Working Days (21 page)

 

 

 

In the work diary which had to do with the
Grapes,
I put down the time of going to work. There was a franticness in that effort—a fear that time would cut me off. Now in the
Pipes
I want to overcome that frantic quality. I want it to remain easy, leisurely, and fun. If some days go by and I do not work, there is no conscience penalty. If I never finish it, very little will have been lost. This is being done for my pleasure and for Carol’s and for Mary’s. And I don’t care if no one else sees it. In form it is almost like a ballet. In tone it is a serious thing, not too much overdrawn, because the things said must be capable of being listened to even if the background were different. But above all it must be fun. The moment it stops, in that moment I will stop writing it. At this moment my first act is difficult as they always are. Bringing people on the stage is a clumsy process and one not easy to accomplish. And then, too, in spite of the slightness of this play, I have the old fear of beginning work that I have always felt. The terror that I could not bring it off. Of course, the main difficulty lies in the fact that between books I soften up both in literary and intellectual discipline, so that with each beginning I must fight soft muscles in the head and in the technique. Naturally, I am frightened. It takes some time for those muscles to harden and for what I now instinctively know about technique to assert itself. Today so far there is no war news. I won’t listen to the radio until my day’s work is over. It is a good, hot day, and when I finish my day’s work, I will go out to the pool and swim and lie in the sun. Congress proposed a universal training act yesterday. It will not be long before I must register for military service. * It will be interesting to see how the nation as a whole reacts to this. It might create a real feeling of the wholeness of the people, and again it might draw out a sullen resentment. Must see it before one can tell. I feel that I would rather serve with common men than to try to get an “office job.” But all that will come as it comes. We’ll just have to see. And now to work.

 

 

This is a lazy day. Went to dinner with the Woods.* Got home early and sober. Carol in pain from Female Complaint. She is having a hard time this time. Went to sleep before twelve and slept until ten this morning without awakening. Disgraceful. I

think I’ll start setting the clock for seven and going to work immediately. This play might benefit from the half sleep carry-over. Also then I would be free in the hot middle of the day. Worth trying anyway. Good letter from Duke—good and long and healthy. I’ll be glad to see him if he ever gets down this way. Must write him a decent letter
^*
soon. Today is fine and as hot as it usually gets up here. I’m keeping myself in check with this manuscript so that the words do not tumble over one another in their hurry to get out. My fingers get a little sticky in this weather so I rub alcohol on them so the pen will be slick in my hand. That seems to be important to me. I don’t know why. But it does. The good feeling of the pen should be kept—should be dry and a smooth point and fine paper like this. There’s something very good about this kind of affair. My room is cool and lovely. Outside a blinding sun and I at a roll top desk*—I’ve always wanted one and they are perfect. I never had anything nice to work at. And a swivel chair that comes to the perfect height. I can see the greenhouse from here, and the perfect pen and the perfect paper and me working on work that pleases me and has no note for the critics. Indeed, I’m going to be very careful about submitting it for publication at all. But I will have had fun doing it and that is the most important thing—And it is fun. Well the time is now to go to work and I have a good feeling about it. It is nice to be this way. Don’t imagine it can go on for very long. I’m afraid of good luck more than bad.

 

 

The trouble with being too casual about a manuscript is that you don’t do it. In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is no possibility, in me at least, of saying, “I’ll do it if I feel like it.” One never feels like awaking day after day. In fact, given the smallest excuse, one will not work at all. The rest is nonsense. Perhaps there are people who can work that way, but I cannot. I must get my words down every day whether they are any good or not. And I am a little afraid that they are not much good. However, down they go. The forced work is sometimes better than the easy, but there is no rule about it. Sometimes they come out better than at other times and that is all one can say. I am becoming very calm after the hectic quality of my recent life. Seems like a crazy dream, the other life, and the tone of it leaves slowly. But now I am feeling more slow and deliberate every day. That is a pace that seems most normal to me. I wish I could have it this way for a little while. But one can never be sure, not even for a week. So I go on with my daily stint, and if it is stopped in the middle some time—that will have to be that. I can’t think of any other way just now. The good slow life won’t last. Nothing to report. Swimming yesterday. It’s a good sunny but cool day today. Not hot enough to drive me to the pool until I am ready to go. It is really time to go to work, and I am nearly ready for it, too. Perhaps I write too much in these notes. No way of telling. I finish out a space visually any way. And that space is finished out for today. Second scene Act 1.

