Seven
In March 1941 I moved into an apartment which had unexpectedly become vacant, just around the corner from the house in which Gerald and Chris lived. Early in May, the first term of my contract with M-G-M expired. I told the studio that I didn’t want to renew it, giving as my reason that I expected to be drafted soon as a conscientious objector. My employers were polite about this, seeming almost to approve. Perhaps, in the psychological confusion of that ante-bellum period, any kind of war involvement, even as an objector to war, appeared somewhat enviable and admirable to those who were still civilians.
Then Denny arrived back from Pennsylvania. The biodynamic farm hadn’t been a success, chiefly because he and the farmer hadn’t liked each other. Meanwhile, Denny had been classified by his draft board as a conscientious objector (4-E). He would be called up to work in a forestry camp in the fairly near future.
I had invited him to stay with me at the apartment. For as long as we might be together, we decided to try an experiment in intentional living, following a relaxed version of Gerald’s schedule—three hours of meditation a day, instead of six.
Every morning, when our alarm clock rang, we got out of our beds in silence and began our first hour of meditation, he in the living room, I in the bedroom. He washed and dressed first, then fixed breakfast while I washed and dressed. As we sat down to eat, we broke our silence by saying “Good morning.” After breakfast, I did the dishes and whatever minor housecleaning was necessary. After this, we took turns reading aloud to each other from some “religious” book. One of these was William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, which we both condemned for its sloppy, imprecise style and academic approach to its subject. Actually, we were showing off to each other. We liked to think of ourselves as being now in a kind of front-line trench, actively engaged in spiritual combat and therefore entitled to sneer, as combat troops sneer at a war story by a non-combatant. Denny’s favorite comments were “Mary, how pretentious can you get?” and “How she dare!”
At twelve, we began our second hour of meditation. Then we had lunch. If we went out in the car during the afternoon, we took our book with us and the non-driver read it to the driver. This was supposed to keep us from watching for sexy pedestrians. It didn’t, but it did divide the driver’s attention by three—book, pedestrian, road—instead of by two, and was therefore the cause of several near-accidents. Our third hour was from six to seven. Then we had supper, the meal we both looked forward to—it was leisurely, with no duties ahead of us. We seldom went out after it, because we had banned movies as distractions. We were usually in bed by nine-thirty.
We had agreed that we would give up sex, including masturbation. This was made easier by the fact that we didn’t find each other in the least sexually attractive. However, while keeping to the agreement, we talked about sex constantly, boasting of our past conquests and adventures. No doubt the underground opposition forces in Denny and myself were working together to sabotage our experiment. But their strategy was crude and unlikely to succeed. If our sex talk excited us, up to a point, it also acted as a safety valve. We might have built up a far greater lust pressure if we had strictly refrained from mentioning the subject.
On the whole, those weeks of May and June were unexpectedly happy. After the loneliness which followed my parting from Vernon, I found Denny’s companionship exactly what I needed. The day lived itself, our timetable removed all anxieties about what we should be doing next. We were continually occupied, and everything we did seemed enjoyable and significant. The apartment was curiously delightful to be in, because of the atmosphere we were creating. I don’t remember our having one real quarrel.
It was our experiment which held us together. Neither of us could make it work alone, even for a day; we had to cooperate. There was no time for moods, sulks, caprices; if any psychological trouble showed signs of developing, we had to acknowledge its presence at once and then proceed to discuss it out of existence. There was no question of one of us succeeding and the other failing; this wasn’t a competition. There was only one alternative to continuing the experiment—dropping it altogether. That we should drop it became less and less likely as the weeks passed and Denny’s call-up to the camp grew more and more imminent. Why give up so late in the game?
Denny contributed more to the success of our experiment than I did, both materially and morally. He was an inventive cook and he had the knack of homemaking. He wasn’t ashamed to demand comfort from his surroundings. My puritanism felt guilty about demanding comfort, although I enjoyed it if it was provided for me. More importantly, it was Denny who made the greater effort to keep us following our daily schedule. As I now see, this was because he had much more to lose than I had if we failed. This was the last bridge he hadn’t burned.
Denny was then at a critical stage in his life. He had returned to the States after a series of quarrels with his wealthy lovers, well aware that he had behaved every bit as badly as they had, if not worse. Then he had broken with the friends in Los Angeles who had laughed at him for becoming interested in Vedanta. Then (according to his version) Prabhavananda had rejected him as despicable, rotten, and unworthy to receive spiritual instruction. Then he had gone to work on the biodynamic farm and had failed to make good and thus be a credit to Gerald. And now, finally, his relations with Gerald himself were deteriorating.
