and then wipe them clean after scouring with little 5-&-10 wire scourer) --
Long nights simply thinking about the usefulness of that little wire
scourer, those little yellow copper things you buy in supermarkets for 10
cents, all to me infinitely more interesting than the stupid and senseless
"Steppenwolf novel in the shack which I read with a shrug, this old fart
reflecting the "conformity" of today and all the while he thought he was a
big Nietzsche, old imitator of Dostoevsky fifty years too late (he feels
tormented in a "personal hell" he calls it because he doesnt like what other
people like! )
-- Better at noon to watch the orange and black Princeton colors on the
wings of a butterfly -- Best to go hear the sound of the sea at night on the
shore.
Maybe I shouldna gone out and scared or bored or belabored myself so
much, tho, on that beach at night which would scare any ordinary mortal --
Every night around eight after supper I'd put on my big fisherman coat and
take the notebook, pencil and lamp and start down the trail (sometimes
passing ghostly Alf on the way) and go under that frightful high bridge and
see through the dark fog ahead the white mouths of ocean coming high at me
-- But knowing the terrain I'd walk right on, jump the beach creek, and go
to my corner by the cliff not far from one of the caves and sit there like
an idiot in the dark writing down the sound of the waves in the notebook
page (secretarial notebook) which I could see white in the darkness and
therefore without benefit of lamp scrawl on -- I was afraid to light my lamp
for fear I'd scare the people way up there on the cliff eating their nightly
tender supper -- (later found out there was nobody up there eating tender
suppers, they were overtime carpenters finishing the place in bright lights)
-- And I'd get scared of the rising tide with its 15 foot waves yet sit
there hoping in faith that Hawaii warnt sending no tidal wave I might miss
seeing in the dark coming from miles away high as Groomus -- One night I got
scared anyway so sat on top of 10-foot cliff at the foot of the big cliff
and the waves are going "Rare, he rammed the gate rare" -- "Raw roo roar" --
"Crowsh'- the way waves sound especially at night -- The sea not speaking in
sentences so much as in short lines: "Which one?... the one ploshed?... the
same, ah Boom'... Writing down these fantastic inanities actually but yet I
felt I had to do it because James Joyce wasn't about to do it now he was
dead (and figuring "Next year I'll write the different sound of the Atlantic
crashing say on the night shores of Cornwall, or the soft sound of the
Indian Ocean crashing at the mouth of the Ganges maybe') -- And I just sit
there listening to the waves talk all up and down the sand in different
tones of voice 'Ka bloom, kerplosh, ah ropey otter barnacled be crowsh, are
rope the angels in all the sea? " and such -- Looking up occasionally to see
rare cars crossing the high bridge and wondering what they'd see on this
drear foggy night if they knew a madman was down there a thousand feet below
in all that windy fury sitting in the dark writing in the dark -- Some sort
of sea beatnik, tho anybody wants to call me a beatnik for THIS better try
it if they dare -- The huge black rocks seem to move -- The bleak awful
roaring isolateness, no ordinary man could do it I'm telling you -- / am a
Breton! I cry and the blackness speaks back "Les poissons de la mer parlent
Breton" (the fishes of the sea speak Breton) -- Nevertheless I go there
every night even tho I dont feel like it, it's my duty (and probably drove
me mad), and write these sea sounds, and all the whole insane poem "Sea'.
Always so wonderful in fact to get away from that and back to the more
human woods and come to the cabin where the fire's still red and you can see
the Bodhisattva's lamp, the glass of ferns on the table, the box of Jasmine
tea nearby, all so gentle and human after that rocky deluge out there -- So
I make an excellent pan of muffins and tell myself 'Blessed is the man can
make his own bread" -- Like that, the whole three weeks, happiness -- And
I'm rolling my own cigarettes, too -- And as I say sometimes I meditate how
wonderful the fantastic use I've gotten out of cheap little articles like
the scourer, but in this instance I think of the marvelous belongings in my
rucksack like my 25-cent plastic shaker with which I've just made the muffin
batter but also I've used it in the past to drink hot tea, wine, coffee,
whiskey and even stored clean handkerchiefs in it when I traveled -- The top
part of the shaker, my holy cup, and had it for five years now -- And other
belongings so valuable compared to the worthlessness of expensive things I'd
bought and never used -- Like my black soft sleeping sweater also five years
which I was now wearing in the damp Sur summer night and day, over a flannel
shirt in the cold, and just the sweater for the night's sleep in the bag --
Endless use and virtue of it! -- And because the expensive things were of
ill use, like the fancy pants I'd bought for recent recording dates in New
York and other television appearances and never even wore again, useless
things like a $40 raincoat I never wore because it didn't have slits in the
side pockets (you pay for the label and the so called "tailoring') -- Also
an expensive tweed jacket bought for TV and never worn again -- Two silly
sports shirts bought for Hollywood never worn again and were 9 bucks each!
