Jon is busy making presents for the children in the toolshed. I don’t know what, but it pleases me. He can make anything—and this is a real Christmas thing to do, to give gifts you make with joy. Mrs. Hepner* made us a lovely wreath for the door. Same kind of gift. One should give from one’s own gift. That would be the truest kind of Christmas. In that sense, perhaps I should write. But not, I mean, articles—write my warm thoughts to people, not conventionally, but what I feel. I should touch them that way, not by giving bought presents. I have not done much buying and shopping this year. The shops are horrible—nauseating.
It is the compromise with the world that is so hard. The other day I was thinking of all the conflicts one lives in the midst of every day—real conflicts below superficial issues. I want a quiet and peaceful and serene living room—and I have five children with no very good place to play and no desire to starch them in discipline. I want to be pure in heart—but I like to wear my purple dress. I want to live so quietly that the flight of live swans over my head is an occasion for a hymn and yet I want to go out in the world and meet people. One cannot be half-monk. But perhaps one can be a monk for half the year—or even just one month out of the year.
I cannot let this get any longer! What a letter. There is still so much to say.
Forgive my not getting an article all out and ready. I think you will understand. We miss you terribly. And I shall think of you.
My love,
A.
Do you disapprove of this day wasted writing to you?!
[Winter 1948]
Dear C.,
Just a scratch—I realize sitting down to my desk it has been weeks since I have written or tried to write you, but I was still hoping you might turn up for Christmas.
Christmas, despite Scott in bed, was quite nice—quiet and peaceful. Anne was an Angel (The Angel) in the school play, with long golden hair and folded arms on a white nightgown, and pink and gold wings—and a clear voice that announced, “Fear not for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy.” Jon and I dug out the garage and Jon got the Mercury out, with chains. (Jon is a very good snow-driver, slow and steady—drives like you—never loses his head.)
We had our little Christmas Eve service: candles and singing and Bible verses. Reeve sang “Silent Night,” and the crèche looked magical as ever. Reeve stops by it each night and says, “Look at the baby Jesus!”
Jon has been a real help to me—what a steady boy he is. He is out at a dance tonight in Fairfield looking very handsome in his dark blue suit.
Slightly bogged-down letter, but these everybody-sick times always seem longer and thicker than they are. But we are coming out of it now and it wasn’t really very long. But how long you’ve been away!
The sun is shining free of charge—everyone feels better this morning. Scott’s temperature is normal!
Jon made me a bird-feeding station for Christmas—very nice—and an aquarium for Land, with (O Heavenly Day!) guppies in it. Mother guppy had eleven babies Christmas Night and then leapt out of the aquarium (“I understand it perfectly!” I told Land and Jon from my position prone on the hearth rug that night).
A very nice letter from Gault McGowan (head of N.Y. Sun in Germany) to whom we sent your book. I knew he was unusual. I shall hope you don’t get this letter and I will see you first!
Captiva, Florida,*
March 1st [1948] [DIARY]
… I have had Sinus almost steadily for two months. Not enough to go to bed—but never able to shake it & at times to a dizzying degree. At best—dulling me slightly all the time. I fall into bed at 8:30 unable to write a letter—or even read. Why? It is ridiculous. I must find out what it is—why am I so apathetic & exhausted all the time. Is it a deep physical depletion after last winter—the pregnancy—the emotional turmoil, the miscarriage—the major operation—the children’s illnesses during convalescence—& then last summer’s challenge—certainly not a rest—& the pressure of the fall & early winter writing? Is it something wrong with the technical set-up of our life in the East? The sense that one is going against the grain all the time—trying to lead a simple life near N.Y.? Is it the sense of the distractions of N.Y.? (But I have done so little this year I haven’t felt up to it.) Is it the imperfections of household life—the small daily drains on energy? I have discovered certain things. The less people there are in the house the less tired I am. (Not the work—the people tire me.) My children tire me—all together—vying for my attention. (One at a time, not at all.) When C. is home, I am more tired. (But when we are off together alone—it is restful.)
