by Paul Auster
MARCH 2: Your latest letter … Again, I say to you, don’t worry about me. I’m all right, really. Have no doubts about yourself in relation to me. Let us not raise questions about problems we know cannot be answered at this time. Simply try to live as best you can, now, with whatever your life consists of. I think the closest man can come to the feeling of eternity is by living in the present …
I sometimes shudder to realize that I am unfit to be loved by anyone. That, because of what I guess is an inherent idealism, nothing in the world seems good, that my loneliness is a masochistic desire …
All around me I see … pettiness, stupidity, and hypocrisy … As a result, I see myself becoming intolerant—and, so as not to offend anyone, retreating from society. I hate myself for what I feel to be an impatience with others, and yet I can do nothing about it …
And yet at the same time I yearn to love and be loved, knowing that it is impossible … I think, in some profound way, that I have fled from the real. I … spend most of my time either engaged in or thinking about my writing. Characters, situations, words, I have become them—moving into a vague world of shifting … colors, sounds—devoid of words and sense. At the same time I am convinced that to live is more important than art …
Soon, however, I’ll be faced with a big decision—the draft … If things remain as they are … I will probably go to Canada. I predict much loneliness for myself—worse than I have ever known.
There is a terrible shyness in me that makes even the most simple social situations difficult—a reluctance to speak, a self-consciousness that compounds my loneliness.
I say these things about myself to let you know—because you seemed to want to know. Probably, however, you’re already aware of all this.—My brooding and melancholy are incurable … And yet, I feel myself, at the center, to be strong—that I won’t ever crack, no matter how bad things might get. In a way, this is what frightens me the most …
I have a job translating a series of essays that will give me money to live on over the summer … must think of a good place to go …
MARCH 14: I think you overestimate my idealism. In essence, I feel the same as you—the differences are a result of circumstances more than anything else. It is difficult to want to carry the world within you, here, in New York, America, when everyone is shouting hate, when the war continues to grow at a maniacal pace, when the only individual alternatives for the future are prison or exile. It is the horrible madness around me (I assure you it is real insanity)—necessarily within me too—that makes me despair. I don’t, however, cease to think of people as individuals. That I have never done and will never do. I don’t believe in abstractions. They are the killers, the maimers of the mind …
My life confusing. Revulsion towards school. Sick of books. My mind cluttered. Need the fresh air. Space to clear my mind. Dissipation. Too much drinking. One night so bad I vomited myself to sleep. I murmured, shouted, cried about God. Why does He refuse to manifest Himself? Drunken drivel. I become very witty at times. You’d like that. The border between tragedy and comedy. Sickness unto death. Writing bogged. But still confident. In general it goes well.—A new-found delight in faces. Old women blowing their noses. Watching old men. Today, a baby dog, a pup, so soft I wanted it for myself.—Steaming steel coffee machines. Spittle on the sidewalks. The darkness of the streets at night. The darkness of dreams. Voices merging in crowds. Phrases mingling from different mouths into unconnected absurdities. Faces in class. A word from a radio. My cluttered desk. The disgust with myself for having cut two straight weeks of class. The irony of my having made the dean’s list. The strong desire not to read anymore. To stop listening and begin speaking … to be wed to silence again only at death.
MARCH 29: I have complete confidence in you, despite the tiny rises and falls … you will emerge strong and whole. As for me … I have great difficulty imagining any sort of future for myself, anything at all. Political problems have become so oppressive that such thoughts have become impossible. If confronted with the draft next summer, my decision will be to go to jail—not to Canada.—I can give no rational explanation—merely, that it is the more disdainful action. So, in some peculiar way, I am pressed into thinking immediately about something that really requires much time …
It has been difficult for me to hold steady to the tasks at hand. I have let my school work slide disastrously—soon it will come crashing down on my head. I walk about in a silent frenzy. Watch the street events. Read books that have nothing to do with school. Think about my writing excessively, but have gotten very little done lately. It all seems unreal without you—all a limbo in which I am wallowing until you return. Despair is not the word. A sense of not being alive.
