The House by the Sea Read online

  Shoulders, no one could break the strong slow beautiful rhythm

  Of this work done together because he would see too clearly

  What he was doing to us all, and to the building, and to the form.

  But for every stone which you place in the actual wall,

  You are placing an invisible stone upon an invisible wall

  And you are building an invisible building and it is this

  Which I am asking you to consider. It is this which is necessary

  And without which the actual stone and the actual building

  Will enclose no life and will have no meaning. And there will be

  A blankness at the center as in many functional houses

  Which appear bleak and barren because the life to be lived there

  Has not yet been created. I have felt a barrenness and an emptiness

  At the center and this is the flaw without which there would be

  No reason for you or for me or for any poem or state to be built.

  I am concerned with the invisible building and the relationship

  Of stone and stone there and you believe also that this is matter for concern.

  I have come here a stranger. I have penetrated perhaps too swiftly

  Too passionately into your freedom and searched for the form.

  I have stood in the center of your freedom and shared it and I have

  Suddenly felt myself to be standing in a desert swept by winds

  And sand, and I have looked with all my imagination to see

  If I could divine the walls of the invisible house and whether

  It was my blindness that did not discover it. And perhaps this is so.

  You have taken upon yourselves the freedom of complete equality

  With one another and with your teachers and by doing this you have

  Created an artificial perfectly flat landscape in which I have not

  Been able to discover a tree which might give a little shade

  From the burning equalizing sun, nor have I seen in the distance

  A mountain which one might climb in the evening and from where

  One might see (who knows?) a great river streaming to a boundless ocean.

  You have shut out from your hearts the possibility of homage.

  You have said “We are to be equal in all things” although by saying that

  And by performing certain rites and gestures which create the invisible

  Building of equality, you have not been able to create it; a stranger

  Coming from less desert places sees the mirage of the mountains, the mirage

  Of rivers and must bend to drink from the rivers and must climb

  The difficult mountains. And the stranger standing in your desert

  Sees only the differences and not the equality and begins to wonder

  If the desert is not a mirage you have willfully created.

  And the mountains and rivers the reality you have destroyed, and indeed

  His thirst has been quenched and his eyes have been filled with visions

  So he cannot believe otherwise. What meaning have these

  Gestures of equality between teacher and student if they only serve

  To create a mirage and to make a desert? You have shut out

  From your hearts the Christian image of the kneeling man, the humble,

  And in so doing you have shut out the emotion which precedes all creation

  And all love, and you have taken from it the small gestures

  Which are the walls which enclose love and form the invisible building.

  You have called this a new form for freedom and a new building

  But you have achieved nothing but a desert in your own hearts

  And you have shut yourselves out from the springs of holiness

  Which come from homage and from devotion and from the recognition

  Of differences and degrees and the progress of souls and minds.

  And you have taken from yourselves the joys of being an apprentice

  And a beginner than which there is no greater, and above all

  You have taken from yourselves the outward delight of the physical

  Acts of homage. You have succeeded in becoming the comrades

  Of your teachers and by doing this you have lost for yourselves

  One of the deepest human intuitions and one of the roots of growth.

  For without leadership there will be no following and without

  Following there can be no leadership and without surrender

  There can be no conquest. But you have chosen to begin by conquest.

  And among yourselves in the community of students, which in

  Spite of your insistence is a community apart (and there is

  And must be a community of teachers and a community of students

  And these are circles which meet but never make one circle

  So that always part of the circle of students covers and includes

  Part of the circle of teachers but always in every community

  There is a secret part from which each draws its life and without which

  There would be no community between them.) But among yourselves

  You have stridently demanded that things be asked for and not given

  Un-asked so that in your dining-hall in which there is little form

  You have once more set up freedom as a monument and worshipped it

  As dangerously as others have worshipped authority.

  The table too is a community and here as everywhere else

  Where you are both a solitary individual and part of a whole

  There is a pattern set up and a rhythm like that of the rhythm

  Of building a wall, and I have seen you break the rhythm

  Over and over again, be unable to sense it, and I have seen

  Thoughts broken before they were completed by someone asking

  For the sugar where if you were truly part of a community

  Of the table the sugar would be passed and the conversation

  Not interrupted. There is a reason for the forms of politeness

  And it is to make possible the freedom necessary between

  Individuals in a community. The hours of meals are the hours

  When you most nearly share your lives and when you exchange ideas

  And when you are clearly building the invisible building

  But you have allowed your idea of freedom to become simply

  Slavery to things and you have obscured this warm light

  Of conversation with gestures and loud demands and formlessness

  And you have laid an emphasis upon these gestures which is fanatic.

  At the heart of life is the flaw without which there would be

  No motion and no growth. I have spoken honestly of these things:

  The lack of homage, the deliberate destruction of intrinsic differences,

  The lack of form in simple daily living. Now I must try to

  Ask a question for which I do not at all know the answer

  For it is a question of your faith and it is fundamental.

