Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (20 page)

I don’t pretend to know how the other half lives, but I do know something
about the way this half lives. I don’t even have to stir from the tiny community in which I
have my abode. With all the good that I see in the neighbors about me, with all the valiant
efforts I observe them making to live up to the good life, to do right by one another, to make
the most of the paradise in which they find themselves, still, if I am honest and truthful, I
must declare that they have only one foot in this new world which is begging to be opened up.
I mean the world of full and harmonious relationship—with God, man, Nature, children, parents,
husband or wife, brother or sister. I say not a word, you observe, about art, culture,
intellect, invention. The world of play, yes! A vast and perhaps the most profitable world of
all, next to that of sheer idleness. But first things first….

No, as a writer, I cannot help but look upon the
immediate scene with different eyes than would a mere friend or neighbor. I can see all that
Jean Wharton saw—and perhaps more. I have chosen to dwell on the “interesting” things which
happened to me here, whether good or bad, whether wholesome or unwholesome. I am not taking a
moral survey of the environment. It doesn’t matter to me that a few hundred yards in this
direction or that I can come face to face with an ornery bastard or a God-given son of a bitch
or a filthy miser or a vain and arrogant fool. “It takes all kinds to make a world.”
Ouais!
If I stray from the cowpath on my daily walk through the hills and come home
bristling with thistles and burrs, who’s to blame? In a casual conversation with a neighbor
you sometimes get overtones and reverberations of your own private misery which give you an
inkling of conditions round about which you had ignored or overlooked. That so-and-so, who
seems so well-adjusted, so at peace with the world, so tolerant and gracious, should have a
wife who is literally driving him crazy may come as a startling revelation. Or that so-and-so,
who seems so happy and content in his field of work and whom every one looks upon as a
“success,” regards himself as a miserable failure and thinks of nothing but the great mistake
he made in refusing to become a judge, a diplomat, or whatever it may be. No matter what the
one in question be—judge, politician, artist, plumber, day laborer or farm hand—if you look
deep into his life you will find an unhappy, unfulfilled individual. And if
he
in his
own soul is a miserable creature, you can almost count on it that his wife is an even more
miserable one. In the home that seems to you so snug and cozy, so warm, so inviting, there are
ghosts and skeletons, tragedies and calamities brewing, far greater, far more subtle and
complex, than our dramatists and novelists ever give us. No artist has sufficient genius to
touch bottom, where the private life of the individual is concerned. “If you are unhappy,”
says Tolstoy, “and I
know
that you are unhappy….” Those words ever ring in my ears.
Tolstoy himself, grand old man that he was, genius that he
was, good
Christian that he was, was unable to avoid unhappiness. His domestic life reads like a sad
joke. The greater he grew in soul the more ridiculous a figure he cut at home. A classic
situation, yes, but when repeated on a trivial scale and universally, something to weep about.
The husbands are doing their best, the wives are doing
their
best, yet nothing jells.
Firecrackers but no fireworks. Petty quarrels, stupid brawls, jealousy, intrigue, increasing
estrangement, hysterical anxiety, followed by more wrangling, more intrigues, more gossip,
more vilification and recrimination, after which divorce, alimony, division of progeny,
division of chattels, and then a new go at it, whereupon a new failure, a new setback. Finally
it’s old John Barleycorn, bankruptcy, cancer or a dash of schizophrenia. Then suicide, moral,
spiritual, physical, nuclear and etheric.

Such is the picture which doesn’t always come clear through the televistic
screen. The negative, in other words, from which all that is positive, good and everlasting
will eventually come through. Easy to recognize because no matter where your parachute lands
you it’s always the same: the everyday life.

With this setup I am almost as familiar as Jean Wharton who has spent so much
time, so much effort, developing positives for those who see only negatives, or rather are
unable to read negatives, for if they could they would have no more need for positives than
for negatives. Why is it we cannot hold the positive, once it has been shown us? The answers
are many, varying with school and dogma. In any case, do we not resemble those myopic
individuals who, during a train ride in which they have fallen sound asleep, their spectacles
safely in their pockets, suddenly open their eyes and, for a fraction of time, see everything
sharp and clear, as sharp and clear as if they enjoyed perfect vision? Let us not quibble.
Their vision
was
perfect—for just a few instants. What made it so? Do they ask
themselves the question? No! They calmly wipe their eyes, now blurred again, and put on their
specs. With these, so they tell themselves, they can see as well as the next man. But they do
not
see as well as the man with normal eyesight. They see as
cripples.

