Tennessee Williams on Krishnamurti
"Habit is the repetition of a pleasurable act."
“Why did I convert to Catholicism? Ha, indeed. Why did I? It amuses many. Well, I was in very bad condition at that time, mentally and physically. I found myself at the end of that harsh and punishing decade [the 1960s] really unaware of who I was, what I could do, if I should even continue to live.
“I have always presented myself as I am, which is to say dancing on the rim of hysteria. I have often felt that my nerves were working very hard to burst right out of my body. I have almost always felt that I was in enemy territory. A fag, nervous and awkward; a writer, from whom pages and clarity were demanded; a friend, tapped out almost always, lacking trust. Being this type of person, and still managing to have around me people who cared for me, I was frequently offered nostrums. Edith Evans and Mildred Natwick tried to explain Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science to me. Ruth Gordon stressed common sense and the embrace of what was within me, not around me, in the marketplace. Many people, unknown to me, would send me candles and rosaries and prayers. It was easy to see that I needed help.
“I am a theatrical person, and I am also a person who craves a schedule. Whatever my state—and if I am not confined to a hospital or a clinic—I get up early and write and swim and think and re-write. I need this routine, and even if the pages are ultimately not worth saving, I have saved myself by getting to the page. I wanted order and a schedule. Christian Science has its daily lesson, its prayers, its schedule, but I was unable to grasp elements of its tenets. I liked feeling that I had already been given all I needed by God—that I was already saved—but I did not possess the strength, the faith, to deny the pains in my legs and my back; the crippling headaches. I must also tell you that I could not commit myself to a religion that had as an adherent Carol Channing, whose voice and visage both make me very nervous.
“So I began to study Catholicism, which is the dominant parent of the Episcopalian doctrines and liturgy and format in which I had been raised, but the Catholic church recognized me as a shit, a sinner, and had all of these prayers and rituals to put me through so that I might be cleansed. I particularly liked the Stations of the Cross, which felt like an outline for a story or a play.
“But now I’m drawn quite a bit to Krishnamurti. I’m always searching and nibbling. Do you know him? Oh, he was quite beloved among many in the arts, and when I heard him speak, he went right to my fear of the time knot. I am acutely aware of what time is doing to me, after which it runs away into the woods. Krishnamurti stood on a stage and seemed to look right at me and he said ‘Thought is time.’ He taught me that time—or our concept of time—is an enemy. [From Krishnamurti: “Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in the mind.”]
“I also learned from him that I have built these masks, these fences, all around me. Queer. Southern. Writer. Catholic. Victim. I have imprisoned myself, and I would like to be free. Was I ever free? I don’t think so, but my desire to rise above and beyond what I was, what had been dealt to me, frequently led me to go beyond what I thought I could do. I could dream a woman and walk her about and write down what she told me. I took some marvelous voyages with these women. I think I can do it again. Habit, Krishnamurti said from that stage, is the repetition of a pleasurable act, and writing is not only what I think I can still do, but it is what gives me pleasure.”
©2023 James Grissom