Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Miller, Henry

  For every wonderful event in my golden childhood they must possess a dozen incomparably more wonderful. For not only did they have their little playmates, their games, their mysterious adventures, as did I, they had also skies of pure azure and walls of fog moving in and out of the canyons with invisible feet, hills in winter of emerald green and in summer mountain upon mountain of pure gold. They had even more, for there was ever the unfathomable silence of the forest, the blazing immensity of the Pacific, days drenched with sun and nights spangled with stars and—“Oh, Daddy, come quick, see the moon, it’s lying in the pool!” And besides the adoration of the neighbors, a dolt of a father who preferred wasting his time playing with them to cultivating his mind or making himself a good neighbor. Lucky the father who is merely a writer, who can drop his work and return to childhood at will! Lucky the father who is pestered from morn till sundown by two healthy, insatiable youngsters! Lucky the father who learns to see again through the eyes of his children, even though he become the biggest fool that ever was!

  “The Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit called their devotional community-life ‘Paradise’ and interpreted the word as signifying the quintessence of love.”*

  Looking at a fragment of “The Millennium” (by Hieronymus Bosch) the other day, I pointed out to our neighbor, Jack Morgenrath, (formerly of Williamsburg, Brooklyn) how hallucinatingly real were the oranges that diapered the trees. I asked him why it was that these oranges, so preternaturally real in appearance, possessed something more than would oranges painted, say, by Cézanne (better known for his apples) or even by Van Gogh. To Jack it was simple. (Everything is quite simple to Jack, by the way. It’s part of his charm.) Said Jack: “It’s because of the ambiance.” And he is right, absolutely right. The animals in this same triptych are equally mysterious, equally hallucinating, in their super-reality. A camel is always a camel and a leopard a leopard, yet they are altogether unlike any other camels, any other leopards. They can hardly even be said to be the camels and leopards of Hieronymus Bosch, magician though he was. They belong to another age, an age when man was one with all creation … “when the lion lay down with the lamb.”

  Bosch is one of the very few painters—he was indeed more than a painter!—who acquired a magic vision. He saw through the phenomenal world, rendered it transparent, and thus revealed its pristine aspect.* Seeing the world through his eyes it appears to us once again as a world of indestructible order, beauty, harmony, which it is our privilege to accept as a paradise or convert into a purgatory.

  The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these at one and the same time.

  I am led to speak of the “Millennium” because, receiving as many visitors as I do, and from all parts of the globe, I am constantly reminded that I am living in a virtual paradise. (“And how did you manage to find such a place?” is the usual exclamation. As if I had any part in it!) But what amazes me, and this is the point, is that so very few ever think on taking leave that they too might enjoy the fruits of paradise. Almost invariably the visitor will confess that he lacks the courage—imagination would be nearer the mark—to make the necessary break. “You’re lucky,” he will say-meaning, to be a writer—“you can do your work anywhere.” He forgets what I have told him, and most pointedly, about the other members of the community—the ones who really support the show—who are not writers, painters or artists of any sort, except in spirit. “Too late,” he probably murmurs to himself, as he takes a last wistful glance about.

  How illustrative, this attitude, of the woeful resignation men and women succumb to! Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) Yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.

  The longing for paradise, whether here on earth or in the beyond, has almost ceased to be. Instead of an idée-force it has become an idée fixe. From a potent myth it has degenerated into a taboo. Men will sacrifice their lives to bring about a better world—whatever that may mean—but they will not budge an inch to attain paradise. Nor will they struggle to create a bit of paradise in the hell they find themselves. It is so much easier, and gorier, to make revolution, which means, to put it simply, establishing another, a different, status quo. If paradise were realizable—this is the classic retort!—it would no longer be paradise.

  What is one to say to a man who insists on making his own prison?

  There is a type of individual who, after finding what he considers a paradise, proceeds to pick flaws in it. Eventually this man’s paradise becomes even worse than the hell from which he had escaped.

  Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisiacal flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.

  The windows of the soul are infinite, we are told. And it is through the eyes of the soul that paradise is visioned. If there are flaws in your paradise, open more windows! Vision is entirely a creative faculty: it uses the body and the mind as the navigator uses his instruments. Open and alert, it matters little whether one finds a supposed short cut to the Indies—or discovers a new world. Everything is begging to be discovered, not accidentally, but intuitively. Seeking intuitively, one’s destination is never in a beyond of time or space but always here and now. If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Which is to say that there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to paradise. Any paradise worth the name can sustain all the flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished.

  If I have entered upon a vein which I must confess is one not frequently discussed here, I am nevertheless certain that it is one which secretly engages the minds of many members of the community.

