There's a Cow In Manhattan Part 02

Date: About 1961-1965

There's a Cow In Manhattan

Part Two

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Mrs. Berman comes to visit me once a year. I hear footsteps clomping up the wooden steps outside my door and a faint call for Mr. Deem. Last year I put a large painting in front of the fireplace so she wouldn’t notice that I had broken into the brick wall. Mrs. Berman is my landlady. She said she doesn’t know I live here and if I get into trouble for living in a non-living zone, she will claim she had not rented to me for living.  I happened to see she was downstairs last year and had a chance to hide my fireplace.  This year she was at the door before I knew it.  She said the fireplace was beautiful and asked if I had any paintings that were not too large that would go over an orange couch. I couldn’t possibly know what she meant and saw she didn’t know what she meant too, so neither of us mentioned it again. I know now it was her way of saying that she saw lots of paintings. This year she told me that an Israeli sculptor was moving into the floor below and she asked me if I was alright and left and went to Florida.

There are a few people who visit me, but not often. I have a terrible time staying here by myself.  Friends I've known decide to come to Manhattan and stay here until they have found where to go. It got so bad once when a friend whom I knew in the Army had a nervous breakdown, left his apartment and came here because he knew there was someone here all the time. He lay on beds moaning and not sleeping until I went away on a Thursday and came back on a Monday expecting to find a suicide but to my surprise only a note saying he was feeling much better and had returned to his apartment Friday morning and he wanted me to telephone him because he was so worried about where I might be. That night I gave my extra bed to the city so that the only people who stayed the night would have to sleep with me in a three-quarter size bed. I've been left alone since. 

I prefer living alone and will probably never live with anyone unless I cannot live without them. Mary Alice O’Neal cannot live without me, but that's about as far as I will go. I've not always lived alone, but found in Chicago when I was in school it’s a very good idea if you're going to be an artist, at least when you're starting. It’s very difficult to be selfish when you are me and I must work on it all the time. It must apply to Georges that when they are friendly to anyone, suddenly that friend moves in on him.  My Dad was the same way and he was a George.  Every bum knows me a block away and even crosses the street to ask me for a handout. I always tell them I spent all my money on tomatoes and that usually satisfies them.  I don’t have any money to give away and wonder about those people who do.

I began wondering if so many people had reasons to ask for my help why I couldn’t ask for someone to help me, so I met a fellow who worked for the Welfare and his name is Bruce Mailman. He's been here and met Mary Alice O’Neal and we talked about the things she did and didn’t do. I told Bruce what she didn't do was pay any rent, but she stayed here because there is always a cat somewhere in a loft.  He suggested she go on welfare, which was a brilliant idea. We decided she must be about 75 years old in order to elaborate on her situation and make the appeal sound reasonable and he took it to his work and within a  few weeks I heard it was working out very well. Suddenly I had a very frantic visit from Bruce who told me we had to present a 75-year-old woman who could prove she was Mary Alice O’Neal and I couldn’t think of any way to do that, so the appeal didn't go through.

Then I tried a Tiffany Foundation Grant and got great encouragement from two curators from the Metropolitan Museum whom I had come to know while working there delivering office mail. They told me my work was certainly good enough to get the grant, but I already knew that and I filled out the application, had photographs made, and mailed in everything just as they asked and got it all in on time. The next day, by return mail I got a rejection. I think what caused such efficient action was because in the application was a question about what would I do if I got the grant.  Naturally I answered, paint, and could not understand why there was an entire blank page after the question. If I were to outline a project, I would not be painting but doing a project, but grant people of course are project people.

My application for a Guggenheim went the same way, but this time I had Allan Stone’s advice and he arranged popular people to write letters of recommendation and I typed many days in order to get the seven or twelve duplicate copies of my autobiography and proposed project. This time I filled every blank with complete sentences and had a great deal of material to submit. It certainly looked like a winner envelope.  From the reports from Allan Stone and the woman who handled the correspondence at the Guggenheim Foundation office,  I was doing very well. I even invited her to my exhibition at the Allan Stone Gallery. At the end I got a very good rejection slip and really felt I was not the type to win grants. A friend of mine found out that if one’s application is held as long as mine was the secret is to apply the following year. I even had Ted Castle correct my spelling and punctuation, but it was obvious I was to be bothered by people who asked me for money, like other Georges I know, and I was not the one to ever be given money, so I went home for Christmas and gave my typewriter to Aunt Renie, who writes wonderful letters on it to me.

Lee Guilliatt comes here and visits a great deal. Sometimes she brings her guitar and sings and practices. Mike Helfgott has been here but he doesn’t stay very long. Olive Deering was here twice but was with other people and really didn’t come to visit me but to be with the other people. Susan Cabot was here with Richard Arve, the dancer. I didn’t know who Susan Cabot was until Richard Arve told me she was the Indian girl in the film where Jeff Chandler played Cochise. David Lee comes over all the time by the fire escape because he lives in a loft next door.  Freddie Herko was here once for dinner and I was so excited I mopped the floor and cooked two entire dinners, one chicken dinner and one beef stew. He came with Deborah Lee and David Lee and killed himself a month or so later when he leaped out of a five-storey window to the music of Mozart. Juanita Grosvenor visited with her husband Jack Harris. Benny Andrews and Mary Ellen come over often, they are moving into a loft very nearby very soon. Edna Marie is Uncle Big Boy and Aunt Mamie’s oldest child and she married Lovis Ponder and they visited Manhattan with their daughter Kathleen and visited me here. I had just finished my painting of Thomas Sully’s "Boy with a Torn Hat" and Edna Marie liked it very much. Fr. Hilary came to visit and I had to borrow a bed from David Lee and that night Mary Alice O’Neal shit in his house shoe. Boyd Clopton visited me many times but now he lives in Hollywood, California. Ronald Vance came to visit one day and brought Jim McNair to see my work, but Jim didn’t like my paintings at all. Ronald Vance does still. Edna Marie is the only Deem who has ever been here besides me. Robert Graham visited me and used the bathroom. So did Marge Mars the second time she came here. When Richard Brown Baker came I overheated the house so much everyone was sweating. Richard Brown Baker is such a strange man. He looked at my calligraphic abstractions and pretended to read them. One afternoon Ivan Karp and Henry Geldzahler came to see my work. Ivan Karp kept looking out the window where his car was parked double and never saw the paintings and Henry Geldzahler looked only at Ivan Karp. Henry Geldzahler first came with Robert Beverly Hale and Hale only talked about how he thought curators should know how to paint. It was then I found Robert Beverly Hale was blind.

