Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  I have talked Amohananda into accepting the fact that I will not write an introduction to Vividishananda’s book. He was very understanding about this, maybe because nobody at Vedanta Place really thinks it’s important. Maybe they just tried it on me, not with any bad intentions but just because they cannot, will not, understand that it could be the least trouble for me, a writer, to scribble off a little something about anything, anytime, in no seconds flat.

  September 6. Had an unpleasant dream—not quite a nightmare— and woke last night about 4 a.m. It is very rare nowadays for me to wake in the middle of the night or to have this kind of a dream; yet it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. I was in some kind of a gothic-looking old house, English rather than American, with lots of ivy, and there I was visited by a group of somewhat sinister youngish creatures, I guess they were demons. The atmosphere was menacing but with smiles, I was aware that it might get out of hand. I remember groping what I thought would be the buttocks of one of the young creatures and finding that it hadn’t any; in fact, there was a concave curve covered over with what looked like tinfoil. The dream ended with my saying somewhat coyly, “You know, I’ve got a word which would make you get out of here”—meaning Ramakrishna. They seemed to agree that it would.

  On the 3rd, Don did three magnificent drawings of Divine—one of them when he was half asleep, looking like an adorable zonked seal—in another, one of his hands sticks out like a flipper. Don says they are good because Divine is his kind of person, which so few of his sitters are.

  September 7. Last night we saw Visconti’s The Leopard. Although this was a terrible print, faded to sepia, I was far more moved by the film, this second time; it seemed almost a kind of cynical War and Peace. This made me read about Garibaldi this morning, starting with D.H. Lawrence’s Movements in European History, a sloppily written book.

  I love this, from Joe Orton’s The Ruffian on the Stair:

  Wilson (speaking about his dead brother): We had separate beds—he was a stickler for convention, but that’s as far as it went. We spent every night in each other’s company. It was the reason we never got any work done.

  Mike: There’s no word in the Irish language for what you were doing.

  Wilson: In Lapland they have no word for snow.

  September 8. Speaking of Tennessee Williams’ Letters to Donald Windham (which he is just now reading), Don, on the beach today, described Windham’s literary style as “exquisitely minimal.” A few moments later, a huge wave shot up the beach slope and drenched our blanket. A glorious day—the kind on which one can’t exactly feel old, only full of aches and stiffness. As I hobbled back, along familiar Mabery Road, where I’ve passed back and forth, drunk and sober, ever since I used to go swimming with the Viertel family in 1939, I met old Madge MacDonald, another survivor, and was complimented by her on my healthy looks. My survival reassures her, and yet, if I were to die, that would be another kind of reassurance—that she was going to live longer than anybody. As for my aches, they are comforting, in a way; they make me feel lazy and inclined to stretch out and doze. Gerald Heard had a dictum, of which I can’t exactly remember the wording—to the effect that the chief pleasure of old age is relief from pain. He put it like that because he loved pessimistic-sounding utterances. The statement in itself isn’t really pessimistic; all it means is that there is a deep pleasure in relaxation and relief from the feeling that it is one’s duty to do something or other. Also, let it never be forgotten, relief from pain is happiness, because happiness is our nature—except, one sometimes suspects, in the case of Jews. . . . Such happiness isn’t necessarily of an inferior kind.

  September 9. Today I’ve finished, though not properly polished, chapter 12. Eleven pages long, bringing the total revised manuscript up to page 138, which means that I’ve dropped four pages behind the first-draft manuscript.

  Waiting for Don to get back from his many chores to find if I shall have time to attend a party which is being held by Henry Jaglom56 against the Briggs initiative. It is to convince heterosexual liberals in show biz that they ought to oppose the initiative. Jaglom, a heterosexual Jew, says he is amazed to find how scared a lot of notoriously liberal actors are of attending a “pro-fag” party. I do feel I ought to go, if possible.