 

 

This can’t be much of a note, for this is Saturday. I’m only going to do half a day’s work today and spend the rest of the time in riotous living or riotous resting. Letter from Joe [Ed.—Joseph Henry Jackson] yesterday. Gussie has been desperately ill. Hemorrhage, etc. Joe says that they just saved her. Some curious psychological features to this. It seems very clear to me. Perhaps it isn’t as simple as I think. Hard to tell. Clouds and some wind today. Perhaps the swimming will not be so good as it might be. I’ll get my one page done and find out. When I think how I am not following orders to do what people think I should do, I am scared, but then I think that it is my own work, if anything, that will be remembered. I can’t work for other people. I don’t do good work with their ideas. So I’ll go on with my own. I think probably the pipe play is lousy, but I’ll go on with it just the same. And I think now is a good time to get it going. As good a time as any. So here goes.

 

 

The time goes and I live on in a mess of puzzlement—like every one else in the world. Took up flying [Ed.—at Palo Alto Airport]. Seven hours I had. Went to Washington with Knisely’s idea. I don’t know whether or not it will be used. It should. Then on to New York where for a week Carol and I did wild rioting in clubs and restaurants. Good worthless week. Came home tired and sad. Lack of work does it, I guess. Lorentz wants to make “Flight,” Milestone
The Red Pony.
I want to finish my play and the
Sea of Cortez.
Just got home when Nosler* called. Wants me to go to Hollywood for the opening of
The Fight for Life
on Tuesday. I may do it since there are other things I want to see about. I have trench mouth. Don’t know where I got it, but prosaically I’m sure. Have to go back to Mexico the 20th of October. Carol is in Monterey today. Idell and Paul
^*
are back. Seem well but confused like everyone else. Joe [Ed.—Higashi] is worried about the Japanese situation* and so are we. It becomes very dangerous. May blow up any day. With so many things happening it is very hard to settle down. Emotionally I am pretty much messed up, too. The old trouble of restlessness. Pat wants me to finish
God in the Pipes.
Carol is feeling lone and lost. But so is every one. My own change of temperament seems pretty radical. Really feel different. But what is to happen? I don’t know. One thing I know is bad but I go on with it anyway. Curious feeling that I must not be a disappointment. And I am and I don’t even know whether the disappointment would be at all sharp. In fact, I am pretty sure it would not. The day is lonely today. And the world is crazy. I wonder whether it will ever be sane again. Probably not. Life for me is nearly over any way. And my head is good still and I can still write. Strange thing honor. The most sapping thing in the world. Oh! Lord, how good this paper feels under this pen. I can sit here writing and the words slipping out like grapes out of their skins and I feel so good doing it. Pat’s dream was a very real dream, but I think it had to do with him not me. The lonely sun and flowers. I’m too fat again. Must start taking it off. Seven pounds at least. Well, I can do that. What has been done can be done again. At first you drink coffee when you get hungry and in a while your stomach shrinks and you are not hungry any more.