  Everyone who has come here in search of a new way of life has made a complete change-about in his daily routine. Nearly every one has come from afar, usually from a big city. It meant abandoning a job and a mode of life which was detestable and insufferable. To what degree each one has found “new life” can be estimated only by the efforts he or she put forth. Some, I suspect, would have found “it” even had they remained where they were.

  The most important thing I have witnessed, since coming here, is the transformation people have wrought in their own being. Nowhere have I seen individuals work so earnestly and assiduously on themselves. Nor so successfully. Yet nothing is taught or preached here, at least overtly. Some have made the effort and failed. Happily for the rest of us, I should say. But even these who failed gained something. For one thing, their outlook on life was altered, enlarged if not “improved.” And what could be better than for the teacher to become his own pupil, or the preacher his own convert?

  In a paradise you don’t preach or teach. You practice the perfect life—or you relapse.

  There seems to be an unwritten law here which insists that you accept what you find and like it, profit by it, or you are cast out. Nobody does the rejecting, please understand. Nobody, no group here, would crave such authority. No, the place itself, the elements which make it, do that. It’s the law, as I say. And it is a just law which works harm to no one. To the cynical-minded it may sound like the same old triumph of our dear status quo. But the enthusiast knows that it is precisely the fact that there is no status quo here which makes for its paradisiacal quality.

  No, the law operates because that which makes for paradise can not and will not assimilate that which makes for hell. How often it is said that we make our own heaven and our own hell. And how little it is taken to heart! Yet the truth prevails, whether we believe in it or not.

  Paradise or no paradise, I have the very definite impression that the people of this vicinity are st
riving to live up to the grandeur and nobility which is such an integral part of the setting. They behave as if it were a privilege to live here, as if it were by an act of grace they found themselves here. The place itself is so overwhelmingly bigger, greater, than anyone could hope to make it that it engenders a humility and reverence not frequently met with in Americans. There being nothing to improve on in the surroundings, the tendency is to set about improving oneself.

  It is of course true that individuals have undergone tremendous changes, broadened their vision, altered their natures, in hideous, thwarting surroundings—prisons, ghettos, concentration camps, and so on. Only a very rare individual elects to remain in such places. The man who has seen the light follows the light. And the light usually leads him to the place where he can function most effectively, that is, where he will be of most use to his fellow-men. In this sense, it matters little whether it be darkest Africa or the Himalayan heights. God’s work can be done anywhere, so to say.

  We have all met the soldier who has been overseas. And we all know that each one has a different story to relate. We are all like returned soldiers. We have all been somewhere, spiritually speaking, and we have either benefited by the experience or been worsted by it. One man says: “Never again!” Another says: “Let it come! I’m ready for anything!” Only the fool hopes to repeat an experience; the wise man knows that every experience is to be viewed as a blessing. Whatever we try to deny or reject is precisely what we have need of; it is our very need which often paralyzes us, prevents us from welcoming a (good or bad) experience.

  I come back once again to those individuals who came here full of needs and who fled after a time because “it” was not what they hoped to find, or because “they” were not what they thought themselves to be. None of them, from what I have learned, has yet found it or himself. Some returned to their former masters in the manner of slaves unable to support the privileges and responsibilities of freedom. Some found their way into mental retreats. Some became derelicts. Others simply surrendered to the villainous status quo.

  I speak as if they had been marked by the whip. I do not mean to be cruel or vindictive. What I wish to say quite simply is that none of them, in my humble opinion, is a whit happier, a whit better off, an inch advanced in any respect. They will all continue to talk about their Big Sur adventure for the rest of their lives—wistfully, regretfully, or elatedly, as occasion dictates. In the hearts of some, I know, is the profound hope that their children will display more courage, more perseverance, more integrity than they themselves did. But do they not overlook something? Are not their children, as the product of self-confessed failures, already condemned? Have they not been contaminated by the virus of “security”?

  The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment. As long as there is something to fight, people seem able to brave all manner of hardships. Remove the element of struggle, and they are like fish out of water. Those who no longer have anything to worry about will, in desperation, often take on the burdens of the world. This not through idealism but because they must have something to do, or at least something to talk about. Were these empty souls truly concerned about the plight of their fellow-men they would consume themselves in the flames of devotion. One need hardly go beyond his own doorstep to discover a realm large enough to exhaust the energies of a giant, or better, a saint.

  Naturally, the more attention one gives to the deplorable conditions outside the less one is able to enjoy what peace and liberty he possesses. Even if it be heaven we find ourselves in, we can render it suspect and dubious.

