Liberation (77 page)

Don is drawing Michael Moriarty. We had supper with him last night and gave him the
Meeting
play to read. We are hoping to lure him into the film.

 

June 22.
Today, Michael Moriarty told me on the phone that he wants to play Oliver in
Meeting
. But that he wants to get the play put on and do that before he does the film. He wants to do the play either in New York or London; he mentioned London first. Says he feels that he can only prepare himself for the film by acting in the play. He is a bit grand about it all but he does seem genuinely enthusiastic about the whole project. I have already told Ismail and Jim Ivory about this. I think Ismail is chiefly worried lest he and Jim get pushed out of the play-and-film deal by middlemen. They have finished their work on
The Wild Party
and are now off on vacation. They were both very pleased and excited about Moriarty. So am I.

Don doesn't know yet, because he went back to Connecticut the day before yesterday. Bryan Forbes wanted him to draw more portraits and also to do some more drawing on camera. When he called me after arrival he was very disgusted because they had put him in a motel, miles from anywhere. His only amusement: reading the first volume of Dodie Smith's autobiography.

There are lots more little details but maybe I'll put them in in a day or two, because right now I should gradually get ready for a dinner party at which Tony Richardson, Neil Hartley and Hugh Wheeler will be present.

 

June 25.
The only “little detail” I can remember now is that shortly before midnight on June 20 there was an apparent earthquake shock; not a big one, but the house gave quite a shudder. Later, Cal. Tech. stated that this shock had
not
registered on the seismograph. So the papers called it a mystery shock. There were two others I didn't feel.

As for the party referred to above, it was given by Alan Shane and Norman Sunshine at their house on the top of a hill . . . overlooking Rock Hudson, which gives you a rough idea how high it is. I think Shane and Sunshine are a pair of gracious livers and ashtray emptiers; they start tidying the place up almost before you've left the room. Hugh Wheeler had come to Los Angeles for the opening of
A Little Night Music
. He was a bit greyer but as charming as ever. I find it impossible to have an intimate conversation with him unless we're alone together. It's something to do with our both being English. Tony was a little bit absent. He's worried about himself. The doctor—to whom he went supposing he might have rectal clap—told him that he didn't have clap but did have a cyst which may have to be cut out.

The day before yesterday, I got up early and left in the car at 7:10 a.m. It was a perfect cool blue morning. The road was fairly empty and the dreamy flat ocean had that beautiful Californian look of remoteness, far-stretchingness. I made japam nearly all of the way to Montecito. The mantra soon began to say itself aloud until I became quite hoarse and had to switch to saying it mentally, lest I should lose my voice before my afternoon talk. I was in a good mood, no hate fantasies, no anxieties, nothing but happy thoughts, chiefly about my darling, including memories of him— as for instance when I passed the Point Mugu state beach (now unrecognizable) and remembered that first outdoor lovemaking in the cove.

Reached the Sarada Convent just around nine, too late for breakfast with the nuns but not too late to be given some, as I'd hoped. Saw Swami briefly. He was constipated and uneasy in his room—he now dislikes spending a night anywhere except his room at Vedanta Place. He gave his lecture sitting down and in his western clothes; he says that he is apt to trip over his gerua robe while walking from the car into the temple. He looked marvellously remote and carven and Chinese, one eye nearly closed. But then he was funny and we laughed. At the end, after pronouncing the formal blessing, he blessed us all and then made a gesture toward the shrine, saying, “Who spoke through me.” I didn't find this particularly mysterious but several people did and asked me what exactly
had
he said. I think they supposed it was a question—that Swami was asking, as a ventriloquist's puppet might, which of his manipulators had made him speak.
Honestly
! Swami didn't feel up to seeing me afterwards. But Krishna sent me away happy by giving me such a deep smile and warm handshake. I felt at that moment that he really loved me.