It is all of a piece—the look in the eye, the posture, the stance, the gait,
and “the angle of vision,” as Balzac says. The angel in man is ready to emerge whenever that
dread human will to have it one’s own way can be kept in abeyance. Things not only
look
different, they
are
different, when perfect sight is restored. To see
things whole is to be whole. The fellow who is out to burn things up is the counterpart of the
fool who thinks he can save the world. The world needs neither to be burned up nor to be
saved. The world is, we are. Transients, if we buck it; here to stay, if we accept it. Nothing
is solid, fixed or unalterable. All is flux, because everything created is also creative. If
you are unhappy—“and I
know
you are!”—take thought! You can spend the rest of your
life fighting it out on every front, in every vector—and get nowhere. Give up, throw in the
sponge, and possibly you will look at the world with new eyes. More than possibly you will see
your friends and enemies in a new light—even your wife, or that rascally, inconsiderate,
hardheaded, ill-tempered, gin-soaked devil of a husband.

Is there a discrepancy between this realistic picture, which I have just
sketched, and the attractive positive which I painted when the “oranges” were in bloom? No
doubt there is. Have I contradicted myself? No! Both pictures are true, even though colored by
the temperament of the writer. We are always in two worlds at once, and neither of them is the
world of reality. One is the world we think we are in, the other is the world we would like to
be in. Now and then, as if through a chink in the door—or like the myopic who falls asleep in
the train—we get a glimpse of the abiding world. When we do, we know better than any
metaphysician can expostulate, the difference between true and false, the real and the
illusory.

Several times now I have stressed the fact that whatever “it” is one gets here
at Big Sur, one gets it harder, faster, straighter than one would elsewhere. I come back to it
again. I say, the people here are fundamentally no different from people elsewhere. Their
problems are basically the same as those who inhabit the cities, the
jungles, the desert or the vast steppes. The greatest problem is not how to get along
with one’s neighbor but how to get along with one’s self. Trite, you say. But true,
nevertheless.

What is it that makes one’s problems (here in Big Sur) assume such a dramatic
aspect? Almost melodramatic at times. The place itself has much to do with it. If the soul
were to choose an arena in which to stage its agonies, this would be
the
place for
it. One feels exposed—not only to the elements, but to the sight of God. Naked, vulnerable,
set against an overwhelming backdrop of might and majesty, one’s problems become magnified
because of the proscenium on which the conflict is staged. Robinson Jeffers is unerring in
high-lighting this aspect of his narrative poems. His figures and their manner of behavior are
not falsely exaggerated, as some believe. If his narratives smack of Greek tragedy, it is
because Jeffers rediscovered here the atmosphere of the gods and fates which obsessed the
ancient Greeks. The light here is almost as electric, the hills almost as bare, the community
almost as autonomous as in ancient Greece. The rugged pioneers who settled here needed only a
voice to make known their secret drama. And Jeffers is that voice.

But there is another factor which enters into play here. Though not cut off,
in the strict sense, Big Sur receives, as through a filter, the violent waves which agitate
the world. Living here, whether at the edge of the sea or on top of a mountain, one gets the
feeling that it is all happening “out there” somewhere. One is not obliged to read the daily
paper over his morning coffee nor tune in on the radio for the latest shock injection. One can
live with or without, take it or leave it, and not feel out of step with the rest of the
community. One does not rush to work in a crowded, ill-smelling subway; one is not on the
telephone all day; one is not confronted with picket lines or police hurling tear bombs into a
panic-stricken mob. One isn’t obliged to buy a television set for the children. Life can
pursue its course here free of so many disturbing elements which are accepted as normal by the
rest of America.

