Month: April 2013

More Lax

Sometimes I think I prefer Lax’s journals to his poetry; in that sense, he reminds me of Thoreau. Even though it was his sparse verse that originally drew me to his work, in the end I think I appreciate his philosophy more than I do his poetic style. Of course, reading his journals and secondary materials has also given me a greater appreciation and understanding of his poetry.

Like Merton, Lax seemed to become more open to Eastern religions later in his life, though they seemed to complement, rather than supplant, his Christian values. Considering his hermetic life, it’s not surprising to me that he found Chuang Tzu appealing, particularly since Merton’s translation of Chuang Tzu is considered a masterpiece in its own right. He obviously studied Merton’s Chuang Tzu translation extensively:

sometimes, i have conversations with an imaginary guru, naturally one who lives inside me. he used to be a psychiatrist: at least in the old days a lot of my conversations were started with, & a lot of my problems heard out or resolved by, an imaginary viennese who listened carefully, often accusingly, & showed me with a few apt technical phrases how far i had erred in my thinking, or behavior. the viennese fellow has disappeared; comes back if ever for very short visits; but has been replaced by chuang tzu (sometimes merton, or sometimes chuang tzu in merton translation) who tells me other wisdoms: usually the wisdoms of abstinence & avoidance; of retreat, prayer & preparation, of non-attachment, of â€?”sitting quietly doing nothing,” of seeking smallness, not greatness, or of seeking nothing at all.

as i don’t think i really understood the â€?”psychiatrist” half of the time, i’m not sure i really understand â€?”chuang tzu.” i respect him though, don’t resent him, as i often did the psychiatrist; feel that he knows i don’t know but that little by little there’ll be things i can learn. i picture him with shaved head, a listener (& yet a practical man), a listener who appreciates, a listener with humor; a storehouse-—but very light storehouse—-of wisdom; made like modern electronic ears of light, light materials, but of great receiving strength.

what he promotes is wisdom, what he promises is grace. zen wisdom, perhaps; zen grace, but certainly wisdom & grace.

one feels that all philosophies, zen, & yoga are ways of approaching wisdom & â€?”enlightenment”—they are ways of approaching an enlightened state in which one’s behavior is always or almost always â€?”spontaneously” right.

to be â€?”enlightened” is not to shine; nor to bring multitudes to the hill where one sits cross-legged, to listen.

it is rather to know what one is doing (& even, perhaps, to enjoy it).

I’ve occasionally had â€?”discussions” with a parent or a long-time friend in my head, but I don’t think there’s a single author I know well enough that I could reconstruct them in my head. If I were going to learn someone that well, though, chuang tzu would be an excellent choice, though I’m more apt to hear Lao Tzu through the Tao Te Ching, probably as close as I come to having a â€?”religion.” More importantly, this seems to indicate a shift from trying to understand why we do things (a Freudian approach) to understanding how we should act, or, equally important, not act. Taoism puts emphasis on accepting what has happened and not trying to understand why it has happened. That’s definitely something I’m still working on.

Lax also emphasizes being in the moment, and not the past, in his journal, another emphasis of Eastern religions:

seeing through two lenses: one lens with a hairline split (like german camera) for greater accuracy: not a split like a broken pane, a broken mirror: but not (yet) the single vision of mystic or hasid.

what could be fuller of life than this (every) moment: each moment regarded calmly is like a jungle (or aquarium) bursting with life.

as jungle is full of beasts, so any moment is full (of many lives).

to look intently at any one object, may seem to leave the others out of account. but the attempt to look at all leaves nothing seen. (nothing regarded closely or understood.)

Of course, it’s hard to imagine any good poet not having this kind of awareness. It’s that kind of attention to detail that allows the poet to convey his vision to his reader.

Much of the later poetry seems to leave out any reference to religious beliefs, to focus, instead, on the immediacy of the setting. The last poem in Love Had a Compass, manages to include both, though it’s certainly not a typical â€?”Christian” poem:

I praise the Lord
for the beauty
of the sun

the beauty
of the sun

I praise the Lord
for the sound
of the wind

the sound
of the wind

the sound
of the wind

the beauty
of the sun

the beauty
of the sun

the sound
of the wind

the sound
of the wind

I praise the Lord

for the movement
of the trees

the movement
of the trees

the movement
of the trees

I praise the Lord

for the movement
of the trees

the sound
of the wind
the dancing
of the sun

I’ll have to admit, though, that I don’t like these later poems as much as I do Lax’s poems in Circus Days & Nights. Surprisingly, they are too minimalist for me, often lacking even the concrete images that I find so appealing in William Carlos Williams poetry and Japanese haikus. Taken to this degree, the poems almost seem abstract rather than concrete. [Apparently I’m not the first to make this observation; see this article.â€?”Beauty of the sun” strikes me as abstract, not an accurate description of sunshine as it strikes (the water, the raindrop, etc.).