No doubt there had always been some friction between them. Denny could be sharp-edged, sour, and rude, and he was chronically suspicious of the motives of others. (In Down There on a Visit, I have presented the Denny–Paul character as a kind of touchstone which reveals whatever elements of falseness are present within the people who are exposed to it.) Denny couldn’t resist challenging Gerald’s authority as a teacher and mocking his old-maidish fastidiousness, his affectations of speech, his evasiveness, his Irish blarney. Gerald, who was extremely sensitive to any hint of criticism, began to withdraw, injured. Soon Denny—and therefore I—had stopped seeing him unless it was absolutely necessary. I can’t pretend that I had tried very hard to prevent this from happening. I realized that it would be far easier to live with Denny if I kept him to myself as much as possible.
* * *
Through the Huxleys, we heard of a lady who taught hatha-yoga exercises. We wanted to learn these for purely athletic reasons, so we were glad to find that she didn’t set herself up as a spiritual guru, like some other hatha-yoga practitioners. The exercises did make us feel wonderfully healthy. They also filled up most of the time we had free from other occupations.
Our teacher, though perhaps a lot older than she looked, was the embodiment of suppleness and serpentine charm. A serpent who was also a perfect lady, she never lost her social poise. Having explained that the air which is passed through the body in the air-swallowing exercise should come out “quite odorless,” she merely smiled in playful reproach when we discharged vile-smelling farts.
I felt that I ought to tell the Swami about our lessons—guessing that he might not altogether approve of them. The violence of his disapproval surprised me. He didn’t object to the postures and the stretching but he warned me sternly not to practice those breathing exercises which require you to hold your breath; they can cause hallucinations, he said, and end by damaging the brain. In 1935, when he made a return visit to India with Sister Lalita, he had met one of his former fellow monks who had since left the monastery and taken up hatha-yoga. This ex-monk was the same age as Prabhavananda and therefore already in his forties, but he looked like a boy of eighteen and behaved like a half-witted child, giggling meaninglessly. The usual justification for the practice of hatha-yoga is that it strengthens the body in preparation for spiritual austerities. But Prabhavananda seemed to regard it merely as an indulgence of physical vanity. “What is the matter with you, Mr. Isherwood?” he asked me reproachfully. “Surely you do not want Etarnal Youth?” I was silent and hung my head—because, of course, I did.
When I questioned our teacher—as tactfully as I could and without mentioning Prabhavananda—about the possible dangers of the breathing exercises, she laughed at the idea but then conceded that if you practiced them rigorously, for many hours each day throughout a number of years, you could perhaps do yourself harm. So I was left in a state of indecision, not wanting to disobey Prabhavananda yet not feeling that I need give up our lessons altogether.
Then, however, our teacher began to urge us to learn the yoga technique of washing out the intestines by muscular action alone; you squat in a bowl full of water, suck the water in through the anus, swirl it around inside you, expel it again, thus cleansing yourself of poisons. Until this technique has been mastered, you should use an enema every day. And meanwhile, the sphincter muscle of the anus must be made more flexible, through dilation … A set of rectal dilators now appeared. I use that verb advisedly because I can neither remember nor imagine our serpent lady actually giving us such unladylike objects. Did Denny perhaps procure them? The largest was a wicked-looking dildo, quite beyond my capacity but dangerously tempting to my curiosity. I told Denny that, at least as far as I was concerned, our lessons would have to stop—lest sex should sneak in through the back door. We parted from our teacher but continued to do some of the exercises at home. (Years later I took to using the breathing exercises occasionally, because I found them helpful in clearing up obstinate hangovers.)
* * *
On July 7, my monastic experiment with Denny was cut short by the opening of the La Verne Seminar. This seminar had been planned by some leading Pennsylvania Quakers in correspondence with Gerald. La Verne is about twenty miles east of Los Angeles. In those days, it was a very small town in the midst of orange and lemon groves, with a coeducational college founded by one of the Baptist sects. Since this would be vacation time, the Quakers had been able to rent the girls’ dormitory building to house the twenty-five men and women who were going to take part in the seminar.