  Some will say they do not wish to dream their lives away. As if life itself were not a dream, a very real dream from which there is no awakening! We pass from one state of dream to another: from the dream of sleep to the dream of waking, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Whoever has enjoyed a good dream never complains of having wasted his time. On the contrary, he is delighted to have partaken of a reality which serves to heighten and enhance the reality of everyday.

  The oranges of Bosch’s “Millennium,” as I said before, exhale this dreamlike reality which constantly eludes us and which is the very substance of life. They are far more delectable, far more potent, than the Sunkist oranges we daily consume in the naive belief that they are laden with wonder-working vitamins. The millennial oranges which Bosch created restore the soul; the ambiance in which he suspended them is the everlasting one of spirit become real.

  Every creature, every object, every place has its own ambiance. Our world itself possesses an ambiance which is unique. But worlds, objects, creatures, places, all have this in common: they are ever in a state of transmutation. The supreme delight of dream lies in this transformative power. When the personality liquefies, so to speak, as it does so deliciously in dream, and the very nature of one’s being is alchemized, when form and substance, time and space, become yielding and elastic, responsive and obedient to one’s slightest wish, he who awakens from his dream knows beyond all doubt that the imperishable soul which he calls his own is but a vehicle of this eternal element of change.

  In waking life, when all is well and cares fall away, when the intellect is silenced and we slip into reverie, do we not surrender blissfully to the eternal flux, float ecstatically on the still current of life? We have all experienced moments of utter forgetfulness when we knew ourselves as plant, animal, creature of the deep or denizen of the air. Some of us have even known moments when we were as the gods of old. Most every one has known one moment in his life when he felt so good, so thoroughly attuned, that he has been on the point of exclaiming: “Ah, now is the time to die!” What is it lurks here in the very heart of euphoria? The thought that it will not, can not last? The sense of an ultimate? Perhaps. But I think there is another, deeper aspect to it. I think that in such moments we are trying to tell ourselves what we have long known but ever refuse to accept—that living and dying are one, that all is one, and that it makes no difference whether we live a day or a thousand years.

  Confucius put it this way: “If a man sees Truth in the morning, he may die in the evening without regret.”

  In the beginning Big Sur looked to me like an ideal place in which to work. Today, though I enjoy working when I can, I look upon it with other eyes. Whether I work or whether I don’t has come to assume less and less importance. I have had here some of the most bitter experiences of my life; I have also known here some of the most exalted moments. Sweet or bitter, I am now convinced that all experience is enriching and rewarding. Above all, instructive.

  In these past ten years I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of individuals from all walks of life. Most callers, it seems to me, come to unload their problems. Occasionally I succeed in handing a man back his problems—and saddling him with a few new ones, weightier, knottier ones than he brought.

  Many who come to pay me a visit make me the recipient of gifts, all sorts of gifts, from money to books, food, drink, clothing, even postage stamps. In return I can only offer the gift of myself. But all this is of little moment. What intrigues me is that, living in a nominally isolated spot, the world is closer to my door than if I were in the thick of it. It is not necessary for me to read the daily paper nor listen in on the news broadcasts. Whatever I need to know about conditions “out there” is brought to me, combed and sifted, in person.

  And how very much the same it all is! Why drag one’s carcass around? “Stay put and watch the world go round!” That’s what I frequently tell myself.

  Here I feel compelled to touch on a matter which, though highly personal, may nevertheless be of interest to “all and sundry.” As a writer of some repute—perhaps dubious repute—I naturally number among my callers many young or would-be writers. When I learn of their aims and purpose, in choosing authorship, I am obliged to put myself the most scathing questions. In what way, I ask myself, do I really differ from these fledglings? What have I gained, turning out one book after another, that they lack? And
why should I encourage them when all they do is augment my own honest doubts?

  To elucidate … all these young men (and women), as I once did myself, desire nothing more, nothing better, than to write what they wish to write and to be read by as many people as possible. They want to express themselves, they say. Very good. (“And what’s to hinder?” say I to myself.) After they have expressed themselves, they want to be recognized and commended for their efforts. Naturally. (“Who’s to prevent it?”) And being recognized, being accepted, they want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. (“Human, all-too-human.”) But—and here is the question, the vital one: Do you, my dear young enthusiasts, have any idea what it means when you say “the fruits of one’s labor”? Have you ever heard of “bitter fruit”? Do you not know that with recognition, or “success,” if you want to call it that, come all the evils in creation? Do you realize that, in accomplishing your purpose, you will never be permitted to reap the reward you dream of? No doubt you picture to yourself a quiet home in the country, a loving wife who understands you, and a bevy of happy, contented children. You visualize yourself turning out masterpiece after masterpiece in a setting where all runs like clockwork.