10HEJIRA
HEJIRA
We found we were a bit tied in the Middle West, caught somewhat whether we liked it or not, in the meshes of possession. Steve and I had liked it much out on the Southern California strand.... When one reads in the earlier book,[12]the stress that we put on building that big stone house on Lake Erie; this felicitous hejira may disconcert.
The fact is, we wearied of possession. We found ourselves yearning for that beauty which is unconfined. We were athirst for new things, a different break of seasons and taxes.... The world was so full of people who could build and buy and own and insure, that we decided we should be doing the things that the others could not. We were glad to have built the house for the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned how to run it well, in and out—but it was astone house. When a man builds a stone house with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave a hole to get out; also he must be sure that he isn't building on his own chest.... In true Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment of possession.
The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands in the crowd. On the same basis a man cannot see the relation of his house to the road or garden from the inside of the house. The world must be regarded from outside to be seen as a whole. The New Race is determined to see it so. Thisoutsideis none other than the mystical viewpoint of all world artists and builders.
One does not know what friends are, until one discovers that the secret of friendship is not in getting but in giving. No one knows what love is until he reverses all the laws that the many follow now. I do not mean lawlessness. I mean the higher law that is found at last by the quester after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to finish with the world as it is before we set out in quest of a better country.... We found that we had to become active servants of a finer ideal than householding at its highest. We determined to do more than to dream this ideal; we set about to make a better country. At worst, we work for our children.
It came to us many times before we movedthat we were forever done with things as they are; that we had come to the end of show and property-measure and hoarding; to the end of the love of self which destroys the vision for friendship; to the end of domesticity which holds one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of civic identification, or relation with any federated commonwealth, which fancies its existence threatened by the prosperity of other political bodies. No heat about it.
We came to the edge of the Lake in vanloads; we went away with bags.... I turned from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one of the last days, and looked at the vined study and the big stone house, the elms so strong and green about it. I remembered the early picture of all this. It began from Stevenson'sTreasure of Franchard, many years ago,—how old Dr. Duprez went out in the morning and tried grapes and plums with the dew on them, sniffing the perfumes of his own yard, dwelling in his own orchards.
I remember one day before building that the man came to us about the young trees. He had pictures of them in books—blooms and fruits of such colours that nature would never be guilty of—all the fruits I heard of as a boy—white grapes that never grow in this country, purple ones that grow whether you care or not....
The trees were coming on now, many withripening fruit. The grove of elms was a matter of collateral, as the bank would say. The break-water had caught up thousands of yards of sand. It worked—the old struggle of wasting banks forgotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles that were planned to climb the bars of the study windows, had to be trimmed now for any light at all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed upon the front the sense of years.
... We had planned to have all the fruits; some of the finest were now in flower. We came with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool and dark things. We left with a few light effects in our hands—to find a place where white garments might be worn in peace. We came with a great idea of food—game and fishes, meats, poultry, many cans and vegetables and desserts. We went away with a taste for graham bread and butter—a spread of honey, a glass of milk. We came with a fear of disease for the children, fear of colds, fear of losing something, or having something taken away, doubtless having the fear of death and accident. We went away with a clear idea of what death is and the advantage of it, children and adults alike.
Young children rode the horse that had a reputation for being wild-spirited and very much a man's mount. We had seen the deep places of the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with parasols and awnings and protections against the sun. Most of us would like to have worn nothing but a breech-clout had the town permitted; and the only time we had found the world hard to bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain.
Sunlight—it is closer to God and happiness and manhood and every delight than words can suggest. The more you know of it, the more you need; the more you love it, the more its mysterious excellence unfolds. I know what sunstroke is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a vile state of the body, or vile clothing that stifles the body. When one is well and has learned to come back to the Father of Lights—there is no fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and dark glasses, but no more—eyes stronger than ever. I look for the sun in the morning and stare up from the sand into his face at high noon. There is nothing the matter with sunlight. The sadness and the sickness is with those who bring their quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh....
It's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession is pain.... We started in with many flowers. We ended with roses. It's all in the tea-rose.... By careful selection of thoughts over a little period, we can come into the joy of flowers in other people's gardens. There are brave men who allow you to walk in their orchards; and there are many who work hard to raise fruits for a price.There is much joy, if you really look at it, in building a house for another fellow.
We start with the brute materials—beginning with the clay itself. Our cultivations become more intensive through the years. All life is so. We take the extract of a thing at last—a shelf of books where formerly we wanted a roomful—somebody's else little rented bungalow, where formerly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, that there is an essence to be obtained from the extract, an oil from the essence—a spirit at last from the oil. The whole story is in that—synthesis. Slowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves free. We descend into matter; learn its lessons and laws, rise like a plant through the darkness to the light, integrating force to meet and cope with the new and lighter element. I held up seven little books in one hand—weighing no more than a new novel.
