Evening – read some poems of Piontek in German, with difficulty but satisfaction on the relatively cool porch.
June 10, 1966
I can be wrong and wrong and wrong. She is right and true in asking me to stop analyzing and figuring and running the risk of misunderstanding her. She tells me over and over that she loves me totally with a love she has never known before for anyone and a love that she could not possibly give to anyone else, and in my right mind I know she means it and that I feel the same towards her. Scruples about my vocation and worries about preserving my old identity are the two things that get in the way, for this love will eventually change me completely and is changing me already, and unconsciously with great anguish sometimes, I resent it. Yet last night before the Bl[essed] Sacrament I was realizing the thing to be is without care and without too many preconceived notions and completely open to risk. Her love is not just “another question” and “another problem” – it is right at the center of all my questions and problems and right at the center of my hermit life.
June 12, 1966
I wonder what all my reasonings and resolutions amount to!
Yesterday I had to go to Louisville for a bursitis shot in the elbow. M. and I had arranged with Jim Wygal that we would borrow his office and get together there, which we did with a bottle of champagne. [ … ] When I got home I called her and we were talking again, foolishly of possibilities, living together, my leaving here, “marrying” her etc. But it is all preposterous. Society has no place for us and I haven’t the gall it takes to fight the whole world particularly when I don’t really want married life anyway; I want the life I have vowed.
This morning I woke up (after a night of light and fitful sleep) without self-hate or undue guilt but with the realization that something has to be done. We can’t go on like this. I can’t leave her. I have to try to live the life I have chosen. Yet I love her.[ … ]
I can’t face the business of a complete break (which in the circumstances would be very bad for her though much easier in the long run for me). I love her completely, as I have never loved anyone in my life. Yet I know this love means only suffering for us. The only thing to grasp hold of in it all is that it is at least a common human reality and not just something in the head.
June 14, 1966
Yesterday the abbot came home. Last night I went down to the Steel building to call M. Bro. Clement was there and said Bro. G. in the gatehouse had listened in on one of my many calls to M. (Thursday Night? Sunday morning – the worst!!) and had reported the matter to Dom James. I don’t know how much he knows but I know he is mad and is waiting to give me the devil about it, which is only natural. I have to face the fact that I have been wrong and foolish in all this. Much as I loved M., I should never have let myself be carried away to become so utterly imprudent. But I suppose I knew that – my time was limited and she loved me so much I wanted to respond all I could … Well, it is clearly over now. I called her once more (she was desolate and so was I). She said, “I had the most terrible feeling something was wrong when I was waiting for you to call …. Will we ever see each other again? … What will I do without you? … How unfair it is, even inhuman ….” But we have both anticipated this. However, the results may be very bad if they reported some of our frankest conversations!! God knows what the abbot knows! I will soon find out I imagine!
In any case, from what I have been through since Saturday, I certainly realize the real spiritual danger I have got into. Things have really got close to going wrong and it is providential that everything has been blocked at the moment. Perhaps it is saving me from a real wreck. Jim Wygal on the phone Saturday was saying “Be careful you don’t destroy yourself!” He is perhaps more right than I thought at the time. Hope I can see him about it.
Decided the best thing was to own up and face Dom James (about the phone calls only!)12 before he summoned me in. So I did. He was kind and tried to be understanding to some extent – his only solution was of course “a complete break.” Wanted to write to M. himself but I refused – that would be disastrous – and he does not know who she is and I don’t think he needs to know. He was hinting around about how lonely I have been in the hermitage, how I ought to come down and sleep in the infirmary etc. But I refused. The only concrete solution we arrived at was that I should go back to ecumenical work in the retreat house – as a cure for loneliness!! – but I suppose some constructive contacts with others would be a good thing. Obviously though he thinks the hermitage has been too much for me and has made me too vulnerable. He did, however, welcome the idea of talking to the ecumenical groups, Protestants, Buddhists etc.
It is a beautiful afternoon. I said Vespers and walked in the silent grass looking at the clouds and all the essence of my love for M. was there (“Every beautiful day is our invention”).13 I know her loneliness, but I also trust she will have the grace to have this same sense of acceptance and peace and deep union now that the inevitability of separation is clear. I think we will continue to love each other on a very full free and spontaneous level in our heart. If it had gone on as it was going there would have been nothing but turmoil and confusion, I think. Now we have to be detached and freed from our compulsions, and yet we can surely love more perfectly and more peacefully.
Later afternoon – I went for a walk out to St. Edmund’s field after work (study of an old book on Dervishes on 2-week loan from the Library of Congress) and looked at the tall woods and thought of M., perhaps out walking by the grotto after work, thinking of me thinking of her lonely. How miserably life can treat people. The great bronze carpet of the wheat-field. The flies. The wind. Our love. The abbot would not give me the thick letter he recognized to be hers even though he could not open it (“conscience matter” – yet he might anyway if I know him!). I think of her again tonight, after reading a poem of Heinz Piontek of a parting on a snowy night, and the wind leaning against the girl’s tears!