-- And it's almost tearful to realize and remember the old green T-shirt I'd
found, mind you, eight years ago, mind you, on the DUMP in Watsonville
California mind you, and got fantastic use and comfort from it -- Like
working to fix that new stream in the creek to flow through the convenient
deep new waterhole near the wood platform on the bank, and losing myself in
this like a kid playing, it's the little things that count (cliches are
truisms and all truisms are true) -- On my deathbed I could be remembering
that creek day and forgetting the day MGM bought my book, I could be
remembering the old lost green dump T-shirt and forgetting the sapphired
robes -- Mebbe the best way to get into Heaven.
I go back to the beach in the daytime to write my "Sea', I stand there
barefoot by the sea stopping to scratch one ankle with one toe, I hear the
rhythm of those waves, and they're saying suddenly "Is Virgin you trying to
fathom me" -- I go back to make a pot of tea.

Summer afternoon...
Impatiently chewing
The Jasmine leaf

At high noon the sun always coming out at last, strong, beating down on
my nice high porch where I sit with books and coffee and the noon I thought
about the ancient Indians who must have inhabited this canyon for thousands
of years, how even as far back as the loth century this valley must have
looked the same, just different trees: these ancient Indians simply the
ancestors of the Indians of only recently say 1860... How they've all died
and quietly buried their grievances and excitements How the creek may have
been an inch deeper since logging operations of the last sixty years have
removed some of the watershed in the hills back there... How the women
pounded the local acorns, acorns or shmacorns, I finally found the natural
nuts of the valley and they were sweet tasting -- And men hunted deer -- In
fact God knows what they did because I wasn't here -- But the same valley, a
thousand years of dust more or less over their footsteps of A. D. 960 -- And
as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our
new words -- We will pass just as quietly through life (passing through,
passing through) as the 10th century people of this valley only with a
little more noise and a few bridges and dams and bombs that wont even last a
million years -- The world being just what it is, moving and passing
through, actually alright in the long view and nothing to complain about --
Even the rocksof the valley had earlier rock ancestors, a billion billion
years ago, have left no howl of complaint -- Neither the bee, or the first
sea urchins, or the clam, or the severed paw -- All said So-Is sight of the
world, right there in front of my nose as I look, -- And looking at that
valley in fact I also realize I have to make lunch and it wont be any
different than the lunch of those olden men and besides it'll taste good --
Everything is the same, the fog says "We are fog and we fly by dissolving
like ephemera, " and the leaves say "We are leaves and we jiggle in the
wind, that's all, we come and go, grow and fall" -- Even the paper bags in
my garbage pit say "We are man transformed paper bags made out of wood pulp,
we are kinda proud of being paper bags as long as that will be possible, but
we'll be mush again with our sisters the leaves come rainy season" -- The
tree stumps say "We are tree stumps torn out of the ground by men, sometimes
by wind, we have big tendrils full of earth that drink out of the earth'...
Men say "We are men, we pull out tree stumps, we make paper bags, we think
wise thoughts, we make lunch, we look around, we make a great effort to
realize everything is the same" -- While the sand says "We are sand, we
already know, " and the sea says "We are always come and go, fall and plosh.
" -- The empty blue sky of space says "All this comes back to me, then goes
again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still
belongs to me" -- The blue sky adds "Dont call me eternity, call me God if
you like, all of you talkers are in paradise: the leaf is paradise, the tree
stump is paradise, the paper bag is paradise, the man is paradise, the fog
is paradise" -- Can you imagine a man with mar-velous insights like these
can go mad within a month? (because you must admit all those talking paper
bags and sands were telling the truth) -- But I remember seeing a mess of
leaves suddenly go skittering in the wind and into the creek, then floating
rapidly down the creek toward the sea, making me feel a nameless horror even
then of "Oh my God, we're all being swept away to sea no matter what we know
or say or do" -- And a bird who was on a crooked branch is suddenly gone
without my even hearing him.

8

But there's moonlit fognight, the blossoms of the fire flames in the
stove -- There's giving an apple to the mule, the big lips taking hold...