Three weeks after that letter was written, the Columbia uprising began. It proved to be an effective vaccine against the epidemic of nervous breakdowns that was threatening to take over the campus that spring—including your own nervous breakdown. In reading over the letters you wrote in the months leading up to that day (April 23), you are stunned by the depth of your unhappiness, shocked by how close you were to what sounds like absolute disintegration, for in the years that followed memory had blurred the details of that time, and you had somehow managed to soften the pain, to turn a full-blown inner crisis into a dull sort of malaise that you eventually put behind you. Yes, the crisis passed, but only because you made an abrupt about-face and threw in your lot with the protesting students, the first and only time you have ever taken part in a concerted mass action, and the effect of joining in with others seemed to break the spell of misery that had engulfed you, to wake you up and give you a new, more emboldened sense of who you were. On May fourth, in the first letter you wrote after the New York police invaded the campus on the night of April thirtieth, smashing students with billy clubs and arresting seven hundred of them, you report: “… occupied a building, was beaten by the cops, was arrested.” Five paragraphs down you add: “… it is rather difficult to make summer plans right now—because I must appear in court on June 7 & don’t know how long things will drag on. It is even possible … that I will wind up in jail—though I doubt it.” In a three-page letter from May fourteenth, you warn her to stay away from the press, explaining that publications such as Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times have distorted the facts and cannot be trusted. The only reliable source of information is the student paper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, which is about to put together a book of all its articles of the past month, and you will send her a copy as soon as it is available. You then go on to discuss the tactics employed by the students during the sit-ins, saying that the police action was a necessary step in bringing the majority over to their side, that everyone in the buildings knew what was going to happen, that they actively wanted the police to come and behave precisely as they did, for only a display of police violence could lead to the all-university strike that was now in effect. In the next paragraph, you say how pleasantly surprised you were by “the committed attitude of the people in the occupied buildings. Tempers didn’t flare, no one got on anybody else’s nerves. For a week, everybody was busy working for everybody else … For me, who am so skeptical about such things, I had to be part of it in order to learn that it is possible, even for a limited time.” Ten days later, you apologize for not having written again sooner. “Things have remained chaotic and violent—another confrontation with the police two nights ago, which perhaps you have read about.” Two paragraphs down, you say how much you want to go to London, “but until June 7, the day I appear in court to get the date of my trial, I am … unable to make any plans. As soon as I know what will be happening to me, I will give you all information.”
The tone of your letters begins to change after that. The morose, self-absorbed malcontent of the past few months suddenly vanishes, and in his place another, altogether different person starts writing to London. A mysterious transformation, for the outward circumstances of your life were unaltered: the war was the same war, the pending threat o
f the draft was the same threat, the struggle to find your way was the same struggle—and yet something in you had been let free, and rather than moan about the rottenness of the world, you become playful, jocular (the rambunctious letter of June 20), and vastly more at ease with yourself, as if the events of April and May had given you a jolt of electricity and brought you back to life.
JUNE 11: I have been anxiously waiting to hear from you, but since, after all these weeks, nothing has arrived, I thought I’d take this golden opportunity (the weather has been unbearably hot) to write to you. I shall make my remarks concise and to the point:
1. I miss you very much. I think of you all the time. I hope we can see each other soon.
2. I wonder what you are doing. Are you working or on holiday? Are you in London or elsewhere?
3. I must return to court on 17 July. After that, I probably won’t have to go back until September. I hope & pray that I’ll … manage to leave N.Y.