"It's all in these," I said to the Chapel. "One could put these in his bag and have it all."
... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore, meditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter is scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for himself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the open road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks he must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers the stuffof death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or his garden. It was allstoryto me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream of the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a connoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell of the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of the little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the potatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better be answered.
11THE SPECTATOR
THE SPECTATOR
Some of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we may set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the same mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty and thirty years younger:
"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or shortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses or wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you—don't make the same mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and pestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn your lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get somewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious and full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world breeze through. It's all a Laugh."
Every process of the world to-day is designed to take away that adorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets, schools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, charlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one in the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the body (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and sacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings of instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the bourse—how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself in the midst of—for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the world go by.... At last to be the Spectator!
I tell you now from much living that there is nothing here in the world that is worth fighting for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer, laughing joy in the Plan.... Every time you adjust your life to the standard of the world, you are doing something that is beneath your soul, and you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. Dress for the world, and the world will find its flaws in you. Work for the world according to its specification, and it will defile you. Enter into any of the competitions of the world and your face and your hands and task will be constricted by visible and invisible impediments and barriers, less than the real of you in every detail. Searchfor health according to the laws of flesh alone, and it will elude you at every point, showing you all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty of face and body, and it will be the first thing taken. There is nothing in the world but to make the human divine—that is the job we are here for.
To cease to hold is the beginning of invincible attraction; want nothing and the treasures of the world are yours. You cannot have health until you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling, and that which was a body held apart from you, is suddenly a winged creature returning.... There is nothing here but the love story, and the power of that must be spiritual. The madonna of the future will look up, not down at the head upon her breast. Man must overcome mammon; Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers of the future will look a little time in each other's eyes and much above to a Third who will come nearer and nearer for their adoration.... The friends of the future will sing in their Partings; they shall know the spirit and the breath ofcamaraderiewhich knows no death.
There is a tendency on the part of our young associates to be extravagant in their speech. Much that they see is beyond their capacity decently to express. A group of us was looking down from a high balustrade. Flowery vines were wovenintricately against the face of the stucco below. We became conscious of an incredible whirring, so low that it was difficult to hear, and yet so intense as to give the thought of a distant seismic disorder. It was the invisible wings of a humming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines below. The child standing next to me said:
"The sound has texture."
It expressed something very real to me; yet there is not power in words to portray the exact feeling. All the objects of nature have their spiritual dimensions also for those who dwell much in the Unseen. These unusual children see the material object merely as an outpost for a challenging mystery; while, to the material mind, the outpost is all, and the lavish adjectives and expressions of the former are deplored as gush or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the most marked and potent of all adjectives and expressions are pitifully inadequate to express the lustre and radiance which begins at the point where three dimensions end.
The Valley Road Girl came into the Study one day, saying that this chapel book should be calledThe Hive. We all thought it a wonderful name to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities has been steadily interesting since that day.
The inner sanctuaries of occult literature commend the students to look to the bees. The pattern of much that man has still to unfold fromhis own soul, for his personal and communal uplift, is already expressed in the hive. There is a period of larva, and a period of wings to each cycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual discernment. One feels on the verge of great revelations for humanity, beyond the thing called death, as he studies this miniature model of a great democracy.
The most fascinating love episode I ever read was the Nuptial Flight in Maeterlinck'sLife of the Bee. The majesty of winging to the sun, the falling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the commanding isolation of sun and sky, fusion under the mighty beat of the wings of the queen, the broken body of the male, the mother's return to the shadow and the labour of the generative wheel—magically, it all opened a vista to the great renunciations, the great passions and aspirations ahead for the human soul, great fusions of the future, marriages truly made in heaven, the inevitable trinity of all matings—the drama of love and death.
For her one high noon flight in June, the queen toils through years. She brings back from that superb instant the swarming cities of the future. On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, a prodigious and Herculean labour; from the human standpoint a task of intolerable pain and monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more difficult than the tasks assigned to the hosts ofworkers, which appear to be denied any separate episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the queen, they share the communal spirit; and no one who has stood among the hives at the end of a long summer day, and heard the song of bounty and deep-hearted content, can deny the peace that dwells among the myriad of skilled artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task.
Bees appear to remember the light, while working at the opposite side of the wheel. Men, as yet, are detached, lost in the heresies of self and strife. Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the petty reach of the optic nerve, to perceive that this, which we make so much of, is but the hell-portion; that this appearance of ours in pounds is a mere dressing up in materials of earth to endure the dark and low vibration of the wheel's most downward sweep. These few visionaries, always singing the joy of the other arcs of the cycle, somehow keep the dream alive,—the dream that appears already to be the essential blessedness and magic of life in the hive.