There's the bluejay drinking my canned milk by throwing his head back with a
miffle of milk on his beak -- There's the scratching of the raccoon or of
the rat out there, at night -- There's the poor little mouse eating her
nightly supper in the humble corner where I've put out a little
delight-plate full of cheese and chocolate candy (for my days of killing
mice are over) -- There's the raccoon in his fog, there the man to his
fireside, and both are lonesome for God -- There's me coming back from
seaside night sittings like a muttering old Bhikku stumbling down the path
-- There's me throwing my spotlight on a sudden raccoon who clambers up a
tree his little heart beating with fear but I yell in French "Hello there
little man" (allo ti bon-homme) -- There's the bottle of olives, 4gc,
imported, pimentos, I eat them one by one wondering about the late afternoon
hillsides of Greece -- And there's my spaghetti... with tomato sauce and my
oil and vinegar salad and my applesauce relishe my dear, and my black coffee
and Roquefort cheese and after-dinner nuts, my dear, all in the woods --
(Ten delicate olives slowly chewed at midnight is something no one's ever
done in luxurious restaurants) -- There's the present moment fraught with
tangled woods -- There's the bird suddenly quiet on his branch while his
wife glances at him... There's the grace of an axe handle as good as an
Eglevsky ballet... There's 'Mien Mo Mountain" in the fog illumined August
moon mist among other heights gorgeous and misty rising in dimmer tiers
somehow rosy in the night like the classic silk paintings of China and Japan
-- There's a bug, a helpless little wingless crawler, drowning in a water
can, I get it out and it wanders and goofs on the porch till I get sick of
watching -- There's the spider in the outhouse minding his own business...
There's my side of bacon hanging from a hook on the ceiling of the shack --
There's the laughter of the loon in the shadow of the moon-There's an owl
hooting in weird Bodhidharma trees -- There's flowers and redwood logs --
There's the simple woodfire and the careful yet absent-minded feeding of it
which is an activity that like all activities is no-activity (Wu Wei) yet it
is a meditation in itself especially because all woodfires, like snowflakes,
are different every time... Yes, there's the resinous purge of a
flame-enveloped redwood log -- Yes the cross-sawed redwood log turns into a
coal and looks like a City of the Gandharvas or like a western butte at
sunset -- There's the bhikku's broom, the kettle -- There's the laced soft
fud over the sand, the sea -- There's all these avid preparations for decent
sleep like the night I'm looking for my sleeping socks (so's not to dirty
the sleepingbag inside) and find myself singing "A donde es me sockiboos? "
-- Yes, and down in the valley there's my burro, Alf, the only living being
in sight -- There's in mid of sleep the moon appearing -- There's universal
substance which is divine substance because where else can it be? -- There's
the family of deer on the dirt road at dusk... There's the creek coughing
down the glade -- There's the fly on my thumb rubbing its nose then stepping
to the page of my book-There's the hummingbird swinging his head from side
to side like a hoodlum -- There's all that, and all my fine thoughts, even
unto my ditty written to the sea "I took a pee, into the sea, acid to acid,
and me to ye" yet I went crazy inside three weeks.
For who could go crazy that could be so relaxed as that: but wait:
there are the signposts of something wrong.

9

The first signpost came after that marvelous day I went hiking, up the
canyon road again to the highway at the bridge where there was a rancher
mailbox where I could dump mail (a letter to my mother and saying in it give
a kiss to Tyke, my cat, and a letter to old buddy Julien addressed to Coaly
Rustnut from Runty Onenut) and as I walked way up there I could see the
peaceful roof of my cabin way below and half mile away in the old trees,
could see the porch, the cot where I slept, and my red handkerchief on the
bench beside the cot (a simple little sight: of my handkerchief a half mile
away making me unaccountably happy) -- And on the way back pausing to
meditate in the grove of trees where Alf the Sacred Burro slept and seeing
the roses of the unborn in my closed eyelids just as clearly as I had seen
the red handkerchief and also my own footsteps in the seaside sand from way
up on the bridge, saw, or heard, the words "Roses of the Unborn" as I sat
crosslegged in soft meadow sand, heard that awful stillness at the heart of
life, but felt strangely low, as tho premonition of the next day... When I
went to the sea in the afternoon and suddenly took a huge deep Yogic breath
to get all that good sea air in me but somehow just got an overdose of
iodine, or of evil, maybe the sea caves, maybe the seaweed cities,
something, my heart suddenly beating -- Thinking I'm gonna get the local
vibrations instead here I am almost fainting only it isn't an ecstatic swoon
by St Francis, it comes over me in the form of horror of an eternal
condition of sick mortality in me -- In me and in everyone... I felt
completely nude of all poor protective devices like thoughts about life or
meditations under trees and the "ultimate" and all that shit, in fact the
other pitiful devices of making supper or saying "What I do now next? chop
wood? " -- I see myself as just doomed, pitiful -- An awful realization that
I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do
to keep the show going and actually I'm just a sick clown and so is
everybody else... All all of it, pitiful as it is, not even really any kind
of commonsense animate effort to ease the soul in this horrible sinister
condition (of mortal hopelessness) so I'm left sitting there in the sand
after having almost fainted and stare at the waves which suddenly are not
waves at all, with I guess what must have been the goopiest downtrodden
expression God if He exists must've ever seen in His movie career -- Eh
vache, I hate to write -- All my tricks laid bare, even the realization that
they're laid bare itself laid bare as a lotta bunk -- The sea seems to yell
to me GO TO YOUR DESIRE DONT HANG AROUND HERE -- For after all the sea must
be like God, God isn't asking us to mope and suffer and sit by the sea in
the cold at midnight for the sake of writing down useless sounds, he gave us
the tools of self reliance after all to make it straight thru bad life
mortality towards Paradise maybe I hope... But some miserables like me don't
even know it, when it comes to us we're amazed -- Ah, life is a gate, a way,
a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some
sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH... but I ran
away from the seashore and never came back again without that secret
knowledge: that it didnt want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in
the first place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period.