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not meditative. My favorite form of meditation isn’t one focused on awareness or on a single object, but, rather, one focused on pure darkness, totally shutting out everything but the darkness. Listening to Lax read his later poems comes as close to Gregorian chant as anything I’ve ever heard read (though I seem to have lost/misplaced the link to the site where he read them in yet another senior moment).

Lax’s “Circus of the Sun”

I suspect it would be difficult to immerse myself in Robert Lax’s spiritual milieu as I’ve done recently and not find more spiritual references in his poetry than I found the first time I read it, or, at the very least, not to pay more attention to those elements than I did the first time. In rereading his poems, I didn’t find too many religious references that I hadn’t noted the first time I read them, but the references did seem much more significant to me than they did on a first reading.

The most Christian of his poems ,â€?”The Circus of the Sun,” is often described as his â€?”masterpiece.” I must admit that the more I read it, the more I like it. I might even go so far as to argue that it was the next generation’s answer to the Lost Generations’ dystopic view of the world, the view that dominated much of 29th century literature. In The Seven Storey Mountain Merton said that Joyce’ s The Portrait of an Artist convinced him to join a monastery. Like Merton, Lax’s poetry stands directly opposed to the views of The Lost Generation. â€?”Circus of the Sun” seems to imply that Eden is constantly reinvented and that we can even manage to live there if we maintain the proper balance.

Unlike Merton, Lax joined a circus, not a monastery. You might have to be as old as I am to understand the appeal of the Circus. Even though circuses were on the way out even when I was a child, I do remember the excitement of watching an old-fashioned circus come to town, watching the elephants set up the tents, playing the carnival games and then attending a bigtop show in the evening. As a child I read stories of unhappy children running away from home to join the circus and having experienced the magic of a bigtop I could identify with that desire.

There was something magical about watching an empty field suddenly be transformed into a thriving carnival, and Lax identifies this transformation with an earlier act of creation:

Morning

In the beginning (in the beginning of time to say
the least) there were the compasses:
whirling in
void their feet traced out beginnings and endings,
beginning and end in a single line. Wisdom danced
also in circles for these were her kingdom: the sun
spun, worlds whirled, the seasons came round, and
all things went their rounds: but in the beginning,
beginning and end were in one.

And in the beginning was love. Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it; the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings, beginning and end. Love
had a compass whose whirling dance traced out a
sphere of love in the void: in the center thereof
 rose a fountain.

The concept of circles and spheres is inherent in almost all the earliest religions but also seem central to Lax’s philosophy, particularly spheres. Since Love is also central to his vision, it’s not surprising to see him to see him tie the two together in the phrase â€?”Love made a sphere.” In The Way of the Dreamcatcher when Georgiou asks â€?”And how do we nurture and sustain?” Lax replies, â€?”Through unconditional love. That’s the bottom line, son. Everything is here because of love. That’s why we were created — to love, and creation was set up to make love possible. Love keeps things going, not just for now, but for forever. Love gives life and makes sure what’s around today will be around tomorrow. It’s about compassion, it’s what the cosmos best responds to…” It’s probably not entirely coincidental that â€?”compass” and â€?”compassion” have the same etymological root.

After watching the tents set up, the poet remarks:

We have seen all the days of creation in one day: this is
the day of the waking dawn and all over the field the
people are moving, they are coming to praise the Lord:
and it is now the first day of creation. We were there on
that day and we heard Him say: Let there be light. And
we heard Him say: Let the firmament be; and water, and
dry land, herbs, creeping things, cattle and men. We were
there in the beginning for we were there in the morning
and we saw the rising of the tent and we have known how
it was in the beginning. We have known the creation of
the firmament: and of the water, and of the dry land, and
of the creatures that moved in the deep, and of the crea-
tures that moved on the land, and of the creation of men:
the waking of acrobats. We have known these things from
the beginning of the morning, for we woke early. We rose
and came to the field.

The key metaphor here is contained in the lines: â€?”We were/there in the beginning for we were there in the morning/ and we saw the rising of the tent and we have known how/ it was in the beginning.” The lines that originally surprised me, though, were: â€?”of the creation of men:/ the waking of acrobats.” Why did Lax identify just the acrobats with the â€?”creation of men?” Was it just that they are the stars of the bigtop, or was it something else that defined them as â€?”men?”

Two later poems help us sense why Lax thinks the acrobats are â€?”His chosen people.”

