by Henry Miller
The idea that the womb might be a place of torture or punishment is a fairly recent one. I mean by that only a few thousand years old. It goes hand in hand with the loss of innocence. All ideas of Paradise involve the conquest of fear. Paradise is always a condition that is earned or won through struggle. The elimination of struggle is the greatest struggle of all—the struggle not to struggle. For struggle, whether erroneously or not, has to do with birth. But there was a time when birth was easy. That time is now as much as then.
To get beyond pain and suffering, beyond struggle, one must learn the equilibrist’s art. (“God does not want men to overtax themselves,” said Nijinsky. “He wants men to be happy.”) In walking the slack wire above the opposites one becomes thoroughly and keenly aware—perilously aware. The consciousness expands to embrace the apparently conflicting opposites. To be supremely aware, which means accepting life for what it is, eliminates the tenors of life and kills false hopes. I should say rather, kills hope, for seen from a beyond hope appears as an evil rather than a good.
I say nothing about being happy. When one really understands what happiness is one goes out like a light. (Vide Kirillov!) All arrangements for a better life here on earth mean increased suffering and misery. Everything that is being planned for tomorrow means the destruction of that which now exists. The best world is that which is now this very moment. It is the best because it is absolutely just—which does not mean that it has anything to do with justice. If we wish something better or worse we have only to want it and we shall damned well have it. The world is a dream which is being realized from moment to moment, only man is sound asleep in the midst of his creation. Birth and rebirth, and the monsters as much a part of the process as the angels. The world becomes interesting and livable only when we accept it in toto with eyes wide open, only when we live it out as the foetus lives out its uterine life. Apropos, has any one ever heard of an “immoral” foetus? Or a “cowardly” corpse? Can any one say whether the Bushmen in Australia are leading the right life, the good life? And the flowers, do they make for progress and invention? These are little questions which often disturb the philosophers. Intellectual sabotage. But it is good to ask unanswerable questions now and then—it makes life more livable.
I remember a phrase which haunted me when I was younger: “man on his way to ordination.” I didn’t know what it meant precisely, but it fascinated me. I believed. Today, though I am frank to say I don’t know what such a phrase means, I believe more than ever. I believe everything, good and bad. I believe more and less than what is true. I believe beyond the whole corpus of man’s thinking. I believe everything. I believe in a collective life and in the individual life also. I believe in the life of the world, the uterus which it is. I believe in the contradictions of the uterine life of this world. I believe in having money and in not having money too. And whether I believe or don’t believe I always act. I act first and inquire afterwards. For nothing seems more certain to me than that everything which exists, exists by fiat. If the world is anything it is an act. Thinking too is an act. The world is not a thought, but it may well be an act of thought. Those who act create reactions, as we say. In the throes of giving birth the mother is only reacting: it is the foetus which acts. And whether the mother lives or dies is one and the same to the foetus. For a foetus the important thing is birth.
Similarly for man, the important thing is to get born, born into the world-as-is, not some imaginary, wished for world, not some better, brighter world, but this, the only world, the world of NOW. There are many people today who imagine that the way to do this is to pay another man to permit them to lie down on a couch and have him listen to their tale of woe. Others again think that the midwives who perform this task ought themselves pay to be born again.
There are always Saviours and somehow the Saviours always get it in the neck. Nobody has yet found out how to save those who refuse to save themselves. And then again—a little uterine question —do we really want to be saved? And if so, for what, why, what is there to save?
We see how the banks spend the money which we save for them; we see how governments spend the taxes which they compel us to pay, in order, as they say, to “protect” us. We see how the philosophers dispense of their wisdom, and how prodigal the artist is of his strength. And do we not know that God is constantly giving us of his boundless love? In the highest places there is giving and spending galore. Why then do we not give ourselves—recklessly, abundantly, completely? If we realized that we were part of an endless process, that we had neither to lose nor to gain, but only to live it out, would we behave as we do? I can imagine the man of the year 5,000 A. D. opening the door of his home and stepping out into a world infinitely better than this; I can also imagine him stepping out into a world infinitely worse than ours. But for him, Mr. John Doe personally, I believe in the bottom of my heart that it will be exactly the same world as this which we now inhabit. The fauna and flora may be different, the climate may be different, the ideologies may be different, God may be different, everything may be different—but John Doe will himself be different and so it will be the same. I feel as close to John Doe of the year 5,000 A. D. as I do to John Doe of the year 5,000 B. C. I would be incapable of choosing between them. Each has his own world to which he belongs. Whoever does not realize what a wonderful world it is, tant pis for him. The world is the world, and the world is more interested in its own birth and death than in the opinion which Mr. John Doe may have about it.