That being the first indication of my later flip -- But also on the day
of leaving the cabin to hitch hike back to Friscoand see everybody and by
now I'm tired of my food (forgot to bring jello, you need jello after all
that bacon fat and cornmeal in the woods, every woodsman needs jello) (or
cokes) (or something) But it's time to leave, I'm now so scared by that
iodine blast by the sea and by the boredom of the cabin I take 20 dollars
worth of perishable food left and spread it out on a big board below the
cabin porch for the bluejays and the raccoon and the mouse and the whole
lot, pack up, and go -- But before I go I realize this isn't my own cabin
(here's the second signpost of my madness), I have no right to hide
Monsanto's rat poison, as I've been doing, feeding the mouse instead, as I
said -- So like a dutiful guest in another man's cabin I take the cover off
the rat poison but compromise by simply leaving the box on the top shelf, so
nobody can complain -- And go off like that -- But during my absence, but --
You'll see.


10

With my mind even and upright and abiding nowhere, as Hui Neng would
say, I go dancing off like a fool from my sweet retreat, rucksack on back,
after only three weeks and really after only three or four days of boredom,
and go hankering back for the city -- "You go out in joy and in sadness you
return, " says Thomas a Kempis talking about all the fools who go forth for
pleasure like high schoolboys on Saturday night hurrying clacking down the
sidewalk to the car adjusting their ties and rubbing their hands with
anticipatory zeal, only to end up Sunday morning groaning in blearly beds
that Mother has to make anyway -- It's a beautiful day as I come out of that
ghostly canyon road and step out on the coast highway, just this side of
Raton Canyon bridge, and there they are, thousands and thousands of tourists
driving by slowly on the high curves all oo ing and aa ing at all that vast
blue panorama of sea washing and raiding at the coast of California -- I
figure I'll get a ride into Monterey real easy and take the bus there and be
in Frisco by nightfall for a big ball of wino yelling with the gang, I feel
in fact Dave Wain oughta be back by now, or Cody will be ready for a ball,
and there'll be girls, and such and such, forgetting entirely that only
three weeks previous I'd been sent fleeing from that gooky city by the
horrors -- But hadn't the sea told me to flee back to my own reality?
But it is beautiful especially to see up ahead north a vast expanse of
curving seacoast with inland mountains dreaming under slow clouds, like a
scene of ancient Spain, or properly really like a scene of the real
essentially Spanish California, the old Monterey pirate coast right there,
you can see what the Spaniards must've thought when they came around the
bend in their magnificent sloopies and saw all that dreaming fatland beyond
the seashore whitecap doormat -- Like the land of gold -- The old Monterey
and Big Sur and Santa Cruz magic -- So I confidently adjust my pack straps
and start trudging down the road looking back over my shoulder to thumb.
