Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Miller, Henry

  When Bob Nash left Wild Cat Canyon to go to Furnace Creek, Death Valley, he made application for a Guggenheim fellowship. I happened to read the outline of his “project” because I was one of several who sponsored his candidacy. I doubt if the Guggenheim people ever received an application such as the one Bob Nash sent in. It was simple, genuine, sincere. It ended like this: “I suppose my ultimate goal is simply to remain on the road which I am now on, to comprehend the universe.”

  To comprehend the universe! How those words must have bounced in the plush surroundings of a foundation dedicated to throwing money out the window!

  What I like about Bob Nash is that he went ahead with his project “irregardless” of the Guggenheim award. If he gets it, I’ll stand on my head for a month—like that yogi in the shadow of the railroad bridge.

  Jesus did his work, and it was a mighty work, without a grant. So did Lincoln, and John Brown, and William Lloyd Garrison. If their efforts were crowned with failure, as some believe, it was not because they lacked financial support, or academic support. Can you picture Jesus receiving an honorary degree—LL.D., D.D., or M.D.—the last in recognition of his healing powers? Of all the degrees, “Doctor of Divinity” would have suited him least, what? Today, of course, if you wish to do God’s work, you must first have a degree. Then, in lieu of doing the work of the Lord, you preach. Social security solves all the ugly problems.

  To simplify one’s life! It seems the most natural thing in the world to undertake, yet it’s just about the most difficult. Everything stands in the way. Literally everything. How did Thoreau put it? “I am convinced that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.”*

  That “if”! The whole nation seems dead set against living simply and wisely. Our leaders talk about making common effort, but what do they mean by it? Do they mean common effort towards the attainment of peace and understanding? Hardly.

  Socrates defied his judges thus: “I am certain, O men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or myself…. He who will really fight for the right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public one.”*

  To create community—and what is a nation, or a people, without a sense of community—there must be a common purpose. Even here in Big Sur, where the oranges are ready to blossom forth, there is no common purpose, no common effort. There is a remarkable neighborliness, but no community spirit. We have a Grange, as do other rural communities, but what is a “Grange” in the life of man? The real workers are outside the Grange. Just as the “real men of God” are outside the Church. And the real leaders outside the world of politics.

  Oddly enough, these lone travelers whom I’ve been talking about—fellows like Jack, Bob, Hudson, Warren, Howard—have more real community spirit than those who talk community. They think for themselves, they know where they stand, they travel light, and they’re always available. They are not laboring to “establish peace and tranquillity in the minds of others.” But neither are they indifferent to the plight of those about them. They do not overlook, do not ignore, those who are less fortunate than themselves. (I am not implying that they are unique in this respect; few, if any, here are capable of assuming such an attitude.) What I wish to stress is that it is easy to get at them, easy to enlist their support, moral or physical. They do not make problems of small issues. Nor do they make lame excuses. (As do the rich.) They answer Yes or No. In addition, you know in advance what their answer will be. You know it will be the right answer, whether Yes or No.

  I spoke earlier as though they were guilty of undermining the fabric of our commonwealth. In reality, along with thousands of other unknowns, they are assisting in the creation of a new fabric, a simple, viable one, better able to stand the stress and strain, the wear and tear of time. In practicing their own way of life they point up the unessentials which make our way of life so absurd and futile.

  Our tourists returning from abroad dwell on the poverty and misery of the great masses in Europe, Asia, Africa. They speak with pride of the abundance which we in America share. They talk of efficiency, sanitation, home comforts, high wages, the freedom to move about and to speak one’s mind, and so on. They speak of these privileges as if they were American “inventions.” (As if there had never been a Greece, a Rome, an Egypt, a China, an India, a Persia.) They never speak of the price we pay for these comforts, for all this progress and abundance. (As if we were free of crime, disease, suicide, infanticide, prostitution, alcoholism, addiction to drugs, military training, armament races and the obsession with lethal weapons.) They speak of motorcars, of the latest fashions in clothes, of superabundant produce, of refrigerators and deepfreezes, of washing machines, vacuum cleaners, of vitamins and barbiturates, of dry cereals, of pocketbooks, and so forth. Or of social security, pensions, dietary fads, automation, jet-propelled rockets, trips to the moon, libraries, hospitals, universities. Or of the marvels of psychoanalysis and Dianetics. Or, sentimentally, of the vanishing sea otter. They never speak of the degrading, senseless, undermining labor which must be performed in order to meet food and rent bills, keep a car, wear the proper clothes, pay the insurance companies, meet the tax levies with which to build tanks, battleships, submarines, jet bombers and create more stockpiles of this bomb and that. They are insured and secured, so they believe, against every emergency, every contingency. They may or may not have money in the bank, but they are certain to be in debt, mortgaged to the ears. They have, so they think, the most wonderful medical service in the world, yet they will succumb in the end to one of a thousand horrible ailments which even American citizens are heir to. Countless are those who will be maimed and mangled in factories and mills, in mines and laboratories; more still will be injured, crippled or killed in automobile accidents. More by the automobile than by the juggernaut of Mars. Disease alone will carry off more than all the other fatalities combined. Many will be rendered hors de combat through excessive drinking, or through the use of drugs. And almost as many from excessive eating, or from eating food products which have been robbed of their natural nourishment. Legions die through fear and anguish, nothing more.