Most of the active workers of the world today look upon our life on earth as a Purgatory or a Hell. They are sweating and struggling to make it a Heaven for the man to come. Or if they refuse to put it quite that way to themselves, then they say that it is to make a Heaven for themselves—a little later. Time passes. Five Year Plans. Ten Year Plans. (Dinosaurs, dynasties, dynamos.) Meanwhile the teeth decay, rheumatism comes, then death. (Death never fails.) But it’s never Heaven. Somehow Heaven is always in the offing, always just around the corner. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. . . .
IT’S BEEN GOING ON THAT WAY FOR A MILLION YEARS OR SO. In the midst of this crazy treadmill I refuse to budge an inch. I stand still. Stock still. Now or never! I say. Peace brothers, it’s wonderful! Meanwhile the big guns are booming, in Abyssinia, in China, in Spain, and besides the usual routine slaughter of harmless animals, birds, fish, insects, snails, oysters et cetera, man is slaughtering man to pave the way for the millennium. Tomorrow the guns may be roaring here in Paris, or in New York, or in Timbuctoo. They may even roar in Scandinavia, in Holland, in Switzerland, where all is sleep and contentment whilst the cows silently chew the cud. But they will soon roar and belch their fire, that is sure. Still I will not budge. I will stand stock still and shout: Peace! It’s wonderful! I have nothing to lose, nothing to gain. Even though I did not make the cannon with my own hands, nevertheless I assisted at their birth. The cannons belong, like everything else. Everything belongs. It’s the world, comrades—the world of birth and rebirth, and long may it wave!
THE ALCOHOLIC VETERAN WITH THE WASHBOARD CRANIUM
IN TULSA not long ago I saw a shorty short movie called “The Happiest Man on Earth.” It was in the O. Henry style but the implications were devastating. How a picture like that could be shown in the heart of the oil fields is beyond my comprehension. At any rate it reminded me of an actual human figure whom I encountered some weeks previously in New Orleans. He too was trying to pretend that he was the happiest mortal alive.
It was about midnight and my friend Rattner and I were returning to our hotel after a jaunt through the French Quarter. As we were passing the St. Charles Hotel a man without a hat or overcoat fell into step with us and began talking about the eyeglasses he had just lost at the bar.
“It’s hell to be without your glasses,” he said, “especially when you’re just getting over a jag. I envy you fellows. Some fool drunk in there just knocked mine off and stepped on them. Just sent a telegram to my oculist in Denver—suppose I’ll have t
o wait a few days before they arrive. I’m just getting over one hell of a binge: it must have lasted a week or more, I don’t know what day it is or what’s happened in the world since I fell off the wagon. I just stepped out to get a breath of air—and some food. I never eat when I’m on a bat—the alcohol keeps me going. There’s nothing to do about it, of course; I’m a confirmed alcoholic. Incurable. I know all about the subject—studied medicine before I took up law. I’ve tried all the cures, read all the theories. . . . Why look here—” and he reached into his breast pocket and extricated a mass of papers along with a thick wallet which fell to the ground—“look at this, here’s an article on the subject I wrote myself. Funny, what? It was just published recently in. . .” (he mentioned a well-known publication with a huge circulation).
I stooped down to pick up the wallet and the calling cards which had fluttered out and fallen into the gutter. He was holding the loose bundle of letters and documents in one hand and gesticulating eloquently with the other. He seemed to be utterly unconcerned about losing any of his papers or even about the contents of the wallet. He was raving about the ignorance and stupidity of the medical profession. They were a bunch of quacks; they were hijackers; they were criminal-minded. And so on.