This is the first time I've hitch hiked in years and I soon begin to
see things have changed in America, you cant get a ride any more (but of
course especially on a strictly tourist road like this coast highway with no
trucks or business)... Sleek long stationwagon after wagon comes sleering by
smoothly, all colors of the rainbow and pastel at that, pink, blue, white,
the husband is in the driver's seat with a long ridiculous vacationist hat
with a long baseball visor making him look witless and idiot -- Besides him
sits wifey, the boss of America, wearing dark glasses and sneering, even if
he wanted to pick me up or anybody up she wouldn't let him -- But in the two
deep backseats are children, children, millions of children, all ages,
they're fighting and screaming over ice cream, they're spilling vanilla all
over the Tartan seatcovers -- There's no room anymore anyway for a hitch
hiker, tho conceivably the poor bastard might be allowed to ride like a meek
gunman or silent murderer in the very back platform of the wagon, but here
no, alas! here is ten thousand racks of drycleaned and perfectly pressed
suits and dresses of all sizes for the family to look like millionaires
every time they stop at a roadside dive for bacon and eggs -- Every time the
old man's trousers start to get creased a little in the front he's made to
take down a fresh pair of slacks from the back rack and go on, like that,
bleakly, tho he might have secretly wished just a good oldtime fishing trip
alone or with his buddies for this year's vacation -- But the PTA has
prevailed over every one of his desires by now, 1960s, it's no time for him
to yearn for Big Two Hearted River and the old sloppy pants and string of
fish in the tent, or the woodfire with Bourbon at night -- It's time for
motels, roadside driveins, bringing napkins to the gang in the car, having
the car washed before the return trip -- And if he thinks he wants to
explore any of the silent secret roads of America it's no go, the lady in
the sneering dark glasses has now become the navigator and sits there
sneering over her previously printed blue-lined roadmap distributed by happy
executives in neckties to the vacationists of America who would also wear
neckties (after having come along so far) but the vacation fashion is sports
shirts, long visored hats, dark glasses, pressed slacks and baby's first
shoes dipped in gold oil dangling from the dashboard -- So here I am
standing in that road with that big woeful rucksack but also probably with
that expression of horror on my face after all those nights sitting in the
seashore under giant black cliffs, they see in me the very apotheosical
opposite of their every vacation dream and of course drive on -- That
afternoon I say about five thousand cars or probably three thousand passed
me not one of them ever dreamed of stopping -- Which didnt bother me anyway
because at first seeing that gorgeous long coast up to Monterey I thought
"Well I'll just hike right in, it's only fourteen miles, I oughta do that
easy" -- And on the way there's all kindsa interesting things to see anyway
like the seals barking on rocks below, or quiet old farms made of logs on
the hills across the highway, or sudden upstretches that go along dreamy
seaside meadows where cows grace and graze in full sight of endless blue
Pacific -- But because I'm wearing desert boots with their fairly thin
soles, and the sun is beating hot on the tar road, the heat finally gets
through the soles and I begin to deliver heat blisters inmy sockiboos -- I'm
limping along wondering what's the matter with me when I realize I've got
blisters -- I sit by the side of the road and look -- I take out my first
aid kit from the pack and apply unguents and put on cornpads and carry on --
But the combination of the heavy pack and the heat of the road increases the
pain of the blisters until finally I realize I've got to hitch hike a ride
or never make it to Monterey at all. But the tourists bless their hearts
after all, they couldnt know, only think I'm having a big happy hike with my
rucksack and they drive on, even tho I stick out my thumb
-- I'm in despair because I'm really stranded now, and by the time I've
walked seven miles I still have seven to go but I cant go on another step --
I'm also thirsty and there are absolutely no filling stations or anything
along the way
-- My feet are ruined and burned, it develops now into a day of
complete torture, from nine o'clock in the morning till four in the
afternoon I negotiate those nine or so miles when I finally have to stop and
sit down and wipe the blood off my feet -- And then when I fix the feet and
put the shoes on again, to hike on, I can only do it mincingly with little
twinkletoe steps like Babe Ruth, twisting footsteps every way I can think of
not to press too hard on any particular blister -- So that the tourists
(lessening now as the sun starts to go down) can now plainly see that
there's a man on the highway limping under a huge pack and asking for a
ride, but still they're afraid he may be the Hollywood hitch hiker with the
hidden gun and besides he's got a rucksack on his back as tho he'd just
escaped from the war in Cuba... Or's got dismembered bodies in the bag
anyway -- But as I say I dont blame them.
The only car that passes that might have given me a ride is going in
the wrong direction, down to Sur, and it's a rattly old car of some kind
with a big bearded "South Coast Is the Lonely Coast" folksinger in it waving
at me but finally a little truck pulls up and waits for me 50 yards ahead
and I limprun that distance on daggers in my feet -- It's a guy with a dog
-- He'll drive me to the next gas station, then he turns off -- But when he
learns about my feet he takes me clear to the bus station in Monterey --
Just as a gesture of kindness -- No particular reason, and I've made no
particular plea about my feet, just mentioned it.
I offer to buy him a beer but he's going on home for supper so I go
into the bus station and clean up and change and pack things away, stow the
bag in the locker, buy the bus ticket, and go limping quietly in the blue
fog streets of Monterey evening feeling lights as feather and happy as a
millionaire -- The last time I ever hitch hiked -- And NO RIDES a sign.


