Liberation (91 page)

 

March 16.
Yesterday, I got a card from the UCLA Department of Anatomy which I am to carry in my billfold. It announces that I have willed my body to the department and wish to have it sent there if I drop dead in the street. So now that's taken care of; I'd never have got accepted if Elsie Giorgi hadn't used her influence at UCLA. I think I really began to decide to take this step because of my horror of the mortuary atmosphere which was inspired by a visit to Forest Lawn when Tony Richardson was about to film
The Loved One
. I am very glad that I've done it—although there are occasional absurd qualms at the thought of Dobbin's old pickled carcass hanging up on a hook ready to be carved. But far far stronger is the satisfaction of knowing that there won't be any kind of “resting place” to which my darling might feel obligated to come, on anniversaries, with wreaths. Then, too, I like to think that I'm following Gerald Heard's example; that maybe, even, my ashes will be dumped with his in some communal hole after the cadaver has served its purpose.

And while we're on such themes, today came an announcement of a performance of Edward Albee's “most profound play yet,
All Over
, which deals with the awareness that we are forever alone as we enter our twilight years”!!

 

March 20.
Yesterday, we went to see Tom Stoppard's
Travesties
. Don said, its humor is verbal, not dramatic at all—which meant that the director (Ed Parone) evidently felt he had to eke it out by making his actors skip around and mug and strike attitudes—with the result that the show ran nearly three hours. . . . Howard and Fran Warshaw and Judith Anderson were there. At intermission, Don suggested that I should ask them to have supper with us later. I hurried over to their seats and did so—the second act was just about to start. Sitting in a row just below them was a pretty elderly woman with carefully fixed white hair in a halo around her head. I thought to myself that she was a typical rich Beverly Hills matron, rather like Dee Katcher (who is again putting the Hilldale property on the market for us).
²¹
The woman gave me a look which might have meant that we knew each other from somewhere, so I started a tentative smile, then shut it off again, largely because I was in such a hurry. On my way back to my seat, it hit me: “That was Peggy Kiskadden.” I hadn't recognized her— perhaps because she had hardly changed, wasn't looking nearly old enough. Don said yes, he was sure it was her. I felt shocked and shaken. It was like suddenly realizing that the thing which had looked like a bead necklace, and which you'd nearly bent down and picked up, had really been a coral snake.

Howard has changed a lot; skinny and sunken-faced and old-Jewish, after his cancer operation. And Judith has become quite tiny and humped over with an ailing back. Only Fran looked just the same, like a powdered silly smiling goose. But they were all very affectionate and full of chatter, and we had a charming supper.

At the end of the week we fly to England. Am dreading this.

But at least I've now made a good start on the Prabhavananda book—more than thirty pages.

 

April 17.
We did fly to England on March 26 and got back here on April 11th. More about that by degrees, maybe. For the moment, what's chiefly important to me is that I was able to get restarted right away on the Prabhavananda book. Now I must simply drive ahead with it until I've gone so far that I
have
to finish.

A couple of days ago, Prabha called from the Santa Barbara convent, with two objectives—to get me to promise to fill in some reading dates during the summer, because Chetanananda is off to India for a three-month pilgrimage (as they call it—may this mean that he is escaping and doesn't intend to return?) and because Swahananda is also leaving for a holiday on the East Coast—and also to get me to convey a warning to the boys at Trabuco that they have got to shape up and face the facts of monastic life and open a bookshop and entertain the public and have lectures and stop being so reclusive and mystical and self-indulgent, or else the property may be sold over their heads and they may be ordered back to Hollywood to
work
. Prabha's silvery southern coo was hateful with malice as she told me this, putting it all onto the will of the Lord and of the Belur Math trustees—as if she gave a blue shit for either when
her
will was involved! So I said I'd think about the reading but could promise nothing, and that I'd speak to the boys if I went down there, as I probably may.