They lie in slumber late, the acrobats;
They sleep and do not know the sun is up.
Nor does the Lord wake them,
Nor do the sun’s rays touch them.
And the Lord, who has chosen them
The Lord, who created them,
Leaves them in slumber until it is time.
Slowly, slowly, His hand is upon the morning’s lyre,
Makes a music in their sleeping.
And they turn, and turning wonder
Eyes awake to light of morning.
They rise, dismounting from their beds,
They rise and hear the light airs playing
Songs of praise unto the Lord.
The circus is a song of praise,
A song of praise unto the Lord.
The acrobats, His chosen people,
Rejoice forever in His love.

One thing that seems to set the acrobats apart is that they awake to a â€?”song of praise,/ A song of praise unto the Lord.” And, of course, knowing that they are â€?”His chosen people,” they â€?”Rejoice forever in His love.”

The greatest acrobat of all is Mogador and Lax makes it clear what makes him so special:

Mogador comes down the field.
â€?”There he is!”
He walks the earth like a turning ball: knowing
and rejoicing in his sense of balance:
he delights in the fulcrums
and levers, teeter-boards, trampolines, high-wires,
swings, the nets, ropes and ring-curbs of the natural
universe.

Beneath his feet the world is buoyant,
thin and alive as a bounding rope.
He stands on it poised,
a gyroscope on the rim of a glass,
sustained by the whirling of an inner wheel.

He steps through the drum of light and air, his
hand held forth.
The moment is a sphere moving with Mogador.

â€?”He walks the earth like a turning ball.” A turning ball makes a â€?”sphere,” the same kind of sphere that love made. Naturally the greatest acrobat of all must have the best sense of â€?”balance,” the same kind of dynamic balance that a â€?”gyroscope on the rim of a glass” sustains. Equally important, like all acrobats, â€?”the moment is sphere moving with Mogador.” Three hundred feet up in the air you either focus on the moment or you fall. â€?”Be here, be now” is more than just a cliche′ to an acrobat; it is the essence of life.

Robert Lax in The Seven Storey Mountain

I first considered reading Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain when Robert Lax’s editors suggested that Merton held Lax in the highest esteem and praised Lax in his seminal work. I wondered if gaining more insight into his character would offer further insight into Lax’s poetry. Later when I read that Jean Vanier’s life was changed by reading Merton’s work, I decided it was time to read it. But it was only as I actually read The Seven Storey Mountain that I realized I must have been destined to read this book. I was amazed to find several references to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a book I recently finished reading and still hadn’t decided how to discuss, particularly since Merton’s early life reminded me of the life Joyce portrays in his biographical novel. I was equally amazed to discover multiple references to Merton’s love of Blake, especially since I’d just recently bought Blake’s Complete Works, a book of his drawings, and two critical reviews of his work in anticipation of a mini-course in his poetry. Turns out that it is just plain a great read, too, even if you’re not entirely converted by Merton’s conversion. My only complaint was that I didn’t have the time to just sit down and read it from cover to cover.

Today, though, I’m going to limit myself to discussing Merton’s portrayal of Lax, because I want to get back to Lax’s works and finish up that discussion before circling back and relating Merton’s views of Joyce to my own impressions. Despite the hype from Lax’s editors, there’s not really too much about Lax in The Seven Storey Mountain, though Lax does seem to be one of Merton’s closest friends and was pivotal in getting Merton’s poetry published after he entered the monastery. We first see Lax waiting for a poetry professor to show up:

Taller than them all, and more serious, with a long face, like a horse, and a great mane of black hair on top of it, Bob Lax meditated on some incomprehensible woe, and waited for someone to come in and begin to talk to them.

Lax was apparently one of Merton’s â€?”serious” friends; at this early stage of Merton’s life Lax might have been one of his few serious friends because Merton seemed to take partying more seriously than his studies. I suspect that the phrase â€?”meditated on some incomprehensible woe” is the most significant phrase for Merton, at least seen from the perspective of when he wrote this biography.

I’m still not sure what Merton means in this later description,

To name Robert Lax in another way, he was a kind of combination of Hamlet and Elias. A potential prophet, but without rage. A king, but a Jew too. A mind full of tremendous and subtle intuitions, and every day he found less and less to say about them, and resigned himself to being inarticulate.

perhaps merely that Lax was a reluctant prophet. I certainly never get a sense from Lax’s poetry that he considers himself a â€?”prophet” at all, though the poetry is quite often limited to â€?”subtle intuitions.” His poetry certainly reveals rather than tells.

Although I don’t really consider Lax a Catholic, or even, for that matter, a Christian poet, all of his poetry has a spiritual overtone to it, for as Merton notes:

And the secret of his constant solidity I think has always been a kind of natural, instinctive spirituality, a kind of inborn direction to the living God. Lax has always been afraid he was in a blind alley, and half aware that, after all, it might not be a blind alley, but God, infinity.