Lately borrowed from Fr. Chrysogonus records of Joan Baez (especially “Silver Dagger”!!) and Bob Dylan, which I liked a lot (“Tombstone Blues” and “There is something happening here and you don’t know what it i-i-s, Do you, Mister Jones?”). Very pointed and articulate.
It is good enough for me not to resist my solitude – it is like normal. But she does not know how. How can she accept solitude? Especially if she thinks I am accepting it? Yet shall I resist uselessly when my solitude is really closer to her than my resistance? I drink iced Xtian [Christian] Brothers brandy out of an old marmalade jar: Where is my love? My dear love to whom I cannot even write now! Damn the abbot’s compassion for my “powerful emotions”! He enjoyed not giving me the letter. Yet nonetheless I am better and freer in solitude, total and accepted, including loneliness and sorrow for M. – I am much more separated from everyone else, alien to the community. Very alone in the field. Invisible. “Like a rolling stone.” M., my darling, where are you? The abbot’s secretary averts his eyes in embarrassment when we meet. The gatehouse brothers smile much too politely. I am known as a monk in love with a woman.
I am going to write maybe a new book now, in a new way, in a new language too. What have I to do with all that has died, all that belonged to a false life? What I remember most is me and M. hugging each other close for hours in long kisses and saying, “Thank God this at least is real!”
June 15, 1966
“In order to untie a knot you must first find out how the knot was tied” (Buddha). This morning for the first time, really since going to the hospital, I have real inner freedom and solitude – I love M. but in a different way, peacefully and without disturbances or inner tension. I feel that once again I am all here. I have finally returned to my place and to my work, and am beginning once again to be what I am. It has been a time of gruesome yet beautiful alienation. Had a hard restless night, kept waking up thinking of her, of what she might be feeling and suffering (I am worried, knowing her intensity) and then realizing my complete aloneness – and the solitude of the woods all around me,
but realizing it as right.
“The self is the relationship to oneself,” Kierkegaard. But not prescinding to relationship to the other seen as oneself. I need badly to hear from her and know how she feels – I can guess. It is inhumane to forbid even letters.
A good morning, cool and free. I can at least read again. Finished [Robert C.] Tucker’s excellent book Philosophy and Myth in K[arl] Marx [London, 1964] – material for conferences. Trouble with arm still makes typing hard but I will get at these notes.
My mind is coming back to life. Ambiguity and illusion in the love M. and I have for each other. Deep down it is a true, simple, excellent love – a material passion that is valid and profoundly reciprocated. But our compulsions have made it much more complex and ambiguous. For instance now – in our separation, I know it is a matter almost of life and death for her to want me to be not liberated, to need her in anguish. Hitherto I think I have made things worse for myself and her by dutifully complying with this when I did not really mean it in that way. It is much better to love freely and be able to do something else – and in fact she has had plenty to do with her work, her social life, her company with the other nurses etc. I have hurt myself by needing her so much and so impractically in this solitude, instead of loving her more simply. She has I think grossly exaggerated her “need” and love for me as a kind of perfect being. Yet I know too she sees me clearly. But she has been very possessive – naturally. So have I. The fact remains that this separation is cruel for both of us, but in different ways, not in exactly the same way. And we have different defenses. For me solitude is not a problem but a vocation. For her it tends to be the problem. And she knows that for me it is a solution. Added cruelty! Yet by it I can perhaps bring her some hidden spiritual help. At any rate I want to.
Jubilant evening – Jim Wygal came out unexpectedly and we had a good afternoon talking about “the problem” which was worrying him. But in the end we went over to New Haven and from a liquor store called M. at the hospital (after failing to get her on the phone). M. was jubilant – said she had been terribly lonely, loved me more than ever, wanted to see me, etc. It was a short call but jubilant and good and I was delighted to hear the life and joy in her voice and to hear her say over and over “I love you.” She got my letters today and I was able to give some practical information (about the uselessness of writing me here etc.).
On the way home, in the brilliant evening and the sunlit knobs Jim said, “You are on a collision course,” but I did not care. Still he is right, I must be careful. And this does not fit in with my life! But as I said it is a question of tapering off, gradually.
June 16, 1966
“Il n’était pas mon père, il était avec les autres [He was not my father, he was with the others],” says Meursault in Camus’ L’Étranger [The Stranger], speaking of the prison chaplain.
June 17, 1966. F[east] of the Sacred Heart
A magnificent day, bright yet cool, you can walk in the sun without getting up a sweat (as I just did, saying office and looking out over the brilliant valley). Went down to concelebrate early, then came back and spent the whole morning on a slow reading of The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus) which I shied away from before. Now it is just right, just what I need, suits me perfectly for I see my vocation to be an absurd man if ever there was one! Or at least to try to think in some such honest terms.
