Opposite Contraries (4 page)

What do these forests make you feel? Their weight and density, their crowded orderliness. There is scarcely room for another tree and yet there is space around each. They are profoundly solemn yet upliftingly joyous; like the Bible, you can find strength in them that you look for. How absolutely full of truth they are, how full of reality. The juice and essence of life are in them; they teem with life, growth and expansion. They are a refuge for myriads of living things. As the breezes blow among them, they quiver, yet how still they stand developing with the universe. God is among them. He has breathed with them the breath of life, might and patience. They stand developing, springing from tiny seeds, pushing close to Mother Earth. Fluffy baby things first, sheltering beneath their parents, mounting higher, spreading brave branches, pushing with mighty strength not to be denied, skywards. Tossing in the breezes, glowing in the sunshine, bathing in the showers, bending below the snow piled on their branches, drinking the dew, rejoicing in creation, bracing each other, sheltering the birds and beasts, the myriad insects.

Above the dip of oars came the meows, the prolonged beseeching. There was not a soul in the village. Every Indian was away fishing, had been for months, the little gas boats had gone. The carriers first take the women and the children, the dogs and cats, but not all, evidently. The boat hull grated. Gumbooted and carrying Koko, I clambered over the side. Three cats waited for me on the pebbly beach. Ugly mottled lean yellow-eyed beasts. The man and boat left. Another cat joined me, and a speckled poulet. They crowded around my feet just wanting sympathy, kind words, companionship. Sure as they knew water was wet they knew Koko and I could be trusted. They crowded round my feet, purring and rubbing, meowing. Their yellow eyes gleaming, tails erect, ears erect; every step I took, they took. They crowded round my camp stool, quarrelling who should get next me after the first wary look to see how I took it. Koko slept with one eye shut, guarding me with the other. The cats purred and rubbed, and the poulet chortled confidently and lay on her side with one yellow leg stretched out and her feathers loosened for the sun to reach her skin.

I worked all day. When I ate, the cats and the poulet shared my bread and cheese. When I moved about the village, they followed in meowing procession. At night I left them meowing dolefully at the very edge of the sea.

Next day I went again. Before the engine had stopped, before I was in the scow boat, I heard them. Not four but eight running the water’s edge and meowing like the Hallelujah Chorus. One had jumped into the boat before I landed. There were the speckled four and the surprisingly white ones, a tortoiseshell, some kittens, a battered half-Persian. The purring sounded like a beehive. Yellow
eyes were all agleam. I could scarcely walk without treading on them. They meowed and rubbed ten times harder than yesterday. We climbed the rotten driftwood stair up the bank. My courtiers and I halfway were met by the splendid poulet. She came running and followed by a clucking hen. She clucked from habit, nothing responding. Probably her brood had found homes in the cats’ stomachs. From 9 to 6 I worked and my court surrounded me. They tried to swarm into my lap and upon my shoulders. This I could not permit. Indian cats are filthy cats, carry things. They were like a lot of children quarrelling who should sit next to teacher.

I went back into the woods. The undergrowth was dense but there were fresh deer tracks and paths broken by deer and probably panther and bear. It was creepy, but my cats all came through too, the speckleds and the tabby, the tortoiseshell and the whites. All day long they stayed with me, pressing close and closer; when the boat came, the whole procession came to the water. I thought one was going to swim out. She jumped on a log out in the sea, then jumped back and followed along the beach. One did board the boat. The Persian. Perhaps she felt herself more out of place than the rest. I hated to leave them to their loneliness.

It was a queer experience. I’ve never had one feeling quite like it. Indian cats are usually mean, timid, slinky creatures, scurrying out of the way of the children who abuse them and the dogs who hound them. They have little use for humans. What did the cats know about me? Why such absolute trust and affection and understanding? I talked to them. Poor beasties, your “Mom” knows, I said. Same as I tell Koko.