    11



The next sign is in Frisco itself where after a night of perfect sleep
in an old skid row hotel room I go to see Monsanto at his City Lights
bookstore and he's smiling and glad to see me, says "We were coming out to
see you next weekend you should have waited, " but there's something else in
his expression -- When we're alone he says "Your mother wrote and said your
cat is dead. "
Ordinarily the death of a cat means little to most men, a lot to fewer
men, but to me, and that cat, it was exactly and no lie and sincerely like
the death of my little brother -- I loved Tyke with all my heart, he was my
baby who as a kitten just slept in the palm of my hand with his little head
hanging down, or just purring, for hours, just as long as I held him that
way, walking or sitting -- He was like a floppy fur wrap around my wrist, I
just twist him around my wrist or drape him and he just purred and purred
and even when he got big I still held him that way, I could even hold this
big cat in both hands with my arms outstretched right over my head and he'd
just purr, he had complete confidence in me -- And when I'd left New York to
come to my retreat in the woods I'd carefully kissed him and instructed him
to wait for me, 'Attends pour mue kitigingoo" -- But my mother said in the
letter he had died the NIGHT AFTER I LEFT! -- But maybe you'll understand me
by seeing for yourself by reading the letter:

"Sunday 20 July 1960, Dear Son, I'm afraid you wont like my letter
because I only have sad news for you right now. I really dont know how to
tell you this but Brace up Honey. I'm going through hell myself. Little Tyke
is gone. Saturday all day he was fine and seemed to pick up strength, but
late at night I was watching TV a late movie. Just about 1: 30 A. M. when he
started belching and throwing up. I went to him and tried to fix him up but
to no availe. He was shivering like he was cold so I rapped him up in a
Blanket then he started to throw up all over me. And that was the last of
him. Needless to say how I feel and what I went through. I stayed up till
"day Break" and did all I could to revive him but it was useless. I realized
at 4 A. M. he was gone so at six I wrapped him up good in a clean blanket --
and at 7 A. M. went out to dig his grave. I never did anything in my whole
life so heart breaking as to bury my beloved little Tyke who was as human as
you and I. I buried him under the Honeysuckle vines, the corner, of the
fence. I just cant sleep or eat. I keep looking and hoping to see him come
through the cellar door calling Ma Wow. I'm just plain sick and the weirdest
thing happened when I buried Tyke, all the black Birds I fed all Winter
seemed to have known what was going on. Honest Son this is no lies. There
was lots and lots of em flying over my head and chirping, and settling on
the fence, for a whole hour after Tyke was laid to rest -- that's something
I'll never forget -- I wish I had a camera at the time but God and Me knows
it and saw it. Now Honey I know this is going to hurt you but I had to tell
you somehow... I'm so sick not physically but heart sick... I just cant
believe or realize that my Beautiful little Tyke is no more -- and that I
wont be seeing him come through his little "Shanty" or Walking through the
green grass
... PS. I've got to dismantle Tyke's shanty, I just cant go out there
and see it empty -- as is. Well Honey, write soon again and be kind to
yourself. Pray the real "God" -- Your old Mom XXXXXX. "

So when Monsanto told me the news and I was sitting there smiling with
happiness the way all people feel when they come out of a long solitude
either in the woods or in a hospital bed, bang, my heart sank, it sank in
fact with the same strange idiotic helplessness as when I took the
unfortunate deep breath on the seashore -- All the premonitions tying in
together.
Monsanto sees that I'm terribly sad, he sees my little smile (the smile
that came over me in Monterey just so glad to be back in the world after the
solitudes and I'd walked around the streets just bemusedly Mona Lisa'ing at
the sight of everything) -- He sees now how that smile has slowly melted
away into a mawk of chagrin -- Of course he cant know since I didn't tell
him and hardly wanta tell it now, that my relationship with my cat and the
other previous cats has always been a little dotty: some kind of
psychological identification of the cats with my dead brother Gerard who'd
taught me to love cats when I was 3 and 4 and we used to lie on the floor on
our bellies and watch them lap up milk -- The death of "little brother" Tyke
indeed -- Monsanto seeing me so downcast says "Maybe you oughta go back to
the cabin for a few more weeks -- or are you just gonna get drunk again" --
"I'm gonna get drunk yes" -- Because anyway there are so many things
brewing, everybody's waiting, I've been daydreaming a thousand wild parties
in the woods -- In fact it's fortunate I've heard of the death of Tyke in my
favorite exciting city of San Francisco, if I had been home when he died I
might have gone mad in a different way but tho I now ran out to get drunk
with the boys and still once in a while that funny little smile of joy came
back as I drank, and melted away again because now the smile itself was a
reminder of death, the news made me go mad anyway at the end of the three
week binge, creeping up on me finally on that terrible day of St Carolyn By
The Sea as I can also call it -- All, all confusing till I explain.