All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point which the bees seem to have learned so well—to transcend time and space in labour; to put off the sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the soul's own song of equality and sufficing days. We must be pushed to the last reaches of pain before we learn this secret. We have to penetratethe darkness before we earn this flash which swings wide the portals of joy.
Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. The bee-queen mother weaves race after race of progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an instant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is a living fragment of her nuptial feast. Fusion is ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many become one; that is heaven. The one becomes many again; that is earth and hell. Integration and diffusion—the same story told in the hives and ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, in the hearts and marts of men, in matings everywhere.
The original idea was to use the title,The Hive, in relation to the happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active acceptance of the precept:That which is good for the one is good for the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one.
We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the eyes ofpassing men. At length appears the task ahead—the great Fatherland, the Planetary Hive.
I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the masters of all ages have told the same story—how to make light of human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration.
To make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work; it is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes man remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any task. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the birth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for immortality; anadiosto the hands that cling, for the stride and rhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the saint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than for the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It is not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One becomes as a little child in learning it well.
We are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's passion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting out of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world burdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods. It has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of our own allotted happiness—that we may not have more than a touch of the beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere.
But personally and nationally we shall come to that significant crossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the highest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft.
That is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and laugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism. One builds from that deep hour.
The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes. When these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the final mesh of possession—cease the idolatry of things; then, and only then, are we rich—possessing the spirit and essence of all things, tallying the universe within according toits objective arrangements with the universe without.
Finally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the mutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the movements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the Play. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that nothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself with material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and changeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last extends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves souls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house, the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance—all but a passing of symbols—Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant reaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external, having bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos.
First passion, then dispassion, then compassion—conquest of pairs of opposites until night and day are seen as separate sides of the same globe. So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. Day by day, while learning this great secret, the aspirant is forced to die to the thing he loves most. Day by day the thing that he hates and fears most—for that he must live. At last, loves and hatesmerge together. One is no longer focalised upon a point, but upon a universe. He arrives at the great silence in himself, the static momentum. He no longer moves with the world—the passing show goes by. He transmutes pain into joy—not lying to the self, but because pain of the body is joy of the soul—joy of union, joy of birth that comes from pain.
At last to be the Spectator! To possess the world, to realise the divinity of others, the ineffable equality of Souls. To have all,—the mothering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the sea; to move and laugh and die with all the world.
12TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL
TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL
The younger boy with us—Tom, now seven, does not find it easy to express himself through writing. He draws well, but that is a talent which I would not recognise so quickly as the expression through words. I mean to send him away to an artist for a time. Tom's imagination is fertile and expansive. He dictates well—wonderful play of colours through his mind. He talked the following to an amanuensis, a year or more ago as he conned over a handful of coloured stones:
"There's a wonderful mystery about stones.... One like a mountain that the fire comes up out of—with white on top ... another like a cap of honey.... Another: this is like a great big mountain, and this is a dog full of food, and he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish dragons; his tail is curved under him, and a spot on him near his neck. He looks down and he sees the sky, floating. He wonders if he should leap down and get some. There's a great big lake under him. He thinks he has more power than anything in the world—he's looking for more power. He's wondering where it is. See him thinking.
... Here's a volcano at night—see the force, and then the rain beating down behind it—even see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with his jaw knocked in. Mystery here—a forest at night. This is like a coloured man that's been in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth because he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's a fried-cake. Another: Here's 'Agra Falls and fairies dashing, and sparkling stones at night. That's in Japan—that's true, look at all the lanterns up there. There's some India—water dashing over a cliff, another like a smooth cliff, nothing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it—and a door-knob, and there's a hole where owls live...."
Many interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's helper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget externals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's case written by the Little Girl[13]who furnishes an interesting surface of understanding for the complications of this lad. Incidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now fourteen and this essay will show something of her awakening:
Tom
He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me. I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though he did not know.
For a while Tom's quest was in healing—his small hands were always laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes—of the big ones that used to lovehim and curl around his neck. I never could help shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel just what you feel—if you're afraid of them, they get mad."
Again I would think of India—the great cobras that sit before a pure master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!"
A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to him first—often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so green and fresh and sweet—with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He would follow laughinglywhat they said and did, always explaining to us later what theymeant. And he saw the spirits of the water, far out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning wood unlocked the fire fairies—let them out into freedom and light. He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into things—way past theseeninto that which is nothingness to most of us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time, for fear we hurry him.
Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached his open ears. He answered immediately.
It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book, written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach the Feet of the Master. Thenext morning I found him on his knees before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read. It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me."
The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness. Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he has been wanting for a very long time—for ages perhaps. He said, "If you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said:
"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from yourself; you are not being theSoul. Each time you do something great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain which way to go—tells you the path, the way home.Thenyou have earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night, shows you many things—tries to help you. But pain has to teach the brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you suffer. It hurts theMaster too, but they both know that you are learning to be their comrade through your pain."
Tom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a joy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing.
"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, but men do not know that the Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently for hisfriendto come."
"His friend?" I asked.
"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are only because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did. He has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master has been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet."
I looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and mouth, all untouched by the world—so pure and yet crying out in pain because he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought Tom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently giving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as important perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and glowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the things that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age, crept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies—they ceased to call. He forgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the Master was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him toopen and receive. But we knew better than that.
The development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing for a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added; the instrument is then keen and direct—a power in itself. We turned from Tom—a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself, is anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of departure, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey just ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more or less his own director those days.
He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He was sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the little room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days in the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the breath of a soul was in the room when he entered.
One day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down behind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness, but there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring ahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly and sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his thought. At last I asked,
"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?"
"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly.
"Have you been thinking about it?"
"Sure have. Been thinking all day."
"Has nothing come?"
"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this, wishing and pulling every minute."
"Of course it can't."
He continued to stare into the darkness ahead.
"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked.
"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back."
"Going back?"
"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then stop. If you arelessthan yourself after you've beenmore, your soul won't stay."
"What do you do when your soul leaves you?"
"You walk the Black Path."
He looked a child seraph.
"That path is not interesting, is it?"
"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways, so that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you are not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to you. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the same as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are animals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will go away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are there, they get mad and bite."
Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, "You can't cut across from the black path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start over."
13THE ABBOT
THE ABBOT
The Abbot is now seventeen. He is doing well at Columbia. Classes and routine there are mere externals. The Abbot is living a life far more real than appears—a life that few men in America have learned how to live. He has actually arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable riches that lie within. Many occultists and a few great artists have a working knowledge of this kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at Stonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters after his family name as well as before. Our young man was enjoined to make the best of it. As a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain things that work admirably with the inner activity which we made much of in our work together.
In another book,[14]I told of the Abbot's awakening—how we called him from mysterious regions of silence and mystification, to a more orless adequate expression of material facts. Here was a boy almost overshadowed by his own soul at times, inclined to be half out of the body and not altogether present in the mind, when moving among the sordid affairs of the world—a lad who knew the arrangement of planets and the flow of meteoric matter better than the geography of our own continent; who swung very readily back into memories of other lives, mainly monastic, rather than into the episodes of his own kid-days.
I forget just how it was that we first sensed the giant in this boy. In any case, we struck one. The ordinary training that I would give an American youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at all necessary with the Abbot. Rather, pressure was exerted from the first to make him come down into our world, to make him be one of us, to make him see streets and alleys, doorsteps and servant-stairs. They have succeeded better at Columbia in this regard than we were able to do, but the wonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the aroused mystic, the aroused artist, has not receded—but dominates his days and work. I understand that he is considered a sensation in a literary way.
He is not different from his fellows. It is part of our ethics to belong where we happen to be; to do the things that others do, better, if possible, than the customary performance; to begin after that to be our inimitable selves. It is our ideal to move about the world, not to attract attention,to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be helpful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, unerring word or hand or lift in the midst of affairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to hold ourselves superior to no one; to strive laughingly toward the big workmanship, to become Players after the essential apprenticeship, to win the Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation which only comes with utter and instant detachment when the task is accomplished.
The Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow one summer afternoon, when I suddenly saw him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we tale-tellers carry our packs. I saw the Abbot with a sea-chest that day. His was not the way of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths—the word-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He came overseas with his narratives.... I saw him in the next few years making a circle around all the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and insular water fronts—a bit of Conrad, a bit of Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a most sumptuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and trinkets from all the Islands; feather of a woman's fan perhaps, here and there, silks hazy from sea water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale-bone and shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a bit of ambergris—just a top tray of the Chest! Deep mystic parchments farther within, a cornerfor the sacred writings of all the world, a small type mill, a great wad of white paper, the rest mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean floors.
I have learned to go very slow in building a matrix of my own thought about any young man's mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw for him—how he was bound to do the big sea-tales, how we were sick of steam, sick already of the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries, all that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that the world presently would be so sick of noise and explosions and show and speed, that professional soothers would be in great demand, like the Japanese masseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that the sick world would want to read of long, loose, lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left where they haven't set up recruiting offices;—that the world would be in desperate need of sunlight and surf and wide swinging seas—that he must be one of those to usher in the old romance of the sailing craft again.