I shall always remember those cats, my cat party, the feeling of perfect understanding between us all. Life is all one. The unexplainable spark that touches us all binds us all. Life.
LIFE
.

Most three quarters of life up here is waiting. Waiting for boats, waiting for stages, waiting for mail, waiting for meals. While this country waits for development and the race awaits evolving. All the foreign elements incorporated into the white, the white elements incorporated into the foreign. The Indian watches his race disappear yet not disappear; appearing in a new civilization, new manners, new customs, new looks, yet with a trifle in them of himself. The new race gathering, sifting, sorting. The hillsides wait ’til the loggers come; strange upheavals, strange noises, vibrations, swells, burning, cutting, blasting. Out of it all springs the second growth, springing joyous, buoyant, new, new; yet it could not have existed except for the old. The sea remains as of old but everywhere boats toss and puff and snort, her silver [waters] are [keeping] the ships clean and they pollute her with offal. But she is vast, vast. The sky? Yes, they are catching her sounds and secrets; they intake her with the aeroplanes. Spaces are linked we are getting to know.

It is good to be going home. There’s the girls and the monk and the cat and the tenants and the flowers, even if one dreads the survey business. In whining, of course, things’ll get the better of me, being a woman.

It’s grey but luminous. I breakfasted opposite a drunk which disgusted me so I made a very scant meal. I was afraid he’d be sick. The dried-up dame next him seemed oblivious. She [chewed] as calmly as a cow and ordered everything. She had coarse straight hair, half long and hanging, a yellow skin,
glasses, and a red and black garment that looked like a uniform and wasn’t. I should say she was a missionary connection.

Men are doing the parade. First, they started singly, now most have doubled up, the very tall ones, the short, an uneven pair. A bullescent mother with a bored son. They are both in sweaters (new for the voyage), her skirt is very much riding up and her legs look old. She waddles. A big Swede is washing paint. He does every part about five times. I can’t make out if he’s being thorough or very careless. The men all look so fleshy, so very material, as though what minds they had were full of dinner and money.

I have not seen my roommate yet. She did make me furious, bursting into the stateroom about midnight and tearing aside my curtains and staring at me. I ripped them back on the rod violently. Neither of us said a word. She read a telegram that had just come for her and went out and banged the door. It was well on with morning before she came to bed. I got up early and left her sleeping.

This morning I’ve tried the thing on canvas. It’s poor. I got a letter from [Mark] Tobey today
. Oh, the creature, he is so spineless. His letter was all tales of excuse for his tardiness in not acknowledging my letter and money. (I sent him the fare to come over 3 weeks ago to give me a crit.) He wanted to come and I know he was short. Well, sadly, $5 and no crit. I sent back a brief note: “No use coming now. Pictures are all away and I expect a guest and won’t have room for you.” Poor worm. Clever and so sorry for himself because he has to make a living. If he’d only get busy. Everything he does is with money first in his brain and it kills his work.
He is clever but his work has no soul. It’s clever and beautiful. [
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]

No word from Hatch about the Seattle show. I don’t feel it has been a success at all.
Hatch said it had made a stir. No one went away without saying something. Some good, Some bad.
At least it waked them up. That’s something. [
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]

[
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]
I wrote two letters, one to Mr. Fuller, president of the Seattle Art Institute. I asked him to find out what was happening about my pictures. Hatch did not answer, I said. Just as I finished it, I got a line from Hatch. It was useless to try and find things that way. Ignoring all my questions. Nothing decided yet. He’d been away in the South “playing around.” It’s rot; the man’s a slacking fool. I wrote him a scorcher, typed every word and may do him good. It’ll settle my head. My things will come bobbing home to the sound of a loud Amen! But I don’t care. I feel lots better for exploding. The sun began to shine at once and now I’m off to the woods to rejoice. I wonder if Fuller will show him my letter. It was written in “fist” so pr’aps he can’t read same. don’t care anyhow — why not be decent and honest in art business as any other? They ought to be
better
and
higher
and
principled
because art should create all the best in us in every way. Slacking and dallying is not best. It’s dishonourable and belittling.