How complicated it is. The Father & the Mother, the Husband & Wife—do not meet as individuals—separate—single—simple. It is like some sort of equation: A does not meet C. It is A + children + world + background + career + ambitions + children + friends meeting C + background + business + plans + children—etc.—A6. A to the sixth power meeting C to the sixth power—which is not at all the same thing as a simple A × C. Every couple should get away from each other alone & should get away alone together part of each year. The first is necessary for the finding & strengthening of the individual, which tends to merge into the dual relationship (esp. if a woman). The second is necessary to keep the relationship a living one. Get back to the essential—pure—basic A × C. Men—just normally—because of business—tend in their lives to get more of the going away alone—so they don’t feel the need for this for themselves—or recognize the need for it for women. Women, on the other hand, get so absorbed in the A6 × C6 relationship that they forget there ever was an A × C relationship. They neglect this & don’t even feel the need for it (they have it with a child)—or for renewing it. The search for the pure relationship is what tempts people into love affairs. That is the easy way to get it. But we shouldn’t have to go there to get it. Every relationship should be pure. We should work consciously at keeping it pure.
Have I really too little strength for my program? Have I too many children?! That is not the answer. But what is it? Extreme simplification of life? And a hardening of the heart against the distracting & draining contacts & activities? No—all these are helpful but peripheral. They are helpful techniques—they are roads to grace—like the rules for a monastery. The answer is inside—it is always inside. The outside can only help you to find the inside answer.
I suppose that is why I am here. Here in a cottage as shabby & bare as a deserted seashell—swept with wind & sand & the sound of the casuarina trees & the waves on the beach. Here with Evie,* so gentle, so sensitive, so aware—so good we can be honest—really honest with each other—and with ourselves. I feel the skins peeling off from me.
Captiva
Friday, March 5th, 1948 [DIARY]
Florida is not the place to work. I should have remembered that from other times. It is the place to relax—rest. Sleep—sun. Get nervously ironed out. It is the place for the body to soak up strength—not for the mind to give forth energy. It is completely unstimulating—even debilitating. Too warm—too soft—too damp—for any real mental discipline—or sharp flights of spirit. But it is rather a good place—speaking of the mind, now—to dream—to ruminate—to let the mind also relax—play—turn over in gentle careless rolls—like these lazy waves on the flat beach. Who knows what these great easy unconscious rollers may turn up on the white sand of the conscious mind—a “Rose Murex” or a “Lion’s Paw.” But it must not be sought for—or—heaven forbid!—dug for. No—no dredging of the sea-bottom here. That would be trop voulu†—& defeat one’s purpose. No, one should lie bare, open, flat as an empty white beach—waiting—without greed & without anxiety—for a gift from the sea.
Perhaps one should always do this? No—there are times for dredging the sea-bottom & times for waiting with the patience & choicelessness of a beach. “My times I do not know.” I am always dredging when I should be waiting & waiting when I should be dredging. If one fights against the currents in oneself—one gets very exhausted—besides not getting where one wan
ts to. On the boat coming back from Europe—for instance—that was definitely a time for waiting—for relaxing after the efforts of the summer—the terrific impacts & stimuli. I should have given in to the damp deck chair atmosphere of an ocean liner. I should have let the rollers of the subconscious wash over me. Something would have emerged after those ten days of rest—besides greater physical recuperation & strength for the problems at home.
But I did not have the wisdom or the courage. I was afraid of being caught by a deadline—of failing in my mission—my first professional mission. It was my cautious penurious Puritan soul that bound me to a card table in my cabin, with all my notes around me. Dredging the bottom of the sea, I was—a fruitless & exhausting effort.
