night. I sit up drinking sherry on ice and listening to jazz (“Things ain’t what they used to be”). No point in trying to sleep!
O the Mountains of Nepal.
And the tigers and the fevers. And the escaped bandits from all the world. And the escaped Trappists, lost, forgotten…
July 21, 1968
Singapore vaccination itched a lot today. Very hot and stuffy again. A storm in the NE but it did not come near. I went to concelebration but fell asleep. Fr. Anastasius preached against false prophets-known by pride and rebellion. False prophets rock the boat. I thought that’s what the true ones did.
In the evening I gave a talk on Joyce. I hope to discuss some of the stories in Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, and read parts of Ulysses.
Fine poems of William Agudelo in the latest El Corno [Emplumado]. He is with Cardenal at Solentiname. I wrote a letter to Cardenal this evening saying that if I do not go to Nepal or Burma after Indonesia, I’ll come there. It is the best idea (avoid New Zealand). And above all I don’t want to be around for that stupid seminar of Basil Pennington’s at Spencer (Early February).
No use being romantic about the Mountains of Nepal. It costs money to get there-and will I have contacts? Nevertheless I wrote to Lionel Landry of the Asia Society about all that. I have a strange feeling something unexpected will pan out.
I have just discovered a place called the Kingdom of Swat.
Maybe that’s the answer.
What’s the hotel? Why, of course the Hotel Swat.
O the Mountains of Swat!!
July 22, 1968
With all my joking about the Mountains of Nepal it was rather a jolt to find in the mail today an invitation to a rather important religious meeting in Darjeeling-nearer to the border of Nepal than the monastery is to Bardstown! I went immediately to discuss it with Fr. Flavian and he approved of my going. It is in October, hence I have to move up my plans-and change them around. Instead of spending November in Japan I can-logically-spend it in Nepal.
Of course-much depends on who I meet in Darjeeling and what comes out of it. I might get invited to places more interesting and important from a religious point of view. But I do hope to get a retreat in the mountains and perhaps see some monasteries. Chakravarty-who arranged the invitation-will be there and I will follow his advice.
Once again-I have a feeling that anew path is opening up.
A letter today from Leslie at the Redwoods. June Yungblut, etc.
July 23, 1968
I have been leafing through the N. Y. Times Book Review-as usual, a depressing experience-except there was an article on Ferlinghetti and City Lights which I read and enjoyed-and a negative review of him by Jonathan Williams-which I can’t say I liked. Is he right? I don’t know.
This morning Sister Luke and 4 others from Loretto came over and we had Mass-eelebrated most informally outdoors at the lake, early, in the cool of the morning. It was very nice indeed. Coffee afterwards and good conversation. When the sun got high and hot they left.
Then I wrote a few letters, mostly arrangements and so on for the Asian trip. It is only nine weeks away. My smallpox vaccination is angry and red and itches a lot.
It was hot again this afternoon. Because of noise of kids at the lake mile from hermitage) I decided to go over to the Linton Farm-and it was good. Quiet, isolated, hot, but with a good breeze by the big soybean field where I have had some good hours of meditation this year. A small book on Vedanta which I don’t entirely understand, but it has good insights and seems pretty hardheaded.
Also-I thought of Nepal: and of the stupidity of being romantic about it. To get to those mountains one has to pass through the poverty of Calcutta: and when in the presence of those mountains one is also in the presence of the poverty of Nepal. And typhus, and yellow fever, and malaria, and VO, and tantrism, and opium. As for Ne
palese Buddhism, if it is like that of Tibet it is not exactly the kind I myself am most interested in, ferocity, ritualism, superstition, magic. No doubt many deep and mysterious things, but maybe it needs to disappear.
However, I’d better suspend judgment on that. I hope to meet the Dalai Lama4 or someone like that at Darjeeling and find out more about it.
Theoria and Theory—had a piece on the Beas Community-Sikhist-active-lay-contemplatives in Punjab.
When I was coming back from my walk I saw a couple of retreatants going up to the hermitage. Avoided them. But I cannot always avoid them. Others bothering the brothers at the Gate who called. I said “No.”
Real solitude is not possible here. Nor is it where Dom James is over in Edelin’s woods. People come and visit him there too. (Sunday before Mass he was more talkative than I have ever seen him-got me in the sacristy and was asking if! heard about the Jesuit Provincial (Baltimore) who ran away and got married-My! My! Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!) And I was laughing like crazy, though I suppose it is really not funny and one should not laugh.
July 27, 1968
Heavy rain in the morning and then, after a hot steamy afternoon a violent thunderstorm at supper time-it blew out the bulb of my desk lamp. After the storm and supper-around bedtime-I went out and there were five small, bedraggled wet quail, picking around in the path by my doorstep and very tame. Must be from the nursery the brothers had at the Steel Building. They don’t seem very well prepared for life in the woods: preferred the path to the grass that would hide them; no mistrust of a human being—did not run away, only got out of the way of my feet or skipped away if I reached for them. They are now out on the wet lawn somewhere. This place is full of foxes-not to mention the kids who shoot anything that moves, in or out of season! I feel very sorry for these quail! But there is also the wild covey of a dozen or so trained by a zealous mother who often lured me along the rose hedge away from where the little ones were hiding in the deep weeds by the gate.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 18