  September 10. I couldn’t go, because there was no way of communicating with Don and finding out when he was coming home. Then we had another dreary party—Jack and Jim, Gordon Hoban and Bill Franklin—to watch the first episode of the T.V. series based on Jim’s Paper Chase. It didn’t amount to much, but Jim reports this morning that it has been very well received. The party was dreary because three of the guests didn’t drink and because Bill, who did, is dreary anyhow.

  Stathis Orphanos, back from Greece, reports seeing Bill Caskey in Athens, drunk and belligerent and beat-up and with legs caked with dirt, because his water in the apartment had been cut off.

  Prema just sent me a book of spiritual talks by the Dutch swami Atulananda who died in India aged ninety-six. I think it’s going to be valuable for me in considering the later part of Swami’s life. He says: “When the mind is on the ordinary plane, then all, even the saints, are mere human beings and behave like ordinary people. Thus it is said that it is difficult to live with sages.”57 But, surely, the memory of the higher plane must, to some extent, affect their “ordinariness”?

  September 11 [Monday]. Talked to Robert Rauschenberg last night, at a party given for him in Venice, at Chuck Arnoldi’s studio. Rauschenberg reminded me so much of Tennessee, but louder, vulgarer. We laughed a lot—I out of embarrassment. Rauschenberg said, “It’s wonderful how much you can do with laughter,” which made him seem suddenly very shrewd.

  Dobbin got the week off to an auspicious start by remembering to call Natalie Leavitt early this morning, to ask her if she had seen one of the two small squares of black rubber which Kitty uses as grips for the barbells when he goes to the gym. She said no, she hadn’t. But then Dobbin found it wedged inside the rim of the cover of the washing machine. Triumph! Dobbin was kissed and hugged and made much of. But what will he lose or forget before the day’s out?

  September 12. While polishing chapter 12, I found that I dropped some more material and ended on page 137 instead of 138. Today, reading ahead through the first draft of the book, it seems to me that I shall have to cut a lot as I go along; far better to have the book shorter, unless the material is going to be really to the point and really about Swami and our relationship—nothing else has any place in it.

  Last night we had a goodbye supper with Gavin, who leaves tomorrow for Morocco. He had chosen to entertain us in an Algerian restaurant called Moun of Tunis—tacky and overpriced, with inferior food, tables too near together, seating uncomfortable. Jack Larson and Jim Bridges were with us. Jim has let himself get involved in the No on Briggs movement and now he’s a bit scared. He gave them a thousand dollars and appeared at that party and feels he’s a marked man. And Jack talked pessimistically about how rough the campaign is going to be, with the mafia and big business involved on Briggs’s side. He remarked that he’s worried because their house is made of wood; some hostile activist might set it on fire. Got drunk and depressed.

  September 13. (A big holdup here, because I noticed that the bottom has fallen out of the e on my typewriter, so had to switch on Don’s, and now, fuck it, Don’s ribbon is so faint that I’ll have to change it, but not yet.)

  Last night we had supper with Billy Al Bengston and Penny. Bob Graham was the only other guest. I have come around to liking him quite a lot, largely because he seems genuinely impressed by Don’s work.

  Billy showed us watercolors he did while in Hawaii. They seemed even better than usual, but this was partly because I had a sudden insight into the quality of Billy’s art in general. Can’t describe this, except by saying that it all seemed to relate to itself as one enormously long chain of variations on his themes. And the big red painting which was near the dining table seemed so power fully lively and exhilarat
ing that it became like a band playing loud brassy seaside music. I was drunk, yes; but drinking doesn’t ordinarily give me perceptions of this kind. It was as if I had been stoned.

  Couldn’t stop reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, which I got in the mail from the author yesterday. The mood of it, the kind of campy fun, is perfect of its kind. I kept thinking how Wystan would have loved it. Somehow, though so different, it made me think of the novels of Ada Leverson.

  Just changed the ribbon. Have been listening to the radio but no news so far about the threatened postal strike.

