Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, book 1)

by Henry Miller

  Their most successful disguise is compassion. How tender they can become! How considerate! How touchingly sympathetic! But if you could ever get a look at them—just one fluorescent glance!—what a pretty egomaniac you would see. They bleed with «very bleeding soul in the universe—but they never fall apart. At the crucifixion they hold your hand and slake your thirst, weep like drunken cows. They are the professional mourners from time immemorial; they were so even in the Golden Age, when there was nothing to weep about. Misery and suffering is their habitat, and at the equinox they bring the whole kaleidoscopic pattern of life to a glaucous glue....

  There is something about analysis which reminds one of the operating room. By the time one is ready to be analyzed it is usually too late. Confronted with a battered psyche the only recourse open to the analyst is to do a plastic job. The good analyst prefers to give his psychic cripple artificial limbs rather than crutches, that's about the long and short of it.

  But sometimes the analyst is given no choice, as happens now and then to the surgeon on the battlefield. Sometimes the surgeon has to amputate arms and legs, concoct a new face out of an unrecognizable piece of pulp, clip the balls off, devise an ingenious rectum and God only knows what—if he has the time for it. It would be kinder to kill such a wreck off, but that's one of the ironies of the civilized way of life—you try to preserve the remnants. Now and then, in the horrible annals of surgery, you come across astonishing specimens of vitality who are truncated and pared down to an uncouth torso, a sort of human pear which a Brancusi might refine into an objet d'art. You read that this human what-not supports his aged mother and father from the earnings of his incredible craft, a craft in which the only tool is the artificial mouth which the surgeon's knife carved out of a once unrecognizable face.

  There are psychical specimens of this order who walk out of the analyst's office to take their place in the ranks of dehumanized labor. They have been pared down to an efficient little bundle of mutilated reflexes. They not only earn their own living, they support their aged relatives. They refuse the niche of fame in the hall of horrors to which they are entitled; they elect to compete with other souls in a quasi-soulful way. They die hard, like knots of wood in a giant oak. They resist the axe, even when it is all up.

  I wouldn't go so far as to say that Kronski was of this order, but I must confess that many a time he gave me such an impression. There was many a time when I felt like swinging the axe and finishing him off. Nobody would have missed him; nobody would have mourned his loss. He had got himself born a cripple and a cripple he would die, that's how it struck me. As an analyst I couldn't see of what benefit he would be to others. As an analyst he would only see cripples everywhere, even among the god-like. Other analysts, and I had known some personally who were most successful, had recuperated from their crippledom, so to speak, and were of use to other cripples like themselves, because they had at least learned to use their artificial limbs with ease and perfection. They were good demonstrators.

  There was one thought, however, which bored into me like a gimlet during these sessions with Kronski. It was the notion that every one, no matter how far gone he was, could be saved. Yes, if one had infinite time and infinite patience, it could be done. It began to dawn on me that the healing art was not at all what people imagined it to be, that it was something very simple, too simple, in fact, for the ordinary mind to grasp.

  To put it in the simple way it came to my mind, I would say that it was like this: everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself. The sickness which we see everywhere, the bitterness and disgust which life inspires in so many of us, is only the reflection of the sickness which we carry within us. Prophylactics will never secure us against the world disease, because we bear the world within. No matter how marvelous human beings become, the sum total will yield an external world which is painful and imperfect. As long as we live self-consciously we must always fail to cope with the world. It is not necessary to die in order to come at last face to face with reality. Reality is here and now, everywhere, gleaming through every reflection that meets the eye. Prisons and even lunatic asylums are emptied of their inmates when a more vital danger menaces the community. When the enemy approaches, the political exile is recalled to share in the defense of his country. At the last ditch it gets dinned into our thick skulls that we are all part and parcel of the same flesh. When our very lives are threatened we begin to live. Even the psychic invalid throws away his crutches, in such moments. For him the greatest joy is to realize that there is something more important than himself. All his life he has turned on the spit of his own roasted ego. He made the fire with his own hands. He drips in his own juices. He makes himself a tender morsel for the demons he liberated with his own hands. That is the picture of human life on this planet called the Earth. Everybody is a neurotic, down to the last man and woman. The healer, or the analyst, if you like, is only a super-neurotic. He has put the Indian sign on us. To be cured we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another—it is a private affair which is best done collectively. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separate and self-hypnotized, but individual and related.

