Although I did not maintain a diary during those years at BCM, I did – from time to time – enter a reflection into a small notebook I carried with me on trips to professional meetings or on site visits I continued to make for the NIH. Here are a few entries from those journals.
Tuesday, Oct. 2, 1979 (San Francisco, CA):
Here I am in my hotel room, alone, in San Francisco, a city advertised as one of the most exciting cities in the country. Yes, it could be; but not when you’re alone and when the woman you love is 1,500 miles away. San Francisco is for couples. I learned that. It really isn’t a town for a single man who has no interest in picking up a woman – nor another man! Even if this town is known for that as well as its fog and charm.
Right now I, myself, feel foggy – and not at all charming. I’m cool and damp, I cover, obscure, all that I touch. I crave a warmth to burn it all away. Perhaps in this writing I can.
It’s now a few minutes after 10 o’clock. I just returned from getting a cheeseburger at a greasy-spoon a block from the hotel – over on O’Farrell. A safe distance away. A left turn, up the hill from the Hilton and a block to the right. “Never turn down hill!” The printed program for the meeting carries that admonition. Yet, down-hill doesn’t look all that bad. No more sleazy than some areas I’ve seen in Washington, D. C. I suppose “down-hill” never does look that bad when you are at the top.
How do I feel right now? The question, of course, was prompted by an assessment of where I am on my own personal hill. The first response is: introspective. Why not? After all, if I didn’t feel that way, I probably would not be writing this right now.
The next one is: puzzled. Yes, that’s a good term. It implies, to me, that I’m in several pieces that need putting back together. I want to see what the picture looks like. I am a jig-saw puzzle. Who cut up the pieces, I wonder? Was there once a whole picture and somehow it got cut up? Or is that what life is all about?
Is God a puzzle maker, a master at constructing a jig-saw puzzle? We’re born all of a tumble, pieces scattered from a box. So many years are spent turning all of the pieces right-side-up. Then comes the time for finding the ones with a straight edge so that the frame can be built first. Finally, one hopes to build up the rest of the picture, to see what God intended right from the start.
Where am I in all of this?
I think I’ve turned over all of my pieces during the first thirty-eight years of my life. To be sure, some were turned over more recently. During the last five to six years. I’ve been building the frame, finding the straight edges. I’ve even found several inside pieces that seem to match. In fact, during the last six months, a number of aggregates have been constructed. They await the right time to be inserted into the picture.
This is surely what “encounter with self” is all about – an attempt to turn the pieces the right way and begin the work of putting them together.
What does my puzzle look like so far?
There appear to be a lot of rosy colors. Karen has found most of them for me and put them together in large aggregates. In fact, she has concentrated on most of the bright pieces. I’ve been obsessed with the dark and dull ones. I see mainly my shortcomings.
I see my anger, my annoyance, my intolerance. She sees my tenderness, my gentleness, my ability to comfort. In fact, she has pointed out how some of the dull, grey pieces are really lilac when put together.
I see my drive to achieve, she sees my concern and need to help others. I serve two masters: me and others. I strive to please others so that I can please myself. I want others to accept me for who I am so that I can accept myself for who I am – and not for what I do.
Yet, how can I separate the two? How can I really “be” without doing. Only God can be; all else must do in order to exist. Only God can exist without doing something to show there is existence. That’s an essential characteristic. God is; man does. Everything does. Atoms move; without movement nothing exists. A basic condition of physics, so I’m told. At absolute zero, there is no movement; at absolute zero, there is no existence as we think of existence.
Everything must do something. Everything is known by what it does, by what it can do. Why should I be different?
It’s ok for me to be accepted for what I can do. What I can do for others. It’s a necessary condition. The question then becomes: what should I do, what can I do? How do the two relate? Satisfaction comes from doing what should be done.
I should help – rather than harm – other people. When I can help, and not harm, then I am accomplishing what I should do. Then I should be satisfied. Can I be satisfied?
What a confusing web our, or at least, my words weave!
And without benefit of a scotch!
I brought back a cup of Sanka. It’s almost gone. Perhaps I should quit now. I’ve been writing for almost an hour. I should read for a while. Let my thoughts unwind. Begin a new web tomorrow.
I kept the notebook and used it once more, several months later.
Monday, January 14, 1980 (New York City, NY):
In a way New York City is not much different from San Francisco. Yet there are subtle changes – in the environment and certainly in me.
Yes, I’ve re-read my West Coast reflections, sitting now in the lobby of the Hotel Tudor. I really can’t abide my cell of a room. If it were in a monastery there would be more atmosphere! So here I am, Muzak bombarded, with people wandering by.
I want my life to have some meaning. I’m not sure what meaning it really has now. Yes, I know it has meaning when it comes to Karen and me. My meaning in life is to love her, to be present to her when she needs me. That really means a lot to me. I so want her to need me – as I need her.
This is what my life is all about.
Strange. My life really began here in New York City, March 1957. Pictures come to mind. Karen in a blue-green coat on a Staten Island ferry boat. Her auburn hair blowing in the wind. I see her face, creamy in my mind’s eye. A Maureen O’Sullivan look! And her green eyes.
I see her beside me at Rockefeller Center, at St Patrick’s, in a subway station late at night. At a restaurant called the Californian. At Sarde’s with “hambourger” that is four inches high and steak-tartare inside. At the Latin Quarter. Sleeping thorough the “Potting Shed.”
Back then, Times Square held excitement and crispness, not the sleaziness of today’s walk among the porn shops and movie houses. That New York of twenty-three years ago is our New York. Then – a street vendor of hot pretzels offered a kingly repast; now I’m thankful he sells his wares and hands me the hot dough wrapped in a paper napkin.
Then – there were lovely smoke-rings from the Camel’s ad on Times Square; now it’s been replaced by air pollution from cabs splashing dirty water on any who venture too near the curb. Each block held a new adventure; now a hint of violence, of ugliness. Baghdad-on-the-Hudson has become Tehran!
Two years later I returned for another site visit to San Francisco; the following words come from my notebook:
July 6, 1982 (San Francisco, CA):
I’d forgotten what the smell of pine is like! A gentle fragrance, a tickle on the nose. A green aroma drawn deep into the lungs. I’m awash in it, here in an isolated spot in the Japanese Tea Garden of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. How I wish Karen were here with me. A hint of her perfume would match the exotic odors of the candelabra pines around me. They stand like tiered birthday cakes, wedding cakes is more like it. In shades of green – shadow darkened, sun spotted. Delicate feathers waltzing in the breeze.
A change of venue! To a post at the foot of a waterfall. Silver threads past a tapestry of red and green. Grey rocks spotted, like knurled hands, with lots of moss. Azure sky above the hill. The orange flash of a pagoda. Miniature daisies at my feet. Sunlight on my back. The Lord is good!
How many shades of green are there!?
For a moment the people had gone. I was alone with Karen and with God.
The Tea House itself. With jasmine tea and a dish of nibble cookies/crackers. Crunch and sweet. And still the fragrance of pine.
It is difficult to exist in the now! I’ve spent the last hour or so looking at thousand-year-old jade carvings in the de Young museum. And now I’m sitting in the dappled sun-shade of the arboretum. I’ve tried to slow down, not to plan what I’m going to do next, how I’m going to invest my time to get the largest yield on the rental car. So much to see. Even more to perceive.
Why can I not rest here for awhile? To feel the cool breeze, to tune out the auto-noise of civilization which trespasses in this abode of rustling leaves, of a gibbering bird. Technological pollution of nature’s orchestra. Discordant blasts to stifle what I’d like to hear – to be.