1:15 p.m. A cloudy, cool day which looks as if it will be wet, but remains dry. I have spent the morning reading: Ulysses, The Long Weekend and perusing my last reading notes/underlines of Proust.
I
have wanted to make a note of the buzzing hum of the lime trees. Do the bees or flies prefer them to other
trees?
The
birds as usual are chirping loudly. Wimbledon
comes on at noon, I have not turned it on, it is somewhat addicting. I seem to recall, whether independently or
through my mother I can't say, that we arrived in June 1958 during Wimbledon.
Later
in the day: Noted last night reading
introduction to A Woman in White
(Wilkie Collins): Dickens is the genius/artist. Collins the
craftsman/storyteller, per Julian Symons.
Why? Because Dickens has symbols
and Collins is stuck with pure storytelling.
We
watched Agassi vs. Becker for awhile till it was called. June was the hottest since 1976, third
hottest in the century, but the weather is quickly changing. Saturday with the J., David remarked how nice
the weather was for the big Cambridge University graduation day.
Reading
somewhere recently: optimistic people do not make good writers, a writer needs
that dark side! But what about mystery?
Reading
Gore Vidal's review of Montaigne's new translation. Montaigne wrote essays to himself, no one
else to write to. I feel I should be
doing the same.
10:48
p.m.: Last night dreamt about
moving. It occurred to me this morning
that dreams are not so much wish fulfillment as means of working out the
problems that persist in our world. When
we first arrived here I dreamt of lawyering for up to six months. Perhaps my dreams were trying to resolve my
lack of purpose in my new world. Without
law, what was I?
I
have finished Ulysses with the help
of my guide book. One can't help but
relate to, be impressed by the mental gymnastics, games, tricks, plain
erudition of Joyce. He has indeed
created a real world of the Dublin of Bloom and a real person in Bloom
himself. It is a worthwhile sign that I
stuck with it. I enjoyed the games the
most, then again, I found myself laughing out loud sometimes at the comedy. The only book I've ever done that before with
was Huckleberry Finn. That's good
company! How often, in the last month,
have I found myself talking to myself as I walked through London, stream of
conscious thoughts a la L. Bloom! We all
see these things going on about us, but it is only when they are singled out by
the writer that we notice they go on (which is not to say that others might not
have done so as well, though it is hard to believe anyone could have done it as
thoroughly as Joyce).
There
were many times I found expressions used in the book, which I would have
thought of more recent origin.
"What's bred in the bone," was one and I know there are
more.
What
to make, however, of a novel which requires a guidebook? I'm sure there is a place for that. Ironic that Joyce elevates Bloom to Everyman,
the hero as Everyman, yet Everyman would not read the book. Yet that is more the function of the 20th
Century than simply Joyce.
I
did tire of the continual attacks on the Church and Jesus, etc., yet I say that
with a post Vatican II mentality. Church
going and beliefs in 1904 were a lot different and I suspect there were things
to complain about, yet, while religion and Jesus and his richness in symbolism
(in His life, meaning, etc.) offer good fodder for the inventive novelist, I
can't help but think that a lot of the barbs were cheap shots, perhaps meant to
show off Joyce's wizardry as much as anything else.
When
I think about other novels, I see a particular scene or plot, but Ulysses seems
to be life itself, not just a part.
Thursday
2 July. Balanced check book at Barclays
and Federal Express came with Valley Bank and other documents. Martina vs. Monica on Wimbledon. Cloudy.
10
p.m. Looking at an old guide to
London. I felt as I remembered feeling
in Las Vegas: London is the greatest city in the world for me. I'm not sure what there is about it. Perhaps it all ties back into my 8th year
when I spent time here, but I look at the old pictures and I feel connected to
this city for some reason. It's not quite
maudlin tonight, just a matter of fact.
I love it as a place!
Friday
3 July. 8 a.m. Cloudy, cold.
I
had an interesting dream last night and have interrupted my reading of The Woman in White to describe it. It was a reunion of Peter M. and myself. Fran was in it as well. In one part I was supposed to go to court,
drive to Bakersfield for a bankruptcy court hearing, find out what happened to
all this missing money (Robert Maxwell type).
I had booked a room at the Union Plaza, was waiting for J. Joseph.
Somewhere
in the hotel, I think, I ran into Peter, perhaps in the bar. We got to talking. Eventually I made it late to the court
hearing. John O. and Tom B. were there
(two good, antagonistic litigators), finding out all the information I needed
to know.
Back
at the hotel, Fran had ordered a hamburger and spilled juice on her clothes.
Sometime
in all this Peter and I were lying on the bed in the hotel room. The room looked like his room in Malibu, but
there was a double bed, not twins like his room. Anyway, we were just lying there (I think he
was in the covers, I wasn't; there was nothing sexual involved). I think I must have gotten around to asking
him about his father and I was very surprised when he told me, with no hint of
ambivalence, "Don't ever ask me about my father!"