When I started living here I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I had moved from Avenue B where I had a three-quarters bed and a few pieces of furniture and here I found another bed that had been left behind. The mattress on this bed was still in the factory wrapper and Mrs. Berman said I could have it. Many office buildings around here are always re-modeling and I found a black leather chaise longue one day in perfect condition and from the same site talked construction men out of a big black leather throne-chair which I called my Gertrude Stein chair, and another black tufted leather chair. Either the tufted chair or the chaise longue had one leg off, but that was easily remedied with two bricks put where the leg was missing, so  I had all this wonderful heavy furniture sitting around in a huge space, and this led to many people staying overnight at different times. George Monk was my first roommate and he did great arrangements with this space. He had a great deal of Chinese articles to make it all a very Fu Manchu atmosphere. After he moved, Lee Guilliatt moved in for about a year and we were so close we even painted together in the same studio. I enjoyed having roommates then. I had just stopped working at the Metropolitan and hadn’t learned that a full-time painter must have his way of being alone. Lee moved away to Staten Island after having worked at the Living Theater and brought their cast parties to the loft, so Julian Beck and Judith Malina have been here, I had almost forgot. When she went to Europe, Richard Arve and Marnie Mahaffey stayed for the summer and Remy Charlip visited at times. Somehow everyone stayed and then went away and I began preferring them away so when the nervous breakdown friend came and went, only me and one bed was left. The chaise longue caught fire slightly, but  began looking like a death bed, so I burned it for heat during a spell of relentless cold weather. The tufted leather chair went up on the roof and I forgot about it during the winter and it rotted up there. The Gertrude Stein chair is still here and will always be, and I sit in it, because it’s the type chair that takes so much of my being I just sit and do nothing else.

The Israeli sculptor is very mannerly and minds his own business and is a good neighbor. If I have a party where people dance, at about 2:30 he taps on his ceiling with a broom and I know it’s time to stop the party or at least cozy it down and that’s always good timing. His name is Hadar. We have a code. I stomp on the floor three times, or he pounds with his broom three times if we see the Fire Department Inspectors. Then we lock our doors and sit quietly in our lofts until they quit knocking at our doors. It gets to be very frightening at times. I don’t know if I do better by letting them in or keeping them out. They have never said anything threatening about my living here. They always come in threes. Once when George Monk was living here they came in one after the other. George was in a Chinese robe posed over a cup of coffee still very much asleep and watched them walk by and look at the fire escape and windows. Both beds were still unmade and a few dishes that had been used for breakfast were scattered around. One fireman said, “Do you live here?” I said no, although I have been known to stay over when I work late. All the firemen left and I didn’t hear anything about them again, but decided it’s better not letting them in.

By now, there are up to five inspectors a week. One came recently and I told him he could not inspect because there were already eight different inspectors who had come on other days and I just did not have any more things to inspect, unless he was a health officer and wanted to inspect me. He laughed and continued being there waiting to inspect. I had to close the door in his face and insist much more than I thought was necessary. Finally he left, but the next day he returned pleading with me to inspect. We talked a while longer and he told me all about A.I.R. I told him my whole life was in no way ever connected with codes and abstract initials and that I was not and did not have the mentality to be interested, let alone understand. He told me I had no choice, that I must understand these things if I were to live in any city in the world, that if he didn’t do it someone would, that there was no way not to get involved with codes and abstract initials and live. He sat down and explained most clearly that A.I.R. meant Artist in Residence and that if I put a  sign above my door at the street, a certain measurement, black letters on a white ground, and which floor number in smaller letters at the right on the bottom, I would be left alone. He was so understanding of my situation and attitude, I was impressed, and told me I also had to fill out these forms. So I got impatient again and told him he knew so much about forms and proper papers he could fill them out himself. To my surprise he did and said he would sign it but didn’t know my name nor how to write it like I wanted it written, so would I sign it. Naturally I was still timid about my getting involved with all of this, but he was so human and sympathetic I signed and then took on the assignment of promising I would mail them to his office. Again I objected, why couldn’t he take them and be finished with it all. By now I had delightful plans on how I was going to make my sign to go above the door downstairs. It was going to have Roman numbers depicting the floor number, and proper capitals from Roman capital letters saying A.I.R. Although it was to be black and white, I had a black I made, which looked like Franz Kline black and much more beautiful than Ivory Black. I was going to varnish it all with an orange varnish to make it all blend like I wanted it so I was very excited to do the A.I.R. sign. He saw I was not so impossible as before then went on to explain if the proper forms were not received through the mail by the proper office and stamped in and routed to him (he was the only one to finally get it) he would not have the form, now a document, legally channeled.  By this time we both were laughing about the whole mess and he promised me that if I did this there would be no more inspectors, except the Fire Department, and they would already know I was legal because of the AIR sign and I would be in proper residency. He also said one day this building is to be taken over by the city and when it was to be destroyed, the city would re-locate me and pay me money for moving, all because I was properly registered. He visited me about once every two months and became a nice friend.

In the early days of living here an inspector came, saw my work, returned with his wife on a Saturday and bought a painting, but those were the days I thought anybody bought paintings. Of course those were the days anybody could buy my paintings because they were anybody’s paintings. Now of course fewer people can buy my paintings because they are painted for fewer and fewer people. There is more and more reason why I don’t get money from people.

Finally all the inspector interest ended and I was again at peace and being left alone. Before winter had returned in full, Hadar asked me to re-arrange the floor of my fireplace so that he would have access to the chimney and have a draft to use for the stove he had set up. I had plugged up one of the two flues in the building. This is the time I began thinking about how it is to live alone and private in Manhattan. I found when I told my story about inspectors and city officials I was not unique, only part of the people in Manhattan and my story was amateur, but I was in. It was like playing marbles in grade school. I thought I could play just because I had beautiful marbles. When I played no one was interested because I didn’t really know how to shoot the marble. I begged boys to play and even promised them beautiful marbles, but they said they didn’t want to take my marbles, they wanted to win them in a good game. I never learned to play and only thought playing marbles was going around trading your one beauty for two uglies and winning because you had the most marbles. John Glass had only two ugly marbles and I asked if he would trade them for one beauty. He said he only needed two, what difference does it make what they look like if two were enough to play a game and I no longer carried my 300 marbles around school and I never learned to play marbles. Learning how to talk to inspectors was the first game I had ever played and saw the reason of the game. Hadar’s request was another bother that caused a threat to my private loft and when I did re-arrange the fireplace it was never the same. Now with the parking hotel across the street, the opening and sharing the fireplace, and the A.I.R. sign I'm seeing everything slowly beginning to change and grow into something else that I had not expected. This happens to everyone in Manhattan and everyone keeps on moving in and living here and that is a big thrill to everyone. They all dread and hate these troublesome events which they can’t avoid, but they all play the marbles game and it keeps Manhattan Manhattan.