And so I miss the fertilization that might come from a contact. And for me—yes, I think I might as well admit it—fertilization does come a great deal from contacts. Why then do I avoid them—in a sort of false pride—shyness—timorous modesty? I used to be afraid of falling in love with people—or having them think I was—that I was chasing them (how ridiculous—I am actually always running away!) but now surely—I should be mature enough to be over that. I am no longer afraid of falling in love, and the other false modesties should vanish. I cannot bear to think “Par delicatesse j’ai perdu ma vie.”* Anyway, here, at least, let me not try to dredge—it is the place & time to relax—to be as choiceless as a beach. That too can be an act of faith. That is what is wrong with dredging the bottom—it is not only greedy—it shows a fundamental lack of faith.
Dear God—how little faith I seem to have—sometimes, it seems to me it all comes down to that.
Thursday, March 11th, 1948 [DIARY]
I have had one full day & two nights alone. There is a special quality to being alone—that is precious beyond words to me. It is curious that though I dreaded Evie’s going (and I always dread people leaving me—as if I were being drained of my life’s blood—as if an amputation were taking place—a limb torn off—I should be unable to get on without it) nevertheless this day without her has been very rich. Very vivid. Extraordinarily so. It is as if one did actually lose an arm—when someone leaves—and then like the starfish one grows a new one. One is whole again—one is complete—round—full—more complete—fuller than before (when the person one loved had a piece of one).
I lay under the stars—alone. I made my breakfast—alone. Alone I watched the gulls at the end of the pier dip & wheel & soar & dive for the broken bread I threw them. A morning’s work. And then a late lunch—alone—on the beach. And it seemed to me that, no longer united to my own species, I was nearer to others in their aloneness. The sky willet, nesting in the ragged tide wash in front of me. The sandpiper, running in little unfrightened steps down the shining beach rim ahead of my footsteps. The slowly flapping pelicans over my head, drifting downwind. The old gull, hunched up, grouchy, surveying the sea. Even the twisted gray arms of driftwood filled me with a kind of ecstasy.
I walked way down the beach drugged by the rhythm of the waves—the sun on my bare back & legs. The wind & mist from the spray in my hair—until I felt really quite drunk with it. I went into the waves with nothing on & then came home—drenched—drugged—reeling—full to the brim with my day alone.
Curiously whole for my aloneness, I feel like the full moon—before the night has taken a single nibble of it—ripe with a mysterious poem—fecund—full. The springs of creativity are filling up in me (was it just physical, then, their depletion? And depletion by people. I am depleted by all the people around me).
Filling up to the brim—May no one come—not even C.—or I might spill it all away!
Is it this then that happens to women—especially feminine ones? Physically, they are so made that they want to spill it all away. And all their natural ties as a woman demand that they spill it (the nourishing instinct—the eternal feeding woman does & must do). Her energy—her fertility seeps away into these channels if there is any chance—any leak—at least, if the artist & the woman are equally balanced. If the artist is stronger—as in Georgia O’Keeffe—then there are no children—there is no marriage—or a poor one. With me—damn it—the woman always wins! And yet not without terrible conflict—which is exhausting in itself. I work against myself all the time. I try to give as a woman over & over again. I want to. I prefer to. It is the primitive urge. Besides, it satisfies my conscience—my Puritan morality: what you do for another is good—unselfish—what you do for yourself is evil—selfish, wrong. The ethical, as well as the physical, pull against the aesthetic creative force in me. What hope then for the aesthetic in such an uneven tug-of-war? Perhaps very little—but at least it helps to know it—to see how difficult it is. Someone must tie me to a mast & stop up my ears to the siren voices of my own instincts (perhaps this is what poor C. has to do). Or like that poor girl in the fairy tale, to produce I must be locked into a room full of straw—with the command—under pain of death—to turn it into gold.