  As to salvation and all that... The greatest teachers, the true healers, I would say, have always insisted that they can only point the way. The Buddha went so far as to say: «Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.»

  The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission it is to preach and to teach. These are the gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your petty life is of no concern to them. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that?

  To be sick, to be neurotic, if you like, is to ask for guarantees. The neurotic is the flounder that lies on the bed of the river, securely settled in the mud, waiting to be speared. For him death is the only certainty, and the dread of that grim certainty immobilizes him in a living death far more horrible than the one he imagines but knows nothing about.

  The way of life is towards fulfillment, however, wherever it may lead. To restore a human being to the current of life means not only to impart self-confidence but also an abiding faith in the processes of life. A man who has confidence in himself must have confidence in others, confidence in the fitness and Tightness of the universe. When a man is thus anchored he ceases to worry about the fitness of things, about the behavior of his fellow-men, about right and wrong and justice and injustice. If his roots are in the current of life he will float on the surface like a lotus and he will blossom and give forth fruit. He will draw his nourishment from above and below; he will send his roots down deeper and deeper, fearing neither the depths nor the heights. The life that's is in him will manifest itself in growth, and growth is an endless, eternal process. He will not be afraid of withering, because decay and death are part of growth. As a seed he began and as a seed he will return. Beginnings and endings are only partial steps in the eternal process. The process is everything... the way... the Tao.

  The way of life! A grand expression. Like saying Truth. There is nothing beyond it... it is all.

  And so the analyst says «Adapt yourself!» He does not mean, as some wish to think—adapt yourself to this rotten state of affairs! He means: adapt yourself to life! Become an adept! That is the highest adjustment—to make oneself an adept.

  The delicate flowers are the first to perish in a storm; the giant is laid low by
a sling-shot. For every height that is gained new and more baffling dangers menace us. The coward is often buried beneath the very wall against which he huddled in fear and anguish. The finest coat of mail can be penetrated by a skillful thrust. The greatest armadas are eventually sunk; Maginot lines are always circumvented. The Trojan horse is always waiting to be trotted out. Where then does security lie? What protection can you invent that has not already been thought of? It is hopeless to think of security: there is none. The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.

  In the insect world is where we see the defense system par excellence. In the gregarious life of the animal world we see another kind of defense system. By comparison the human being seems a helpless creature. In the sense that he lives a more exposed life he is. But this ability to expose himself to every risk is precisely his strength. A god would have no recognizable defense whatever. He would be one with life, moving in all dimensions freely.

  Fear, hydra-headed fear, which is rampant in all of us, is a hang-over from lower forms of life. We are straddling two worlds, the one from which we have emerged and the one towards which we are heading. That is the deepest meaning of the word human, that were are a link, a bridge, a promise. It is in us that the life process is being carried to fulfillment. We have a tremendous responsibility, and it is the gravity of that which awakens our fears. We know that if we do not move forward, if we do not realize our potential being, we shall relapse, sputter out, and drag the world down with us. We carry Heaven and Hell within us; we are the cosmogonic builders. We have choice—and all creation is our range.

  For some it a terrifying prospect. It would be better, think they, if Heaven were above and Hell below—anywhere outside, but not within. But that comfort has been knocked from under us. There are no places to go to, either for reward or punishment. The place is always here and now, in your own person and according to your own fancy. The world is exactly what you picture it to be, always, every instant. It is impossible to shift the scenery about and pretend that you will enjoy another, a different act. The setting is permanent, changing with the mind and heart, not according to the dictates of an invisible stage director. You are the author, director and actor all in one: the drama is always going to be your own life, not some one else's. A beautiful, terrible, ineluctable drama, like a suit made of your own skin. Would you want it otherwise? Could you invent a better drama?

