The House by the Sea (11 page)

I had hoped we would have a happy time picking the first peas yesterday … I never managed to have peas exactly for the Fourth in Nelson, so it was a triumph. But Judy didn't really enjoy it (though she did shell them). Then, while I struggled with masses of crabgrass between the rows of annuals, I suggested she pull out a few easy weeds among the lettuce. When I looked up, I realized she was pulling out the lettuce instead of the weeds! And this had come at the end of so many other small crazy fugues that I cried bitterly. While I was having a bath before getting our supper (salmon and fresh peas), Judy disappeared again. But finally we did have a good half hour watching the evening birds fly over, sitting out on the terrace, and she was delighted by the sailboats gliding up and down in the distance.

The most difficult thing for me, of course, is that she is here with me but we no longer can share anything. I try to tell her what I am thinking about, but all the reactions now are superficial, glib sentences like, “How interesting!” when she is clearly not paying the slightest attention. After a few days I begin to feel desperately lonely.

Tuesday, July 8th

D
OWNHILL
A
LL THE
W
AY
is what it feels like here … I discovered yesterday that Tamas had been bitten about the tail—a deep bite hidden by the thick fur. That means, I guess, that I shall have to stay with Judy every moment when she next conies. It must have happened while she was walking him, as he never leaves the place unless he is off on a walk with a human being. The Firths assure me that the fracas on Sunday (when Judy went down there again despite her promise not to) was not a dogfight, since Jud simply barked from the porch. There was blood on my sheet this morning where Tamas had lain. The vet said the wound was infected, so I had to leave him there and came home absolutely empty and exhausted. I had so counted on this morning to get back to my own center, do some work. But whatever juice there was in the motor has been used up.

Tamas never comes up here to my study on the third floor, but it's amazing how aware I am that he is not here.

A hot muggy gray day.

One of the marvelous Japanese iris, a huge white one, has opened, and late yesterday afternoon, after taking Judy back to her nursing home and driving on to Cambridge to get some clothes, I made an all-white bunch with some spirea, two white foxgloves, a single late peony, and the noble iris. It is lovely against the smoky gray wall of the porch.

The catalpas are in flower. There is none on this place, but on a drive with Judy we saw several huge ones, glorious with their large clearly defined leaves and flat white flowers. I think it is one of my favorite trees … there was one in the playground at Shady Hill School when I was a child.

Also, yesterday afternoon I went out in a passion and fury of being alone at last and extricated rows of onions, beets, and lettuce from such a torture of huge thick weeds, crabgrass, and others that the vegetables had become invisible. If we can have a good rain, and one is expected today or tomorrow, they will revive. I have neglected the vegetables while I tried to get the annuals deweeded and mulched. Vegetables can be purchased, but not the flowers, and they are far more precious to me.

Friday, July 11th

V
ERY DREARY
muggy weather, and Tamas is still at the vet's. It is dismal without him; even self-centered Bramble minds and miaows at me as if to say, “Where has my dog gone?”

I feel trapped by all the interruptions which have kept me from doing any work all this week. Yesterday I spent an hour rummaging about in the files to try to find a long poem I wrote when I was at Black Mountain College in 1940! By some miracle I did find it, and was interested to see how much of what I felt then about freedom and discipline is still much in my mind, about education, and about democracy itself. So, after all, the request in a letter from a woman who is writing a book on Black Mountain turned out to bring an unexpected benefit, and I am glad I made the effort to hunt the poem out.

A Letter to the Students of Black Mountain College, written in homage and in faith

At the heart of life is the flaw, the imperfection

Without which there would be no motion and no reason

To continue. At the heart of life is the knowledge of death

Without which there would be no boundaries and no limitation

And so no reason for existence or for action—and no time.

At the heart of life there is silence without which sound

Would have no meaning, nor music, and we should not hear it—

And this flaw, this knowledge of death, this background

Of silence are the form within which life is boundless,

Everlasting, creating, discarding, destroying, always in flux,

Always changing, choosing, denying, affirming in order to discover

The purer Form in which the purer Freedom may have its being.

Observe the fern uncurling like a steel spring,

The life implacably held there from bursting out of the strain.

Does the blood in your veins spill out and be wasted? Everywhere

The search is the same but it is not a search for Freedom

For perfect freedom is death, but it is always a search for form,

The form in which to enclose the freedom and make it live.

And how much more delicate even than a single fern is the life

Of a community where you are holding individuals balanced

Against each other and where not one but all must move in

His secret direction as swiftly as deeply as possible without

Interruption, and still, as we are all moving inwardly each

In his own direction, the community too must be bounded

And within it is the flaw which keeps it in flux and growing

And the time-space which encloses it, and the silences

Without which it could not exist. And you are always seeking

The exquisite perfect balance between the individual and the whole

Community and you are asking this question every day which is

The question of life, the question of all creation and form,

The question of government and you are bending your wills toward it.

Now you are building a place to enclose your life and your work.

With your hands you are cutting the rocks, carefully weighing

And choosing the solitary, the only, the exact one which will fit

The place for which it is needed, and patiently carefully

You are judging what weight you must put behind the hammer

(Neither too much nor too little) to give it the desired form.