I told about his sea-chest better than I have told it here, but the Abbot's eyes didn't bulge. Presently, however, he began to grow that way.... His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, not in Morningside Heights, but down among the shipping and across the harbour, where the big world tramps hang out. You will see these things in his letters. I have several of his yarnshere, but I am not going to run any of them in this book. They are good yarns, but too intrinsically big yet for the handling of a boy of seventeen. He has too much calibre for his brain so far to carry ten thousand words to superb consummation. I want to spring a big tale presently. I have a lapful of his random letters from days spent down on the water front, and nights under the study lamp:
Dear Old Wasp:Morning mists over the lake, thePeleecoming up out of them. Just had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've been watching the sun go down from Lynster's[15]back lately, and breathing the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky way dipping to the lake before us. This inland place is heavy to take. The weight of agriculture is like a blanket over all. It takes three or four pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me for a get-away to the world soon—to feed up on the hum of feet and voices and cars.... Blackbirds are beginning to blacken the mornings and nights again; touch of Fall and Pine-smoke this morning. Real itchings in the ankles—to you! A wonderful synthesis for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to roam the world with John. He is a grandpal. Could joke over an oven made out of a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table.... #/
Dear Old Wasp:
Morning mists over the lake, thePeleecoming up out of them. Just had a night with John and a corking good run of work. We've been watching the sun go down from Lynster's[15]back lately, and breathing the planetary heave under the stars, with the milky way dipping to the lake before us. This inland place is heavy to take. The weight of agriculture is like a blanket over all. It takes three or four pages to bore up through the cuticle. Me for a get-away to the world soon—to feed up on the hum of feet and voices and cars.... Blackbirds are beginning to blacken the mornings and nights again; touch of Fall and Pine-smoke this morning. Real itchings in the ankles—to you! A wonderful synthesis for us all when we meet up again.... I'd like to roam the world with John. He is a grandpal. Could joke over an oven made out of a tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet table.... #/
A day or two later:
... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to have a debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups and tea and electric tea-kettle together and got things going. He called for me to come and make the tea. He was seated in the big chair with a tableleaf in front of him, and on that was the tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg slipped, and the whole boiling collection went in his lap.... A prince, the way he stood it. The bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' rushed over, and the next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, rags, confusion of voices and footsteps—too many people and the little guy sort o' lost his control—but it all came back again. Almost any minute I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him. Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades of pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump—but his mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel.... Yours right along.
... Black forces strong around Stonestudy last night.... About eight-thirty I rode over on Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to have a debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gathered the cups and tea and electric tea-kettle together and got things going. He called for me to come and make the tea. He was seated in the big chair with a tableleaf in front of him, and on that was the tea-kettle, boiling.... One leg slipped, and the whole boiling collection went in his lap.... A prince, the way he stood it. The bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' rushed over, and the next was a turmoil right, cries, olive oil, lint, rags, confusion of voices and footsteps—too many people and the little guy sort o' lost his control—but it all came back again. Almost any minute I am looking for the laugh from him. All night I was with him. Penelope, the finished heroine as always. One could see the shades of pain pass over John's face time and again. His nerves jump—but his mouth and eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel.... Yours right along.
Another:
Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height—am headed back for Columbia—where I'll let time shape the winds for farther "going."School is not harmful to one whoishimself. I'll take philosophy, and then be over to tell you who stole your washboard.... It is no struggle, no test, for one to be lit among his own as we are. One's depth of listening is best tested in crowds. We've got to separate—go out and change the continents into tablelands of democracy.War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a bigger order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God and worship through his work to shape the master beauty. Every one's art breaks new roads which lead to one place.Stories are coming freer every day—I've gotten across. Don't know whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and that's what I wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are beginnings. I look back now on the summer of '14. Itwasheaven. Itwaspeace. To look at the cottage lights and hear the voices of rowers through the dusk was a breath from God. It was peace, it was relaxation, a deep resting of tissue for turmoil. Depth and mastery to you.
Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with shadows deepening in the distance. Crops drying beneath the sun. Leave it at its height—am headed back for Columbia—where I'll let time shape the winds for farther "going."
School is not harmful to one whoishimself. I'll take philosophy, and then be over to tell you who stole your washboard.... It is no struggle, no test, for one to be lit among his own as we are. One's depth of listening is best tested in crowds. We've got to separate—go out and change the continents into tablelands of democracy.