It had been agreed that there were to be three periods of group meditation and two periods of group discussion, daily. These were some of the problems scheduled to be discussed:
To what extent must the beginner in the spiritual life be prepared to discipline himself? Can we make a distinction between the duties and privileges of two ways of life—that of the householder and that of the monk? Is the life of prayer a form of escapism, or is it, perhaps, the most direct form of action? Can the other major world religions, taken together with the findings of modern science, help us revise our cosmology? Granted that the present order of things is in a state of chaos due to the war, what could be the structure and sanctions of a new order of society? Can we produce an order in which man’s spiritual growth is fostered, not hindered? What have history and science to teach us about the nature and power of non-violence?
Gerald, I knew, was coming to La Verne with one personal objective; he wanted to find out how far he could go in agreement with the Quakers. In his writings, he had referred to the Society of Friends as the most promising force for spiritual regeneration within the Christian Church. But he had described the Quaker way of meditation as happy-go-lucky. Quakers sit passively waiting for the Inner Light, he said, without bothering to study what the great mystics have taught about the technique of prayer. Gerald had also deplored the Quaker preoccupation with social-service projects. The Quaker social worker, he said, is unwilling to face the truth that his activity is chiefly symbolic; its material consequences for the people he is trying to help can’t possibly be foreseen and may sometimes be disastrous. The only person who stands to benefit spiritually from the project is the social worker himself—as long as he can remember that he isn’t really helping his fellow men but offering an act of worship to the God within them. The worker nearly always forgets this, Gerald added, because he becomes distracted by anxieties about the material success of his project.
As for the Quakers themselves, many of them were broad-minded and genuinely humble. I think they were fascinated by Gerald’s personality and eager to understand his ideas, but they couldn’t help being suspicious of what they called his “Oriental” tendencies. And even the most liberal of them must have regarded his celibacy with some distaste. Quakerdom is based on the values of family life.
* * *
Until shortly before the seminar opened, I had been supposing that I should attend it on my own, since Denny would already have been called to his camp. But the call-up never came and now there was no reason why he shouldn’t join me. This he did unwillingly and with a bad grace, bringing his hostility to Gerald along with him. As soon as we arrived at La Verne, Denny began watching me for signs of disloyalty to himself—that is, of friendliness toward Gerald. So now I found myself in a peculiarly false position. I felt obliged to cooperate with Gerald publicly and also to join Denny in bitching him behind his back.
Indeed, we bitched nearly everybody at the seminar. Our negative behavior expressed the discomfort we felt at being separated from our previous life together. We decided that life at La Verne was a kind of parody of it and that these professionally religious people were hypocrites, posers, windbags. From our decision, a convenient conclusion could be drawn: if they weren’t acting up to their professed principles, then we needn’t act up to ours.
Actually, Gerald was at his brilliant best throughout the month we spent at La Verne. As unofficial chairman, he was tact itself in checking the overtalkative and encouraging the shy to speak. And he was masterly in his summings-up of rambling speeches which nobody else had been able to follow.
* * *
In my diary there is a day-to-day account of the seminar, with descriptions of all those who took part in it. I have already borrowed some of this material for the seminar scenes in Down There on a Visit, setting them in a different location and inventing a sex scandal to involve the Denny–Paul character. What remains I may publish elsewhere. It doesn’t belong to the main theme of this book.
If the La Verne Seminar had been a sporting event—Contemplatives versus Actives—it could be said to have resulted in a draw, one all. By the time it was over, my cousin Felix Greene had decided to give up his executive job with the Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia and remain in California with Gerald. And I had decided to go to Philadelphia and work with the Quakers.
This didn’t mean that I had changed sides, philosophically speaking. My motives were practical. Feeling convinced that the States would soon be at war and that I should then have to declare myself a conscientious objector before a draft board, I wanted to get involved with an organized pacifist group which could give me the moral support I would need. I couldn’t with honest conviction join any of them except the Quakers. Other such groups tended to be dominated by Christian fundamentalists who upheld the infallibility of the Bible and similar dogmas which I didn’t accept.
I might, of course, have found employment with the Quakers of Los Angeles, some of whom I already knew. But it seemed to me less embarrassing to make my plunge into Quakerdom as a stranger among strangers, 2,394 miles distant from Gerald’s possibly reproachful gaze.
