Tender Spaces

Wed Oct 6th

Dear Grandmother,

It seems to me that there are some pts in need of straightening out, some things which you are not quite clear on. I will try to explain things clearly to you in this letter, but you will have to try and understand them.

One is why I left the hospital
Two is my marriage with Peter
Three is why I want a farm
Four is whether or not I am trying to abuse your generosity.
Five is what I want to do with my life and why.

All those things fit together. They cannot really be separated one from the other but for simplicity’s sake I have outlined them. There is one thing that everything hinges on. It is the religion which I mentioned before.

1. To understand why I left the hospital, you’ve got to see why I came to the hospital, from Nell’s point of view and from mine.

Nell’s: I went to jail for crawling on the streets having been kicked out from the free school 3 months since. The day I got out of jail, I was put into an emergency ward for mushroom poisoning. 10 days later, I phoned Nell and told her I was not scared to die anymore. In the meantime, my family has received letters from me which they can make neither head o tail of. Also my year with Nell was pretty hectic. So Nell figures I need psychiatric care and sets the wheels in motion.

Mine: I have however an entirely different view of the picture. When I got kicked out of the free school, I had only tried marijuana once and it had had no effect. That evening, I tried L.S.D. which I have only had twice since and will never take again. I was not very involved into drugs then and never have been or will be. I do not feel that marijuana in moderation will do me harm and I feel that there are spiritual things which it may help me to understand, by stopping my conscious mind from blocking my unconscious from me. It has helped a few times, but I will not even take that for a long time. It would not be helpful.

As for crawling on the street, it was mainly an experiment. People are always assuming to move around you should walk. I will admit it is the easiest way but it would be narrowing your life to a great extent not to take every possibility or most and try them out. Test the feel of it, the different view of the world from that vantage point, people’s reaction to a situation which they have never encountered before, if anything with seemingly nothing to do with the experience can be learned from it. Also learning to express an opinion which other people will not even consider the possibility of sharing.
There is no end to the number of things that crawling on the streets will teach a person!

The mushroom episode is one which has shown me the river I had to cross and helped me cross it. That particular type of mushroom has been used by many civilizations to try and reach their particular version of God. There are several books about it. One called “the Sacred Mushroom and the Cross,” brings forward the idea that Christ used it, also the ancient Egyptians and the Mexicans still have ceremonies with that mushroom.
They know more about it than me though, and I took a little too much. Fortunately I had the sense to make myself vomit while I could.

When that experience, beautiful and frightening as it was, was over and I was back into this world, I felt a very intense love for myself and the world. Something completely unselfish. I was able to see the forest and each individual tree and see the beauty of each and how they fitted perfectly to make a whole. And how everything fitted, even man who likes to separate himself from nature, man who does not know he has no more or less right to use land than the smallest plant or bird or even rock. Each one of us whatever race or kind has his place, and to a great extent, we are all a part of each other. If you have had or do ever have the experience of looking into the beauty of somebody’s soul, you will or have seen the prints of the same maker.

When I phoned Nell and told her I was no longer scared to die, I did not think of telling her that I was not scared to live either. All my fear was completely gone. Dissolved by the beauty which I saw all around me. It was as if I had suddenly entered heaven. 2 weeks later I was in a hospital.

After a while, I rather got to like the one in Montreal. There were people there, willing to work on my level, one of absolute honesty, explanation of feelings and understanding of them on both parties. The nurses and me actually went quite far into the removal of inhibitions to be replaced by trust of one another. In spite of the fact that I only spent 2 months there I would still trust Vivian Turley, the head nurse, say, with my most inside of inside feelings.
Then I went to Chestnut Lodge. That place may have a good reputation and nice grounds, but that’s about all. The people there, most of them, were very stuck in the dull routine of either being crazy or depressed or working 8 hrs/day, among crazy and depressed people. For a while it was okay. Then my resistance started wearing a little thin. The atmosphere of Chestnut Lodge is one of 50 years of despair. It gradually started seeping into me to sap my strength. Especially Christmas. It was horrible! As a matter of fact, I cant remember feeling quite right since, though things are beginning to look up.