Meanwhile anyway poor Monsanto a man of letters wants to enjoy big new
swappings with me about writing and what everybody's doing, and then Fagan
comes into the store (downstairs to Monsanto's old rolltop desk making me
also feel chagrin because it always was the ambition of my youth to end up a
kind of literary businessman with a rolltop desk, combining my father's
image with the image of myself as a writer, which Monsanto without even
thinking about it has accomplished at the drop of a hat) -- Monsanto with
his husky shoulders, big blue eyes, twinkling rosy skin, that perpetual
smile of his that earned him the name Smiler in college and a smile you
often wondered "Is it real? " until you realized if Monsanto should ever
stop using that smile how could the world go on anyway -- It was that kind
of smile too inseparable from him to be believably allowed to disappear --
Words words words but he is a grand guy as I'll show and now with real manly
sympathy he really felt I should not go on big binges if I felt so bad, "At
any rate, " sez he, "you can go back a little later huh" -- "Okay Lorry" --
"Did you write anything? " -- "I wrote the sounds of the sea, I'll tell you
all about it -- It was the most happy three weeks of my life dammit and now
this has to happen, poor little Tyke -- You should have seen him a big
beautiful yellow Persian the kind they call calico" -- "Well you still have
my dog Homer, and how was Alf out there? " -- "Alf the Sacred Burro, he ha,
he stands in groves of trees in the afternoon suddenly you see him it's
almost scarey, but I fed himapples and shredded wheat and everything" (and
animals are so sad and patient I thought as I remembered Tyke's eyes and
Alf's eyes, ah death, and to think this strange scandalous death comes also
to human beings, yea to Smiler even, poor Smiler, and poor Homer his dog,
and all of us) -- I'm also depressed because I know how horrible my mother
now feels all alone without her little chum in the house back there three
thousand miles (and indeed by Jesus it turns out later some silly beatniks
trying to see me broke the windowpane in the front door trying to get in and
scared her so much she barricaded the door with furniture all the rest of
that summer).
But there's old Ben Fagan puffing and chuckling over his pipe so what
the hell, why bother grownup men and poets at that with your own troubles --
So Ben and I and his chum Jonesy also a chuckly pipesmoker go out to the bar
(Mike's Place) and sip a few beers, at first I vow I'm not going to get
drunk after all, we even go out to the park to have a long talk in the warm
sun that always turns to delightful cool foggy dusk in that town of towns --
We're sitting in the park of the big Italian white church watching kids play
and people go by, for some reason I'm bemused by the sight of a blonde woman
hurrying somewhere "Where's she going? does she have a secret sailor lover?
is she only going to finish her typing afterhours in the office? what if we
knew Ben what every one of these people goin by is headed for, some door,
some restaurant, some secret romance" -- "You sound like you stored up a lot
of energy and innerest in life in those woods" -- And Ben knows that for
sure because he's been months in the wilderness too, alone -- Old Ben, much
thinner than he used to be in our madder Dharma Bum days of five years ago,
a little gaunt in fact, but still the same old Ben who stays up late at
night chuckling over the Lankavatara Scripture and writing poems about
raindrops -- And he knows me very well, he knows I'll get drunk tonight and
for weeks on end just on general principles and that a day will come in a
few weeks when I'll be so exhausted I wont be able to talk to anybody and
he'll come and visit me and just silently at my side be puffing his pipe, as
I sleep -- The kind of guy he is -- I trying to explain about Tyke to him
but some people are cat lovers and some ain't, tho Ben always has a little
kitty around his pad -- His pad usually has a straw rug on the floor, with a
pillow "pon which he sits crosslegged by a smoking teapot, his bookshelves
full of Stein and Pound and Wallace Stevens -- A strange quiet poet who was
only beginning to be recognized as a big rosy secret sage (one of his lines
"When I leave town all my friends go back on the sauce') -- And I'm on my
way to the sauce right now. Because anyway old Dave Wain is back and Dave I
can see him rubbing his hands in anticipation of another big wild binge with
me like we had the year before when he drove me back to New York from the
west coast, with George Baso the little Japanese Zen master hepcat sitting
crosslegged on the back mattress of Dave's jeepster (Willie the Jeep), a
terrific trip through Las Vegas, St Louis, stopping off at expensive motels
and drinking nothing but the best Scotch out of the bottle all the way --
And what better way to go back to New York, I could have blown 190 dollars
on an airplane -- And Dave's never met the great Cody and will be looking
forward to that -- So me and Ben leave the park and slowly walk to the bar
on Columbus Street and I order my first double bourbon and gingerale. The
lights are twinkling on outside in that fantastic toy street, I can feel the
joy rise in my soul -- I now remember
Big Sur with a clear piercing love and agony and even the death of Tyke
fits in with everything but I don't realize the enormity of what's yet to
come -- We call up Dave Wain who's back from Reno and he comes blattin
downto the bar in his jeepster driving that marvelous way he does (once he
was a cab-driver) talking all the time and never making a mistake, in fact
as good a driver as Cody altho I cant imagine anybody being that good and
asked Cody about it the next day -- But old jealous drivers always point out
faults and complain, "Ah well that Dave Wain of yours doesnt take his curves