  And, to continue the story … those who were lucky enough to make a fortune will, if they live long enough, see their clever gains pissed away by their children. Those who have three cars, where only one was necessary, will end up in wheel chairs. Those who save their money will see it eaten up by those who want to make money make money. Those who work hard all their lives will receive in their old age a pension barely sufficient to keep a dog alive. As for the worker, he fares no better than the drone. The hobo, almost nonexistent now, lives a luxurious life by comparison. People are living on longer, but they are no match, in health, vitality or longevity, for the poor, hardy mountaineers of the Balkans. How many, in this land of plenty, are living to be eighty, ninety or a hundred, in full possession of their faculties, not chronically ill, and possessed of a full set of teeth, their own? How many of those who hang on until three score and ten may be said to be “living”? (Have you seen the fantastic valetudinarians of southern California and Florida who scoot along in motorized wheelchairs? Have you watched them idling the day away at cribbage, checkers, casino, dominoes?)

  And how do writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, dancers, to speak of the creative few, end their days? On a bed of roses? Does ever one of them look as Goethe did on his deathbed? Notice how the poets fade out of the picture. No man in his sound senses would elect to be a poet in this land of kingdom come!

  Yes, Hemingway leads a grand life, seemingly. Name a few thousand other authors who do likewise!

  It might be edifying to take time out and read how the great Milarepa died. (After a vain attempt to kill him with poison.) Or how Ramakrishna, succumbing to the ravages of cancer, comforted and cheered his disciples on his deathbed. Or how William Blake passed away singing.

  Strange, but despite all
the benefits of science, people are not dying the way these men did. They are dying miserably, here in America, though they have forked out the most exorbitant sums to doctor, surgeon and hospital. They may be given wonderful funerals, but no one has yet succeeded in making them die peacefully, nobly, serenely. Few enjoy the luxury of dying in their own beds.

  “The human body is not a happenstance. It was created on purpose and by design. True, ‘it comes forth like a flower and is cut down; it fleeth like a shadow and continueth not.’ This is the way of all material things. But the creative forces and the natural laws that govern them are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and eternal.

  “The body springs from a cell less than one-hundredth of an inch in diameter, which contains nothing of which it is built. Soon it grows into a material entity, of which 62,500 miles of blood vessels are only a small part. It lives and functions until abuse, disease or some other force destroys it.

  “Some bodies enter the world already dead. Others live various periods, the average life expectancy now being about fifty-nine years. Some live to be one hundred or more….

  “Of the nine primary functions of the body, those of growth and repair are most necessary to longevity. Creative processes resulting in growth appear to cease at maturity but we … have found that they do not. They only go into partial retirement. To the extent that basic body materials have to be replaced for the maintenance of life, they remain active. But without proper inducement they apparently grow tired and lag in their work. When creative processes are in full predominance over body decay, 140,000,000 cells are created every minute. This means an 8% replacement of basic body constituents every month, or a 96% new body every year.

  “Could this creative rate be maintained, the average life expectancy might well be several times what it is today. In fact, one might live almost indefinitely….”*

  The great hoax which we are perpetuating every day of our lives is that that we are making life easier, more comfortable, more enjoyable, more profitable. We are doing just the contrary. We are making life stale, flat and unprofitable every day in every way. One ugly word covers it all: waste. Our thoughts, our energies, our very lives are being used up to create what is unwise, unnecessary, unhealthy. The stupendous activity which goes on in forest, field, mine and factory never adds up to happiness, contentment, peace of mind, or long life for those engaged in it. Very, very few Americans enjoy the work they are obliged to perform day in and day out. Most of them look upon their work as stultifying and degrading. Few ever find a way out. The vast majority are condemned, just as much as any slave, any convict, any half-wit. The work of the world, as it is so nobly called, is performed by drudges. That so many of them are well-educated only makes the picture that much worse. How little it matters whether one be lawyer, doctor, preacher, judge, chemist, engineer, teacher or architect. One might just as well have been hod-carrier, stevedore, bank clerk, ditch digger, gambler or garbage collector. Who really loves what he is doing day in and day out? What holds one to job, trade, profession or pursuit? Inertia. We are all locked together, as in a vise, feeding on one another, preying on one another. Talk of the insect world, by comparison we resemble their degenerate offspring!

  Dominating the show, supervising and regulating it, stands a government composed of elected representatives of the people, which, for a collection of bunglers, misfits, jokesters and miscreants, would be hard to match.

  And our millionaires—are they happy? They, at least, should be gay, jovial, light of heart. Is not the goal of all our striving to have even more than one wants? Look at them, our poor millionaires! The sorriest specimens of humanity on earth. How I wish the starving Asiatics could become millionaires overnight, all of them! How quickly they would realize the futility of the American way!