I
was surprised because I had always thought what a great guy Mr. M. was, hanging
around all the time, the coach of the baseball team, etc. He seemed like a great guy to have for a
father. Yet this was, apparently, the
solution to Peter's mystery: he never liked his father, cared only for his weak
mother (who, I was proud to tell Peter, still spoke with my own mother). When I understood this, somehow I was better
able to understand Peter, to realize that my ideas about him all those/these
years, even though I had even lived with him, had been wrong. I had misunderstood him. He was a pathetic, misunderstood kid,
deserving of my compassion. I no longer
felt angry, frustrated at him for having abandoned me (or was it I him?) back
in high school. I felt as though, in the end, we could be friends again.
9:45
a.m. The rain has begun, as promised,
giving the men's semifinalists at Wimbledon (three Americans: Agassi, McEnroe,
Sampras, and a Croatian whose name has too many i's in it) a rest. Cricket as well at "Old Trafford,"
which I think is near Manchester.
Occasionally
I still get renewed reawakenings of being in England for the first time. This morning it was my towel which smelled,
for the first time, as I remember a towel smelling in England a long time ago.
Also
thinking this morning how this year I have had a chance to relive an event in
my early life, living in England, and that perhaps what I should do next is to
pick the next thing to relive. What
would that be? Fresh from a passage of
Wilkie Collins about the first time a person of the opposite sex stirs you, I
thought, fleetingly, not seriously, I should go out and fall in love again,
then realized I have the opportunity to fall in love with Cathy and the
children anew, almost every day.
Perhaps,
like England in its place setting, I need to relive living at the beach. The thought of living closer to the ocean is
tempting; very. With all the threats and
fears of earthquakes, living in California may, in some slight way, be like
living in England. Here one makes
hardship and restraint a part of one's life by choice or temperament (the
famous "stiff upper lip"): we have seen it this year with the
continual threats of IRA bombs and fires (incendiary devices). California has the constant threat of
earthquakes, indeed, quite a few one this past year; yet life goes on.
There
is, of course, an obvious difference. I
couldn't help but notice the earthquake kits last time I was in Laguna
Beach. It only makes sense, of course,
to be prepared in an emergency, yet I can't help thinking there is a more
Hollywood-like air of concern about earthquakes in California (they are
celebrities!), whereas IRA bombs are more a part of the daily routine here (no
trash bins, don't leave suitcases unattended, etc.). Celebrities here are looked down upon, except
in the tabloids!
At
sea,
Adrift
in mystery.Fog banks obscure
All but
Our tiny circle
Of water,
Where you and I
Go about our daily routine,
Searching the sky for
Signs of life,
And keeping our dingy
Relatively free from flooding.
All life to me, the daily small things to the imponderable questions of immortality, are wreathed and cloaked in mystery. If I am to pursue this craft of writing it must be to explore these mysteries, to learn what I can from them, solve them when I can, appreciate them when I can't.
I
am, if not desperate, certainly inspired on to complete this journal
today. Tomorrow we leave to go to Lyme
Regis and these Italian paper books do not travel well at all, in spite of the
leather back. So I hate to take it on
even one more trip. Instead I will bring
my new Smythson's diary, like the one I purchased at Asprey, but bigger and the
same price, with a leather cover and even nicer, white paper.
I
told myself this morning that the reason I have not completed the writing I
wanted to complete (whatever that may have been) is that this trip is very much
a part of my education, and I am still absorbing experiences about which to
write, but that is not exactly true. It
is the formation of a central theme or idea that I seem to lack.
Cathy
and I watched a show on television about a countess, a refugee from Russian
invasion after World War II, and her daughter.
The daughter thought the mother had secrets, the daughter travelled back
to East Germany and saw her own grave, i.e., she was not really the
daughter. Afterwards I was struck by the
variety of stories in Europe. There are
so many different kinds of cultures, each with its own history, its own
home. People are pushed about, forced to
flee home for various reasons. I suppose
we have some of that in the U.S., but I don't get the sense that I do
here. People do flee their homes in
South or Central America, Haiti, Asia, Africa, etc. and move to the U.S., but
it must be that the U.S. seems to be a whole, with people coming into it from
outside. "Safe" countries such
as Britain (a place to which one can flee in refuge) seems to be only a part of
the whole. Here I identify with a part
of the whole (Britain vs. Europe) whereas at home I identify with the
whole. The invasion of refugees is from
without, not from within as it is here.
Read
a terrific article in First Things magazine by Joyce Little, entitled,
"Naming Good and Evil." It seems the problem with our age is that we
have displaced God with ourselves, per Pope John Paul II. Little uses the example of feminism and goes
back to Eve in the garden. Man is made
male/female in the image and likeness of God.
What is that image? (Man is a
sacrament in creation being in image of God.)
Only God can say, because only God knows God; man does not know God,
only His handiwork. The tree of
knowledge of good and evil which Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat is the
attempt by man to name good and evil, rather than rely on God to name that for
us. Thus, when Adam and Eve eat from the
tree, they take on themselves a function which God reserved for himself.
There
is of course much more to the article, but a problem that occurs to me is that
we must continue to rely on the word of men/women for guidance on the further
revelation of the image of God. We are
no longer in the garden of Eden, where God walks and talks with us. What, for example, does God (read Jesus)
teach us about birth control? That
answer has to be extrapolated from the principles we learn from Jesus'
teaching, principles that can be debated, misconstrued, etc. There is room to maneuver!