Each city has its special trouble that is a constant complaint that identifies that city and the people in it, and those people are lost any other place and say so when they are any other place. San Francisco must have an air problem and always did. Detroit has everyone hating that they must drive everywhere. They have cleaning and laundry establishments that return the laundered and cleaned clothes on hangers with novel signs saying how handy to hang them in the car. Chicago has its loop and all its apartment houses have common stairways in back, so everyone has a back door and are always in danger of being mugged and robbed, but they don't change the situation. All the people in Indianapolis, Indiana, hate going to the hospital and are always going. People live there to go to the hospital often, just like people who live in Boston are always going to school, taking courses is part of living in Boston. In Manhattan everyone hates their landlord and the landlord is always doing something that sees to it they are hated and that is why so many people continue living in Manhattan. I don't know what people do in Brooklyn, I think they talk of going to Manhattan and never do it. It's too close to see. In Washington D.C. everybody acts as though they are happy to be there and are not happy at all. However they stay there acting like they are happy and that's why they stay there. Every city has its disagreeable identification and everyone living in that city is aware and proud of his disagreement.

The winter after George Otts left for the monastery, I began piano lessons. Selma was still taking piano lessons and had been going to Vincennes on Saturday with George Otts. She was in the eighth grade and on Monday evenings Dad let her take the car and me and go to Miss Kimberly for the music lesson. I didn’t have to milk that night and found piano very interesting and I was quick to learn. Norma Spor played “Over the Waves” on an accordion every time I took a lesson, she was right before me. This happened each Monday evening for a year. Miss Kimberly wore lots of rouge and was very pleasant with an air of great appreciation of music. She constantly told me to hold my hand as though I was holding a ball. I didn’t like the image and always forgot to keep my hand cupped like she wanted it.

The main excitement was knowing I was in town on Monday night, after school and also had usually been in town on Sunday afternoon when Dad took us to the movies. If I had been the Saturday before too, I felt very adult having been in town three times in a row. Selma and I would go for a coke after the music lesson and act like Vincennes students, carrying our music books so anyone could see. She was caught carrying a piece of George Otts’s sheet music that was much too advanced for her, but she said she had picked it up by mistake. Once we met some friends from the country who asked us what in the world we were doing in town on Monday night. How pleased we were that they noticed, and when they said, “My, you Deems are always in town,” I knew that it was the occupation of all farmers to go to town. When you live on the farm near Vincennes and you go to Vincennes, you are living the full requirement. Returning home it was after dark, and as Selma drove out of town on 15th Street, I could see into the houses that were lighted and enjoyed all the interiors and people moving in them as we passed. Selma was very good about the driving instructions. She did not have a license, but Dad marked out a route that was simple and was local enough to allow her not to be stopped and checked. She never took chances by dashing somewhere in the car that she was warned not to do. We walked to the Greeks for our cokes regardless of rain or cold because we had to prove we were in town often. The next winter I was in Miss Kimberly’s recital and much to my surprise I was the oldest one in my beginner group playing “The Little Brakeman” and was very unhappy when a boy my age named Lucas Berlakis played Chopin’s famous “Polonnaise” with great skill. He was of the Greeks who owned the fountain and restaurant where Selma and I had our cokes, but his family had another one called The Palace of Sweets. I wondered when Lucas Berlakis took his lesson and if I followed him instead of Norma Spor I would be playing better. I continued taking piano lessons for two years. I was not such a good student and was not so interested and often forgot to practice until the last minute.

Aunt Renie was very wise and always made me practice as soon as I got home from the lesson so I would remember the new instructions. It never dawned on me that I could go as fast as I chose by perfecting any new assignment quickly, and gain more, so I slowly went on hoping Miss Kimberly would have a new piece for me and that I was ready. Dad was not so interested in my being a musician then. I was in the sixth grade and on our way to church on Sunday we passed a slovenly farm which had two beautiful barns with dirty lots around them, and the farm house was in very bad repair. The farmer who owned this farm was Ramsey Bateman and I dreaded seeing him because the condition of his farm made me sick. He also had many children and one daughter who always fell down due to some nerve condition. I didn’t know her, she didn’t go to St. Thomas School, but any social event that included any general public I always saw her and she was indeed always falling down. When I practiced piano I always chose to do it when Aunt Renie was finishing and putting the last touches to supper. Naturally I would be called to supper, but had just a few notes to complete. Dad would become impatient and call me Beethoven and insist I get to the table at that moment. One day he changed it to Ramsey Beethoven and that was rude to me. When he began calling me Ramsey Bateman I decided to quit my music lessons if they would buy me oil paints.

By the time I was in the first year of High School I was only able to go to town twice a week because I was no longer taking music lessons. The first winter of high school I heard that Sister Bertilla had taken an art course at Notre Dame and I asked her if she would teach me art on Saturday and she was delighted. Each Saturday afternoon I rode my bicycle to St. Thomas, where the nuns lived across the road. There I began learning how a nun does watercolors and became very good at nun watercolors. Sister Bertilla helped me also with my first oil painting and told me to keep it so that when I was a real artist I could look at it and remember my first time painting with oil, but I destroyed it almost immediately. Buck and I had always had the glory of Saturday afternoon movies, and now that I was in High School and Bill Updike lived in town there was more reason to go there. When I began lessons with Sister Bertilla, Bill got a job at the movie theater called the New Moon and he could sneak me in any film that was showing, even at the Pantheon and the Fort Sackville. It was a difficult choice to make, even Dad refused to drive me to St. Thomas, I had to ride my bicycle or on rainy days he would leave me off at Ramsey Bateman’s road and I would walk. On Sunday mornings after mass I could pick up my supplies. During these long bicycle rides of about seven miles, or during the rainy cold walks I found some new force of determination that made for the most concentrated kind of study. I was totally interested in painting and when I borrowed the American Artist Magazine from Sister Bertilla, I read everything in them and understood it. I thought Cezanne was pronounced Shezanne, not unlike Captain Marvel’s secret word of power, Shazam!. I never liked Cezanne’s paintings then and concluded it was homage to some poor old man who dedicated his life somehow to painting and was respected like Barnett Newman is now. There was lots printed about Gauguin too, which I thought had a reason to call Gawgin, but I could never remember what his work looked like. Van Gogh was talked about in those days a great deal and I read his name often but never got around to pronouncing it out loud.

George Otts was in the monastery and Bud Otts had gone to the Army and returned having married Agnes and was living on his own farm on the other side of Vincennes. He had left his car at our house until his wife took it and I sat in it on winter days while it was in the garage vowing to him that I would work harder on the farm and be a good farmer when I grew up. But, now that I was in High School, studying art on Saturday the vow was no longer applying. I had a good friend who was Bill Updike and there was always Buck, so this type of life I had grown into was going well enough.

Summer came again and I burned my old shoes and took my school shoes for everyday, which I didn't wear and as usual cut them down to sandals which I would wear after I had washed my feet at the end of the day. Buck was the first to notice I had not started wearing shoes in the summer like the other boys who quit their barefoot habit as soon as they were finished with the eighth grade, if they ever had gotten the habit at all. Buck told me that I should begin wearing shoes like everyone else, but I just couldn’t. I plowed melons barefoot, picked them, drove the tractor, everything, barefoot and it was a surprise to everyone. They began calling me “feet.” It was a great symbol for me not to wear shoes, plus it was so comfortable and I was always known for not wearing shoes in the summer. When Selma, Buck and I were smaller and played circus I always walked on glass, Buck was the tall man and Selma would put her fist in her mouth. Here I was in my second year of high school and here we were all still doing our Circus Game.