On the other hand, when things get tough, when one is at his
wit’s end, when one’s patience is tried to the breaking point, there is no one to go to,
no movie to stultify the mind, no bar to lap it up in (there
are
drinking places,
yes, but one would soon be excommunicated if they were used for this purpose), no pavements to
pound, no store windows to stare at, no bastards to pick a fight with. No, you are completely
on your own. If you insist on gnashing your teeth you can gnash them at the wild waves, at the
silent forest, or at the stony hills. One can get desperate here in a way that no city man
understands. Sure, you can run amok … but where would it lead you? You can’t slash mountains
to ribbons, nor cut the sky to pieces, nor flatten a wave with the broadest sword. You can get
the screaming meemies all right, but what would Mother Nature say if you took to acting up
that way?

I recall one period—right here on Partington Ridge—in which I went through all
the demi-quivers of real desperation. It was during the time when my then wife was easing
herself out of a hopeless situation. She had taken the children back East, ostensibly to
become acquainted with their grandparents whom they had never seen. Some time after they were
due back her letters suddenly stopped coming. I waited, wrote a few unanswered letters, one of
which was returned unopened (indicating that the addressee had left for parts unknown, or
died), and then, as the silence thickened, I suddenly grew panicky. I wasn’t so much concerned
for my wife, though perhaps I ought to have been, as I was about the children.
“Where in
hell are my children?”
I kept asking myself. I kept asking myself the question louder
and louder, until it seemed to me that I was shouting it for all to hear. Finally I sent my
wife’s sister a wire, to which I got a response two days later, informing me that “they” had
left by train some days ago and were probably in Los Angeles. It was small comfort, because as
I figured then (in my innocence), if she intended to bring the children home, Los Angeles was
not home. Besides, how could I know that Los Angeles was her point of destination? Maybe that
was only a jumping off place? Maybe they were over the border by now and
deep in the heart of Mexico. And then and there I realized that “home” had come to mean
some other place—for her. Now I had no way of communicating with her. I was cut off, just as
sharp and neat as if by a razor blade. A day passed, two days, three days. Still no word. My
pride prevented me from wiring her sister again. “I’ll sit and wait,” I told myself. “I’ll sit
till hell freezes over.” Oh yeah? Try it! There are twenty-four hours in a day, and these can
be broken down into minutes, seconds, and fractions of seconds which last an eternity. And all
you can think of, all you can repeat to yourself over and over and over, is—“Where, where,
where?”
Yes, one can always go to the police or hire a private detective … a man of
action can think of a thousand things to do in such an emergency. But I am not that type. I
sit on a rock and think. Or I think I am thinking. No man can say he “thinks” after he has
subjected his mind to all the questions and answers his conscience puts him. No, my mind was
just a blank, a blank piece of blubber that had been mercilessly pounded by alternate doubts
and hopes, alternate recriminations and confessions.

What does one do in such a case—the wild waves going up and down, the gulls
screaming at you, the buzzards sniffing at you as if you were already so much tripe, and the
sky so full of glory yet empty of hope? I’ll tell you what you do, if you have an ounce of
sense left in you. I’ll give it to you the way William Blake answered when a visitor once
asked him what he did in moments of dire extremity. William Blake calmly turned to his good
wife Kate, his helpmate, and he said to her: “Kate, what
do
we do in such cases?” And
his dear Kate replied: “Why, we get down on our knees and pray, don’t we, Mr. Blake?”

That’s what I did, and that’s what every bleeding mother’s son has to do when
things get too unbearable.

If ever I should find time hanging heavy on my hands I know what to do: hop
in my car, drive to Los Angeles, and search out the files which are kept in steel cabinets in
the Special Collections Division of the University Library there. In these files are the
thousands of letters which, at their urgent request, I have been turning over to the library
ever since I have been in Big Sur. They are for posterity, I suppose. Unfortunately, some of
the best ones, the maddest, the craziest, I burned (at my wife’s instigation) shortly before
the library made its request. Before that, in New York, and again in Paris (when leaving for
Greece), I got rid of a short ton of correspondence which I then thought of no importance,
even for “posterity.”