  Lie down, then, on the soft couch which the analyst provides, and try to think up something different. The analyst has endless time and patience; every minute you detain him means money in his pocket. He is like God, in a sense—the God of your own creation. Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, implore, cajole, pray or curse—he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to fool him then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot. He has nothing to lose. But if you realize that he is not a god but a human being like yourself, with worries, defects, ambitions, frailties, that he is not the repository of an all-encompassing wisdom but a wanderer, like yourself, along the path, perhaps you will cease pouring it out like a sewer, however melodious it may sound to your ears, and rise up on your own two legs and sing with your own God-given voice. To confess, to whine, to complain, to commiserate, always demands a toll. To sing it doesn't cost you a penny. Not only does it cost nothing—you actually enrich others. Sing the praises of the Lord, it is enjoined. Aye, sing out! Sing out, O Master-builder! Sing out, glad warrior! But, you quibble, how can I sing when the world is crumbling, when all about me is bathed in blood and tears? Do you realize that the martyrs sang when they were being burned at the stake? They saw nothing crumbling, they heard no shrieks of pain. They sang because they were full of faith. Who can demolish faith? Who can wipe out joy? Men have tried, in every age. But they have not succeeded. Joy and faith are inherent in the universe. In growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity. Between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and super-terrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. The one who mounts sings. He is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas. He ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. Everything lies ahead. The way is endless, and the farther one reaches the more the road opens up. The bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sink-holes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind. They lurk in waiting, ready to swallow one up the moment one ceases to advance. The phantasmal world is the world which has not been fully conquered over. It is the world of the past, never of the future. To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

  1 5

  Everybody took Mona and Rebecca for sisters. Outwardly they seemed to have everything in common; inwardly there wasn't the slightest link between them. Rebecca, who never denied her Jewish blood, lived completely in the present; she was normal, healthy, intelligent, ate with gusto, laughed heartily, talked easily and, I imagine, fucked well and slept well. She was thoroughly adapted, thoroughly anchored, able to live on any plane and make the best of it. She was everything that a man could desire in a wife. She was a real female. In her presence the average American woman looked like a bundle of defects.

  Her special quality was her earthiness. Born in Southern Russia, having been spared the horrors of ghetto life, she reflected the grandeur of the simple Russian people among whom she grew up. Her spirit was large and flexible, robust and supple at the same time. She was a Communist by instinct, because her nature was simple, wholesome and all of a piece.

  Though she was the daughter of a rabbi, she had emancipated herself at an early age. From her father she had inherited that acumen and integrity which from time immemorial have given to the pious Jew that distinctive axira of purity and strength. Meekness and hypocrisy were never the attributes of the devout Jew; their weakness, as with the Chinese, has been an undue reverence for the written word. For them, the Word has a significance almost unknown to the Gentile. When they become exalted they glow like letters of fire.

  As for Mona, it was impossible to guess what her origins were. For a long time she had maintained that she was born in New Hampshire and that she had been educated in a New England college. She could have passed for a Portuguese, a Basque, a Roumanian gypsy, a Hungarian, a Georgian, anything she chose to make you believe. Her English was impeccable and, to most observers, without the slightest trace of accent. She might have been born anywhere, because the English she spoke was obviously an English she had mastered in order to frustrate all such inquiries as relate to origins and antecedents. In her presence the room vibrated. She had her own wave length: it was short, powerful, disruptive. It served to break down other transmissions, especially those which threatened to effect real communication with her. She played like lightning over a storm-tossed sea.

  There was something disturbing to her in the atmosphere created by the coming together of such strong individualities as composed the new menage. She felt a challenge which she was not quite able to meet. Her passport was in order but her luggage excited suspicion. At the end of every encounter she had to reassemble her forces, but it was evident, even to herself, that her forces were becoming frayed and diminished. Alone in our
little room—the cubicle—I would nurse her wounds and endeavor to arm her for the next encounter. I had to pretend, of course, that she had acquitted herself admirably. Often I would rehearse some of the statements she had made, altering them subtly or amplifying them in an unexpected way, in order to give her the clue she was searching for. I tried never to humiliate her by forcing her to ask a direct question. I knew just where the ice was thin and I skated about these dangerous zones with the adroitness and agility of a professional. In this way I patiently endeavored to fill in those gaps which were distressingly blatant in one who was supposed to have graduated from such a venerable institution of learning as Wellesley.

  It was a strange, awkward and embarrassing game. I was surprised to detect in myself the germination of a new sentiment towards her: pity. It was incomprehensible to me that, forced to show her hand, she should not have taken refuge in frankness. She knew that I knew, but she would insist on keeping up pretences. Why? Why with me? What had she to fear? That I had detected her weakness had in no way diminished my love. On the contrary, it had increased it. Her secret had become mine, and in protecting her I was protecting myself also. Could she not see that in arousing my pity she was only strengthening the bond between us? But perhaps that was not her great concern; perhaps she took for granted that the bond would grow with the years.