War seems settling on the world for years longer, but there is a bigger order coming out of the incredible chaos. Each must see God and worship through his work to shape the master beauty. Every one's art breaks new roads which lead to one place.
Stories are coming freer every day—I've gotten across. Don't know whether it's the best thing for me. But I've done it, and that's what I wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results are beginnings. I look back now on the summer of '14. Itwasheaven. Itwaspeace. To look at the cottage lights and hear the voices of rowers through the dusk was a breath from God. It was peace, it was relaxation, a deep resting of tissue for turmoil. Depth and mastery to you.
This to John:
The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland of sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine needles. To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills, I walked along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant Harlem. The voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low growl of outpassing vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted barge, came up with the hum of the city. There seemed to be some goddess entwined with sea-weed standing over the ocean of structures. She held a finger to her lips for silence, and pointed to the Lord knows where—well, where I felt a tumult to go, to satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude of faces that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour of youth singing in the veins.Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives an old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and down the streets. His head is grey—his eyes are deep and old. The light from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow about his carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the fire-place alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest, and he dreams—I suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a sea-captain.His wandering days are over—no more quest. The houses rise to his eyes like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea.... He means old days, but we—we must never grow old; we must live and ever be full of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We must, old pal, ride the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our work as we go, as night spills its stars from a casket. Fill me up with the Pacific in your letters—the big sunlight—the colour of the mountains where they dip and rise to clouds. I have a dry palate for it all. Fill me—eye and ear and soul.Yours deep in those scars——
The thought of your scarred legs has been with me on the borderland of sleep for many nights, also our hours together on the pine needles. To-night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron mills, I walked along the Heights and cast an eye down into brilliant Harlem. The voices of the bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low growl of outpassing vessels, an occasional curse from a freighted barge, came up with the hum of the city. There seemed to be some goddess entwined with sea-weed standing over the ocean of structures. She held a finger to her lips for silence, and pointed to the Lord knows where—well, where I felt a tumult to go, to satisfy some hot quest.... I was lost to the multitude of faces that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible hum ... savour of youth singing in the veins.
Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room.... I reached up and flicked out the lights.... In an apartment across the street lives an old man who always comes to his window at dark and gazes up and down the streets. His head is grey—his eyes are deep and old. The light from his shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow about his carpet. Sometimes he turns out the lamp, and leaves the fire-place alone. Sometimes his head falls forward on his chest, and he dreams—I suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a sea-captain.
His wandering days are over—no more quest. The houses rise to his eyes like one long, bleak, uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea.... He means old days, but we—we must never grow old; we must live and ever be full of creation as the cloud is full of lightning. We must, old pal, ride the deserts, drift over seas; we must spill our work as we go, as night spills its stars from a casket. Fill me up with the Pacific in your letters—the big sunlight—the colour of the mountains where they dip and rise to clouds. I have a dry palate for it all. Fill me—eye and ear and soul.
Yours deep in those scars——
Dear Old Man:The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung out with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the river in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and white. The morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades. How grand that old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb and flood—almost like a solar system in the serene way it deals with human traffic.A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very birth of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words—quite like a Spanish treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and "pots of Arica bronze." The artists go treasure hunting in language, and a few do startle theworld with their wealth. The live-long day seems to me now like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from soul to matter, a golden fabric.This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea. Lift up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the seaman's religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line and hooks, in pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a few stray books of Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville'sMoby Dick. The point is we all bungle along through our world-term somehow; we have our work and religion and pleasures and tales in a camphor-wood chest with a brass band around it. Sometimes we bring out the violin and make God-awful discords, calling it music of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with our bits of turquoise; terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle and Goethe and Moby Dick have given us; we make them feel that endlesswroom, wroom, wroomof the ocean that is washing in our souls.Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live. The war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when everybody is singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't it be great when the chastened New Race springs up, like green shoots at the passing of winter? Won't it be great when the world has grown serene and wise enough to sit down besidea blazing bark fire, with the shadows of pine trees about, or near the dim breakers, and consider it profitable to talk about the stars?... There are times when one feels he must be alone—when he wants to be connected with nothing—when he wants to go to a distant and high altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy—there, where the air is dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight up. He must listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the stars humming in their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet, then a crescendo of song up to a deafening roar,—that all things, all stars, are headed towards one point of balance among that whole mass of sapphires we see above.Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human hearts, of loving men and their ways—to fill out a morning with that golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls and the shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the stones of the hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that. The heart within her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the ecstasy of life tears in her storm and in still hours she sits in her glitter....Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We shall have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and combs of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains in our products; and that endless andinsistentwroom, wroom, wroomof the ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have it:The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After we have cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee, we shall go to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in mathematics,[16]and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all forces of thinking into play—awaking the mind—shaking off that inertia of body. After that we shall penetrate the thing which we wish to work upon that particular morning. We shall see its functions and logical action, then begin the shuttle and weave back and forth with that pliancy that sees the deepest of metaphysics in an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over a pork-pie. To top the morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. The afternoon shall mean an isolation with the books—perhaps on the sand with the sun tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally an efflux of soul. At about five in the afternoon comes the humming calm—the poise of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple foods and once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea—giving one's soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side by side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles themighty Pacific. We shall pass no words—the earth'll be good to feel and smell. We'll honour the still night of stars.That day is a privilege to earn—our bodies must suffer and become scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon by foul mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart of a bartender as we would want to know the heart of the Christ. Do you know that Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the real artist is sanity. One must grow hair the medium length—keep a well muscled and full lunged body—and if chronic fishermen should happen in on us for a meal we must be able to argue that a hickory pole is better for a pound-net than pine; or if a devout pastor—that we would much rather praise God's work outside on the beach....