I have seen the perfect rhythm and stability of your working

Together, one mixing the mortar, one casting the stones with a

Beautiful slow rhythm into the hands of another and given by him

Into the hands which will finally, having made a soft bed

Of cement, lay it firmly there, and upon it another and another,

Given from earth to truck and from truck to hand and from hand

To wall where it will stand, enclosing your life and your work,

Keeping the cold from you and the winds and the rain. This you are

Building and because it is work of the hands and of the heart

Because it is well-defined and it is necessary and visible

The form in which the work shall be done is easy and natural

And there are no questions. If someone should suddenly drop

The stone, if someone should break the rhythm, if someone should

In a moment of passion wrench the planted rock from the wall—

But no one could do this, you answer. No one could willfully destroy

What we have built together with so much strain of backs and

Shoulders, no one could break the strong slow beautiful rhythm

Of this work done together because he would see too clearly

What he was doing to us all, and to the building, and to the form.

But for every stone which you place in the actual wall,

You are placing an invisible stone upon an invisible wall

And you are building an invisible building and it is this

Which I am asking you to consider. It is this which is necessary

And without which the actual stone and the actual building

Will enclose no life and will have no meaning. And there will be

A blankness at the center as in many functional houses

Which appear bleak and barren because the life to be lived there

Has not yet been created. I have felt a barrenness and an emptiness

At the center and this is the flaw without which there would be

No reason for you or for me or for any poem or state to be built.

I am concerned with the invisible building and the relationship

Of stone and stone there and you believe also that this is matter for concern.

I have come here a stranger. I have penetrated perhaps too swiftly

Too passionately into your freedom and searched for the form.

I have stood in the center of your freedom and shared it and I have

Suddenly felt myself to be standing in a desert swept by winds

And sand, and I have looked with all my imagination to see

If I could divine the walls of the invisible house and whether

It was my blindness that did not discover it. And perhaps this is so.

You have taken upon yourselves the freedom of complete equality

With one another and with your teachers and by doing this you have

Created an artificial perfectly flat landscape in which I have not

Been able to discover a tree which might give a little shade

From the burning equalizing sun, nor have I seen in the distance

A mountain which one might climb in the evening and from where

One might see (who knows?) a great river streaming to a boundless ocean.

You have shut out from your hearts the possibility of homage.

You have said “We are to be equal in all things” although by saying that

And by performing certain rites and gestures which create the invisible

Building of equality, you have not been able to create it; a stranger

Coming from less desert places sees the mirage of the mountains, the mirage

Of rivers and must bend to drink from the rivers and must climb

The difficult mountains. And the stranger standing in your desert

Sees only the differences and not the equality and begins to wonder

If the desert is not a mirage you have willfully created.

And the mountains and rivers the reality you have destroyed, and indeed

His thirst has been quenched and his eyes have been filled with visions

So he cannot believe otherwise. What meaning have these

Gestures of equality between teacher and student if they only serve

To create a mirage and to make a desert? You have shut out

From your hearts the Christian image of the kneeling man, the humble,

And in so doing you have shut out the emotion which precedes all creation

And all love, and you have taken from it the small gestures

Which are the walls which enclose love and form the invisible building.

You have called this a new form for freedom and a new building

But you have achieved nothing but a desert in your own hearts

And you have shut yourselves out from the springs of holiness

Which come from homage and from devotion and from the recognition

Of differences and degrees and the progress of souls and minds.

And you have taken from yourselves the joys of being an apprentice

And a beginner than which there is no greater, and above all

You have taken from yourselves the outward delight of the physical

Acts of homage. You have succeeded in becoming the comrades

Of your teachers and by doing this you have lost for yourselves

One of the deepest human intuitions and one of the roots of growth.

For without leadership there will be no following and without

Following there can be no leadership and without surrender

There can be no conquest. But you have chosen to begin by conquest.

And among yourselves in the community of students, which in

Spite of your insistence is a community apart (and there is

And must be a community of teachers and a community of students

And these are circles which meet but never make one circle

So that always part of the circle of students covers and includes

Part of the circle of teachers but always in every community

There is a secret part from which each draws its life and without which

There would be no community between them.) But among yourselves

You have stridently demanded that things be asked for and not given

Un-asked so that in your dining-hall in which there is little form

You have once more set up freedom as a monument and worshipped it

As dangerously as others have worshipped authority.

The table too is a community and here as everywhere else

Where you are both a solitary individual and part of a whole

There is a pattern set up and a rhythm like that of the rhythm

Of building a wall, and I have seen you break the rhythm

Over and over again, be unable to sense it, and I have seen

Thoughts broken before they were completed by someone asking

For the sugar where if you were truly part of a community

Of the table the sugar would be passed and the conversation

Not interrupted. There is a reason for the forms of politeness

And it is to make possible the freedom necessary between

Individuals in a community. The hours of meals are the hours

When you most nearly share your lives and when you exchange ideas

And when you are clearly building the invisible building

But you have allowed your idea of freedom to become simply

Slavery to things and you have obscured this warm light

Of conversation with gestures and loud demands and formlessness