During my second year of high school, Bill Updike and I decided to take a girl to the gravel pit and have sex with her. Both of us were going to experience our first girl together. Her name was Norma Stodgill and in September we met her at the skating rink and asked her if she would meet us the following Saturday and go to the gravel pit with the two of us. She had very bright eyes, a broken front tooth and was short on chin and said yes. She was known around the Vincennes teenagers as a real hot number. I was very frightened, not very interested, but knew I should get this experience. I always had the pick-up truck to drive and was certainly eager to get it over with. The Tuesday night before our Saturday date Norma Stodgill was hit by a truck and killed.

It was that same school year I saw the film “The Song of Bernadette” and told Aunt Renie I wanted to go to the monastery. She said, "Do you really?" and I told her I wanted to become a lay brother not a priest, but just live in the monastery working and praying. She asked me what was wrong with being a priest and I couldn’t say, but knew I didn’t want to do that kind of work. Both Bill and Buck were very surprised and were sad to see me do such a thing. Buck said he thought I wouldn’t go if they didn’t have those big black dresses to wear. He hit the point very closely and repeated, “Would you really go if you just wore shirts and trousers, now think about it, Georgie.” We began making plans and each month Aunt Renie would ask me, “Do you still want to go?" and "Are you sure?” One evening Selma was playing the piano in the good room and Aunt Renie and I were sitting in the sitting room talking and she asked me why I wanted to go to a monastery and not even become a priest. I didn’t know what to say, but I told her again I preferred being alone where I could do my art work and be quiet, then added as tears began rolling down my face, “I don’t know what to do with myself and think this is the best idea.” Then I turned to look at her for help and consolation and saw she was sitting there with her hands over her face heaving out tears too. This caused such a shock I didn’t know what to do so I quit crying. She finally regained her breath and composed herself and said, “You are my only problem left.” I soon left the house to go milk and was quite shattered for a couple of days because that was the first time I had seen Aunt Renie cry.

The following summer came and went. I was to leave for St. Meinrad September 17.  We had visited St. Meinrad and George Otts was now a Frater, called Frater Hilary and he took us to St. Placid Hall, where I was to live. When you go to the monastery to be a brother and you are in high school, you become an Oblate, which is a candidate for brother, like Frater is for Father, he explained it all. Then we stopped all that and visited with him. I asked him where his friend Orville Schaeffer was and he told me he transferred to another order. This was the Benedictine order and Orville Schaeffer had transferred to the Franciscan Order. Orville Schaeffer was a funny-looking man, he had thick glasses that made his eyes look very large and he lisped, but always talked to me and he did not smile like so many strangers did when talking to me. I always liked Orville Schaeffer. Soon I had a new suitcase and lots of new underwear and socks. It was just like those exciting days when George Otts left. I especially enjoyed the plain clothes I was to wear. “You can wear comfortable wash pants under that habit,” Aunt Renie proclaimed. Selma’s birthday is September 17, but she was in nurse’s training so did not see me leave. A few hours before Dad and I drove away we got a phone call from Aunt Hootie saying that Vestie Cummins had rolled off the levee, her Ford tractor had rolled over her and she burst.

I don’t know anybody from Maine, but I’ve been to Bangor. I don’t know anyone in New Hampshire either and I had to have gone through New Hampshire to get to Bangor, Maine, because we drove. I don’t know anyone whom I know of from Massachusetts. Lowell Mintz has a cabin in Vermont. He inherited it from relations and took Lee Guilliatt and me there one winter and I wore his snowshoes. I once went on a dance tour as a dancer and danced in Providence, Rhode Island, but I don’t know anyone there. I live in New York, in Manhattan, and know many people here. Ronald Vance comes from Connecticut and once, before I knew Ronald Vance, I hitchhiked across the state looking for Lakeville in order to visit my French teacher Miss Preston. While I was at Lakeville, Wanda Landowska died there. Mary Ellen Andrews comes from Pennsylvania and the Deem name is Pennsylvania Dutch. I first went to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, when I was in the Army but I can’t think of anyone I know who lives there even though I’m in Manhattan. May Wilson comes from Maryland. Richard Palmer comes from Ohio and works at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. Eleanor Steber comes from Wheeling, West Virgina. I don’t know her, but I hear her. Camp Pickett is in Virginia and I spent 18 weeks of basic training there and certainly like Richmond. Boyd Clopton comes from Richmond, Virginia. I don’t know anything about Delaware except about the river. Sandra Hutchins and Verdalee Tombelaine both come from North Carolina and I met them while working at the Metropolitan Museum, when they had all sorts of pretty southern girls working there. Tommy Johnson comes from South Carolina and I was there once and visited Lynwood McTeer. There is a North, South Carolina. Rosemary Deem Horsting lives in Georgia and I was there at Fort Valley when Dad was in the hospital there. I don’t know anyone in Florida, but I ran away from home once and turned back a bit south of Daytona Beach. I don’t know anything about Alabama. Francis Imbriguglio comes from Mississippi. Tony Ellis comes from Louisiana. Tooke once dated an officer from Arkansas and we all called him Arkie. I don’t know anyone from Missouri, but there’s an art school there in St. Louis. Marie and Al Coates are friends of Aunt Renie and they used to live in Chicago, Illinois. It is just like Indiana except for Chicago. I come from Indiana, Vincennes, Indiana. Kentucky is so beautiful. I hitch-hiked through Kentucky twice, but I don’t know anyone there. I don’t know anyone in Tennessee but I’ve been to Knoxville. Rachel Fawcett lives in Michigan. Ann Fries came from Wisconsin. I don’t know anyone nor anything about Minnesota. Ed Barquist comes from Iowa. Do you know if when you are in North Dakota that you are not in South Dakota? I don’t know anything about the Dakotas but I knew an Indian boy at the monastery from one of them. He was a bright and beautiful boy and nothing like the Catholic missions promise. Lee Guilliatt comes from Nebraska. I think the University has a painting of mine. Fred Merida comes from Indiana, but he talks a lot about Kansas. Oz is in Kansas. Dick Lee comes from Oklahoma and I couldn’t sing the song for a long time because I couldn’t spell it. I’ve always wanted to go to Texas. Tom Nazarre comes from Texas. Mary Lou Tislow who is Uncle Ed and Aunt Ollie’s oldest daughter married a man from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His name is Bob Barkus. Edna Marie loves Colorado. My mom went there because of TB. I don’t know anything about Wyoming nor Montana. Dad has been to both places. There are people who go to every state in the Union, but I never did care for that. I once thought if I received all seven sacraments I’d go to heaven. A male can receive all seven if his wife dies. When I was in the Army I knew a boy from Washington, his name was Richard Grant. He telephoned here to the loft one night and Lee Guilliatt answered the phone and he asked her if she were Mrs. George Deem. I don’t know anything about Idaho. Tom and Tooke used to pick fruit in Oregon. I don’t know anything about Nevada except the painted desert which I don’t believe. I don’t know anything about Arizona. There’s a Great-Uncle Cyrus Deem who lives in California, so does Tom and Tooke. There was a woman at home named California and we called her Cali. I don’t know anything about Utah.