Dear Old Man:
The Hudson is very still this morning; a few battleships have swung out with the tide; gulls seem to be forever passing up and down the river in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises straight and white. The morning sun strikes like a sledge upon the Palisades. How grand that old river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb and flood—almost like a solar system in the serene way it deals with human traffic.
A great new sense of words has come over me lately. At the very birth of language lies a chest of rich obsolete words—quite like a Spanish treasure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and "pots of Arica bronze." The artists go treasure hunting in language, and a few do startle theworld with their wealth. The live-long day seems to me now like a shuttle driving back and forth, weaving from soul to matter, a golden fabric.
This word-chest means much to me because it deals with the sea. Lift up the lid, and tucked away in those little drawers lies the seaman's religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line and hooks, in pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old violin, or in a few stray books of Carlyle, Goethe, Dante and Melville'sMoby Dick. The point is we all bungle along through our world-term somehow; we have our work and religion and pleasures and tales in a camphor-wood chest with a brass band around it. Sometimes we bring out the violin and make God-awful discords, calling it music of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with our bits of turquoise; terrorise them with the philosophy that Carlyle and Goethe and Moby Dick have given us; we make them feel that endlesswroom, wroom, wroomof the ocean that is washing in our souls.
Yes, we must first learn the futility of life before we can live. The war teaches this lesson well, but won't it be great when everybody is singing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't it be great when the chastened New Race springs up, like green shoots at the passing of winter? Won't it be great when the world has grown serene and wise enough to sit down besidea blazing bark fire, with the shadows of pine trees about, or near the dim breakers, and consider it profitable to talk about the stars?
... There are times when one feels he must be alone—when he wants to be connected with nothing—when he wants to go to a distant and high altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy—there, where the air is dust free, and the incense of one's devotion goes straight up. He must listen and listen, until he believes that he hears the stars humming in their courses; then the sun drawing like a magnet, then a crescendo of song up to a deafening roar,—that all things, all stars, are headed towards one point of balance among that whole mass of sapphires we see above.
Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording the warmth of human hearts, of loving men and their ways—to fill out a morning with that golden shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the walls and the shadows in the corners, or if at night, the flame on the stones of the hearth turn to words!... The old sea is full of that. The heart within her breast sounds the footfalls of quest; the ecstasy of life tears in her storm and in still hours she sits in her glitter....
Some day we shall be together on the blessed Pacific coast. We shall have bookshelves and packages of dates, bottles of cream and combs of honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of mountains in our products; and that endless andinsistentwroom, wroom, wroomof the ocean in all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have it:
The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall awake us. After we have cooked and eaten of crisp toast and honey and coffee, we shall go to our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in mathematics,[16]and dwell perhaps for an hour in drawing all forces of thinking into play—awaking the mind—shaking off that inertia of body. After that we shall penetrate the thing which we wish to work upon that particular morning. We shall see its functions and logical action, then begin the shuttle and weave back and forth with that pliancy that sees the deepest of metaphysics in an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over a pork-pie. To top the morning, we'll have a meal of milk and dates. The afternoon shall mean an isolation with the books—perhaps on the sand with the sun tanning our backs. Both healthfully and mentally an efflux of soul. At about five in the afternoon comes the humming calm—the poise of mind and soul and body. Another meal of the simple foods and once more, production, as the sun goes into the sea—giving one's soul the might and expanse that the planets use in weaving their ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach up, switch out the electric bulb and open the door. That shall be a day mastered. Side by side, we'll walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles themighty Pacific. We shall pass no words—the earth'll be good to feel and smell. We'll honour the still night of stars.