 

April 18.
This morning, Tom Shadduck, who had come by to do our watering, noticed that the tall cactus plant—one of the ones Jim Tyndall
²²
gave us before he moved to North Carolina—has been stolen. We both suspected the kids who trespass continually through this property and felt the usual fury. I called George Caldwell, flattered him a bit, and suggested that he should speak to one of his next-door neighbors who is also his tenant and has a lot of teenagers in the house; I just want him scared a bit by the prospect of a scandal, because I blame him utterly for anything his sons and their friends do, it's all this shit-permissive mealy-modern parent stuff. Rather to my surprise, Caldwell was impressed, saying that, “This kind of thing affects all of us.” He agreed to speak to his tenant.

A really interesting and horribly depressing talk, last night on T.V., about the approaching oil famine within thirty years and consequent plans for transmitting solar energy via satellites, etc. I got such a sense of a future which I don't want to, and anyway can't, live on into. At the same time, I quite realize that my aversion is merely romantic; I hate to part with the notion of space as something awesome, of the moon as a shining mysterious orb, etc., and contemplate a time when the earth will be surrounded by a sort of backyard full of skyjunk.

Nick Wilder brought down a New York dealer this morning named Robert Miller to see Don's work. Nick says he was impressed. Oh, if only—

 

April 25.
Struggles with letter and check writing have stopped me from making daily entries, as I'd hoped. But I have kept on with the Prabhavananda book—a page a day, which would mean finishing a rough draft around the end of this year, if the book is about the length I expect it to be.

Today, I heard from the other abbess of the Vedanta Society; Anandaprana. She wants me to get started on the recording of the Gita. Usual complaints about being overworked. She seemed to be running the place, just as usual. No mention of either of the swamis.

I do hope I can settle down a bit, now, and regain some slight sense at least of—I won't venture to call it “contact with”—just ordinary awareness that the word Vedanta means anything at all. I have been incredibly alienated by these publicity trips and sealed up tight inside my “image.”

 

April 30.
Vistas of work are now opening up. On the 26th, we had a talk to George Weidenfeld, who was visiting here, and it seems that he is quite serious about commissioning a book from us—
Drawings and Dialogue
is a provisional title suggested by Candida Donadio; the only objection to it being that there may be a few of Don's paintings as well. I was prejudiced against Weidenfeld for becoming a lord but then prejudiced in his favor by his foreign accent and courtly foreign charm and his appreciation of Don's work. . . . Also my book about Swami, now at page 53. Also the diaries of the forties and early fifties, to be brought up to 1953, at least. Also this recording of the Gita.

One memory of our English trip came back vividly to me this morning. It was on the night of April 1, which I spent up at High Lane, with Richard. I went into the bedroom in his house where I was to sleep, and opened the wardrobe, and there, hanging all alone, was Frank's red army parade uniform! It was almost as startling as seeing his ghost, especially since I had assumed that Richard, who really hates his memory—not Frank himself, whom he barely knew—would have destroyed or given it away, long ago. Now I come to think of it, I was so shocked that I never even asked him why he had kept it. Must remember to do so.

 

May 1.
Discovered for the first time this morning, from the dictionary, that “mayday,” the international radiotelephonic signal for help, derives from “
m'aider
.” This suggests a clue for May Day in a crossword puzzle: “Not waving but drowning” and reminds me that we saw Glenda Jackson as Stevie Smith in a play, while we were in London.
²³
She did her best, but Smith didn't make much of a character to work with. We also saw three other plays with people we know in them—Alec Guinness as Swift,
²⁴
Gielgud as Julius Caesar, John Mills and Jill Bennett in
Separate Tables
; all disappointments.

Suddenly, we are on the brink of selling the Hilldale property. It will be marvellous to be rid of our tenants and their dishonesties and the sheer nuisance of paying bills and keeping an eye on the rents. And yet—we found ourselves sad and a bit apprehensive. There's something painful about parting with
land
.

And this morning Don and I decided to ask John Ladner to arrange Don's adoption for us. He seemed quite pleased to do so. He is very bright and confident, without being smart alecky. Maybe he'll become our “family lawyer.”

