Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (3 page)

In all these idealistic ventures, particularly those initiated by religious
communities, the participants seemed to possess a keen sense of reality, a practical wisdom,
which in no way conflicted (as it does in the case of ordinary Christians) with their
religious views. They were honest, law-abiding, industrious, self-sustaining, self-sufficient
citizens with character, individuality and integrity, somewhat corroded (to our present way of
thinking) by a Puritan sobriety and austerity, but never lacking in faith, courage and
independence. Their influence on American thought, American behavior, has been most
powerful.

Since living here in Big Sur I have become more and more aware of this
tendency in my fellow-American to experiment. Today it is not communities or groups who seek
to lead “the good life” but isolated individuals. The majority of these, at least from my
observation, are young men who have already had a taste of professional life, who have already
been married and divorced, who have already served in the armed forces and seen a bit of the
world, as we say. Utterly disillusioned, this new breed of experimenter is resolutely turning
his back on all that he once held true and viable, and is making a valiant effort to start
anew. Starting anew, for this type, means leading a vagrant’s life, tackling anything,
clinging to nothing, reducing one’s needs and one’s desires, and eventually—out of a wisdom
born of desperation—leading the life of an artist. Not, however, the type of artist we are
familiar with. An artist, rather, whose sole interest is in creating, an artist who is
indifferent to reward, fame, success. One, in short, who is reconciled from the outset to the
fact that the better he is the less chance he has of being accepted at face value. These young
men, usually in their late twenties or early thirties, are now roaming about in our midst like
anonymous messengers from another planet. By force of example, by reason
of their thoroughgoing nonconformity and, shall I say, “nonresistance,” they are proving
themselves a more potent, stimulating force than the most eloquent and vociferous of
recognized artists.

The point to note is that these individuals are not concerned with undermining
a vicious system but with leading their own lives—on the fringe of society. It is only natural
to find them gravitating toward places like Big Sur, of which there are many replicas in this
vast country. We are in the habit of speaking of “the last frontier,” but wherever there are
“individuals” there will always be new frontiers. For the man who wants to lead the good life,
which is a way of saying
his own life
, there is always a spot where he can dig in and
take root.

But what is it that these young men have discovered, and which, curiously
enough, links them with their forebears who deserted Europe for America? That the American way
of life is an illusory kind of existence, that the price demanded for the security and
abundance it pretends to offer is too great. The presence of these “renegades,” small in
number though they be, is but another indication that the machine is breaking down. When the
smashup comes, as now seems inevitable, they are more likely to survive the catastrophe than
the rest of us. At least, they will know how to get along without cars, without refrigerators,
without vacuum cleaners, electric razors and all the other “indispensables” … probably even
without money. If ever we are to witness a new heaven and a new earth, it must surely be one
in which money is absent, forgotten, wholly useless.

Here I should like to quote from a review of
Living the Good Life
, by
Helen and Scott Nearing.
*
Says the editor: “What we are trying to suggest is
that the solution for a cluttered, frustrated existence is not merely in moving to the country
and attempting to
practise ‘the simple life.’ The solution is in an
attitude towards human experience which makes simple physical and economic arrangements almost
a moral and esthetic necessity. It is the larger purpose in life which gives to its lesser
enterprises—the obtaining of food, shelter and clothing—their essential harmony and balance.
So often people dream of an ideal life “in community,” forgetting that a “community” is not an
end in itself, but a frame for higher qualities—the qualities of the mind and the heart.
Making a community is not a magic formula for happiness and good; making a community is the
result of the happiness and the good which people already possess in principle, and the
community, whether of one family or several, is the infinitely variable expression of the
excellences of human beings, and not their cause…”

Digging in at Big Sur eleven years ago, I must confess that I had not the
least thought or concern about the life of the community. With a population of one hundred
souls scattered over several hundred square miles, I was not even conscious of an existent
“community.” My community then comprised a dog, Pascal (so named because he had the sorrowful
look of a thinker), a few trees, the buzzards, and a seeming jungle of poison oak. My only
friend, Emil White, lived three miles down the road. The hot sulphur baths were three miles
farther down the road. There the community ended, from my standpoint.