But not, I think in Florida. Not even at Captiva—liberating a place as it is. (Perhaps earlier in the winter—less hot & humid.) It is a curious island—not a bit like the rest of Florida. I feel it has a spell on it—& not even the tea-room atmosphere of the Tween Waters dining room (nasturtiums in the orange pottery on each table, fruit salads made of a single limp canned pear with whipped cream & a marshmallow on top!) can compete with it. It even has some influence on those middle-aged respectable marrieds in print dresses & bald heads who sit in front of the orange pottery & the marshmallow pears. It is curiously—almost humorously, possibly even dangerously—uninhibiting. One drops—as I felt the first week—the world—one’s own cares—vanities—guilts, etc. One drops one’s clothes—one’s habits. One sinks into natural rhythms. One is even forced into them—willy-nilly. The pounding of the sea—the wind through the casuarina trees—the slow flapping of pelicans. One must—one cannot resist—giving in to it. One drops the clothes—chains—habits of civilization & one discovers one’s own physical rhythms. They are in fact awakened in one. The body—so dead in the modern city—here wakes. Is first taken back into primeval rest—unconsciousness—drowsiness & then awakened—to all kinds of new tactile delights that it forgets & almost forbids the thought of—in civilization—wind on the body—firm sand under the feet—sun on skin. The springs of physical energy are filled up—as in me. It could, I suppose, be sinister & dangerous to live so completely sensuously. But one feels at Captiva a kind of purity about it. One sinks into childhood—not into sex. One can hardly think of anything impure happening at Captiva. It would be washed clean as a shell—clean as a piece of driftwood—and left on the beach.
This is what happens to one—one becomes bare—empty—open as a shell—echoing the sea. The shell is certainly the symbol for Captiva. One lives in a cottage—bare, empty—deserted as a shell. One becomes like a shell—filled with salt & sand & sun & the rhythm of the sea. The only form of materialism here—the wealth—so to speak—is counted in seashells—a childlike wealth after all. One becomes childlike—one plays at house—plays at collecting treasures. And one becomes—almost against one’s will—a child. Even the pompous bishop in his brown shorts—striding down the beach. He cannot quite maintain his worldly pose—not in those shorts—not with sand between his toes! Even if he does hold his head in the air, talk in sepulchral tones & use a piece of driftwood as a walking stick.
And all this childlikeness enters into people’s manners, too. They are open—frank—smiling. Strangers smile at you on the beach & come up & offer you a shell—for no reason—lightly—like a child & then go on by & leave you alone again—free. Nothing is demanded of you in payment—no social rite—no tie established. It was a gift—freely taken—freely given—in mutual trust—like a child’s. People smile at you like that—like a child—sure that you will not rebuff them—sure that you will smile back. And you do—because you know that it will involve nothing. The smile, the act, the relationship in the immediacy of the present free of past & fut
ure—is living in space, balanced there on a shaft of air—like a seagull.
It is this, I suppose—the living in the present—that gives it its quality of extreme vividness & extreme purity—living like a child—or a saint—in the immediacy of time and space. Every day—every act—is an island, washed by time and space, and has an island’s self-containment—wholeness—serenity. And one becomes oneself like an island—self-contained—whole—mysterious & fecund. “No man is an island,” said John Donne. I feel we are all islands in a common sea.
But is there not a terrible lack of responsibility in living in the present? Should we not think of the past—of the future—of the lessons of the past? Of the consequences of the future?
I suppose the saint’s answer is that if you live purely enough (“those in the gale of the Holy Spirit”) one need not think of—nor fear—the consequences of one’s acts. The fruit will be good because the tree is good.
But for us who are not saints—what is the answer? What the Guru said to Jali? “To live in the present one must be very simple—or very saintly—and you are neither!”
But for short periods it is permitted—even vital.
May 21st, 1948 [DIARY, ON PLANE TO PHILADELPHIA FROM CHICAGO]
… Perhaps it is not strange that I have not written more. And yet this is the normal condition of my life. It must be adapted to. I must find the time in this life—or never find it. I must cut to the bone the unnecessary things, the vanities, the wastes of time. It is not that I waste more time than other women—but that I can less afford to waste. I pay so heavily for my mistakes—not only in time but in energy—emotional waste—in frustration—in conflicts. There is so little leeway—I must budget time—space (being alone) & energy. And that isn’t all either. One must replenish the spring.
Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Page 5