I got interested in Eastern thinking some years back from reading Isherwood’s biography of Rama-krishna, but the more I learned about the Eastern philosophies, the less different they seemed from the Western ones, and the more I decided I’d really figured all that out in my own way anyway (or was born Socratically knowing it). I’m interested in languages and in the different terminologies people put to the same things, and it seems to me to be only that—a difference in terminology, another way of saying something basic to all people.
The great value of the current vogue for Eastern ways being that one can, through them, contemplate basic truths in fresh jargon that is free from any buildup of emotional associations. One can’t really say even “Amen” without it calling up all sorts of ballooning memories of childhood and its lessons, which lead to one’s early teachers, etc. But I can’t help laughing at myself in a way, making all these pronouncements as if I knew what I was talking about!
48
Maybe
I’ll
Never
Be
Able
to
Relax
Maybe I’ll never be able to relax into the real acceptance of someone else’s love. I know myself too well to be able to believe (except coolly and rationally) that I deserve it, or perhaps even have it. Yes, well . . .
There is a sadness inherent in any sort of maturity, after all. The other night a couple of boys came into a stationery shop where I was buying a few things, both about nineteen or twenty, I guess, one excessively handsome and the other just this side of being ugly, but both so beautiful I had to make an effort not to stare at them. And not just because they were both boys—the same thing happens to me with girls, too.
It’s late indeed that we come to realize the accuracy of flower metaphors. There’s such an incredible beauty in simply being young. There’s beauty in being old, too, but a different kind. Beauty, beauty everywhere! But I’m not like Yeats in his horror of growing old. Most of my friends of my own age think me rather perverse in my enjoyment of my age and hate my revealing it, but I’m quite wonderstruck at the realization that I once had that same beauty that all young people have.
Nobody realizes it at the time, of course, which simply doubles the beauty of it. Of course there are many young people who use their beauty quite consciously, but even that’s beautiful in a sense, since no matter how beautiful they think they are, they couldn’t possibly realize it all.
49
Just
in
from
Shopping
Just in from doing a bit of shopping Friday night after a long week and had a funny scene in the supermarket.
“Are these any good?” said the cute young (female) cashier, holding up a package of frozen tortillas I’d bought to go with my frozen enchilada dinner.
“Sure,” says I, “unless you’re used to the real ones.”
“How do you get used to the real ones?”
“To grow up in Texas is one way.”
“Did you grow up in Texas?”
“Yep.”
“How come you live in New York?”
“No more work for us cowboys.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“Yep.”
“Do you like it here?”
“Yep.”
“You know, you don’t look like a cowboy.”
“How’s a cowboy supposed to look?”
(At this point an old lady in line behind me is starting to get angry, as I’m all checked out.)
“Well . . . are you sure you’re not kidding me?”
“Would I kid a nice girl like you?” I say over my shoulder going out.
50
A
Desert
Island
Library
A desert island library: If, as is usual, only one book is allowed, then it would be a blank book like the one I’m writing in—the biggest one I could find. To choose a given small number of books already written would likely give one more regrets than pleasure. I would like to have:
The Blue Estuaries.
All of Austen, Forster, Kerouac, and Nabokov.
The Last of the Wine.
Genji.
The Lord of the Rings.
The Silmarillion.
We Think the World of You.
Cavafy.
Byron’s letters.
Makriyannis’s memoires (but only in Greek).
Balzac.
Proust.
Plato.
Homer.
Nocturnes for the King of Naples.
The Jerusalem Bible.
51
A
Young
Friend
Came
Over
to
Talk
Today a young friend (both in age and in the length of time I’ve known him) came over to talk and listen to music and go out to lunch. We never made it to lunch, much to my surprise (and greatly—well . . . nicely—to my pleasure). It’s ever so much nicer when things turn out differently than you’ve planned (so long as it is pleasurable).
Now a trying evening ahead with another old friend with whom I’ve been out of touch for a few years, ever since he went to a psychiatrist and decided he was really straight so didn’t want to see me (even though, as I found out, he’s been sleeping with his old tricks with fair regularity). Now it seems he wants to be friends again, but I’m not really interested. Neurotic folks, even though one sympathizes with them, are ultimately a bore. At least they are to me.
52
I
Feel
Curiously
Peaceful
I feel curiously peaceful despite the depressing things I’ve been seeing lately, or hearing about. Like that little boy getting killed by a truck going out of control and coming right up onto the sidewalk on Sixth Avenue, which bothered me all night long thinking was he with his mother, how awful his parents must have felt getting home from work and finding out about it, how awful the truck driver must have felt to see that little squashed body (I was told they had to gather him up with shovels). It was during the afternoon rush hour, everybody hurrying to get home. The truck driver, too, I guess, and the little boy having had a fine afternoon in Washington Square and hungry and hot, hurrying home, too. The fantasy could be endless.