  Then there are the middle classes—the bulwark of the nation, as we blithely say. Sober, steady, reliable, educated, conservative, self-respecting. You can count on them to steer a middle-of-the-road course. Could there be any emptier souls than these? All living like stuffed cadavers in a wax museum. Weighing themselves morning and night. Saying Yes today, No tomorrow. Weather vanes, shuttlecocks, noisy amplifiers. Have kept up a good front all their lives. Behind this front—nothing. Not even sandbags.

  And the workers—the highest paid in all the world, as we proudly boast. Own their own cars, their own homes. (Some of them.) But all loaded with insurance, war bonds, cemetery plots. Children educated free of charge, schools equipped with playgrounds and recreation centers, food approved by the Pure Food inspectors. Factories air-conditioned. Toilets sanitary and always in good working order. Forty hours a week, double pay for overtime. At a hundred a week they find it difficult to make ends meet. The government robs them, the banks rob them, the merchants rob them, the labor leaders rob them, the boss robs them, everybody robs them. They rob one another. I speak of the de luxe workers, who sometimes make de luxe soldiers or de luxe politicians. As for the unwashed, the un-unionized, the unheard of variety, they live like rats. They are a disgrace to the nation. This is one nation which will not subscribe to poverty, filth, vice, illiteracy, mendicancy, or idleness and shiftlessness!

  Except for the gangsters, who are getting smarter every day, more efficient, more cunning, more business-like, more progressive, more honorable, so to speak, and who are indoctrinating the young (through comics, movies, radio, television), infiltrating the ranks, so that sometimes it is difficult to tell whether the man seated next to you is one of them or just a lawyer, judge, banker, congressman or minister of the gospel… except for the gangsters, I say, the ones who really seem to have it best, who know perfectly well what they are doing and like it, who show the least wear and tear, who get the most enjoyment out of life, are the fifty-, and one-hundred-dollars-per-call call girls, most of them highly intelligent, well educated, pleasant to look at, always well dressed, well read, simple and unaffected in deportment, less noisy, vulgar and vain-glorious, very much so, than the wives or mistresses of the men they cater to. Even a Supreme Court judge would find it pleasant, profitable and instructive to spend an hour or two with one of their calling. The pity is that they are not available to the rank and file!

  As a minnesinger of the lumpen proletariat, I know that no respectable American will take the foregoing seriously. Any more than he will take seriously that fact that, by the latest count, 13,976,238 men and women, including a percentage of children as well, are rotting away in prisons, reformatories, hospitals, insane asylums, institutions for the mentally defective and similar establishments throughout the land. I may be off on my figures this way or that, but the facts are correct. As Lord Buckley says: “You lay it down, Nazz, and we’ll pick it up!”

  These are the kind of facts, needless to say, that one would hate to rub under a kitten’s nose by way of house-breaking it. Even a whiff of such facts would give a plover or an osprey mental diarrhea. Better not present them to your children until they are ready for their master’s degree. Better keep the young on lemons and lavender until they’ve reached the age of discretion.

  REFERENCE TABLE FOR THE PRECEDING POTPOURRI

  1. The Cult of Sex and Anarchy

  2. The Anderson Creek Gang

  3. The Chama Serial

  4. The Water Color Mania

  5. The Look of Wonder (Pookie and Butch)

  6. A Fortune in Francs

  7. Problems Large and Small (Jean Wharton)

  8. Fan Mail

  9. Sauve qui peut!

  10. Bringing Up Father

  11. Testimonial in Ut-mineur

  12. The Part of Fortune

  13. The Task of Genuine Love

  14. A Day at the Baths

  15. Making a new Fabric

  PART THREE

  PARADISE LOST

  Courad Moricand

  Born in Paris, January 17, 1887, at 7:00 or 7:15 P.M.

  Died in Paris, August 31, 1954.

  It was Anaïs Nin who introduced me to Conrad Moricand. She bro
ught him to my studio in the Villa Seurat one day in the fall of 1936. My first impressions were not altogether favorable. The man seemed somber, didactic, opinionated, self-centered. A fatalistic quality pervaded his whole being.

  It was late afternoon when he arrived, and after chatting a while, we went to eat in a little restaurant on the Avenue d’Orléans. The way he surveyed the menu told me at once that he was finicky. Throughout the meal he talked incessantly, without its spoiling his enjoyment of the food. But it was the kind of talk that does not go with food, the kind that makes food indigestible.

  There was an odor about him which I could not help but be aware of. It was a mélange of bay rum, wet ashes and tabac gris, tinctured with a dash of some elusive, elegant perfume. Later these would resolve themselves into one unmistakable scent—the aroma of death.

  I had already been introduced to astrologic circles before meeting Moricand. And in Eduardo Sanchez, a cousin of Anaïs Nin, I had found a man of immense erudition, who, on the advice of his analyst, had taken up astrology therapeutically, so to speak. Eduardo often reminded me of the earthworm, one of God’s most useful creatures, it is said. His powers of ingestion and digestion were stupendous. Like the worm, his labors were primarily for the benefit of others, not himself. At the time Eduardo was engrossed in a study of the Pluto-Neptune-Uranus conjunctions. He had delved deep into history, metaphysics and biography in search of material to corroborate his intuitions. And finally he had begun work on the great theme: Apocatastasis.