I soon found out how mistaken I was, of course. It was no time before
neighbors began popping up from all sides—out of the brush, it seemed—and always laden with
gifts, as well as the most discreet and sensible advice, for the “newcomer.” Never have I
known better neighbors! All of them were endowed with a tact and subtlety such as I never
ceased to marvel at. They came only when they sensed you had need of them. As in France, it
seemed to me that I was once again among people who knew how to let you be. And always there
was a standing invitation to join them at table, should you have need of food or company.

Being one of those unfortunate “helpless” individuals who knew
nothing but city ways, it wasn’t long before I had to call upon my neighbors for aid of
one kind or another. Something was always going amiss, something was always getting out of
order. I hate to think what would have happened had I been left entirely to my own resources!
Anyway, with the assistance that was always willingly and cheerfully extended, I received
instruction in how to help myself, the most valuable gift that can be offered. I discovered
all too quickly that my neighbors were not only extremely affable, helpful, generous in every
way, but that they were far more intelligent, far wiser, far more self-sufficient than I had
fatuously thought myself to be. The community, from being at first an invisible web, gradually
became most tangible, most real. For the first time in my life I found myself surrounded by
kind souls who were not thinking exclusively of their own welfare. A strange new sense of
security began to develop in me, one I had never known before. In fact, I would boast to
visitors that, once a resident of Big Sur, nothing evil could possibly happen to one. I would
always add cautiously: “But one has first to prove himself a good neighbor!” Though they were
addressed to my visitor, I meant these words for myself. And often, when the visitor had
departed, I would repeat them to myself like a litany. It took time, you see, for one who had
always lived the jungle life of the big city to realize that he too could be “a neighbor.”

Here I must say flatly, and not without a bad conscience, that I am
undoubtedly the worst neighbor any community could boast of. That I am still treated with more
than mere tolerance is something which still surprises me.

Often I am so completely out of it all that the only way I can “get back” is
to look at my world through the eyes of my children. I always begin by thinking back to the
glorious childhood I enjoyed in that squalid section of Brooklyn known as Williamsburg. I try
to relate those squalid streets and shabby houses to the vast expanse of sea and mountain of
this region. I dwell on the birds I never saw except for the sparrow feasting on a fresh pile
of
manure, or a stray pigeon. Never a hawk, a buzzard, an eagle, never a
robin or a hummingbird. I think of the sky which was always hacked to pieces by roof-tops and
hideous smoking chimneys. I breathe again the air that filled the sky, an atmosphere without
fragrance, often leaden and oppressive, saturated with the reek of burning chemicals. I think
of the games we played in the street, ignorant of the lure of stream and forest. I think, and
with tenderness, of my little companions, some of whom later went to the pentitentiary.
Despite it all, it was a good life I led there. A wonderful life, I might say. It was the
first “Paradise” I knew, there in that old neighborhood. And though forever gone, it is still
accessible in memory.

But
now
, now when I watch the youngsters playing in our front yard,
when I see them silhouetted against the blue white-capped Pacific, when I stare at the huge,
frightening buzzards swirling lazily above, circling, dipping, forever circling, when I
observe the willow gently swaying, its long fragile branches drooping ever lower, ever greener
and tenderer, when I hear the frog croaking in the pool or a bird calling from the bush, when
I suddenly turn and espy a lemon ripening on a dwarfish tree or notice that the camellia has
just begun to bloom, I see my children set against an eternal background. They are not even
my
children any longer, but just children, children of the earth … and I know they
will never forget, never forsake, the place where they were born and raised. In my mind I am
with them as they return from some distant shore to gaze upon the old homestead. My eyes are
moist with tears as I watch them moving tenderly and reverently amid a swarm of golden
memories. Will they notice, I wonder, the tree they were going to help me plant but were too
busy then having fun? Will they stand in the little wing we built for them and wonder how on
earth they ever fitted into such a cubicle? Will they pause outside the tiny workroom where I
passed my days and tap again at the windowpane to ask if I will join them at play—
or must
I work some more?
Will they find the marbles I gathered from the garden
and hid so that they would not swallow them? Will they stand in reverie at the forest
glade, where the little stream prattles on, and search for the pots and pans with which we
made our make-believe breakfast before diving into the woods? Will they take the goat path
along the flank of the mountain and look up in wonder and awe at the old Trotter house
teetering in the wind? Will they run down to the Rosses, if only in memory, to see if
Harrydick can mend the broken sword or Shanagolden lend us a pot of jam?