* * *
On August 21, having at last got his call, Denny left for the forestry camp at San Dimas, not far from La Verne, but up in the mountains. The next day, I flew East to visit Wystan and to be interviewed by Caroline Norment, who was about to open a hostel for refugees from Nazi Europe under the auspices of the Friends Service Committee. Caroline and I took to each other and it was agreed that I should report for work as one of her assistants, in the middle of October.
* * *
The hostel was at Haverford, just outside Philadelphia. A large, shabby mansion, built at the beginning of the century and once luxurious, was its headquarters. Between twenty-five and thirty refugees—men, women, and children, Jews and non-Jews—were living there or at the homes of neighboring Quakers. Many of them had professional backgrounds—as teachers, lawyers, economists, musicians—and could hope to get jobs sooner or later. When they did so, they would be replaced at the hostel by other refugees who were on a waiting list.
Meanwhile, the function of the hostel was to prepare them for an independent existence in the United States. Some needed to rest and get their health back, some needed to learn more English. But their psychological preparation was a greater and subtler problem. Uprooted, disillusioned, and suspicious, they were being asked to have faith in and adapt themselves to an abstraction called the American Way of Life, which even their mentors couldn’t quite agree with each other in defining. No doubt, the indoctrination was sometimes less than tactful. No doubt, the indoctrinees were sometimes bossed into activities they didn’t see the point of. Nevertheless, while admitting the validity of Gerald’s objections to the Quaker practice of social service, I felt that we—Caroline and her assistants—were doing considerably more good than harm.
My days were spent giving the refugees English lessons, going for walks with them, accompanying them to classes at Haverford College—to learn the American Way of Teaching—and to social gatherings in the neighborhood—to observe the American Way of Entertaining. I also, like everybody else at the hostel, lent a hand with the housecleaning and washed dozens and dozens of dishes.
The thought that I was serving God within the refugees came to me often, not awe-inspiringly, but comically. It sustained me as a private joke does, so long as you don’t tell it to anyone else. The essence of this joke was that most of these human temples of the God I was serving would have unhesitatingly described themselves as atheists.
I am sure that the refugees had many jokes about me and the rest of the hostel staff. Almost without exception, they saw the Quakers as lovable but unworldly eccentrics and Quaker pacifism as mere craziness. From their point of view, my best asset was probably that I had known pre-Hitler Berlin. They kept coaxing me to talk about it. Doing so made me slip naturally into German, in which they would join me—thus breaking our often-broken hostel rule that English must be spoken whenever possible. Even those who spoke it fluently seemed unwilling to, unless compelled. Perhaps because the language reminded them of their predicament as aliens.
What they didn’t realize was the extent to which I, too, was an alien, in Quakerdom. But, unlike them, I wanted to belong to it. Already I was using Quakerese in conversation with my fellow workers: “Caroline, I have a concern.” “Caroline, does thee want me to take thy letters to the mail?” I attended the Haverford Meeting House on Sundays and within a few weeks found myself standing up and speaking. Playacting? Yes, partly. But playacting about something that was entirely serious to me. There is no reason why you can’t equate the Quaker Inner Light with the Hindu Atman. I was really talking about Vedanta to them, but in their idiom, not mine. It was merely my self-consciousness which made this into a theatrical performance.
* * *
At the end of those long long workdays, I was usually eager to drop into bed and sleep. But, later on, when I had discovered a sexual playmate, I would take an occasional evening off with him in Philadelphia. This seemed to me just fun, well earned. I had no conscience pangs. I had never felt that Quakerdom demanded celibacy of me; they all approved of sex, even if it was only of the lawful kind. I made one little concession to respectability, however; I always removed my Friends Service Committee button from my jacket before we went into bars where we would get drunk and the steam bath where we sobered up again.
* * *
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, regulations were issued which restricted the movements of “enemy aliens” to very small areas around their domicile—the area around our hostel contained no post office, no movie theater, no drugstore. Nearly all the refugees were still technically German or Austrian citizens and therefore subject to this restriction.
They took it very quietly. This was what their chronic pessimism had been awaiting. In their voices there was a note, almost, of relief that the inevitable worst was no longer to be delayed. “It’s France, all over again,” they muttered. “Next will come the detention camps.”