  I would like to ask what it is that binds you together, and me to you,

  And in what you believe, and why you and I are putting forth

  So much imagination, so much spirit and mind to build

  An invisible and an actual building. Somewhere at some time

  We must be united in awe before an Absolute Form and

  an Absolute Freedom of which, like the circles of teachers

  And students, you can meet a part but never the whole, and

  I would like to see you bound together in awe of this secret

  Part of the Absolute Form and the Absolute Freedom without which

  There would be no flaw to be perfected, no perfection to attain,

  No community bound together in time, no sound and no silence,

  No life and no death. And it does not matter by what name
<
br />   You call Absolute Freedom within Absolute Form as long as you

  Recognize its existence and allow yourselves to be united in awe before it.

  May Sarton

  October 1940

  I became convinced at Black Mountain that without the physical work of building together the place would fall apart, and I feel this about my own life here. The hours I spend weeding are the perfect way to balance the hours at my desk. More than mere exercise, working at something so tangible rests and clears the mind.

  Today I can’t see the ocean … it is somewhere there beyond the mist. But, not seeing it, I am more aware than usual of the low continuous roar of the waves as the tide rises—lovely soothing sound. The first huge pink poppies are opening … they were here when I came and seed themselves all over the annual beds. I think they are opium poppies! They are beautiful with strong blue-green serrated leaves, far less fragile than the Shirley poppies. The flowers are double like pink swansdown powder puffs. A few are single with a blue circle round the pistil, very handsome indeed.

  Raymond has agreed to stay, cut my grass and garden for me. He helped me weed the other day and it was such a happy time, working together. It’s a great lift to have someone at my side. Otherwise the garden becomes a kind of purgatory because I feel I shall never get out from under the jungle into a neat weedless paradise.

  Monday, July 21st

  WHERE HAS the time gone like sand pouring too fast through an hourglass? I haven’t had a clear day at the desk for what seems like weeks. Partly taking Tamas four early mornings to the vet’s (the wound has healed but he developed a horrid sore on one leg, an allergy to the anesthetic, apparently, and of course he too suffers from the heat), partly the long drought has meant hours of dragging hoses. It’s not an easy garden to water, as there are many single small borders scattered around, as well as bushes such as azaleas that have to be watered separately. But at last we had a deluge all night and into the morning. And that constant anxiety, as I held a million thirsty roots in my consciousness, has lifted.

  Most of the last week went in making my semiannual pilgrimage to see Marynia Farnham in her nursing home in Brattleboro—no one has been there to see her since I went before Christmas! The trip entails visits to the Nelson neighbors, and a night away, and this time I brought a friend back with me for two nights; so altogether it ate up most of the week. Nelson is still unspoiled. I was moved as I drove past the cemetery (where I shall be buried) and down into the center, very still and leafy on that hot afternoon, moved to hear how beautifully Nancy and Mark Stretch (who bought my house there) are fitting into the village. They have done what I dreamed of doing—they have had the rocks bulldozed out of the big field and now have a huge vegetable garden started. I feel blest that the right people have come to live in the house. I shall not own a house again, so it is still “home” in some ways. But I have no regrets. More than ever I realize that it was time to leave. The tide of my Nelson was ebbing even three years ago. The Stretches bring youth and strength and their own spirit of adventure to the village, sorely needed … and they are such hard workers! Win French told me that Mark has helped with the haying and worked well; he also helps deliver mail now and then.

  I reached Marynia only to find that she had, that very morning, fallen and broken her hip. I stayed by her side for a half hour, holding her hand, while they sent for an ambulance … and, when I called later that night from here, was told that it was a fractured hip and she will be in the hospital for some weeks. She was marble white, her face entirely unwrinkled, very serene, though she was obviously in pain, rocking her knees back and forth to try to find a comfortable position and talking to herself in a low voice. I believe she recognized me, but am not sure.

  Tuesday, July 22nd

  AT LAST I woke to clear air this morning and a serene pale blue satin sea, luminous after the hazy days. There is a disaster in the garden that kept me awake last night, trying to decide whether to make a heroic effort to rectify it or not … the phlox has reverted to that awful magenta color. When I knew I was coming here, I ordered phlox that Raymond put in the autumn before I came—pale pinks and white and deep purple. I had not taken in that there were large ragged groups that had reverted already, and when I found out, I told R. that we should take them out, but he persuaded me that that was nonsense. Now all that he planted for me is reverting! It is really sad because that narrow border below the terrace wall is the only “garden” in the usual sense that I have, except for annuals, and various small shady “borders” I have dug out here and there. I guess I’ll have to tear all the phlox out and start fresh—a waste of two years.