Unlike Lax, Merton was conflicted by his desire to publish, fearing that it was a self-indulgence and manifestation of ego that conflicted with his desire to serve God:

Lax rebuked me for all this. His whole attitude about writing was purified of such stupidity, and was steeped in holiness, in charity, in disinterestedness. Characteristically he conceived the function of those who knew how to write, and who had something to say, in terms of the salvation of society. Lax’s picture of America— before which he has stood for twelve years with his hands hanging in helplessness at his sides— is the picture of a country full of people who want to be kind and pleasant and happy and love good things and serve God, but do not know how. And they do not know where to turn to find out. They are surrounded by all kinds of sources of information which only conspire to bewilder them more and more. And Lax’s vision is a vision of the day when they will turn on the radio and somebody will start telling them what they have really been wanting to hear and needing to know. They will find somebody who is capable of telling them of the love of God in language that will no longer sound hackneyed or crazy, but with authority and conviction: the conviction born of sanctity.

The line â€?”They will find somebody who is capable of telling them of the love of God in language that will no longer sound hackneyed or crazy, but with authority and conviction: the conviction born of sanctity” reveals much about not only Merton’s writing but about Lax’s writing, too. It’s easy to see how most, if not all, of Lax’s poetry serves this purpose as clearly as Merton’s religious-oriented writings.

Even though Lax didn’t convert to Catholicism until after Merton had become a monk, Lax dispels Merton’s doubts and leads directly to his conversion:

“What you should say”— he told me—” what you should say is that you want to be a saint.” A saint! The thought struck me as a little weird. I said: “How do you expect me to become a saint?” “By wanting to,” said Lax, simply. “I can’t be a saint,” I said, “I can’t be a saint.” And my mind darkened with a confusion of realities and unrealities: the knowledge of my own sins, and the false humility which makes men say that they cannot do the things that they must do, cannot reach the level that they must reach: the cowardice that says: “I am satisfied to save my soul, to keep out of mortal sin,” but which means, by those words: “I do not want to give up my sins and my attachments.” But Lax said: “No. All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let Him do it? All you have to do is desire it.” A long time ago, St. Thomas Aquinas had said the same thing— and it is something that is obvious to everybody who ever understood the Gospels. After Lax was gone, I thought about it, and it became obvious to me.

Not many people could make that statement, even less college students, but it says worlds about Lax’s character, even in his early years. No wonder Merton saw him as even more religious than himself.

The Week That Wasn’t

For awhile I thought that things might be getting back to normal around here, and I would finally be able to post to my site every day and get back out birding when the sun would magically appear. I should have known better. I finally got the cold that Leslie has had for a week, my first of the year, and I’m sure I was more susceptible because of all the stress around here. Of course, to complicate matters taxes had to be done. Normally they would have been done months ago, too, but other matters have taken priority.

As luck would have it, the taxes were a little more complicated than usual due to some unusually high medical costs for Leslie, and I had to finish them this week. Our medical expenses this year, including insurance premiums, totaled $18,000. Even though I’m on Medicare, my insurance premiums totaled nearly $3,500, and I paid a $1,000 for prescriptions. Leslie had to have relatively â€?”minor” surgery and despite having insurance her out-of-pocket costs accounted for the rest of the total. I certainly felt blessed that we have a good enough income to pay those bills from savings, but it’s also clear many people would have been unable to pay them from savings and would either have had to pay them off over several years or declared bankruptcy. As it turned out, we did get the largest tax refund we’ve ever gotten so the hours spent running down all the needed information was time well spent.

The Wednesday I spent in bed all day certainly wasn’t well spent. COPD and upper respiratory infections aren’t a good combination. It probably didn’t help, either, that Spring is absolutely the worst time of year for my allergies. Even the beauty of our plum tree in full bloom is not enough to overcome my allergies. In fact, early on in the week I was convinced that I was merely having allergy symptoms, not cold/flu symptoms. Wednesday morning when I was having trouble getting up to take Lael to school, it was perfectly clear that it was a cold/flu, not allergies. Luckily, Leslie volunteered to take Lael to and from school and I was able to spend most of the day in bed sleeping with the help of over-the-counter pain killers. I have very little memory of the day. Apparently I was too tired to even push the send button on the tax program, because I had to do that earlier this morning.

Two days later, I’m finally feeling almost back to normal, which is why I’m finally getting around to posting. I’ve also managed to finish reading Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain and am starting to sort my ideas out. Although I’m not about to convert and I was somewhat put off by his dismissal of other religions, I did find it a fascinating work. My only regret was that I was so busy that I couldn’t sit down and read it through non-stop. In many ways it has helped me to reflect on not only Robert Lax’s poetry but on Joyce’s works, books I finished several months ago but haven’t managed to comment on yet.