It was cold and rainy and we, who were bundled up in overcoats, were urging him to get moving.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said, with a good-natured grin, “I never catch cold. I must have left my hat and coat in the bar. The air feels good,” and he threw his coat open wide as if to let the mean, penetrating night wind percolate through the thin covering in which he was wrapped. He ran his fingers through his shock of curly blond hair and wiped the corners of his mouth with a soiled handkerchief. He was a man of good stature with a rather weather-beaten face, a man who evidently lived an outdoor life. The most distinctive thing about him was his smile—the warmest, frankest, most ingratiating smile I’ve ever seen on a man’s face. His gestures were jerky and trembly, which was only natural considering the state of his nerves. He was all fire and energy, like a man who has just had a shot in the arm. He talked well, too, exceedingly well, as though he might have been a journalist as well as doctor and lawyer. And he was very obviously not trying to make a touch.
When we had walked a block or so he stopped in front of a cheap eating house and invited us to step in with him and have something to eat or drink. We told him we were on our way home, that we were tired and eager to get to bed.
“But only for a few minutes,” he said. “I’m just going to have a quick bite.”
Again we tried to beg off. But he persisted, taking us by the arm and leading us to the door of the café. I repeated that I was going home but suggested to Rattner that he might stay if he liked. I started to disengage myself from his grasp.
“Look,” he said, suddenly putting on a grave air, “you’ve got to do me this little favor. I’ve got to talk to you people. I might do something desperate if you don’t. I’m asking you as a human kindness—you wouldn’t refuse to give a man a little time, would you, when you knew that it meant so much to him?”
With that of course we surrendered without a word. “We’re in for it now,” I thought to myself, feeling a little disgusted with myself for letting myself be tricked by a sentimental drunkard.
“What are you going to have?” he said, ordering himself a plate of ham and beans which, before he had even brought it to the table, he sprinkled liberally with ketchup and chili sauce. As he was about to remove it from the counter he turned to the server and ordered him to get another plate of ham and beans ready. “I can eat three or four of these in a row,” he explained, “when I begin to sober up.” We had ordered coffee for ourselves. Rattner was about to take the checks when our friend reached for them and stuck them in his pocket. “This is on me,” he said, “I invited you in here.”
We tried to protest but he silenced us by saying, between huge gulps which he washed down with black coffee, that money was one of the things that never bothered him.
“I don’t know how much I’ve got on me now,” he continued. “Enough for this anyway. I gave my car to a dealer yesterday to sell for me. I drove down here from Idaho with some old cronies from the bench—they were on a jamboree. I used to be in the legislature once,” and he mentioned some Western State where he had served. “I can ride back free on the railroad,” he added. “I have a pass. I used to be somebody once upon a time. . . .” He interrupted himself to go to the counter and get another helping.
As he sat down again, while dousing the beans with ketchup and chili sauce, he reached with his left hand into his breast pockct and dumped the whole contents of his pocket on the table. “You’re an artist, aren’t you?” he said to Rattner. “And you’re a writer, I can tell that,” he said, looking at me. “You don’t have to tell me, I sized you both up immediately.” He was pushing the papers about as he spoke, still energetically shoveling down his food, and apparently poking about for some articles which he had written and which he wanted to show us. “I write a bit myself,” he said, “whenever I need a little extra change. You see, as soon as I get my allowance I go on a bat. Well, when I come out of it I sit down and write some crap for”—and here he mentioned some of the leading magazines, those with the big circulation. “I can always make a few hundred dollars that way, if I want to. There’s nothing to it. I don’t say it’s literature, of course. But who wants literature? Now where in the hell is that story I wrote about a psychopathic case . . . I just wanted to show you that I know what I’m talking about. You see. . . .” He broke off suddenly and gave us a rather wry, twisted smile, as though it were hopeless to try to put it all in words. He had a forkful of beans which he was about to shovel down. He dropped the fork, like an automaton, the beans spilling all over his soiled letters and documents, and leaning over the table he startled me by seizing my arm and placing my hand on his skull, rubbing it roughly back and forth. “Feel that?” he said, with a queer gleam in his eye. “Just like a washboard, eh?” I pulled my hand away as quickly as I could. The feel of that corrugated brainpan gave me the creeps. “That’s just one item,” he said. And with that he rolled up his sleeve and showed us a jagged wound that ran from the wrist to the elbow. Then he pulled up the leg of his trousers. More horrible wounds. As if that were not enough he stood up quickly, pulled off his coat and, quite as if there were no one but just us three in the place, he opened his shirt and displayed even uglier scars. As he was putting on his coat he looked boldly around and in clear, ringing tones he sang with terrible bitter mockery “America, I love you!” Just the opening phrase. Then he sat down as abruptly as he had gotten up and quietly proceeded to finish the ham and beans. I thought there would be a commotion but no, people continued eating and talking just as before, only now we had become the center of attention. The man at the cash register seemed rather nervous and thoroughly undecided as to what to do. I wondered what next.