It’s true I might not have left if I hadn’t got a place to come to, but you musn’t blame the Hunts for helping me in my need. I would not have left if I had felt it was in the least bit healthy for me to be there. After a while, I had learned all I could from the place and it was of no further interest to me. I had almost no communication with my doctor throughout that time, partly because of his inability to understand me, partly because I was tired of explaining things. We started out on the wrong foot and things never got better.

Peter and me were carrying on an irregular correspondence at that time and he told me in one of his letters “If you need a guardian, sponsor or anything, just write.” So I wrote to him and we figured out that legally, the best thing would be to get me out of Nell’s custody altogether, which would involve marrying me. So he did.

See, I think that if I ever wanted to marry somebody in a real forever bond, I would not need papers that say I have done it. Correspondingly, those papers have for me lost their old value, but they are not entirely worthless, they are worth my freedom. I would probably be into some other hospital by now if I hadn’t got married. I’m through with that kind of place. They know too little for me to put my soul in their hands.

Incidentally, I asked my doctor, Nell and mom a repeated amount of times to let me go. They wouldn’t. If it had been less important, I would have just forgotten about it. But that I continue learning about life and how to help people is the most important thing in my life. It is my life. Without it, I am not. The hospital was hindering that knowledge.

See my “religion” has so much to do with spontaneous feelings and their expression until selfishness, fear, jealousy, all those things, are of the distant past, that I could not do it while working 8 hrs a day. In fact that would quite impede it. Say I suddenly want to stand on my head, hug somebody, run in the rain naked, I would be very limited in the city environment. That is why I want a farm. I want to be able to go out naked on a full moon night and dance and sing and howl without having to think “Am I waking anyone up? Will the police suddenly appear?” It only makes things more difficult than they already are.

I know too, that what I am looking for, not only for myself, but for the whole world, is something for which there is a great demand. I am giving my life and my time to it, though it is what makes me happy. I do not see the need for me to do anything else, and I don’t think it would be helpful to me or anyone else and I don’t want to have to waste anymore time before I start doing what I must do. By wasting time, I mean, being in a situations where I can’t explore feelings and different modes of behavior, which is what I must do.

It has been often said that nobody’s perfect. At the risk of sounding crazy to you, I will tell you that everybody’s perfect. They don’t know it though. Look at nature. Examine the perfection of its cycles and remember that people are included in that. Then look into the soul of some deep friend with whom you share a mutual trust, then you will see what I mean. Jesus Christ is one who realized his perfection and his unbreakable link to a perfect world. Man cannot kill “life” entirely, but it will kill man if man becomes death or persists in his killings of nature.
Enough phylosophy.

I am most certainly trying to use you, most certainly not trying to abuse you. I don’t know how much it means to you to help me get a farm. To me it means my whole life which should last a long time yet.
I guess you know I love you very much. If after this you need further clarifications, don’t hesitate to write and ask me. Ask me whatever you want, at whatever level, I want you to understand and will be glad to answer.

I have made 10$ carrot picking today. So we do have some earning power, though not great.

Much love again,

Gaëtane.

P.s. - If you want to show this letter to mother, that is fine by me. She doesn’t seem to quite understand what is going on either. Not that I blame her. I hope this letter helps and that you take everything I have said seriously. Exept for the part about showing it to my mother, everything has been said seriously. I have quiet feelings about having talked to her on the phone for so long this evening, especially when we were fighting the whole time.

You’re right, she doesn’t want you to lend me money. Oh well. I guess I’m not the most responsible person in the world. Things like money are utterly beyond me. I’m always under the impression that it grows on trees, though I don’t recall having actually seen it happen. Trees would grow on money though.

I think I have told you everything. From now on, it’s all yours.

Take care of yourself.