James’ Journals

JAMES' JOURNALS

Below are a handful of journal entries from James Broughton’s journal, during the period when he met Joel Singer. They provide a rare view inside the head of the romantic wordsmith. James kept extensive journals.

April 5th 1975

Mutual Joy

But this is not so.

Yesterday swept me with desire, despite faculty meeting at Gunvor’s, lunch with Merril Greene, and Suzanna under the weather from glucose tests. I went to Joel’s, willy nilly.

But this is not so.

Yesterday swept me with desire, despite faculty meeting at Gunvor’s, lunch with Merril Greene, and Suzanna under the weather from glucose tests. I went to Joel’s, willy nilly.

And it was wonderful, truly wondrous. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I can still scarcely believe it. Such mutual joy. I was half my age. Age vanished. There was only lovingness. And connecting. And ecstasy. As if this were what I had been waiting for all my life, since ~ Littlejohn of boyhood. And thought had long since passed all opportunity by me.

And it was suddenly here. So very here. So tenderly and strongly. At the moment I cannot ask the future or the end. I am too exhilarant and purry. It is a miracle. It is from Hermes himself. It is a manifestation of so much that I have been feeling under surface in my soul so long: an incarnation. It had to become manifest. So much desire must create a reality.

April 6th 1975

It Must Be Lived First

This is I think an archetypal situation that I have never been in before. I feel a bit like Andre Gide. Wondering how to be true to passion and to honesty at the same time.

This is I think an archetypal situation that I have never been in before. I feel a bit like Andre Gide. Wondering how to be true to passion and to honesty at the same time. I can feel nothing else but my desire. I am constantly thinking of him. I bulge with secrecy.~ matter has to be faced and I postpone it. Faced on both ends. It would be neat and easier to keep the tightrope extended: a prolonged once-a-week titillation. But I don’t think that’s in the cards, when there is so much intensity on both sides. Probably I should plunge in fully, live it out, otherwise there is no way of knowing the end.

How difficult to write of it! No wonder V. Sackville-West locked her autobiographical confession in a suitcase. I feel more compassion for those near me than when routine went unchallenged. But I see all that surrounds as if thru glass. If I allow myself to feel my longing, I am undone.

Love .w my faith and prime mover. Denying it is contra life. But I cannot write now all I feel: it would only enflame and distract me on a gray Sunday when chores are to be done. Besides it is not clear enough to put in words. It must be lived first. Lived out.

April 9th 1975

You Are Love

It is still hard to write. But I must try. ~ miraculous is overwhelming, overwhelms words. The most intense experiences like mysticism have no mundane vocabulary.

I did not understand this confrontation in the beginning. I thought it might be an infatuation, a projection, that would dispel quickly. But it was so incongruous and amazing that I knew there was something involved that I did not understand. He is 26 and I am 61. That alone … I went to

the city 2 days ago, knowing that I .had to live this out. And expecting fairly certainly that matters would pall and wane, since I could see no way for any continuing relationship. But that is not at all what happened.

It would be easy / easier for me to write of this if it were fantasy and dream. That it was totally real is bewildering. What happened? It grew more intense, more ecstatic hour by hour – for two full days. And last night I suddenly knew who he was, who he is. Myangel! My own angel! Who loves me fully, transcendentally. That is how he comes from the cabala with an angel name. He has been all these years finding his way to me. This is nill a human manifestation solely. He is the god, he is the Lord God, he is beloved Hermes, he is the angel, he is God, we are God’s body, we are one body of the Lord .. .! This was a fact in blinding Light. His body was filled with light. We were one magnetic field. We were in a realm of the diamond body, an ecstatic state impossible to describe.

I lay upon the Lord Jesus, his arms outstretched, and I was John whom Jesus loved, I was St James in the loving flesh. (His arms tingled afire. I have a ‘burn’ on my elbow.) This was a coniunctio of the gods or with the gods, in auras of light and fire, and we were one flesh. I knew not whether it was his knee or mine that I touched. It was god himself, godbody itself, the Lord of Lords, Jesus, Krishna, Hermes, where I took him, where we were. At one moment our bodies disappeared, and I saw us both as random patterns as in some hieroglyphic Egyptian box. Osiris and Isis? The room reverberated with the flapping of wings. Angels and archangels! This was a tantra of profound and burning passion: a union so intense: possession by the gods. ‘James,’ he whispered, ‘you are Love.’