Then I went to speak at the writers' conference which was being held at the Cate School, up in the back country, looking out onto the mountains of the Los Padres forest. Ray Bradbury was there, acting youthful in shorts; I'm fond of him. Also James Michener,
¹⁷⁰
rather professiorial but trying to be friendly. We embarrassed the living shit out of each other, and I think my talk shocked him. It was questions and answers. I have the impression that I was quite good, an A minus. It was very hot. One of the disadvantages of being so frank about one's queerness is that everybody expects you to leer at attractive boys, so you try not to, out of perversity. There was one in the front row. He sprawled right back, wearing almost nonexistent shorts, with his legs naked to the crotch and wide apart. Whenever he asked a question, I had to keep my eyes high by a conscious effort of will.
¹⁷¹

The drive home was unpleasant as I neared Los Angeles. The San Fernando valley was oven temperature, with a fierce hot wind ruffling the golden teddy-bear hills. Scarcely was I home when Don called from Connecticut and then Michael Moriarty arrived with his girlfriend, Anne Martin(?). She was friendly but struck me as a bit arrogant, with a look of Princess Kelly; she's a career girl, an executive in the telephone company. Much talk about
Meeting
. Moriarty is fairly silly and self-absorbed but I still like him and, what's infinitely more important, still believe in him.

This morning, for the first time this summer, I went in the ocean. First I had to clear the path below the house, it's so overgrown that you can hardly get through; but I had to be careful to leave it still looking jungly, as a deterrent to trespassers.

In a letter from Rolf Ekman, my Swedish professor fan, a perfect specimen of the Lord-giveth-and-Lord-taketh-away type of compliment: “In my opinion they should have given you the Nobel prize—many who got it were not so worthy of it as you. Or perhaps share it with some other British or American novelist. Such as Angus Wilson?”

 

June 28.
Angel is coming back today, I hope. He should be on the 2:25 plane from New York. This morning I got up early and inscribed all the uninscribed books of mine that I have given him; he was complaining that there were so many I hadn't written in. But how impossible it is to write anything that doesn't sound stupid or false or indecent. Inscriptions are for The Others.

In Ezra Pound's
Cantos
, there is a reference to the green flash; Canto 100: “a green yellow flash after sunset.” So he saw it too! I've nearly finished reading right through the
Cantos
. I only read them on the toilet seat. They are perfect for making you shit, because they give you a feeling of pleasant apprehension. It's the way I can imagine the Ancient Mariner talking.

I hear from Jack Larson that Jim Bridges went off to Spain to join Peter Viertel, either yesterday or the day before. Jack was rather bitchy, saying that
White Hunter
has nothing about Huston in it, only about Peter. And implying that the script Peter wrote is unusable.

Bob Adjemian told me that Swami's dismissal of one of the nuns—I think I heard all about it at the time, but I forget—had “turned the society upside down.”
¹⁷²
We were discussing (the day before yesterday) the peculiar behavior of the enlightened. Pavitrananda is at the center now and not looking nearly as ill as I'd feared, from the accounts; he has had two operations. Thank God, Swami has decided that it will be too hot and tiring to go to Trabuco on the Fourth, so I won't have to either. Swami said that, when he told Pavitrananda this, Pavitrananda “jumped with joy.”

Went to supper with the Hustons on the 25th. Tim Durant
¹⁷³
was there. At seventy-four he had just won a horse race and he was talking John into entering a race in Dublin and telling him how he had to get into training, doing a squatting exercise. Somebody stepped into the fish pool in the living room, trying this out. I got rather drunk (with no ill effects) and Cici got me to recite poetry. So I spoke it to the cat.

 

July 13.
Since writing the above, Cici told me that Tim Durant rode in the Grand National. He didn't win it but he was one of the few who completed the course. That was a sufficiently astonishing feat, at his age. Cici also said that it was out of the question for John Huston to ride the race in Dublin. Right now, he and Cici are down in Mexico, at Puerto Vallarta. Cici wants us to come down and stay with them there, later. This might be a good idea, because Don is determined not to have Jack and Jim in the house and it will be difficult to avoid inviting them, when Virgil Thomson comes here in August. It would be amusing to see John in a Mexican setting but I dread the great heat.