When I talked to Prabha the day before yesterday, she announced approvingly that
all
the devotees were getting visions of Swami and “feeling his presence.” Well, I have neither felt nor seen. Just once, he appeared in a dream, but it was confused and I forget all the details. Does this distress me? No. I keep calling on him. And my mood, a lot of the time, is wonderfully happy.

 

May 9.
The “triple anniversary.”
²⁵
Shall I ever make it quadruple?

It seems that the Hilldale property really is going to be sold. We go into escrow today or tomorrow.

All this time, I have kept on with the Prabhavananda book. Reached page 70 today. Of course, this is just jogging; I'm not really getting down to the big narrative problems.

Items from a sex catalogue (Blueboy Products) I got in the mail yesterday: Dr. Richard's Ring (to maintain an erection), Jewelled Cock Rings, Electric Cock Rings, Leather Harness, Extasx (suck vibrator), Anal-egg Vibrator, Big Squirt (the ultimate pulsating dildo) and Big Billy—the sexy doll (“the chicken who never says no. . . . almost better than the real thing”).

 

June 8.
Yesterday morning we went through the adoption ceremony in Santa Monica, before Judge Mario Clinco. It was done in his chambers, not in the courtroom, quickly and politely, with no awkward questions asked. He said “good luck” to us both when it was over, which made the ceremony seem like a marriage. John Ladner probably had a good deal to do with the speed and smoothness of the proceedings. We both like him very much now and think of him as “our” lawyer. We had lunch with him afterwards and drank champagne. And much much more in the evening, to celebrate Billy Al Bengston's birthday. This would have been an auspicious day indeed, if it hadn't been for Anita Bryant's sweeping victory in Florida and her threat to carry her persecution of our tribe into California.
²⁶
I feel dull with forebodings. Courage. My job is to get on with my book about Swami, now at page 118.

 

July 4.
Swami's deathday, his first. This morning, some journalist called to tell me that Vladimir Nabokov has just died. I could give him no comment.

Have got to page 157—more than half, surely, of the first draft? I wonder if it is because I am writing this book that I feel so cut off from Swami's presence.

Have reached a point in the story which is very difficult to handle. It is my meeting with Don. [Vernon] and Caskey I have been able to handle, because [Vernon]'s involvement with Swami didn't last long and Caskey never had any. But Don ended by becoming his disciple. His impressions of Swami and his impressions of my relationship to Swami are of enormous importance to the book; they give me the only opportunity to get a temporary binocular view of the situation.

Aside from working with him on that, we may possibly soon be working on some project for John Frankenheimer. We met him at a lunch given by the Housemans on the 26th, and he suggested that we should meet and discuss stories. He is said to be unreliable. But, if he isn't serious, why did he make the suggestion, out of the blue, without any prompting?

Then there is the possibility of our doing the commentary together for Weidenfeld's book of Don's drawings. Weidenfeld seems fairly serious about this. At least he is starting to argue that my name ought to be first on the title page, for reasons of publicity. Don insists that this doesn't matter. I find it a bit humiliating. But I suppose it doesn't.

And then there is still Harry Rigby on the horizon. He called, not long ago, to declare that he wants to produce our play this fall.

We'll probably regret and curse all of these projects, if they materialize, and feel let down if they don't.

The escrow on the Hilldale property closed on the 29th. No more tenants, no more writing checks for the Hazel Allen loan,
²⁷
no more keeping accounts of water bills, property taxes, etc.! But also no more real estate other than the bit we live on, to keep increasing steadily in value. And the payments I'll receive from the sale will be increasingly trimmed down by inflation.

 

August 7.
Today I reached page 203, which is almost certainly much more than two-thirds of this draft. I still haven't the least idea what is caught in the net. It is still entirely possible that the question, “Why are you telling me all this?” won't be adequately answered. But, in all my long experience, I have never been able to find anything better than this fumbling way of getting down to the nerve.