  September 14. Michael di Capua called this morning from New York, wanting to know when my Swami book would be finished. So I kind of promised the end of this year, which has now thrown me into a flap. Can I really manage that? Theoretically, yes— practically, I’m not sure. My “Muse” is such a bitch sometimes, and it knows that it has the whip hand.

  Also a call from James P. White. After all these years, his wife has suddenly become pregnant. And can he please name the child after me? He takes it for granted that it’ll be a boy, apparently. I had to say yes, of course, and was then told that the second name would be—Jules!

  September 15. Last night, we ate with Paul Sorel as his guests at La Ruche, surrounded by politely insolent Frog waiters—the only people with whom Paul seems truly at ease. He made one of his strange boasting self-deprecating speeches about how half of him is crazy or evil or something, and will spend absolutely any money it can get its hands on. This whole speech keeps bringing in Chris Wood, so that one feels his presence powerfully. Paul speaks with great affection of him, yet keeps pointing out that Chris really despised him and would only give him money in the form of tips, as it were, never in the form of, say, income property to provide for his future. Once, they decided to split up altogether and Chris gave him thirty thousand dollars. Paul spent it in a few months. Now, he seems to be getting through most of his available inheritance money, according to him only about twenty-nine thousand dollars remain; after that, he has absolutely nothing except the house, and his car. Today on the beach (which was glorious but already autumnal) I asked Don if he thought Paul is hoping to get us into the mood to help him when he is finally broke. Don said he didn’t think so but maybe; anyhow we ought not to give him a cent, although we could continue to buy him meals.

  Have just reread Gavin’s A Case for the Angels. It is actually the Case for Lambert versus Clint Kimbrough. I found it curiously depressing and lowering, although it’s so well done.

  September 16. Was so delighted when dear old Muhammad Ali won last night and became champion for the third time.58 What does one demand of a hero? That he shall be admired, prepared to risk his fame by doing something unpopular, that he shall be sexy, that he shall be a comedian, that he shall be vulnerable, losing sometimes as well as winning, that he shall have weaknesses, such as boasting, that he shall nevertheless not be corrupt.

  Running down to the beach, I noticed, as so often nowadays, the bad state of our hillside with its dangerous slippages, the bulge of the brick wall below our deck, and all the cracks. Thought, it’s like me, with my eye going dim and my head getting bald and my sore tongue and the tweaking pains in my bad knee. But the house alarms me more: it’s collapse seems a much more catastrophic event than my impending death.

  Reading Laurens van der Post’s Jung and the Story of Our Time. I think this is going to be really interesting, but his sentences are like long limp bits of wet string. Does he think it’s somehow insincere to write well?

  September 17. Amazing, what a block I have against getting on with this book. It’s a question of tone. I don’t know exactly the right tone of voice in which to narrate it. Never before have I been so aware of the truth of [Cyril] Connolly’s accusation that I desire to ingratiate myself with the reader. And yet, just because of that, I know that there is a danger in the opposite direction: The lady doth confess too much. ( Just as I was about to write this misquotation, a doubt struck me. I’d thought it was from Macbeth—no, Hamlet.59

  September 18. Last night we saw Days of Heaven, directed by Terrence Malick. The story lacks force because it is a heavy sex-drama in the Italian tradition, treated artily. The treatment, the artiness, in itself is beautiful—a shot of a train crossing a high bridge against the sky, the clouds of a thunderstorm over the prairie, a wineglass lying underwater in a stream—the first of these made me actually gasp out loud. The effect is curiously like something by Virginia Woolf, especially in Mrs. Dalloway. The trouble is that, if you attempt this, if you try to show all kinds of outside sights and sounds of nature surrounding the human drama, then you must somehow relate the whole thing to its parts—that’s the difference between art and real life. In real life, all the parts are interrelated, but not evidently—only by their existence within Brahman. . . . Still and all, this film was truly an experience, visually—otherwise it wouldn’t have made me write all this rather confused stuff.

  A glorious brilliant windy day. We ran down to the beach and went in the water.