Caroline made a vigorous speech, assuring the refugees that the regulations couldn’t possibly be enforced because they were so absurd and unjust. “If we make such a mess of bureaucracy in this country, it’s because we’re not used to it.” (This I interpreted as a gentle reproof: “You Europeans got so used to your bureaucracy that you didn’t realize it would turn into a tyranny and destroy you.”) Then she was off on the warpath to the District Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. To my astonishment, the D.A. lifted all local restrictions on our hostel members immediately. Caroline took her victory as a matter of course, never having doubted that the American Way of Life would prevail. To me, this was an extraordinary demonstration of the Quakers’ power over the consciences of non-Quaker Philadelphians, even in wartime.
* * *
In the middle of May 1942, a young English Quaker lectured at the Meeting House. He was on his way back to England after working with the Friends’ ambulance unit in China. He had blond hair which was curly like a lamb’s fleece, and a charmingly silly, innocent laugh. He seemed to me to be an ideal non-violent hero. I got an instant crush on him—and was thus moved to volunteer for a second ambulance unit, which the Quakers were then organizing. I was turned down, however, because all volunteers had to be either doctors or trained automobile mechanics.
* * *
Meanwhile, as expected, the U.S. draft age had been raised. It now included those in my age bracket.
June 17. Today I sent off form 47 to the draft board, applying for 4-E classification as a conscientious objector. When you write these things down for official consumption, they sound horribly priggish and false—because you are presenting yourself as a strictly logical, rational human being with principles, a philosophy of life, etc. Whereas I, personally, am much more like a horse which suddenly stops and says, “No. That’s going too far. From that pond I won’t drink.”
I have reasons, of course, and a philosophy. I can explain them—quite lucidly, if necessary. But how dry and cold they would be without the personal factor behind them: Heinz is in the Nazi army. I would refuse to kill Heinz. Therefore, I have no right to kill anybody.
Of course there are a dozen ways in which you can come to the pacifist decision. And I don’t doubt that there are many people who honestly arrive at it on general principles: they simply know that it is wrong for them to kill. But I have never been able to grasp any idea except through a person.
June 30. Medical examination at the draft board. All these kids seem so utterly helpless, so unprotected. You feel, “Let me go, instead of them.” Their nervous little jokes. The old-timer who scares them with his army tales. The boy who’s afraid he’ll faint when they take his blood. (He didn’t.) The young Negro’s beautiful body, so dignified in its nakedness; nearly everybody else wore undershorts.
I had to wait till last because, for me as a C.O., this wasn’t just a preliminary but the only examination I should get. They didn’t do much beyond establishing the fact that I was alive.
* * *
The Friends Service Committee had now decided that the hostel must be closed down—partly for financial reasons, partly because no more refugees were expected to be able to get over from Europe and because those who remained with us would nearly all be able to find jobs in the rapidly expanding wartime labor market.
I myself left Haverford early in July, to return to California. Soon after my arrival there, I got a notice from my draft board that I had been classified 4-E. This meant that I could expect a call to the forestry camp within the next six weeks. Or so I imagined.
* * *
While I was away in Pennsylvania, Gerald Heard and Felix Greene had bought—with money from an anonymous donor—a ranch called Trabuco. It was sixty miles south of Los Angeles, in an almost empty stretch of country behind the coastal hills. Here Felix had caused to be built what they already called Trabuco College. Gerald said that it looked like a small Franciscan monastery in the Apennines. It was indeed dramatically picturesque, a complex of tile-roofed buildings with cloisters which commanded a vast airy view westward to the ocean. And its interior design was a model of monastic simplicity—built-in cabinets and tiled floors—requiring a minimum of dusting and sweeping.
Felix had worked all through the winter, studying and revising the architect’s plans, pressuring contractors to get on with the job, dashing from place to place to snap up the last available supplies of lumber and metal fixtures before they were “frozen” by military authorities. He had also done a great deal of the construction with his own hands. “With an energy,” said Gerald, “that was almost epileptic.” Gerald’s adjective suggested not only unwilling admiration but an ironic admission of responsibility. He himself had unleashed Felix and his energy upon the original modest Focus project. And now Focus, the mini-retreat for four people, was swallowed up within Trabuco College, this—to Gerald—slightly embarrassing showplace, which could house fifty.
Gerald reminded us frequently that Trabuco was to be a college in the sense of the Latin word collegium, “a community.” He also spoke of it as “a club for mystics,” non-sectarian, non-dogmatic, and as “a clearinghouse” for individual religious experiences and ideas. Those who visited it were to meet as colleagues, not as masters and disciples, not as spiritual superiors and inferiors.