  It is a curiously nil time these days—the deerflies are awful. I took Tamas for a walk in the woods for the first time since he came home yesterday, but it was a nerve-racking battle to keep the flies off his ears, head, and nose. About every ten steps he stood still and waited for me to drive them off with a bunch of bracken—a slow enervating process. After that episode I went to town to try to get a fan for up here … the small fan broke and fell yesterday when I stupidly ran into the cord. Lesswing was sold out of fans, so I came home. The mosquitoes are unbelievable multitudes … it was then five and I gave up on gardening. Why be compulsive about it?

  I looked forward to getting into bed and reading the end of Wain’s Samuel Johnson. A saving grace at the end of a maddening day.

  Sunday, July 27th

  I HAD TO LAUGH when, after being cross with D.D., who had stopped by, unaware of course that Saturday was my glorious day alone, I came on this in Rosten’s People I Have Loved, Known or Admired. He is speaking of Babbage, a crotchety Cambridge professor who invented computers: “The moment he heard an organ-grinder or a street singer, he would run out of his house and give chase, with homicidal intent. He just went wild if anyone disturbed his inner, furious peace” (underlining mine). The phrase is so exact!

  Perhaps the disaster of the phlox that has reverted forced me out of my doldrums. I decided on Friday that I was going to get rid of that horrible magenta, willy-nilly. So on a hot, humid day I attacked with a pitchfork and after an hour of struggle (the roots are matted under rocks, and intertwined with the ivy that creeps up the wall behind them), I got out two big clumps that have not been touched for years. The ones Raymond planted will be far easier, and already I am enjoying that breathing space in the border, and planning what to do with it! Next morning I was able to get started again on the portrait of Rosalind, so the block appears to be broken. Writer’s block is a familiar professional ailment; I experience it very rarely, but when I do I am in a panic of nerves.

  Yesterday and today have been cool, perfect summer days … how few we have had lately! … days when the sea is dark, sparkling, and in the evening gradually pales to an angelic satiny blue, then slowly turns pink with the sky reflecting the sunset, hyacinthine, behind it. I drank the day like wine, intoxicated by the change after humidity and heat.

  Tamas is a little better but I think I must take him to the vet tomorrow. Last night he woke me at midnight to ask to go out. He does it by licking my hands very gently till I wake up, and almost never does it; so I felt sure it was a real need. The cat came in at three; Tamas wanted to go out again at half past four, and barked to come in again at six, so I really had a poor night’s sleep.

  I must copy out two paragraphs from a piece in The Listener (June 26th) that came yesterday.

  “Crime in the American schools begins at about the age of eight. Last year, there were over 8,000 rapes: young women teachers are often the targets; nearly 12,000 armed robberies; a quarter-of-a-million burglaries and 200,000 major assaults on teachers and pupils. Drugs, alcohol, extortion rackets, prostitution are all found in today’s American classroom. And knives, clubs, pistols and sawn-off shotguns are more often taken to school these days, either for attack or self-defense, than an apple for the teacher.

  “The official Congressional report reads like a lurid paperback. In New York, a 17-year-old boy w
as clubbed on the head with a pistol butt and stabbed in the spine; 16 shootings in Kansas City schools; in Chicago, a headmaster killed and a school official wounded, and a 16-year-old shot dead over a gambling debt of five cents. In North Carolina, two children forced two others on pain of death to hand over $1,000; their ages: nine. And in Los Angeles where there are 150 recognized school gangs, the biggest call themselves the Cripps because they are dedicated to crippling their victims. There are also girl Crippettes and the junior Cripps for eight- to eleven-year-olds.”

  As far as I know, the Ford administration has no plans to salvage the inner cities, and of course the trouble is worst there. We are breeding monsters and one has to conclude that we are monsters to permit such things to happen. The indifference on the part of suburbia, the indifference of the Government, staggers the imagination.

  Sunday, August 3rd

  (on Greenings Island)

  MY MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY. Even two years ago it would have been celebrated here, but now dear Anne is beyond that kind of focus and when I mentioned it there was little or no response. Anne is one of the very few people I ever see now who knew and loved my mother and it felt like a second death at breakfast this morning—one so loved no longer alive in the consciousness of Anne. Judy is far more aware. I knew she felt it when she said, “Your dear mother. I’ll never forget her.”

  It is not an easy time. We arrived in a heat wave and yesterday was, I think, the hottest day I have ever experienced here. We had two swims. The last one, late in the afternoon, was refreshing, but in the late morning the lovely walk down through the heather and the woods and the big field, now brilliant with massed black-eyed Susans, had become an agony because of the relentless sun. And in the afternoon Judy went on a kind of fugue of near madness, babbling on but making no sense. Finally, in despair, I suggested a tepid bath and that did calm her down.

  Today is cooler, thank goodness, cool and foggy.

  Because of the heat wave I have become more aware than ever of the effort it takes, as one grows older, simply to keep life going. The garden, the need to water every day, looms as an ordeal rather than a pleasure. And I see myself doing exactly what my mother did—ordering in a rush of excitement what I shall hardly have the strength to plant, beginning new borders which will have to be maintained. The spirit spurts on, but the machinery is running down.