  September 19. A hangover from Clytie’s birthday party last night combines with hot Santana weather to rob me of my strength. Only the ocean was bracingly cold. An interesting intimate talk with Don on the beach—he was in an unusually happy mood, saying that everything at that moment was perfect. I see now much more clearly why he needs someone like Bill Franklin, a sort of familiar; also I felt how heterosexual he is in his homo sexuality. We agreed that he had had only one boyfriend with a good character, Bill Bopp. Bill Franklin, says Don, is ugly, undersexed, Jewishly competitive, sorry for himself, always worried about his health; but Don feels he can connect with Bill (that’s the word he used) and he likes Bill’s ass. Don also said, “I couldn’t possibly be an artist in the way that David Hockney is.” He describes his being an artist at all as almost accidental; it arose out of an interest in people, not in art.

  Natalie was very drunk last night while cooking. I fear she may have smashed some more glasses. She always disarms us with her joy over Thaïs’s success. Thaïs is now to dance the lead in Death and the Maiden.60

  September 20. Another hot brilliant day, with the ocean water even colder. Walking back from the beach, I overtook a little blonde girl, five, six, maybe seven years old, pretty but unmistakably weird. She said “Hi,” I said “Hi.” She said, “I’m wearing two lots of clothes, I had a heart attack.” She was wearing some kind of a tank-top shirt with a jacket over it. She said, “It wasn’t really a heart attack,” and then mumbled something I couldn’t understand. Then we got to the house she was evidently living in, one of the smaller ones, on the south side of the street. She said, “Do you want to come into my house and do it?” Maybe this had some quite innocent meaning, which I’d missed by not having heard all of her dialogue. But I didn’t want to get involved, so gave her a smile and waved my hand and went on.

  September 21. We had a birthday party for Penny Little last night—her birthday is really on August 7, but she was away then in Hawaii. Except for Billy Al, all the guests were female, which made, for us, an agreeable change. The girls got together in a bunch and entertained each other merrily, with a certain amount of lesbian flirtation. Billy Al said to me, “Don’s twice the artist David is.” Don says that Billy Al is very shrewd—which I know— and that he sees into the real David, whose greatest inspiration is ambition.

  We scream at the neighbors’ dogs. Last night, being a bit drunk, we screamed a lot, at midnight, and this resulted in a furious call on my recording machine from a Mrs. Lawrence Davidson, who lives below at 242 Maybery Road. However, when I called her up today, she seemed quite on our side. Her bedroom is right next to the neighbors with the dogs and she hates them as much as we do. In fact, she contradicted herself completely. She promised to go round to the neighbors tonight and speak to them about the barking. I doubt if she has. Anyhow, the barking continues.

  Another wonderful beach morning today.

  September 22. A great “face the brute�
� drive this morning, against my accumulated mail. Not that I answered any of it, but by sorting it and tearing up quite [a] few letters, and noting that others could be answered by phone, I somehow reduced the pile from around fifty to around thirty.

  Worried in the night—I was awake an hour or two, unusual for me—over my book. Have I explained to the reader enough about Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, etc.—and, if I haven’t, does it matter?

  September 23. Worrying about the Swami book. To date, I have one hundred forty-two pages revised, which leaves one hundred eight pages of the first-draft typescript. Of these, the last forty-eight pages consist almost entirely of direct transcription from my diaries, so that very little alteration will be necessary. The real work will be on the next sixty pages, and even these contain a fair amount of transcription. So courage, Dobbin. Whether the manuscript will add up to being a book, that’s another question.

  This weather is too hot for me, I rather hate it, it is getting me down. Rectal bleeding this morning; hope it’s just a pile.

  September 24. The “rectal bleeding” was merely the coloration caused by eating beets, it seems!

  Very hot today, maybe the hottest of this hot spell. Decided not to go to the beach; a hot Sunday is intolerable there. But I often think romantically, on such weekends, that, by the law of averages, there must at least be two or three couples of boys who will meet for the first time and plunge into a real love affair, maybe the affair of their lives.