Here is a strange thing—almost like a secret. You start out putting words down and there are three things—you, the pen, and the page. Then gradually the three things merge until they are all one and you feel about the page as you do about your arm. Only you love it more than you love your arm. Some day I will be all alone and lonely—either dead and alone or alive and alone, and what will I do then? Then those things I have now and do not know will become so desperately dear that they will be aches. Then what? There will be no way to cure those aches, no way. In that coldness nothing will come. Things are leaving me now because they came too fast—too many of them—and being unable to receive them I threw them out and soon they will not come any more. This process is called life or living or any one of a number of things like that. In other words these are the soundless words, the words that have no being at all. The grey birds of loneliness hopping about. I thought that there might be a time or a condition different from that. But I know now—there isn’t any other way. But in a will toward holiness one goes on—and curiously—the holiness is often evil in a way, mischievous in a way, sometimes destructive. Must be some way. There must. If only this winter were a calm sweet time. If only. But it isn’t. It can’t be. The frog in the pool and the man who raises foxes. Four hundred dollars a pair. Curious man. Wants to train foxes to pull a little sled. The gay horrible life. And now I’ve done enough of this and I think I’ll move over to the other [Ed.—love poems to Gwyn].

 

 

My writing in this book is so irregular. A few entries and then six months with none. Back from Mexico again and this time I’m through there I hope. And back from Hollywood again and definitely not through there. I try to stay relaxed about that. It isn’t possible to be more than it is, and I know that. What a fiasco that would be. And I like it and keep at it and will continue. It seems the best thing to do and surely the pleasantest in many ways, but there are stomach pains in it, too. How will it end—tragically, I imagine, but that is part of it too. I won’t even run from that. I won’t do anything. The years fly away now and I am mostly glad. My forces, probably due to the relaxation, increase and may continue to do so for a time at least, and I will make the most of them, too. The year is turning. Mexican film [Ed.—
The Forgotten Village
] with the exception of commentary is done, too. Now comes* only the
Red Pony
with Milestone and the “Flight” with Pare and the introduction for Ed’s book second edition and the
Sea of Cortez.
I need to lose weight again. Last winter I lost 30 pounds in six weeks. Fifteen is all I need to lose now to be in good shape. I’m starting it now, too. I may not try to hit it so quickly. Depends on how hard it sticks.

Much magic
^*
in Mexico this last time, and of the very blackest kind. Probably some of my present difficulties are due to just that magic. Things are beginning to turn and twist in my head again. I must be sure to choose which is love and which sorryness. I’m not a very good person. Sometimes generous and good and kind and other times mean and short. I’m going to load myself with [Ed.—Vitamin] B for a few days and see what the effect is. Might be interesting. Ed is in pretty good shape now. He has a girl he likes. I feel pretty fine myself except for loneliness. Have been drinking more than usual. Maybe that is good. Can’t say. I’ll let it go as it goes. Have yet to drink for its own sake. But in the present world of cruelty and fierceness of expectancy and greed, drinking, even if practiced as a vice, seems a very little unoffensive one. And I get sick of it very quickly, too. Accounts in the big book of rains that may come. Joe is raking and burning leaves in the vegetable garden. And I have this whole sense of coming tragedy and am so conditioned that I do not even resent it. Carol has been having some quite bad dreams. Poor darling feels insecure, too. And insecurity is every where. She doesn’t know how much nor can conceive how much.

This is a new pen. I bought it for the
Sea of Cortez
job. I wonder whether I can do anything of a job on that. The little bird in the black coffin is part of the magic and a very powerful part. Now the clouds are running in fast. Sometimes, I would like so much not to have this beautiful ranch, but a tight, small house built on piers over the water so I could hear it moving and breaking all the time. I am so restless. What will come of this restlessness? I don’t know.

 

 

Now back from Hollywood and the Mexican film done as far as I can do it. It isn’t anything I am going to be very proud of, but other people will probably like it. Stayed in the Aloha Arms two weeks. An apartment with four beds. Worked and came back to bed. Only thing to do. And had little quarrels with Herbert,
^*
my own smallness mostly and being bored with the film. No open quarrels. The other, I think, might be over or nearly. [Ed.—affair with Gwyn] Just a feeling and I hope it is true, really, deeply, I hope so. Can’t really see anything good in it in any future. Now I am home for a few days. And Carol is feeling badly because it rains all the time. She lives on sun more than on food. I’ll try to get her to go get the southern sun, if she will. A boat trip would do her good if it went south. I am going to Pacific Grove to work on the gulf book and it will be pretty rainy there, too. I want her to be healthy and happy.