That day is a privilege to earn—our bodies must suffer and become scarred and jostled by the currents of people, and cursed upon by foul mouths. All pleasant presently. We must know the heart of a bartender as we would want to know the heart of the Christ. Do you know that Masefield was a bartender? The secret of the real artist is sanity. One must grow hair the medium length—keep a well muscled and full lunged body—and if chronic fishermen should happen in on us for a meal we must be able to argue that a hickory pole is better for a pound-net than pine; or if a devout pastor—that we would much rather praise God's work outside on the beach....
To Jane:
Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This is really the highest day I've had—real rugged work—bronze moving pictures before me—faces—open shirts on sunburnt breasts—and, of course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag of sunlight emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the promontories sharp like ink lines.And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not writing. And this war—it's like a maelstrom rising higher and higher. Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it means I go. But rather than go as a private I'm going to enlist voluntarily in the aviation corps. Flying only would have as much thrill as doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. And I'm not panicky or worried about it. I feel in some unconscious way that the balance of the cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and grows to let the new green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big song. I would not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. I'd go because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many feet and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the many eyes of their own being. Oh—it's a song, the whole thing! And I'm looking forward to it.Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the joy, the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? The first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now, she is white.... The work is on me with talons.I am looking only at the impossible heights—of a portrayal of life—the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath silently with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The work comes now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place with shadows and light aroundstones, and were to grow interested, with stars low on the horizon like live sparks.And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in the formative thrall of work. Ididwant your letter. But forget pity. That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the stars, I do not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you all.And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or be ground in mud. You are all friends—but I must be alone now. The work is rising....
Your letter this morning after a long, wonderful run of work. This is really the highest day I've had—real rugged work—bronze moving pictures before me—faces—open shirts on sunburnt breasts—and, of course, the eternal sea. Your letter came like a sudden bag of sunlight emptied into a mist. The water became blue and the promontories sharp like ink lines.
And about Steve. I understand all. The draft explains his not writing. And this war—it's like a maelstrom rising higher and higher. Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, it means I go. But rather than go as a private I'm going to enlist voluntarily in the aviation corps. Flying only would have as much thrill as doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. And I'm not panicky or worried about it. I feel in some unconscious way that the balance of the cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and grows to let the new green shoots come under in spring. It's like a big song. I would not go to fight Germany, or France or England or America. I'd go because it's a cleanser. One must play with the song of many feet and express with the original song. One must flash pictures to the many eyes of their own being. Oh—it's a song, the whole thing! And I'm looking forward to it.
Only the ones such as John and Tom shall escape. Don't you see the joy, the peace, the grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? The first year of the war, England was black with mourning. Now, she is white.... The work is on me with talons.
I am looking only at the impossible heights—of a portrayal of life—the rugged life in endless volumes. I have made an oath silently with myself that in three years I shall do a book.... The work comes now just as if I were to sit down before a fire-place with shadows and light aroundstones, and were to grow interested, with stars low on the horizon like live sparks.
And friends? A foolish question! I mean that I must be alone in the formative thrall of work. Ididwant your letter. But forget pity. That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, by all the stars, I do not ask for anything. The highest of all things to you all.
And Steve? He has too much of the Song to be trodden or be lost or be ground in mud. You are all friends—but I must be alone now. The work is rising....
To John:
There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's riot in the street below—kerosene torches a-going—one shaggy haired enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his jaw in an athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your type-mill? What's the brand of smoke it gives up—poetry, action, lumps of granite or ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place here—because things are moving—real issues are gathering—and the pulse of living is so close that I can almost feel it occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a place called Rockaway—and oh man—rocks—rugged grey and eroded—surf bitten—gnarled, twisted—and they tossed the sea's white jaws about like bits of cotton.Real sea coast it was—with a little smack in the purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine—an old fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife hauled up the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat.Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your aphorisms.
There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and there ain't none of your sacred seas and canyons around; but there is a socialist's riot in the street below—kerosene torches a-going—one shaggy haired enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is wagging his jaw in an athletic way.... How's the fire burning under your type-mill? What's the brand of smoke it gives up—poetry, action, lumps of granite or ladles of ocean? I'm all lit up in this place here—because things are moving—real issues are gathering—and the pulse of living is so close that I can almost feel it occasionally. Last Saturday, went to a place called Rockaway—and oh man—rocks—rugged grey and eroded—surf bitten—gnarled, twisted—and they tossed the sea's white jaws about like bits of cotton.Real sea coast it was—with a little smack in the purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping the brine—an old fisherman browsing around the shores for clams while his wife hauled up the nets, basketed the cod and upturned their boat.
Put an extra stick under the machine and line a few of your aphorisms.