A Preference for the Chant of Frogs

Warmer. Rain in the night. Frogs again. At first the waterhole (four feet long at most) had one frog or two. Now they are a small nation, loud in the night. The innocent nation, changing blissfully in praise of the spring rain. Last evening, I pruned a few little trees–including the beeches I had planted.
Today I have to go down to see Fr. Vernon Robertson, who evidently7 wants me to get involved in something–and I will try to to. He has been pestering me to come to Louisville to five a talk at Bellarmine College. And this is confirming me in my resolution to keep out of all that.
Almost every day I have to write a letter to someone refusing an invitation to attend a conference, or a workshop, or to give talks on the contemplative life, or poetry, etc. I can see more and more clearly how for me this would be a sheer waste, a Pascalian diversion, participation in a a common delusion. (For others, no; they have the grace and mission to go around talking.) For me what matters is silence, meditation–and writing; but writing is secondary. To willingly and deliberately abandon this to go out and talk would be stupidity–for me. And for others, retirement into my kind of solitude would be equally stupid. They could not do it–and I could not do what they do.
March 16, 1968,VII.68