Peter Matthiessen

Back in 1992 I wrote a letter to Mr. Peter Matthiessen asking him if I could go practice Zen Buddhism in his zen center in Long Island. He was kind enough to write me back saying he didn´t have living quarters there, and he advised me to go to the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York, which I did, for a month.
Last August, 25, I read an article about him in the spanish-catalan newspaper La Vanguardia. An excert:

If we mention his role in the foundation of the legendary magazine The Paris Review, the first to publish Kerouac and Pkilip Roth, and also important literary interviews, we enter a spies thriler. "Once, when I was studying in Yale, a professor asked me «What do you think of serving your country working for the CIA in Paris?» At the time I had no money nor work, CIA still had a clean name, Paris was the dream of every aspiring writer, and to work as a spy sounded the most exciting. They gave a list of suspects from whom I would have to get informations. I needed a cover up, in case the police would interrogate me, and thus The Paris Review was born. After one year I quit. I was afraid...Even today they could sue me for telling you this, but I doubt this old man is any kind of threat for them."

I knew that many materials and gadgets that make life easier, derive from military investigation and industry (washing machines, the internet, passengers airplanes, toilet paper, tv sets, paints, and the list goes on, althoug I´m not sure of some of the above...). Now, it came as a big surprise to know that even in the art domain we benefit from the military. The Hindus worship a Godess of war and destruction. I feel I´ve been further from converting to Hinduism.






In the photo above, among diferent objects that Peter Matthiessen collected from the shore and fields, I saw some dolphin vertebrae, similar to these I collected from the beach. These bones are beautiful.