4. I am fine. I’m beginning to write well … My mind is relaxed.
5. I read much less now than I used to. As a consequence, I am more intelligent and have a better sense of humor …
6. I do not fret about my fate.
7. Have you heard from Peter and/or Sue?
8. Tell me how you feel, what you’ve been doing.
9. If all goes well, I’ll be in London in August.
10. Write me a poem. Dance a polonaise.
11. The single stroke of a saw, cutting into hard wood. It is October. The window shatters in a wheel.
12. Let me do it. It is evening. The musicians are gathering around the symphony, drinking milk.
13. The painting has melted. It is 3 weeks before spring. The farm is dancing in the harbor.
14. Find a good book and read it under water. Socrates was put to death for less. In my dream the broom is a body.
15. Anyone can add and subtract. The grass is redder in the shade. I am not surprised.
16. Why is the bathtub so big? Some drink Pepsi-Cola; others drink Coca-Cola. In the tank the soldier sings a song by Schubert.
17. When we wear sneakers we often think that we are pogo-sticks. It will soon be evening. Then the blindman will blow his nose with a dollar bill.
18. The politicians have fled the country. It is morning, but the air is still dark. At the center of our despair we see words, written upside-down, hanging from the jaws of a pelican.
19. Please find drawing enclosed.
20. Please accept this transmission of my love.
JUNE 20: Madame ma femelle:
At times, when in bondage, we manifest the desire to put the world in our pocket. We walk up & down the street with our companion, the Master of the Bagpipes. Once, as he sat down on our typewriter, preventing us from pursuing our daily labor, he opened a can of beans and said: “What a wise man I am.” His wife, the blind ballerina from Jersey City, stubbed her toe one day on a tank (inside a soldier was playing “Desiccated Embryos”18) and contracted syphilis. Now the people must go to the theater in helicopters. Discounting those times when the radio declares a lunar eclipse, however, no one seems greatly disturbed. For my part, I console myself by turning my pockets inside-out and filling my socks with pennies.
The equator hangs over the back of the chair, a limp and withered cudgel. The mailman enters. The mailman is a Fatman who carries a dead dog at the bottom of his sack. He says: “Ever since I got so fat I have swung my two-foot key-chain in an ever-widening arc. Soon I’ll lasso the globe and eat it as a snack, just as I once ate oranges.” Never has laughter so deflated us. We sit on our toilets, sweating with shame.
At night I attach an upside-down funnel to my head to protect me from the draft that blows through the window. It’s a very clever idea, capable of being conceived only by one who is both chipper and dapper. Everyone I know agrees. Some have even begun to do it themselves. But I know them & therefore have little faith. They start out like a house on fire and end up as nose-pick.
We, madame (ma femelle), your humble servant, have recently formulated plans for a lightning-swift conquest of the world. We hesitate to announce them now, however, for 2 reasons: one, the mails are notoriously dangerous for transferring secret information, and two, you play a vital role in these plans and must hear them in the only decent way known to conquerors: from lips to ear. Humpty-Dumpty, your most devoted servant, therefore anxiously awaits your return to this corner of the universe.
Humpty-Dumpty, madame, nôtre femelle, wishes to convey his complete accord with the private revelations transformed into calligraphic notations for him in your most recent letter. In order to comply with your request, he hereby submits the following synopsis of his daily activities for your scrutiny:
Since it is important to live each day to the fullest, I rise early, at 4:05 A.M. I then run 5 miles in order to keep my body firm & healthy. Panting slightly, I return to my apartment at 4:18 and eat a well-balanced breakfast of crushed glass on toast, porcupine’s blood, and caviar. Feeling more chipper & dapper than ever, I then stride triumphantly into the bathroom, pull down my pants, sit on the toilet, and move my bowels. This activity terminates precisely at 4:31. I then go into the kitchen, pick up the plates I have just eaten off, & throw them on the floor. The Master of the Bagpipes sweeps them up. At 4:32 I arrive at my desk, read what I have written the day before, rip it up, eat it, and then sit, absolutely motionless, for a period of six hours and 18 minutes, waiting to be inspired. Exhausted by these endeavors, I then nap for exactly 4 hours on the couch. I wake up with a start, careful not to laugh, for fear of choking