I met a boy once by going to a party that his roommate invited me to. The roommate was named Frank and the boy I met was called Teddy. Somehow I impressed Teddy because I played the old game from Anna and the King of Siam, and refused to have anyone’s head higher than mine. Teddy was very pleased with this game and we talked after the game was over and he told me his name was really Allen but his parents called him Teddy because he looked like a Teddy bear, which he did. Everybody has his way of deciding how someone can look like a Teddy bear, it’s a common practice to compare anyone to a Teddy bear, it’s much better than using a monkey because Teddy bears look more like humans than monkeys who are said to be like humans. Teddy the boy did look like a Teddy bear, but his eyes had the real Teddy bear look. I had a Teddy bear when I was small, so did my twin brother, but his Teddy bear’s eyes got lost so someone, I guess it was Mom, sewed green diamond-shaped buttons in their place and I always thought they didn’t look like eyes at all. I thought about this so much that whenever I saw Teddy bears with Teddy bear eyes, I saw that those eyes didn’t look a thing like eyes and finally came round to seeing that the green diamond-shaped buttons were more like eyes for a Teddy bear than anything else. Teddy or Allen, the boy I met had green eyes, they were not diamond-shaped but they were very strange, they were upside down. I found out he worked downtown near me and we became friendly enough to meet for lunch. Finally he became Allen all the time and I invited him to lunch at my loft and it became common for him to drop by at noon just to say hello. Allen had a marvelous manner about him which I recognized when I played the King of Siam and he decided the artist game I was playing was as good as any game and he played like anyone who plays well would play a game of visiting an artist. I played the artist very well in the game, I had always wanted to play being an artist but had never had the chance because I was fighting so hard being one all the time every day and Allen had no reason to know to object especially when I realized he was not playing, that that was the way he was. He played everything. He did not know anything different, he could not not play any image the world brought to him. He became free enough to walk throughout my loft and even into my studio and look at my work. An artist, especially one playing artist with Allen, had all kinds of reasons to explain their ways, so I could easily tell him that I being an artist never allowed anyone into my studio unless I asked them in. He looked strange and it was then I saw Allen’s eyes were certainly like a Teddy bear’s, they were artificial-looking because they were upside down. The lower lashes were longer than the upper. I still think his eyelids were at the bottom but that is unimportant because the pupils were upside down. After Allen was told about not going into the studio without my inviting him and looking so funny, I decided that he could be the one who could go in without permission because when he would leave I always bent over, put my head between my legs and would look at what he looked at and could see the way he saw. It didn’t work by turning the painting upside down because you merely had the painting upside down, the world had to be upside down, like his world was. We think a round eye cannot be upside down, like a camera or a parrot cannot be upside down but just look at the world, especially a sunset by putting your head between your legs or lying on a bed with your head hanging off the bed and you will see a very beautiful world. It all falls into a place that seems very logical in a way you didn’t expect it. Allen and I grew to be very fond of one another. He knew his world was upside down when he was with me and he knew when it wasn’t a very nice world for him even upside down. Allan finally changed his name to Hugo, but that didn’t turn his world over.

Going to the monastery was very exciting, not only being there, but also thinking about being there. Monks are always continuing being monks because everything they do tells them they are monks. Fathers or mothers know they are that but there is nothing to tell them about it, children can’t, everyone thinks they can but they can’t, they are much too busy telling themselves who they are. Monks have nothing else to do about themselves and they are usually very successful. It is difficult to do if you are not one, but it’s the most logical and natural thing to do if you are one. I never became one, but I had lessons on how to do it. The Director of St. Placid Hall was Fr. Marcellus. He was not very interesting but he gave us lectures on the Holy Rule of St. Benedict and then he was very interesting because he was telling who he was.

My first realization of being away and being a candidate for a monk was on Saturday night. We had a study hall and could hear the village down the hill doing Saturday noises and I could think about becoming a monk and what Saturday night was for a monk. That part was easy. We then all found we would not get our habits for six weeks. Buck had been correct, I began thinking it was not worth it if I had to wait all that time for my habit. Slowly the Holy Rule became more important and more understanding because it says it was much nicer to wait for something than have it without preparing for it. So all the new candidates spent six weeks preparing for their habit. We went to the seminary for high school classes that were just up the hill, we had one and one half day of trade training. I was put in the tailor shop where I met Br. Innocent whom I became very fond of and made a black priest’s suit without knowing it until Br. Innocent turned it right side out and sewed a few things together and had a jacket with no sleeves because I was still sewing at the insides of the sleeves. The high school part was very difficult for me. I had been to Decker High School which only prepared the student to live near Vincennes if he farmed or not. If you were going to live in Vincennes, you went to Vincennes High School. St Meinrad's High School prepared the student for the whole world, plus being a priest too. Naturally I never understood anything in any of my subjects except Gregorian Chant and Holy Rule or Religion classes. English composition and literature were combined, which I never could grasp. I thought, and still do, if they were to combine subjects they should be Literature and History, Geography and English Composition or Grammar. However, by the time I realized this abstract idea, the course was over and on my final Composition, which was “Your Autobiography,” I made a grade of 125 below failing. I cannot remember the name of the priest who taught us but he looked like he had a gray flannel suit under his habit, plus a Perry Como haircut. He was witty and clever but was always telling us O. Henry stories without the ending to prove they were good stories anyway. Naturally I never understood because I didn’t know what an O. Henry story was in the first place.

Fr. Damases taught history, American History, and gave us newspaper-like pamphlets which had mock-ups of all the headlines and direct U.P. and A.P. reports on all the important events in American history. I never had learned how to read the paper and still don’t, and could not learn this way because all I knew about reading newspapers was you didn’t have to read everything and I concluded I didn’t have to read anything. I made low grades with Fr. Damases, but most of the Oblates made low grades because they didn’t claim to be students. All the priests and seminarians were able to conclude that the Oblates were a certain kind of people who were not students and even implied that if you were not a good student you could always be an Oblate and still be religious. This was the first time I found myself in a class. I felt that I was even below that Oblate class because I had made such a ridiculous and low grade in English and Literature. I knew I wasn’t hopeless and having no information on how to be any other way continued being the way I had always been, but it took me a long time to realize that a student is not known to himself because of his grades but known to himself by comparing his grades with others. How else could a student know himself he is nothing but a student for so many years? There was nothing I could do but be the student with the lowest grade, plus an Oblate and I had to be that all the time.