I keep meaning to write in this book and failing to. Mostly because of work which seems to go more slowly than ever before. I feel uninspired and stupid. Also I am so fat from gluttony and my eyesight seems dimmer and I have this chronic thing in my left leg and the ball (I never know exactly what to call it) of the foot. It feels as if it is something wrong with the veins. I hesitate to go to a doctor about it for fear it will mean some kind of operation.

I think a great deal about death, nowadays. With apprehension, of course, but much more as a reminder. I mean, I try to think about death because that is the best way I can keep reminding myself of “our only refuge,” Holy Mother particularly. So the thought is really an inspiring, invigorating thought—as long as I don't dwell on the negative aspect of it; separation from my darling and the probable dreariness and pain of dying.

I'm at present rereading Carlos Castaneda's
Journey to Ixtlan
, that marvellous masterpiece. I just picked it up and then couldn't stop. There is a chapter in it called “The Last Battle on Earth,” in which Don Juan says: “Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact that you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power.”

What Don Juan means by “power” isn't what I'm looking for. But that passage is still valuable for me as a meditation.

Michael Moriarty has gone back to New York. Now he is going to show the play script of
Meeting by the River
to Edwin Sherin, who directed him in
Find Your Way Home
. He says Sherin is his guru, which I suppose means that if Sherin doesn't like the script he won't want to play it. It's more or less taken for granted that Sherin will direct him in it if Sherin does like it. Am somewhat pessimistic about this, because I read Sherin as the kind of Jew who only admires “gutsy” material.

Have just started a revised rough draft of chapter 5, which is to be the third and last chapter about Berlin, in
Wanderings
. Have also more or less finished the foreword to Chetanananda's Vivekananda anthology on meditation. I do hope I don't have to write any more of this stuff. I simply cannot help ringing false.

Swami has been down at Malibu with Pavitrananda and Bhadrananda and Sat for about a week, now. No word from him. I wonder if he's displeased with me about something.

Don is painting quite a lot, I'm delighted to say. I think the work is excellent, but who cares for old Dub's verdicts? I do wish he'd let Nick Wilder see it.

 

July 26.
Just beginning the last whole month before my seventieth birthday. I have a nagging soreness in the right side of my throat and altogether feel shaky and old, but not really unhappy at all. Vivekananda says we should think of death always, so I am trying to do that, and I know it will help when I get the hang of it.

Meanwhile Don, journeying at my side, seems the very embodiment of life, alive every instant in his work and his anxieties and intense nervous strain and the warmth of his love. Despite his worries about the future, he seems all
now
, he's got that instantaneity Gerald was so fond of talking about.

Poor Nick Wilder has been sentenced to five days in jail for drunk driving and may get a further sentence later. So his inspection of Don's paintings is delayed. Don continues to paint, however, and that's all that really matters.

 

July 30.
Poor old Jo has been having shingles, in addition to her bad leg and the nervous tortures she goes through because of the dance hall which has been opened in what used to be Ted's Grill. All the kids from miles around come to it and there is a band with singers blasting away from ten to two-thirty in the morning. Dozens of residents have complained but the police will do nothing. The place has been zoned as a dance hall, they say, and they can't interfere until the law is broken. They would bust the place quick enough if it was queer, and plant some pot in the kids' pockets, to make the bust stick.

Jo complains so insistently that I feel it's part of her psychological self-treatment. And today she admits to feeling better. But the pain must be truly awful.

Steamy tropical weather. I wish my throat wasn't sore. I long to go in the ocean. Dr. Allen says all my tests are okay so far.

I keep slugging on at the book. Now I have finished the third chapter in its third draft. I feel so uninventive. I keep being reduced to quoting from Stephen's autobiography—which has some marvellous descriptive phrases in it—or from
Goodbye to Berlin
. Richard is helping a lot, sending me extracts from Kathleen's diaries. I love one of her exclamations: “That hateful Berlin and all it contains!”