Before starting on our new notebook we have been looking over the old
one. We are painfully astonished to see so many interesting ideas that
we never turned to account.
We see no reason for being ashamed of using a memorandum book to jot
down casual excitements in the mind. If you are really interested in
what goes on inside your head, that is the only possible way to keep
track of those flittermice of thought. Astronomers spend much time
examining the Great Nebula in Orion, and other pinches of star dust
that circumspangle the universe. It is equally important to scrutinize
those dim patches of mental shining where, once in a while, one
suspects the phosphorescent emergence of Truth. Unhappily, most of
the ideas jotted down for sonnets and meditations never get anything
done to them. They lie there unexercised, and once a year or so, when
we run through the pile of old notebooks just to cheer ourself up, we
are newly gratified to see how many occasions for thought the world
suggests. Often, however, we aren’t quite certain just what we meant.
For instance, scattered through our now discarded memoranda we find the
following cryptic entries:
_The army of unalterable bunk._
_Prayers for newspaper men._
_Nesting season for mares._
_Who wrote the line “A rose-red city half as old as time”?_
_The current fetiches, taboos, and hokums are as hard to expel
from the mind as the deboshed melody of some vulgar popular
song._
_As a child, the phrase “civil engineer” puzzled me--the
civility or civics of engineering I could not comprehend._
_It’s a mistake to conclude that the result of an action was
necessarily included in the purpose: i. e. Effects overlap
Causes, e. g. The Tariff._
_If every day we are surrounded by astonishment and unexpected
adventures in the actual realm, why may it not also be true in
the spiritual?_
_Kipling is the kind of man who, after half a dozen visits to
the dentist, would have been able to write a story filled with
accurate technical details of dental science._
_Sign on Italian restaurant on Park Place_: IF YOUR WIFE CAN’T
COOK DON’T DIVORCE HER--KEEP HER AS A PET, AND EAT HERE.
_Sign on a Manicure Parlour_: SPECIAL ATTENTION PAID TO OTHER
GIRLS’ FELLOWS.
_Potboiling--the crackling of a crown of thorns under a pot._
_Biography is impossible. There’s no such thing._
Well, the preceding items, lifted more or less at random from one of
these notebooks, are sufficient to explain the sense of mystification
with which one examines old memoranda. And yet one always hopes that
he may chance upon some germ of thought which is worth the fun of
expanding it. It reminds us rather of the Janitor Emeritus of the
_Post_, an elderly and pensive darkness, who has a fixed idea that some
day he is going to find something precious in the various rubbish of
the office, and is to be seen gravely poking into baskets and canisters
of jetsam in the hope of motion picture magazines, tobacco, and
detective stories.
But among these fugitive and sudden scribbles we did find one notation
that brings back to us more or less clearly what we had in mind. It was
written thus: _People in N. Y. no rooted sense of place._
We had been thinking of the curious life of those who dwell in city
apartments. We are a great lover of apartments every now and then, for
a briefly adventurous term; and certainly every one who has read Simeon
Strunsky’s admirable book _Bellshazzar Court_ will have realized how
fecund with human episode these great, dense barracks are. But there
can be no good life for very long unless one has an opportunity to
plant feet on actual soil; to be close witness of earth’s colours and
seasons; to be able (sovereign pleasure of all) to go out at night and
make the circuit of one’s terrain and recognize a few stars. There are
three stars, for instance, that we see (at certain seasons) from the
back stoop when we visit the icebox towards midnight. We suspect them
of being the trio known as Orion’s Belt. Anyhow, part of our pleasure
in life is to notice them occasionally and know that they are still
there, or _were_ still there when those agile beams left them to
vibrate across all the light-years between us.
Orion’s Belt, by the way, seems to be a Sam Browne, for it is tilted up
diagonally. We will show you exactly what his starry girth looks like,
so you can recognize it:--
*
*
*
The simple and sensuous pleasures of place are not so easy to enjoy
in the city. There is a feeling of unreality, of human and mechanical
interposition, when you are snugly nested in a niche of a stone cliff
fifteen stories high. Something stands between you and the realization
of earth. That something may be fine, comfortable, reassuring, it may
be highly stimulant for the mind; but there is also a loss to the
spirit. It is a loss not to be able to see exactly how Nature tints her
tapestry curtain of gold and bronze, behind which she quietly shifts
the scenes for the next act; and then suddenly the curtain is shredded
away; the landscape widens and is transvisible to the eye; going out on
the porch at night you find the trees full not of leaves but stars.
This is a large topic: we can only hint at it. Science, criticism,
ethics, these are urbane. Poetry and religion are rustic. Poetry
particularly--whether the writing or the reading of it--thrives
best where there is silence and the foundation on earth. The solid
satisfaction of visiting one’s own cellar and the brightness of one’s
own furnace grate, actually set down inside the shell of earth’s crust;
of knowing one’s own chimney shaft open topward to the sky; the fall
of autumn acorns rattling on the roof--are sentiments felt rather than
understood. But from that quiet fertility of feeling understanding
grows gradually. You must be quiet with things before you can love
them; and you must love them before you can write about them.
But very likely these fragmentary ideas are true only for those who
believe them. It is a way ideas have.
[Illustration]