Once every two weeks I got permission to meet with Frater Hilary. On Saturday night he and his group of Fraters were walking in a garden called Fraters Paradise. There they would be, about twenty of them walking around an asphalt circle that curled around trees and plants. We would walk together talking in a long line of Fraters two or three abreast, then suddenly everyone would stop and turn around and go the opposite way. This was called recreation. I usually stepped on the heels of the Frater in front of me or would be caught by Frater Hilary before I could bump into the man in front of me. I told them I couldn’t do this system of walking very well because I was an Oblate not a Frater and they all thought that was funny but Frater Hilary understood that very well.

Finally the day came for us to get our habits. It was called investiture. We went on a retreat for a week when we didn’t talk, but read religious literature and heard many sermons by Fr. Marcellus concerning the Holy Rule. He cut our hair very short and told us that when we took vows a belt would be put around our heads and our heads shaved leaving only the hair where the belt had been and this was called tonsure. This was to happen after we were out of high school. When the retreat was over, on a Sunday afternoon we all went to the crypt of the Abbey Church and the Fr. Prior gave us our habits while we renewed our Baptismal vows and made promises that we would follow the Holy Rule. Fr. Abbot was not there that day.

It was difficult getting accustomed to the habit. It was a long button-up bathrobe type of black wool dress with a leather belt over which a wide black panel hung in front and back. You could put your hands under that. It was easy to forget to pick the panel up while going up steps and we all stumbled for a week or so. The older Oblates accepted us more now that we had habits, but they were proud of their having more experience and showed their worn sleeves and some patches. They were too far along for us to catch up and we realized we would have to wait for the next crop so we could act more experienced. They had decided they were more familiar with holy jargon and called St. Joseph “St. Joe,” which I had heard a nun do, but certainly could not consider myself doing. It was indeed very consoling to hide behind my new habit and when Aunt Renie and Dad visited I was different for the first time and even with their curious expression I felt so proud I had done something that no one else had done. I was sixteen and wore a panel which was called a scapular and Fr. Hilary couldn’t wear a scapular until he was twenty. He had a hood that stood up on the back and we would not get that hood until we had taken three-year vows. I dreamed of this hood and sometimes when alone would hook the back scapular up to make it look like a hood in the mirror.

When I went home for Christmas everyone was surprised that I wasn’t being an artist at the monastery and Aunt Renie had my eyes examined and asked the doctor if sewing black fabric all the time wasn’t bad for my eyes. The doctor said naturally sewing black thread on black fabric was hard on any eyes. Aunt Renie then told Fr. Marcellus that sewing black fabric with black thread was hard on my eyes and, after all I was very interested in being an artist and what has sewing black fabric with black thread to do with being an artist. My trade classes were changed and I began working in the plaster shop making plaster casts of small religious statues. Fr. Marcellus said, "Now what do you think of that, you are now working in the art shop." I said that I seldom sewed black fabric with black thread but white thread, but he told me I was soon going to be using black thread all of the time and that was very hard on my eyes if I was going to be an artist.

Instead of learning Latin I was taught art, which I thought was a marvelous substitute like English Composition with Geography. I had no teacher but was given a little room to work in and a Brother Timothy came once in a while to teach me. He was taking courses at an art school in St. Louis and any vacation he had he would see me and tell me many things. He told me to get "Art Through the Ages" by Helen Gardner and I did and I read it all the time but didn’t understand it but got so involved with art that the Oblates began calling me Oblate Art.

In English Composition and Literature we were assigned an argumentation theme. I wrote many pages, cut out and pasted many pictures to make up my theme. By this time I was so involved with art I couldn’t see anything else. Brother Timothy told me that I must get the habit of seeing everything as a painting. I overstated it and everything became art. I had my real habit and my art and there was no way to stop me now. My theme was called “Is Cubism and Surrealism Necessary.”  It had many pages, many arguments, many pictures and quotations, and was so confused that in my last re-reading of it I found some arguments agreed with the opposing side and some didn’t, but I decided it was too long and too important to be criticized by the priest who had the Perry Como haircut. I got it back almost right away. There were no marks on it, no comments, no trace of it having been read. There were no punctuation or spelling corrections. No scoldings for having split infinitives and I was quite pleased because I must have made one hundred percent. Fr. Marcellus told me later that my argumentation theme was so hopeless that it wasn’t graded and that I was so far behind in understanding English grammar that the Seminary had concluded not to register me in the course at all. I would not have to take it over, I was not to have taken the subject at all, like Latin.

I was hardly affected by this decision, I was an artist with my "Art Through the Ages" book. No one knew I was not in the English Composition course anymore and I still went to the class. I did feel strange and thought I must be looking like Jimmy Cardinal the dumbest boy in grade school, but I didn’t have adenoids and didn’t breathe through my mouth like the dumb students I had known in grade school. Besides I had such wonderful ideas. I was indeed seeing everything as a painting and English Composition was like farming, something I would never do.

One Sunday morning I was working on my Argumentation Theme and someone tapped me on the shoulder. To my great surprise there was Bill Updike standing in my room. He had hitchhiked to St. Meinrad to see me. I later found police were looking for him because he had never told his mother he was going away. I did not know what to do with Bill there visiting me. His only reason was to ask me to quit and return to Decker High School because things were not like they were once. He used all sorts of wonderful arguments and the amazing thing was his arguments never got mixed up like my theme had. He stayed until dark and made me very miserable because I knew by the time he left that I would be quitting. Such personal problems like that were all I needed to start another new life. How important I was at 15 years old. Of course I told him I couldn’t say yes or no that day, but when I wrote him next I promised I would put a yes or no under the stamp. It was the rule that no Oblate sealed their letters when they mailed them. Fr. Marcellus read them before they were sent, if he chose to. The same applied to incoming letters they were always opened by him first. Naturally that was all right with me because it was part of being there and doing the things that were done in a monastery. Writing to Bill Updike and putting anything under the stamp was already quitting the whole monastery idea. So I finally wrote and under the stamp it said, Yes. No would have been yes.

For many weeks after Christmas vacation I had been affected by my reaction to having gone home. Oblate James, my best friend at St. Placid Hall who was in his second year there, had told me the shock of going home. He said everything was going to be littler. I didn’t know what he meant by littler. When I got home, even the coal range had got small.  I was so much taller than the kitchen sink, I thought, because it had been installed right before I left, that it had settled, but doorknobs were lower, the piano was smaller, I even counted the keys. Oblate James didn't say anything about the color of everything. Was I the only one noticing everything had faded? The most frightening sensation of all was that nobody could hear me. I talked louder but that didn’t help. Even Selma couldn’t hear me. She couldn't even hear that I was talking louder, I asked her. I wasn’t affected by thinking I was going crazy, I just knew something new had come into my existence. One day I told Dad and Aunt Renie that I felt I wasn’t there. They laughed and told me I must be the little man who wasn't there and I was called “the little man who wasn't there” for the rest of my vacation at home. The walk to the barn was much shorter, less interesting and seemed artificial. Indeed it wasn’t there when I was at St. Meinrad and when they put it back for my vacation they forgot how it really was. It was very easy to return to St. Meinrad where everything was how you made it.