The
article goes on to conclude that many people simply turn to themselves for
answers rather than to religion. I'm not
quite sure it's as simple as the author points out. Things are not as bad as she says. Most people have a better idea of God than
just an easy life. (I think she is
specifically writing about America.)
(Makes
me think: exactly what message do our children get from us about God? There is church and "love" and
heaven and dead souls to pray for, but is that enough?)
I
agree that people have internalized God quite a bit. There are a lot of experts out there and we
don't turn to religious authorities as much as we used to for advice. Yet how many priests have we heard talk about
birth control at Engaged Encounter weekends, and almost every one of them
seemed to have a different answer!
What
Little writes about is not just "God is dead," (she talks of
Nietzsche), but one of the problems of living in the 20th Century: everything
is exposed for what it is. The Church,
for example, is "exposed" in its leadership and even in its sacred
texts as being lead and authored by human beings (the feminists would say
"men" though the real quality is simply that of being a fallible
human creature) who sometimes do wrong.
Everything is put into question when we realize that people, including
church people, make mistakes. To solve
this, we turn inside to our own personal understanding of God, trusting our own
guidance system (homing devices) rather than relying upon a demonstrably
fallible institution, which sometimes gives conflicting answers.
Is
it better for us to follow the sometimes confusing, often hard, sometimes
internally inconsistent voice of authority of the Church? Or are we better off following our own
ideas? It would seem that, except in
rare cases, we are better off following the voice of authority. We have a tendency to get lost too easily when
we are on our own! Yet does that mean
that whenever we do follow off on our own we err, or, worse yet, sin?
Birth
control is a good example, not as simple as other "evils." Whether doing good or refraining from doing
evil, moral decisions are difficult: it is hard to be loving, to go to mass
every Sunday, to live a life of frugality in order to be more charitable to
those who have less; on the other hand it is easy to recognize that these
goals, while hard to accomplish, are not really subject to second
guessing. They sort of flow from
Christ's message and the ten commandments.
The practice of birth control offers (and perhaps I delude myself) ends
which may be good: to ask God for less, to discipline our lives, to take better
care of our planet, to take better care of our mothers and fathers who must
care for these children. These would
seem to be good ends in themselves. Must
the act of being open to creation prevail?
Or is it that sex without a proper respect for life and greater material
wealth are tendencies which must be avoided no matter the cost?
The
Church's teachings in this area (and perhaps others as well, e.g., women
priests, celibacy, though I am not at all convinced the latter is a teaching in
error) shows how the possibility of interpretation can lead to challenges to
authority, to a feeling that my own judgment can be as fallible or infallible
as the Church's. I'm not sure of the
answer, except lots of prayer. The
Church keeps to main line areas, because it knows the dangers when we give
ourselves too much freedom, just like a parent will insist that a child not
drink, smoke or engage in sexual activities until he or she is old enough to
understand what he or she is undertaking.
Then
again, using my example, children do grow up.
We do become mature Christians and should be able to have greater
freedom. Does the danger of the claim to
superior knowledge, Gnosticism, mean that the Church must never let us be
responsible?
The
road is fraught with danger. It is
worthwhile to remember, however, that when we follow the Church with a trusting
attitude, we are acting as Jesus told us, when He said we must be like little
children and trust in the Father. That
is a hard, very hard, thing to do. We
constantly want to take charge of things ourselves; fortunately it takes me a
long time to get moving, so I tend to remain where I am, believing that God
will lead me where He would have me.
England came at the right time.
There will be other changes, I suspect, in time--His, not mine.
2:45
p.m. It has been a cloudy, sometimes
rainy, sometimes bright day. I went to
mail letters around twelve and smelled the damp, fertile smell of England that
seems to only come in warm weather, a smell that I infrequently sense, no doubt
because of the drought (which I can now mention, without smiling, as I first
did after moving here from the desert!), but a smell which seems to have a
place in England a long time ago, some place near the smell of diesels and the
towel I smelled today and the electric/damp concrete ozone smell I smell in the
Underground.
To
add a thought regarding trusting in God: there are times when Jesus acted as a
man, perhaps not himself always trusting in God. For example, when he threw the money changers
out of the temple or made water into wine.
He didn't always say, "It's God's will" or "It'll take
care of itself." In one case he
became angry and in another he acceded to his mother's requests.
In
Jesus' own relationship to the Law, he reinterpreted it through - Himself
(e.g., sabbath rules), and sometimes went against established practice. I don't think we are quite capable of doing
the same thing ourselves (i.e., interpreting the Church's laws through
ourselves), yet Jesus calls us to love above all. Recognizing that we do not always act in/with
the purest of notions (even when we do, are we right in our interpretation of
what love means?), there seems at least room enough to think for ourselves.
Lot
of rain today. I don't think Wimbledon
ever got started. Watched an old (1938)
movie called "Bank Holiday" and went running again. Not too much else besides journal. BBQ hamburgers for dinner, Seymour kids over.
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