* * *
More than two months passed and I had still heard nothing from the draft board. On September 25, I got a letter from one of the boys at the forestry camp, saying that they had been expecting me to arrive some days previously. Was I technically AWOL without knowing it? Alarmed, I telegraphed the director of the camp, asking what I should do. He wrote back that if I hadn’t got my induction notice I needn’t worry. He wasn’t allowed to admit me to the camp without it.
Meanwhile, the Swami was urging me to apply to the draft board for reclassification as a theological student, 4-D. (One of the men at the Vedanta Center in San Francisco had already been classified 4-D, so a precedent had been established.) The Swami had a frankly admitted motive for keeping me out of the forestry camp. He wanted me to come and live as a monk at the Vedanta Center, as soon as he could make arrangements to accommodate men there. This might take several months. But he also had an occupation for me which I could begin work on immediately. He had just finished a rough translation of the Bhagavad-Gita and needed me to help him polish it.
I told him I doubted very much that the board would agree to reclassify me when I was already as good as drafted. Why should they take the trouble to do the extra paperwork? The Swami giggled and said, “Try.” To my ears, there was a slightly uncanny quality in this giggle; it sounded as if he knew something about the situation which I didn’t. I sent off my application for 4-D.
September 28. Talked to the Swami on the phone. He is ready to write a letter to the draft board, backing up my appeal for reclassification. But first he wanted me to reassure him that I really intend to become a monk. I said yes of course—but later I was bothered by all kinds of doubts. Just what does the Swami mean by “monk”? One who takes the vows of chastity and poverty? Or one who belongs, specifically, to the Ramakrishna Order, conducts lecture courses, officiates at the rituals, and goes to lunch with householder devotees in their expensive houses. I’ll see him tomorrow and ask him.
September 29. As I expected, the Swami waved my doubts aside. Of course, he said, I wouldn’t be asked to do things I wasn’t fitted for or wasn’t inclined to do.
October 12. Most days, I see the Swami and we work together on his translation of the Gita, turning it into more flexible English. This is a very valuable way of studying, because I have to make absolutely sure I understand what each verse means. Some of the Sanskrit words have meanings which sound bizarre in English, and the Swami, who has long since learnt to paraphrase them, has to be practically psychoanalyzed before he’ll admit to the literal translation.
No call from the draft board yet.
There never was a call. Nor any answer to my application for 4-D. This silence was explained when the authorities later announced that they were lowering the upper draft-age limit to thirty-seven. By that time, I was well into my thirty-ninth year.
January 29, 1943. The opening of Brahmananda Cottage (as the Swami has christened the house where we’re to live, at the Vedanta Center) is still fixed for the sixth of February. At the moment, this, and all that it implies, seems utterly remote and unreal. I told the Swami some weeks ago, “I’ve been ten thousand miles away from you.
Daydreams of a “last fling.” Some part of me is irrationally convinced that somehow someone will show up to give me a glamorous final twenty-four hours of sex in the best Elinor Glyn style.
February 3. Lunch with Berthold Viertel. Talked about my move to the Center. He disapproves of it with all the jealousy of his fatherly affection. A return to the Quakers he could understand, a retirement into an ivory-tower life of novel writing he could understand. But why am I joining these obsolete Hindus? What possible relevance can their beliefs have to the world of 1943?
Berthold feels a deep suspicion of Gerald, whom he naturally associates with Vedanta and the Swami. He asked, “Would you be doing this if you’d never met Heard?”—as though he expected the question to disconcert and perhaps enrage me. “Would I have written for the movies,” I countered, “if I’d never met you?”
In the afternoon, I called Denny on the phone, up at the forestry camp. He seems to be completely happy there. He has been skiing. He showed no special desire to come down and visit us.
Supper with Chris Wood. Afterwards, we went to the Club Gala. I haven’t been to a place of this sort in ages, and it was so nostalgically reminiscent of all the other times—the baroque decorations and the cozy red velvet corners, the sharp-faced peroxide pianist with tender memories and a tongue like an adder, the grizzled tomcat tenor, the lame celebrity, the bar mimosa, the public lovers, the amazed millionaire tourist and the daydream sailor. I have loved them all very much. I owe them many of my vividest moments of awareness. But enough is enough. And here we say goodbye.
Or do we? Isn’t this entirely the wrong spirit in which to become a monk? I am not going to the Center to forget such places. No—if this training succeeds, I shall be able to return to the Gala, or any other scene of the past, with the kind of understanding which sees what they are really all about.