And like the woman who went up to a man in the park by my house last Friday with two German shepherd dogs and asked him if he’d like to have them. He said no thanks, so she just turned them loose and went and got on the bus and left. So he took one of them, but the other one was so scared he wouldn’t let anybody near him and ran off. I saw him on Riverside Drive and he just ran across in the traffic and of course a car hit him, but didn’t kill him, panicking him even more. Later I spotted him doing the same thing on West End, and no one could make him stop and come to them.
Then on Monday morning when I went down to see Sylvia Fowler at her shop, there was a little mutt tied in the vacant lot next door, trembling and looking as mournful as a dog can look, an I found out he’d been tied there since Friday night, without food or water (the lot was locked and nobody could get in to him), in the rain-storms and heat and cold. As soon as the baker came and unlocked the gate, a fellow in the building where the shop is boiled him up some liver and gave it to him and I took him some water and he was very happy with it and we called the ASPCA (not the greatest fate, I know, but better than dying all starved in the rain). But in the meantime a man came by and when he heard the story he took the dog away with him. Ah, me. But then he brought it back because his father wouldn’t let him keep it because it didn’t get along with the dog they had already. And then a lady came and said it was her dog, and that she was on welfare and didn’t have a place to live, so she’d left it there w
hile she was out looking for someplace to stay. And she took it away with her. It seemed happy enough.
After all, what’s to be done, really, about anything? I plan to spend the coming weekend painting the bedroom, doing laundry, lying on the roof in the sun, and studying Rheingold, since I’m hoping one of these summers to get to Bayreuth.
53
I
Feel
Happy
Anyhow, I feel happy. Tranquillity and all! Happiness and sadness, not being opposites, can coexist. Unhappiness is the opposite of happiness, and though I’m often sad, I’m not unhappy, of that I am quite seriously convinced, so pay attention! All the sadness in the world brought on by the sight of those poor people and other things I see every day on the street and in the subway can’t possibly cancel out the happiness that having a friend like Jim gives me. I’ve not felt this close to anyone as far as I can remember, even lovers, as they’re called. I’m getting impatient for his visit.
54
Jim’s
Visit
Jim’s visit was lovely. He’s so much calmer now, so at ease since the last time he was here, when he was in such a state of confusion. He appears to be quite happily settled in again with Jean and the kids, and next time he promises to bring them along, though it is quite an expense. We shall see.
Last Saturday there was a terrific ruckus in the hallway, just as I was sitting down to eat, so I went to see what it was all about. It sounded as if someone was trying to kick down a door, and the impression was correct. I leaned over the bannister to see what was going on and heard someone shouting, “Open the door, you fucking bitch!” (KICK KICK KICK) “Come on, open up, you fucking whore!” (KICK KICK KICK) Turned out the mousey little fellow in the middle apartment (whom I’d always considered gay, but I was wrong) and his girl had smelled smoke, looked out the window to see the girl in the front apartment (a probation officer, incidentally) had lit a charcoal grille on the fire escape to cook some steaks, and he (the mouse) had decided it was dangerous and likely to set the building on fire so wanted her to put it out, but she wouldn’t answer the door to talk to him.
However, she and her own boyfriend finally came to the door, naked and mad, and it was obvious why they’d not wanted to bother with neighbors at that precise moment. By this time half of the apartment building was watching, and just then the superintendent arrived on the scene, and soon everyone was yelling. Before we knew it there was a terrific fight between Mouse and the boyfriend (who, unfortunately for me, had by this time betrousered himself). Mouse’s girl was soon hysterical, screaming, “Oh, Ronnie! Oh, Ronnie! Oh, no!” And the probation officer girl was quietly saying, “I’m really very sorry. I’m terribly sorry.” And the fight continued. Then one of the lookers-on jumped into the middle of it all, trying to make them stop, and himself—he being a fair-sized fellow I’d not seen before—being pummeled severely. So then the super joined in the fray, hitting the probation officer’s boyfriend on the head with his fake arm, kicking Mouse with his lame leg (he being a World War II veteran), and pushing the boyfriend back into the girl’s apartment. Finally the little opera was closed, with the probation officer quietly saying she was most awfully sorry as she closed her door. The charcoal glowed invitingly on the fire escape until about 2 a.m.