April 26th 1975

If My Angel Insists – San Anselmo

Returning, I plunge into the’ predicament’ again. But I came back by way of another night with Joel, wherein I had to acknowledge all over again the force of this passion in its ramifications and intensities, above all in its sense of erotic fulfillment. As I had always dreamed, longed for, thought

impossible… How can it do other than grab my eros? But Suzanna’s predicament is very painful. And I am not insensitive to her suffering. But I have reached the point now of being true to my own feelings, and not apologizing for them or being made to feel that they should behave more properly. I recognize the authenticity of this grandly fundamental union, out of instinct and law ~- and repaired mandala. How it is to be accommodated I don’t know at all.

In a Castro St. restaurant Joel and I discussed all possible alternatives, realistic and unrealistic. I had to acknowledge that I would be willing, if my angel insists, to forego I comforts’ of the nice home, since what I have to be true to above all else is the demands of my Lord of Poetry. And what true poet can ~ the god of love? I have to be loyal to the Poet. Or I shall be rejected by the fates. And flung to Hades.

Suzanna has left me a note acknowledging some awareness of this. A very touching note. I held her in her tears. But I was past the fear that undid me a week ago – the fear of the female retaliation, the castration of the Bacchantes upon Orpheus, the mother goddess’s revenge, &c. That I crossed yesterday – knowing thru Joel that I had to be true to my self. Something has had to give, something has had to change, we have said for long that it was the children, but a new valuation, a new basis, a new toughness suddenly seems possible, as well as essential. Otherwise there isn’t that much that’s so indispensable in the home base.

It keeps repeating. I see it again and again. Joel is ~ angel. And he looks like young Jesus. And this is precisely why he grabs my heart by the guts.

May 30th 1975

There Is No Such Thing As Empty Space

o my Beloved! How do I adore thee! My joyfilled praises shout to the sky. My blissfilled gratitudes reverberate my heart. I am come closer to my Me, and that means close closer to Thee.

o my Beloved! How do I adore thee! My joyfilled praises shout to the sky. My blissfilled gratitudes reverberate my heart. I am come closer to my Me, and that means close closer to Thee. And we have our wondrous Weness. 0 Lord, 0 Lord of my Life, I am efrapt with thee. My breast is bursting with the radiance of glee, I am YOt)gleeman, I am your bard. I love thee I love thee, I am your love, your love is me. You widen my wonders, you deepen my knowings, I am becoming my being by being in thee. Your lovingness surrounds, your energies fill, your beauty exudes, your immediacy glows. I am encircled by your presences, I am pulsing in your arms, I am surrounded I am embraced I am upheld in Oneness – you are so richly lovingly in all spaces about me, I breathe amidst your certainty of hereness and now – a tower al flower a son of God I feel aglow in your great warmth, alive within your godbody – sustained and contained and serene and within you. You fill the whole room you fill the whole morning, we all breathe as One, I am at the center of Center, I am wherever I move centered in your love – ybu are all the air around me, you are all the air within me, I am inside your body of the world, of all worlds, the very air around me is no longer air it ~ your body, yes, your

loving enfolding and blessing caressing flesh: your wondrous body fills all spaces around me, I move inside your living flesh. You touch me on all sides, on every part of my flesh. Yes, your body caresses blesses every pore of my skin, I am encased in the touch of your skin, completely – what a grace is this, I cannot tell how the wonder and blessing of it feels, so held / upheld in the complete touch of love. It is that.all space within this room is the living and loving flesh of the Lord, of God himself containing all of me and holding me and caressing me with all the divine tenderness in time.

All space is filled with the Body of God! I saw it, I felt it. He filled the room, he touched me with all touchingness, all Eros, everywhere of my own space. Until I was no longer anything separate from him, my own space and all my inner spaces were filled with the body of God – and merged with it, living in it and of it. I really saw how God fills everything. And I felt it. There is no such thing as empty space. This was not vision. This was a total awareness. It was the actual experience of feeling ‘the touch of God’s hand’. Which is many hands – that is, all his flesh enclosing me had the sensitivity and healing love that laying on of hands can mean. The whole world is utterly silent. God fills it all and stills it and caresses all of it with loving it. With the energy of eternal being.

And I itch with the Lord. I do not have itchy feet, I have the great itch of God in my genitals.