right, he eases up and sometimes even pokes the brake a little instead of
just ridin that old curve around on increased power, man you gotta work
those curves" -- Obvious at this time now, by the way and parenthetically,
that there's so much to tell about the fateful following three weeks it's
hardly possible to find anyplace to begin. Like life, actually -- And how
multiple it all is! -- "And what happened to little old George Baso, boy? "
-- "Little old George Baso is probably dyin of TB in a hospital outside
Tulare" -- "Gee, Dave, we gotta go see him" -- "Yessir, let's do that
tomorrow" -- As usual Dave has no money whatever but that doesn't bother me
at all, I've got plenty, I go out the following day and cash 500 dollars
worth of travelers checks just so's me and old Dave can really have a good
time... Dave likes good food and drink and so do I... But he's got this
young kid he brought back from Reno called Ron Blake who is a goodlooking
teenager with blond hair who wants to be a sensational new Chet Baker singer
and comes on with that tiresome hipster approach that was natural five or
ten and even twenty five years ago but now in 1960 is a pose, in fact I dug
him as a con man conning Dave (tho for what, I don't know) -- But Dave Wain
that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie
to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining
camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in
town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something
that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate -- For one thing is one of
the world's best talkers, and funny too -- As I'll show -- It was he and
George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in
America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the
ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in
all the modern antisepticism -- Says Dave "People in America have all these
racks of dry-cleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau
de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is
under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress,
they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go
around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on
earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles -- Isnt that amazing?
give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order
two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants
anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state,
the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest
factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great
engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts
and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these
various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades
and perfumes are all walking around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is
simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasnt occurred to anybody in
America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you
think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but
we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles? " -- The whole azzole
shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from
coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good
one -- In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse
where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there
on each trip -- Monsanto hadn't heard about it yet, "Do you realize that
until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking
around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that? " -- "Let's go tell
him right now! " -- "Why of course if we wait another minute
... and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with
a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand
all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all
that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet
there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's
wrong they don't know just what! " -- We rush to tell Monsanto at once in
the book store around the corner. By now we're beginning to feel great...
Fagan has retired saying typically "Okay you guys go ahead and get drunk,
I'm goin home and spend a quiet evening in a hot bath with a book" "Home" is
also where Dave Wain and Ron Blake live -- It's an old rooming house of four
stories on the edge of the Negro district of San Francisco where Dave, Ben,
Jonesy, a painter called Lanny Meadows, a mad French Canadian drinker called
Pascal and a Negro called Johnson all live in different rooms with their
clutter of rucksacks and floor mattresses and books and gear, each one
taking turns one day a week to go out and do all the shopping and come back
and cook up a big communal dinner in the kitchen -- All ten or twelve of
them sharing the rent, and with that rotation of dinner, they end up living
comfortable lives with wild parties and girls rushing in, people bringing
bottles, all at about a minimum of seven dollars a week say
-- It's a wonderful place but at the same time a little maddening, in
fact a whole lot maddening because the painter Lanny Meadows loves music and
has installed his Hi Fi speaker in the kitchen altho he applies the records
in a back room so the daily cook may be concentrating on his Mulligan stew
and all of a sudden Stravinsky's dinosaurs start dining overhead And at
night there are bottlecrashing parties usually supervised by wild Pascal who
is a sweet kid but crazy when he drinks A regular nuthouse actually and just
exactly the image of what the journalists want to say about the Beat
Generation nevertheless a harmless and pleasant agreement for young
bachelors and a good idea in the long run -- Because you can rush into any
room and find the expert, like say Ben's room and ask "Hey what did
Bodhidharma say to the Second Patriarch? " -- "He said go fuck yourself,