on my syllables and accidentally strangling myself. At 2:50 P.M. I return to my desk and in a great frenzy write in my journal concerning the events of the day thus far, for 10 minutes. At 3:00 I am served a well-balanced meal of beans, macaroni, chili, & horseradish by the blind ballerina. I finish my meal at 3:04 and then leave the house to ride on my bicycle through the park. I return at 5:03 & once again seat myself at my desk and take care of my correspondence. At 5:05 I take my afternoon nap. At 9:13 I am awakened by an orchestra of sirens and screams, which serves notice that dinner is ready. The Master of the Bagpipes and the blind ballerina, his wife, then serve me a well-balanced meal of radios, toasters, and lightbulbs (100 watt). During this meal I read the daily papers from New York, London, Paris, Rome, Prague, & Moscow. I eat the most interesting articles for dessert. From 9:21 to 11:33 I play either ping-pong or billiards with my companion, the Master of the Bagpipes. Then, until midnight, I do sitting-up exercises. At 12:01 I return to my desk and read a good book. I close the book at precisely 3:29. I then write furiously until 4:00. Wearied by the work, I fall asleep at my desk. At 4:02 the Master of the Bagpipes and the blind ballerina pick me up, carry me to my room, and put me to bed. I stir for a little while, but am sleeping deeply and soundly by 4:04.
Signed: the Dwarf.
JULY 9: We must not consider the distance between us as anything more than a transitory pain. We are small children with vivid imaginations that sometimes get the better of us. We awoke from unhappy dreams and sat up in our beds, surrounded by an unending night—night which had always passed so quickly in our sleep—and waited … for the darkness to dissipate into day. Already it is July. In less than a week you will have another birthday … Two days later I’ll go to court for a hearing, and soon after that, perhaps I’ll be in London …
It is late in the afternoon. I am writing to you in order to take a pause from the translations, which I do at a frenetic pace, in order to have done with them. I write at night. Though my emotions have become as erratic as the arms of an over-zealous but inexperienced boxer, my mind moves steadily toward … unexplored territory. Where I am now I do not check my coat, for fear of forgetting my body on the way out. Years of floundering seem to be emerging into a strange & clumsy strength that knows no fears and each day finds connections between elements that are … outlandishly disparate. A methodical spontaneity. A dialectic that excludes nothing.
Not all has gone
smoothly, however. Norman, my stepfather, had a very bad heart attack about 2 weeks ago and is still recovering in the hospital. Things seem to be all right now, but they were dangerous for a while. I have spent much time in Newark …
JULY 12: Perhaps you have an exaggerated picture of the extent to which I have changed.—Change (or growth) … is always subtle, and this is no exception. My appearance, except perhaps for an increased thinness (I’ve become quite bony, though I dream of being robust, of looking like Mayakovsky) is the same. I wear the same clothes, I still smoke cigarettes … I still detest parties and continue to feel awkward among large groups of people. As I hinted in the last short letter, the change has been more intellectual than anything else—but of course this manifests itself in my behavior & attitudes: My only categorical imperative is that things must be faced head-on, in their entirety. If something is being overlooked—either willingly or accidentally—then one is living a lie …
Once I thought that art should be … divorced from society … Once I wished to live with my back turned to the world. I see now that this is impossible. Society, too, must be faced—not in the purity of contemplation, but with the intention of acting. But action, when generated from an ethic, often frightens people … because it does not seem to have a one-to-one correspondence to its intention. People are too literal-minded … they cannot think in terms of metaphors. Because left-wing political tactics do not have this one-to-one correspondence (the seizure of a university building, for example), people, in their confusion and fear, think there is some sinister plot or conspiracy at work …
The social revolution must be accompanied by a metaphysical revolution. Men’s minds must be liberated along with their physical existences—if not, any freedom obtained will be false & fleeting. Weapons for achieving & maintaining freedom must be created. This means a courageous stare into the unknown—the transformation of life … ART MUST POUND SAVAGELY ON THE DOORS OF ETERNITY …