Then the next night, after I’d finished studying my Greek and twanging my guitar, when I went over to close the window before going into the bedroom to sleep, what do I see but two lovely young fellows mother-naked standing by their window in the building across the street drying their hair. So I naturally looked at them. Soon they lit up a pipe of dope, got high, and lolled about, talking and being beauteous till they finally decided to dress and go out.
I was so surprised that I was surprised at myself. I always hear of people being city voyeurs, but had never seen even an ugly person with no clothes on, much less two handsome ones at the same time! And the same thing happened last night. Finished twanging and conjugating, shut the window, and there they were again. Same program. What next?
55
A
Quiet
Moment
A quiet moment on a beautiful sunny Sunday. I’m tired of typing opera libretti for the moment (a small job I’m doing for a friend) and will sit for a while and gaze down on the blossomy cherry trees in the park by the river. Such a contrast to yesterday, when I dashed out in the pouring rain to give a Greek lady friend who’s going to Athens in a few days some baubles to take to Ada.
Ada was very disappointed about my not being able to get to Greece this summer and expects me without fail next year. But who knows? There have been times these past few months when I’ve hoped I wouldn’t even be alive next year! Funny how a certain focus of assorted difficulties every now and then can get one down, whereas the same things sometimes don’t really affect one at all at other times. But even at my worst, I don’t seem to be suicidal.
56
Summer
Has
Finally
Come
Summer has finally come, hot and muggy, but welcome. I’m reading Céline for the first time—Voyage au bout de la nuit—and liking him immensely. So far (midway through) a perfect book of its kind, from every point of view, and très français!! The French are the only people I know whom it’s possible to love and cordially detest at the same time.
Also took a quick and rapturous trip through Mary Renault’s Last of the Wine again, another perfect little opus. I know of no other example (except perhaps—in a cooler way—Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian) of such a well-woven web of imagination based on a few known facts.
The other night there was a huge, magnificent thunderstorm, with theatrical blasts of lightning all up and down the river. I sat in the dark and listened to Mahler and reveled in it!
And today I came across a little book of poems I wrote ten or twelve years ago and which I was certain I had thrown out. That was the last time I felt, as Isherwood says, “the need to versify,” and I was amused to read them. One I still like:
Optical Illusion
Sitting up
In his bed
I saw the morning.
About me and Ilya, of course.
57
I
Was
Delighted
I was delighted today to have at last a “real” letter from Jim, this after a several-week spate of postcards only, or nothing at all. I don’t know why I should panic so when I don’t hear from him. After all, he is certainly busier than I, what with his writing, being a husband and father, friend to his friends, brother to his brother and sister, son to his mother, and God knows what else!
But I’m no less selfish than anyone else, so naturally want Jim to spend every possible moment writing to me! I really do look forward to any communication from him. That he seems to like me so much is wonderful to me. I’m not sure I do realize how much I mean to him, or that he in turn realizes the reverse. I find it hard to believe that someone loves me, or even says that they do—not just Jim, but anyone. It’s not that I really believe myself unworthy of being loved, but just that it’s hard to believe that anyone takes the trouble these days to stop and consider another person long enough to love him. Perhaps I’m living not only in the wrong age but in the wrong city for love. Perhaps I don’t, after all, know what I’m talking about!
58
Ada
Has
Written
That
All
Is
Mostly
Well
Ada has written that all is mostly well in Athens, except for some trouble brewing with her young cousin and his jealous wife. As far as I know, Stavros, the cousin, is not the unfaithful-husband sort at all—being therefore an atypical Greek male—but somehow his wife (a Roman) has become jealous and possessive, to the point of going to the gym with him whi
le he worked out, preventing him from visiting his mother, etc., etc. The poor guy finally gave up going to the gym and started running in the neighborhood early in the morning along the seashore, but his wife just put their baby daughter in the car and followed alongside!
Poor both of them. Whether her jealousy is founded or unfounded, she must be suffering awfully. More so if unfounded, probably, since she can’t focus it on anything. And as for Stavros, one can only imagine how he must feel (assuming, as I do, that he’s innocent). Soon she’ll drive him either mad or certainly to a mistress.
My jealousy over Ilya was one of the most shattering experiences I’ve ever had. Cancer is benign by comparison! Well, perhaps I exaggerate—maybe it was no more shattering than being born. Now I can look back and take valuable lessons from it—about myself, about relationships with other people, about love, freedom, unselfishness, egotism, the works, but mostly about love—that is, passion gets jealous; love never does. So I guess it was valuable, too—but what a price! I say now that I’ll never let it happen again, and I hope I’m right. I have a great faith in love and honesty and believe they can win out, if the situation ever arises again, over jealousy—my own or someone else’s. But what a gloomy topic!
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