Yesterday I was forbidden absolutely to try to call M., write her a letter or any contact like that. I am glad I got in that last call the evening before. I wonder what she thinks and feels – I can guess. But it is terrible not to hear the sound of her voice at all or to read a letter of hers. This is bad enough when I have already had two calls this week, three including Sunday. What will it be when there are no calls for days – no calls or letters ever?
June 19, 1966. III Sunday after Pentecost
Again cool, almost cold. The Hammers came yesterday. Last night could not sleep, thinking of M. But things are better. And got up, went out, looked at the stars, called on the Name – sense of presence, totality, peace. What is there to look for or to yearn for but all reality here and now in whatever I am?
“Who is like unto God?” The secret of knowing that there is none like Him and of disposing my whole thoughts and being in accordance with this secret. The long labor of getting back to this center. Helped by a return to [Shaikh Ahmad al’] Alawi – contact also with F.S. [Frithjof Schuon]. (Letter from [Marco] Pallis yesterday.) My solitude has to mean what it really means! It has to become once again totally sincere – or if it has never been so, it must become so now.
“To live without appeal” says Camus: i.e. without resorting to calling on God. And yet it is less a contradiction than it seems. To invoke Him only is to invoke No-thing and to have no visible, definable, limited appeal. To call upon everything – reality itself, such as, in some sense indecipherable.
The great and deliberate flaw in Camus – a flaw on which he insists – is the “ethic of quantity.” Certainly this is decisive for our time – perhaps the only way of not being quixotic (the repetition of the absurd in complete lucidity – Don Juan – is non-quixotic). This I cannot accept. I’d rather fight windmills. But am I fighting them? Or does it come back to the same thing – and to the fact that “knowing oneself to be mortal” is in fact a disguised return to quality! That is the ambiguity in Camus and La Peste [The Plague] proves it. (Sisyphus is by no means final!)
The desert landscape in Camus – the hidden Islamism.
Finished Sisyphus in a rush, finally bored by it.
June 22, 1966
Hot. Tired. Valley full of heat and evening mist. A loud pump chattering by itself. I realize wearily how wrong I have been. How mistaken. Not that I regret loving M. – it has been beautiful, even though mixed up – but I still see I never should have become involved in such a thing in the first place. The whole seriousness of my own life is in question – I suppose I should not be surprised at that! To realize how much of a phoney I am. But I might as well face it and try to mend matters. We have been straight with each other and I think we have not hurt each other, though we have had our compulsions. Very understandable ones. I see her very clearly and love her as she is, love her more because of her frailties. I hope she is not hurt and suffering now. Have no idea how she is reacting, as I cannot contact her. Very tempted to try and phone her again, but it would be disastrous, and what’s the use? The whole thing has to be given up. Only I don’t want her to hurt necessarily.
June 25, 1966
Dream – “another” girl. I am supposed to date her soon but now she is in the hospital. I am talking to her mother (a heavy mother – battle-axe type), not interested in any of them much. But then someone suggests we go and see this girl in the hospital and I feel an inner awakening of interest and love, and know that briefly seeing her will awaken in us both a deeper rapport. I then wake up thinking – but this is another, not M., and go back to thinking consciously of M. with a little guilt. Is it another? Imagery later – after difficulty in starting –
I see a tangle of dark briars and light roses. My attention singles out one beautiful pink rose, which becomes luminous, and I am much aware of the silky texture of the petals. My Mother’s face appears behind the roses, which vanish!
Also in there somewhere a student nurse who came to see me briefly in hospital one day when I was preparing to go out for a walk. I was short and rude with her.
Today I go in for X-rays. Exactly 3 months since the operation. Am not supposed to see M., but I think she may come and meet me at the doctor’s office, in which case I will give her “Midsummer Diary” (practically a book, I wrote it for her this last week).14
And then it will have to be clear that we can’t see each other any more, at least now. And that I can’t write or call. (Though I still think before God that in a real emergency, if charity really demands it, I should simply ignore the prohibitions. But it is a delicate question to know when it is really necessary.) After communion and Ma
ss yesterday it was as if I were told firmly “Do what you think right and trust in me!” Temptation? I still have to be extremely careful. I am in bad shape due to all this affair and have to get back, with difficulty and struggle, to what I ought to be as far as discipline goes. Prayer etc.
Began the gospel of Mark. Very moved by the first 10 or 15 lines – up to “repent and believe the good news!” So I begin again.
I realize that what is most wrong in my relationship with M. now is that I no longer trust her fully, and this may gravely affect my attitude – it may even make me unconsciously try to defend myself by insincerity and evasion. God help me and prevent me from this!
Came upon [Eugenio] Montale’s magnificent poem on the sea of ancient wisdom, which sums up exactly my task. (Antico, sono ubriacato dalla voce [Ancient one, I am intoxicated by the voice] … )
… Tu m’hai detto primo
che il piccino fermento
Learning To Love Page 12