Whenever Dad and Aunt Renie visited, it would take a few weeks for me to get over the homesickness that pressed against my heart. It was the first interior emotion of that type I had ever had. It was like love I found out later. Not love and devotion but love to do with being constantly rocking on some nerve ending that you couldn't let go of. I hadn’t felt it on that enormous day I saw Fr. Hilary go off to the monastery, I had never felt it before but somehow knew that it was an experience that I would feel again. Homesickness, love and desire all come from the same source because you love to remember the sensation and recall it each time you can and enjoy the strange misery until you wear it all out.

Selma came with Dad and Aunt Renie once when they visited and brought her boyfriend Bill Schulze and kept acting more stimulated about everything than her usual manner. She is always very animated and I know her well enough to see what she is doing. This new glow was not clear to me, and I knew she wasn’t so far from me that she had a new technique or carriage to flash for my benefit. Finally I caught it, she was in love. She had never acted like this in the presence of a boyfriend before. Bill is a man from Vincennes, could Selma be in love with a man from Vincennes? I understood her being in love with one from Indianapolis or one from any nearby small town, but not someone from Vincennes. She would live in town all the time. She would become like a Vincennes wife and we knew together that was not possible. A girl who lived all her life in the country and graduated from Decker High School living her young life without asking any aid from the town of Vincennes for some tribal reason cannot marry a man from Vincennes and become a town wife. I thought of this and certainly realized there were no Deem girls living in Vincennes and being a town wife except Aunt Ollie and she was another generation. Virginia May married Leroy and she was from the farm and he was certainly from Vincennes, but I knew about their marriage and also knew why they suddenly moved and bought their own home in Terre Haute and everyone was surprised and everyone was satisfied because it worked out so well. A farm boy can marry a Vincennes girl and live in Vincennes, but a farm girl cannot marry a Vincennes boy and live in Vincennes, it has never been done. Was Selma twinkling so much and smiling so readily because she was going to become a town wife? Selma? Not even a nurse could do that. She did teach herself to tap dance and did tap dance at the U.S.O. and the Veterans Hospital, and Marge, Aunt Ollie’s second daughter, saw her and Marge had studied tap dancing, and Marge was a Vincennes girl and a first cousin whom I loved, but of course she and Selma couldn’t even speak, that’s how important Vincennes girls and farm girls are to one another. Selma was really acting too much, she had been in love before and didn’t act this way, but that time her boy friend was a farm boy who had become a trucker, so she didn’t need to act that differently. That next week I got a letter from Selma who said that Bill was the man she was going to marry as soon as she was finished with nurse’s training and they were going to live in town.

Whenever Dad and Aunt Renie visited Aunt Renie always had a reason to excuse herself, even in the presence of Frater Hilary, and take me off to some place where we were alone. She asked me how my eyes were, how my ears were, if my headaches were bothering me more than usual, and calmly waited to see if I had anything to report to her. This time I did. It had been a month or more since Bill Updike had visited and Aunt Renie asked what he wanted. I didn’t tell her directly that he wanted me to quit, I didn’t know anything that directly, I never did know anything directly like everyone always seems to. I didn’t know Benny Andrews was a Negro until he had me read an application for a scholarship when I was working at the Metropolitan Museum.The application said clearly, "I Benny Andrews an American Negro…”. He got the scholarship. Aunt Renie knew Bill Updike visited me for a reason but didn’t say anything like that to me, but when she asked if I had anything I wanted to tell her privately, I said that I wanted to quit being an Oblate and go back to Decker High School. She merely said I should think it over and we would talk about it again sometime. This was sometime in April and I was to go home for six weeks starting in July. I was planning to move back home then.

Oblate Art was learning lots about who he was. I was appointed to make a poster each week that depicted the most important religious event of the week, and I was doing it very well. Some of the Fathers came down the hill from the monastery just to see some of my posters. The best was Good Friday in which I painted an illustration of the Temple curtains that were said to have been torn from the Temple when Christ died. Through the rents of the curtains there was a silhouette of the three crosses far in the distance. This pleased everyone. Oblate James and I had been appointed sacristans. He had been the only one, but I was to be his assistant and we were given a room together. I was taught to read the Latin Ordo that tells which color vestment is to be used, I was even given permission to touch the chalice. Fr. Marcellus and I were getting along very well and I was becoming more and more reliable and more and more a candidate for the Holy Brotherhood. One day he asked me to design the Blessed Virgin Chapel there at St. Placid Hall. I told him I didn’t know how to do architectural drawing but he said I had a very high grade in architectural drawing from my course at Decker High School, and I had, and I knew how to do it all, but was so interested in quitting in July, I was just waiting the time out. This was the time Oblate James and I decided to slip out after night prayers and run around the hillside with our habits on and no trousers under them. We did one night and it was great fun giggling and watching our shadows in the moonlight. It didn’t work out the way we had expected. We had put a chair outside the window and climbed out silently but when we tried to return it was impossible to hoist ourselves up that high. We crept to the side door but it was locked, then the front door, but the screen door began squeaking so loudly it could not be opened. Suddenly many spotlights went on around the porch and we ran to hide behind a large cedar bush. We stayed there until the spotlights went out, then found we could get into the game room in the basement and spent the night trembling on a damp couch there. The next day I was wilted. All the religious instructions that told about sin and repentance started to apply. I couldn’t face anyone and when Fr. Marcellus said everyone should keep watch on their possessions, that there were prowlers trying to get in last night, I’m certain I turned white. Oblate James was very amused when Oblate Donald told everyone what the prowlers looked like, and a day passed and it was being forgotten by everyone while I was on my way down the long hall to Fr. Marcellus’s office to explain I was the prowler. Oblate James seriously explained to me that this was not necessary, that I would ruin our whole sense of frolic, that no one cared about it anymore, and his face changed and we were no longer very friendly after I went into the door of Fr. Marcellus’s office. I told him everything. He asked why Oblate James wasn’t with me, he said to wait quietly around and he would tell me what the Monastery was going to do to me; I would probably be asked to leave. Oblate James never did explain himself even though he was called into that office. Finally, after two days of silent white dread, Fr. Marcellus called me in and told me he had decided to handle this himself and I was to remain in my same position without penance only because I had the honor to tell him about my offense. He didn’t quite know what he was going to do with Oblate James who was a senior Oblate and really the main influence for this adventure. This ended all hope and all interest in becoming a Brother or any kind of religious. I remained on until July doing all my things as well as I could but with no interest in staying there or leaving to go home where all the faded colors were, where they were to put everything back like it was before I left.

At about five o’clock the heat goes on for an hour. Joe, the bartender down on the ground floor has some way to turn it on and off. I have asked him many times to consider how cold it is where I am and he just mumbles something about the steam kitchen provides enough heat for the bar. I always have my single radiator open all the way and took off the valves once and pure steam came flooding in and I was in a cloud.