Mrs. Pinkerton thinks I did wrong in sending Hatch that outburst. I’d have come to an untimely end if I had bottled [it] up any longer. Of course he’ll be quit of me now, like Ottawa, having all their own way. They think they are so noble, shoving you forward into the beastly public eye — that and being “written
up.” And these ideas of an artist’s ambitions, hopes and desires, that’s the idea of Mrs. Pinkerton too. She thinks one should swallow anything just to get before the public. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. No! That spoils everything; even unconsciously it leads to smugness, draws away from concentration from striving for the great things.

Today I am a bundle of nerves. Reaction, probably, from the storm within over Hatch’s letter and feeling like a swine. Was I unfair to him? After all, why should he bother with my rotten stuff at all? Damn. I’m always like that, bursting forth making enemies instead of friends, whirling around in a muck of rage, muddling everything and getting all wrought up. How can [I] see straight and clear and search for the good, the true and the beautiful when I’m such a wild beast — and yet I go on just swallowing everything, seeing things going wrong and rotten. Then I ferment inside and that’s worse. One must be calm and happy according to one of my teachers, a Frenchman who used to badger me to get the best work out [of me], he said. Maybe it was more alive work, but this is not what one wants. It is deep, pure, good. Good emotion that should underlie the best work — not mean snappy ones.

I shall never paint anything good. I am just dead bones and venom, and I ache to express what is really good and beautiful and true and real.

Lizzie, Alice and I went to hear the Seattle Symphony. [
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]
Good music that gives one the best feelings always leads me away from
man, away from cities out and off to spaces (or woods). Why? Being human, the call of humanhood should be stronger.
[
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]

[
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]
How weary I am of showing off my pictures. Seattle people who have anthropologists’ interest in my old Indian stuff. The man deaf and the woman stupid. Well, it gave me an opportunity to clean behind the picture anyway….

Look up and feel out to every corner of the earth. Loving people and things and searching after God — and after the good and true and the beautiful.

[…]
Just come from the fourth lecture in a course on applied psychology with Harry Gage. Have enjoyed them enormously — practical, straightforward, inspiring. Last night’s lecture was more spiritual and wonderful. He taught on the “silence,” on meditation and concentration. The silence is turning one’s mind to the infinite divine, absolute communion with the divine. Telepathy is conveying by your subconscious to the other fellow’s subconscious (since time and space do not count). Tonight was [on] food. He recommends no meat or fish or sparingly. Lots of salad, vegetables, some root vegetables. Never more than one starch and abundance of fruit, nuts. Some milk and eggs. No tea or coffee. Water and fruit juice for drinks.

[Lizzie Carr was called Betty by most people]

Just home from a psychology lecture by Professor Mobius. Funny duck, but I got quite a bit out of it. Then came home and
straightway forgot B.C. [Betty Carr]. Why does she rile me so? Her religion, which she thrusts at one every occasion, is so small and mean. Somehow her God seems such a small little person.

I wouldn’t give a bean to Gardner’s wedding present. I [have] died to that outfit. When Una said she hoped sincerely I’d die and not live to be a cranky invalid [for] poor Lizzie to care for, I did die to her. When I read that, Lizzie says I’m wicked, she always has and always will side with any other human being on earth against me. That’s been her attitude towards me and my things and my painting and all pertaining to me always. And she always throws a sneaky religious cloak over her statements. I don’t like her religion and I don’t want it. I don’t believe God is small and mean and unjust as she paints him.

I’ve been figuring out with myself how it is I hate write-ups. Someone always sticks them under my nose. I figure thus: people here don’t like my work, it says nothing to them, but they like what is
said
about it in the East. In other words, they like the “kick up” not
it.
That’s the hurt
. I’d rather have a nigger or an idiot really like the work itself (feel something in it) than the governor general gloat over a spiel on it.
[
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]