For every wonderful event in my golden childhood they must possess a dozen
incomparably more wonderful. For not only did they have their little playmates, their games,
their mysterious adventures, as did I, they had also skies of pure azure and walls of fog
moving in and out of the canyons with invisible feet, hills in winter of emerald green and in
summer mountain upon mountain of pure gold. They had even more, for there was ever the
unfathomable silence of the forest, the blazing immensity of the Pacific, days drenched with
sun and nights spangled with stars and—“Oh, Daddy, come quick, see the moon, it’s lying in the
pool!” And besides the adoration of the neighbors, a dolt of a father who preferred wasting
his time playing with them to cultivating his mind or making himself a good neighbor. Lucky
the father who is merely a writer, who can drop his work and return to childhood at will!
Lucky the father who is pestered from morn till sundown by two healthy, insatiable youngsters!
Lucky the father who learns to see again through the eyes of his children, even though he
become the biggest fool that ever was!

“The Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit called their devotional
community-life ‘Paradise’ and interpreted the word as signifying the quintessence of love.”
*

Looking at a fragment of “The Millennium” (by Hieronymus
Bosch) the other day, I pointed out to our neighbor, Jack Morgenrath, (formerly of
Williamsburg, Brooklyn) how hallucinatingly real were the oranges that diapered the trees. I
asked him why it was that these oranges, so preternaturally real in appearance, possessed
something more than would oranges painted, say, by Cézanne (better known for his apples) or
even by Van Gogh. To Jack it was simple. (Everything is quite simple to Jack, by the way. It’s
part of his charm.) Said Jack: “It’s because of the ambiance.” And he is right, absolutely
right. The animals in this same triptych are equally mysterious, equally hallucinating, in
their super-reality. A camel is always a camel and a leopard a leopard, yet they are
altogether unlike any other camels, any other leopards. They can hardly even be said to be the
camels and leopards of Hieronymus Bosch, magician though he was. They belong to another age,
an age when man was one with all creation … “when the lion lay down with the lamb.”

Bosch is one of the very few painters—he was indeed more than a painter!—who
acquired a magic vision. He saw through the phenomenal world, rendered it transparent, and
thus revealed its pristine aspect.
*
Seeing the world through his eyes it appears to us
once again as a world of indestructible order, beauty, harmony, which it is our privilege to
accept as a paradise or convert into a purgatory.

The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so
many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these at one and the same
time.

I am led to speak of the “Millennium” because, receiving
as many visitors as I do, and from all parts of the globe, I am constantly reminded that I am
living in a virtual paradise. (“And how did you manage to find such a place?” is the usual
exclamation. As if
I
had any part in it!) But what amazes me, and this is the point,
is that so very few ever think on taking leave that they too might enjoy the fruits of
paradise. Almost invariably the visitor will confess that he lacks the courage—imagination
would be nearer the mark—to make the necessary break. “You’re lucky,” he will say-meaning, to
be a writer—“you can do your work anywhere.” He forgets what I have told him, and most
pointedly, about the other members of the community—the ones who really support the show—who
are not writers, painters or artists of any sort, except in spirit. “Too late,” he probably
murmurs to himself, as he takes a last wistful glance about.