I half expected our friend to raise his voice and begin a melodramatic scene. Except however for the fact that he had grown a little more high-strung and more voluble his behavior was not markedly different from before. But his tone had altered. He spoke now in jerky phrases punctuated with the most blasphemous oaths and accompanied by grimaces which were frightening to behold. The demon in him seemed to be coming out. Or rather, the mutilated being who had been wounded and humiliated beyond all human endurance.
“Mister Roosevelt!” he said, his voice full of scorn and contempt. “I was just listening to him over the radio. Getting us in shape to fight England’s battles again, what? Conscription. Not this bird!” and he jerked his thumb backwards viciously. “Decorated three times on the field of battle. The Argonne . . . Chateau Thierry . . . the Somme . . . concussion of the brain . . . fourteen months in the hospital outside Paris . . . ten months on this side of the water. Making murderers of us and then begging us to settle down quietly and go to work again. . . . Wait a minute, I want to read you a poem I wrote about our Fuehrer the
other night.” He fished among the papers lying about on the table. He got up to get himself another cup of coffee and as he stood with cup in hand, sipping it, he began to read aloud this vituperative, scabrous poem about the President. Surely now, I thought, somebody will take umbrage and start a fight. I looked at Rattner who believes in Roosevelt, who had travelled 1200 miles to vote for him at the last election. Rattner was silent. He probably thought it useless to remonstrate with a man who had obviously been shell shocked. Still, I couldn’t help thinking, the situation was a little unusual, to say the least. A phrase I had heard in Georgia came back to my head. It was from the lips of a woman who had just been to see “Lincoln in Illinois.” “What are they trying to do—make a he-ro of that man Lincoln?” Yes, something distinctly pre-Civil War about the atmosphere. A president re-elected to office by a great popular vote and yet his name was anathema to millions. Another Woodrow Wilson perchance? Our friend wouldn’t even accord him that ranking. He had sat down again and in a fairly moderate tone of voice he began making sport of the politicians, the members of the judiciary, the generals and admirals, the quartermaster generals, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Y. M. C. A. A withering play of mockery and cynicism, larded with personal experiences, grotesque encounters, buffoonish pranks which only a battle-scarred veteran would have the audacity to relate.
“And so,” he exploded, “they wanted to parade me like a monkey, with my uniform and medals. They had the brass band out and the mayor all set to give us a glorious welcome. The town is yours, boys, and all that hokum. Our heroes! God, it makes me vomit to think of it. I ripped the medals off my uniform and threw them away. I burned the damned uniform in the fireplace. Then I got myself a quart of rye and I locked myself in my room. I drank and wept, all by myself. Outside the band was playing and people cheering hysterically. I was all black inside. Everything I had believed in was gone. All my illusions were shattered. They broke my heart, that’s what they did. They didn’t leave me a goddamned crumb of solace. Except the booze, of course. Sure, they tried to take that away from me too, at first. They tried to shame me into giving it up. Shame me, huh! Me who had killed hundreds of men with the bayonet, who lived like an animal and lost all sense of human decency. They can’t do anything to shame me, or frighten me, or fool me, or bribe me, or trick me. I know them inside out, the dirty bastards. They’ve starved me and beaten me and put me behind the bars. That stuff doesn’t frighten me. I can put up with hunger, cold, thirst, lice, vermin, disease, blows, insults, degradation, fraud, theft, libel, slander, betrayal . . . I’ve been through the whole works . . . they’ve tried everything on me . . . and still they can’t crush me, can’t stop my mouth, can’t make me say it’s right. I don’t want anything to do with these honest, Godfearing people. They sicken me. I’d rather live with animals—or cannibals.” He found a piece of sheet music among his papers and documents. “There’s a song I wrote three years ago. It’s sentimental but it won’t do anyone any harm. I can only write music when I’m drunk. The alcohol blots out the pain. I’ve still got a heart, a big one, too. My world is a world of memories. Do you remember this one?” He began to hum a familiar melody. “You wrote that?” I said, taken by surprise. “Yes, I wrote that—and I wrote others too”—and he began to reel off the titles of his songs.