The Empty Chair Read Free

monks here are completely gaga over Hildegard. Sinéad O’Connor would have made a
great
Hildie B),
The Scale of Perfection
,
Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Teresa’s
The Way of Perfection
(lotta striving toward perfection in those days), and my own personal fave,
The Cloud of Unknowing
—and O! Better not leave out Jacobus de Voragine’s
The Golden Legend . . .
    Sorry to digress. I think I have a case of nerves, that’s why I’m chattering away. I’m usually not such a motor-mouth. It’s just that I guess everything’s building up, all that’s been unspoken for so many years. The whole kit and caboodle, as Mama used to say.

    A break for lunch. As we settled in, he excused himself. When he returned, he wore a sheepish smile. His face was blotchy, as if from crying.
    I had to “make my toilet.” Splash some water on my face . . .
    What was I saying?
    The Christian mystics
—
    Kipling! Kipling
also
did his time in the City by the Bay, oh yes. Mind you, there was no love lost between the two—not between Kipling and Twain, but Kipling and the
city
. He was a flinty, finicky man, and most decidedly “on the road.”
What do you think the Beats would’ve made of him? Now there’s
another
play—my third of the day!—the meeting of Kipling and Kerouac. “Kipling/Kerouac,”
that’s
what you call it. Or maybe just “K 2 ” . . .
K
-
squared! Yes.
I
like
it.
On the Road with Jack and Rudy.
Stendhal said something marvelous, that a novel was nothing more than a man holding a mirror as he walks down a road . . . it reflects the sky above and the mud below, and woe to the man who carries it in his rucksack and captures nothing but the mire! For he will be pilloried.
    I was saying. Kipling didn’t care for San Francisco a
whit. If he didn’t leave his heart, he certainly left his spleen, or some other
mess to clean up. Had a reputation for being a real pisser. Thought
everyone was rude, particularly hotel workers. Isn’t that funny? I guess that’s understandable, he was used to India where the English were treated like gods. I have an old Kipling in the van, I know just where, green cover, introduction by Henry James. (Come to think of it, I’ve a very pretty
Le Rouge et le Noir.
)
There’s a chapter in there, if memory serves, called “American Notes,”
subtitled “Rudyard Kipling at the Golden Gate.”
Apparently, the thing he absolutely could not tolerate
about our beautiful city was all the white people! Too many white people. Not enough blacks and
fellaheen.
(Oh, the Beats were great fans of the fellaheen!) There was just this
very
long list of complaints. The querulous Lord K had no truck with the custom of the day, which allowed that a fellow who bought a drink would get his food for free. The man even hated cable cars! Moreover, he was of the mind that Americans plagiarized English authors without compensation or acknowledgment, and to make things worse, willfully perverted the pilfered texts. On the topic of copyrights, he was apoplectic. A drooling hound from Hell . . . but we forgive Genius its prickliness. And he
was
a prickly pear. Some of my best friends are prickly pears.
    Kipling actually wrote about the Cliff House. You know the Cliff House, Bruce? You said you lived in the Bay Area when you were a boy . . .
that
took me by surprise. The very Cliff House I—we!—remember from our youth! We lived south of LA, see, in Orange County, and would drive to Point Lobos and Sausalito . . . our little unhappy family. Those dreadful, benumbing, contentious vacations. Good Lord! We’d go to the Cliff House and my big sis and me climbed the hundreds of steps to that positively
Brobdingnagian
indoor slide—remember?—made out of slippery, buttery blond wood. I was so struck with fear, my tiny face all scrunched up in tears,