It takes a long time to write a book. I’m no longer lying in bed, but sitting at a desk writing, then I lie down and read what I’ve written aloud. I often read aloud. I read "The Scarlet Letter" aloud and now I’m reading the Proust novels and must read them aloud. I told Ronald Vance I was writing a book and he became very excited. He’s the only one I’ve told. He talked about writing to me. He knows a great deal about it, not only to tell but to feel inside. I found out by talking to him that I’m not a writer because I’m not thinking about my next book. He is a writer and a writer always thinks about his next book while writing the one he is writing. An artist at a certain time often thinks about his next painting while working on a painting, but that’s when everything is working. My being a painter allows me to begin to know more and more about painting. Not only applying paint, but also doing compositions. It’s seldom now that I force a painting to begin because when things are going well the new painting thoughts just walk right in and begin becoming paintings. I always wondered why people always ask, “How long did it take you to do that?” It must be like my habit of saying, “Where did you get that?” when I see any interesting article. If I get the answer, “Bloomingdale’s,” I am at a loss. All this time I was wanting merely to say that I’ve noticed an article. No one really wants to find out how long it took to do a painting, they really mean to say they admire the painting. Once it irritated me when people told me they too liked to paint because it was so relaxing. I’ve never found painting relaxing and consider it exhausting work. Now it has begun to occur to me that painting is relaxing. When I am in a kind of trance not knowing anything about time or what I am doing consciously and everything works very well, I can come back to actuality and indeed find painting is relaxing. So people know what they are saying and some day when I’m very old I’ll know what is meant when I’m asked, “How long did it take you to do that?”

Dad is dead, so is Aunt Teet, Uncle Pete, Uncle Big Boy and Uncle Can. Dad died the day I was transferred from the mail room to the display department at the Metropolitan Museum. I went home for Christmas and Aunt Renie said I should go see Aunt Teet who is in the hospital. I knew she had cancer, I had known it for a long time, because she told us a year ago that she didn't know old age was so uncomfortable all the time. When she went out to be among her chickens in winter she had such painful chills in her bones that she sent Uncle Pete out. We all told her to get her spirit back up and go among her chickens because we didn't know her without her chickens. She said, "Kid, I just can't." I went to see her in the hospital and she looked so frail and so thin and so old, but she laughed at the humorous things I said and her belly shook like it always did. Her voice was in her belly, and when she talked, her belly would jump. She said to me that she was not going to be around much longer, and I said that I hadn't come to visit her to hear that. She said she was not going to be around much longer, and probably would not be able to see me again, "but we will still be friends, won't we, George?" She died a few weeks later, after I had come back to New York.

It has always been a habit for me to think who I am by thinking where I am. Naturally while at St. Meinrad I had to think where I was to know who I was because the place where I was put me away from home for the first time and even gave me a habit to wear after six weeks, so I could always know where I was then be always aware of who I was. Yes I've always played games on that. I wonder if everybody does. When I was a child I had to go through that terrible worry of trying to find when I was going to sleep, that is when the sleep took over the mind, which takes a lot of time and worry for a child and comes to be his first experience of sleepless nights. Next I got concerned about sleeping in one position and awaking in the morning in that same position. This led to arranging myself into my morning position when I got into bed the following night. Finally I would go to bed and get into my usual position and think of all the action of the day. When I would realize that whatever had happened to me that day was not enough to keep me from going to sleep in my favorite position, I knew that nothing had really affected my life. I even got so that I created imaginary strings that I could tie to my hands and when I got into bed I would trace those strings and find where they led and remember my most intimate action each day. Now that I'm reading Proust I can remember all this easily because that is the way the Proust novels go.

All this is called to mind whenever I’m in trouble with myself and the evening before I left St. Meinrad I was really in trouble with myself. I had gone to Frater’s Paradise and told Frater Hilary I was going to discontinue. By this time he always called me “Oblate” and he said, “Now, Oblate, you must tell Fr. Marcellus what your plans are, you can’t just not come back.” So I could only tell Fr. Marcellus the next morning before Dad came to pick me up. Fr. Marcellus was gone all morning because he was taking other Oblates to Evansville where they lived or where they could take other transportation to where they lived. Dad arrived and as I was piling luggage into his car he made a remark about my not needing so much if I'm only visiting home but I told him I was not going back and was very surprised that Aunt Renie had not told him. We drove home and after the noon meal began plowing melons. It was a comfort to plow melons and while we rested I told Dad that I knew a great deal about art and the secret in composition was merely having everything all alike. He didn’t understand what I was saying but it was wonderful to plow melons and think about art. Within a day or two I got a letter from Frater Hilary saying if I were going to quit I had better make a clean sweep of it and explain it to Fr. Marcellus. He would make an appointment with Fr. Marcellus the following Thursday. So, Aunt Renie, Dad and I returned to St. Meinrad, much to Dad’s complaint because of all these unnecessary trips, and Fr. Marcellus would see no one but me. He told me that I absolutely had a religious calling, that if I were not to become a Brother, I would only be a farmer, which he knew I didn’t have any interest in. He said that I certainly could not go on to school because I wasn’t going to have enough credits to graduate from High School. I hadn’t taken Latin or used any of that required time, and English Composition and Literature was a course I had taken there that they hadn’t even credited. I almost had no choice. Fr. Marcellus smoked many many Lucky Strike cigarettes while talking and that was the only way I could see he was nervous, and he was nervous. I had no idea what to answer after he had squeezed me down to no choice. Out of desperation I saw for a moment how consoling it was plowing melons and thinking of art. I told him I wasn’t planning to continue school after High School, I was going to be a farmer. He would not accept this and continued talking and smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. Finally after three hours he asked me if I didn’t agree to return to St. Placid Hall for one more year; then I would be ready for the monastery, my vows and the hood that I would wear on the back of my habit. I told him that indeed I wanted to just be a farmer and quit all of this monastic life. He then explained that I was so young, that he had read all my letters to Selma and all the letters she had written and he knew I was in love with her. He reminded me that Selma was going to marry Bill Schulze as soon as she was out of nurse’s training and she was not going to be like she had been. He went through many similar lists that always led to my being better off remaining there. Finally he asked me for the last time what my choice was. I again said I wanted to quit. He then informed me that I was hopeless and should get out of his office and forget the whole thing, and I did and went back to Decker High School, where I mocked Carmen Miranda the following school year for the annual school Carnival.

The drive home that evening was dreadful. I did not say a word to anyone. The spires of the Abbey Church could be seen for miles after we had driven away and I could only think that I would have to learn to hate them instead of loving them so. I was trying to make trails in my mind that would make me like I had never been away when I met Uncle Cy’s family or Buck and Aunt Hootie and it was a great problem and I was so tired. That night I tried for a long while to trace the imaginary strings that I had tied to my hands and it had been such a long time since I had traced all my actions like that but I did what I could and decided that the day I graduated from High School I would break those strings and never worry about that anymore.

End of Part Two