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us the Monsanto jeepster follows doggedly -- Passing thru Monterey Monsanto
has already called PatMcLear, staying for the summer with wife and kid in
Santa Cruz, McLear with his own jeepster is following us a few miles down
the highway -- It's a big Big Sur day.
We wheel downhill to cross the creek and at the corral fence I proudly
get out to officially open the gate and let the cars through We go bumping
down the two-rutted lane to the cabin and park My heart sinks to see the
cabin. To see the cabin so sad and almost human waiting there for me as if
forever, to hear my little neat gurgling creek resuming its song just for
me, to see the very same bluejays still waiting in the tree for me and maybe
mad at me now they see I'm back because I havent been there to lay out their
Cherios along the porch rail every blessed morning- And in fact first thing
I do is rush inside and get them some food and lay it out -- But so many
people around now they're afraid to try it.
Monsanto all decked out in his old clothes and looking forward to a
wine and talkfest weekend in his pleasant cabin takes the big sweet axe down
from the wall nails and goes out and starts hammering at a huge log -- In
fact it's really a half of a tree that fell there years ago and's been
hammered at intermittently but now he's bound he's going to crack it in half
and again in half so we can then start splitting it down the middle for huge
bonfire type logs -- Meanwhile little Arthur Ma who never goes anywhere
without his drawing paper and his Yellowjack felt tip pencils is already
seated in my chair on the porch (wearing my hat now too) drawing one of his
interminable pictures, he'll do twenty-five a day and twenty-five the next
day too -- He'll talk and go on drawing -- He has felt tips of all colors,
red, blue, yellow, green, black, he draws marvelous subconscious glurbs and
can also do excellent objective scenes or anything he wants on to
cartoons... Dave is taking my rucksack and his rucksack out of Willie and
throwing them into the cabin, Ben Fagan is wandering around near the creek
puffing on his pipe with a happy bhikku smile, Ron Blake is unpacking the
steaks we bought enroute in Monterey and I'm already flicking the plastics
off the top of bottles with that expert twitch and twist you only get to
learn after years of winoing in alleys east and west. Still the same, the
fog is blowing over the walls of the canyon obscuring the sun but the sun
keeps fighting back -- The inside of the cabin with the fire finally going
is still the dear lovable abode now as sharp in my mind as I look at it as
an unusually well focused snapshot -- The sprig of ferns still stands in a
glass of water, the books are there, the neat groceries ranged along the
wall shelves -- I feel excited to be with the gang but there's a hidden
sadness too and which is expressed later by Monsanto when he says "This is
the kind of place where a person should really be alone, you know? When you
bring a big gang here it somehow desecrates it not that I'm referring to us
or anybody in particular? there's such a sad sweetness to those trees as tho
yells shouldnt insult them or conversation only" -- Which is just the way I
feel too.
In a gang we all go down the path towards the sea, passing underneath
"That sonofabitch bridge" Cody calls it looking up with horror... "That
thing's enough to scare anybody away" -- But worst of all for an old driver
like Cody, and Dave too, is to see that upended old chassis in the sand,
they spend a half hour poking around the wreckage and shaking their heads --
We kick around the beach awhile and decide to come back at night with
bottles and flashlights and build a huge bonfire, now it's time to get back
to the cabin and cook those steaks and have a ball, and there's McLear's
jeep already arrived and parked and there's McLear himself and that
beautiful blonde wife of his in her tight blue jeans that makes Dave say
"Yum yum" and Cody just say "Yes, that's right, yes, that's right, ah hum
honey, yes. "
A roaring drinking bout begins deep in the canyon -- Fog nightfall
sends cold seeping into the windows so all these softies demand that the
wood windows be closed so we all sit there in the glow of the one lamp
coughing in the smoke but they dont care -- They think it's just the steaks
smoking over the fire -- I have one of the jugs in my hand and I won't let
go -- McLear is the handsome young poet who's just written the" most
fantastic poem in America, called "Dark Brown', which is every detail of his
and his wife's body described in ecstatic union and communion and inside out
and everywhichaway and not only that he insists on reading it to us -- But I
wanta read my "Sea" poem too -- But Cody and Dave Wain are talking about
something else and that silly kid Ron Blake is singing like Chet Baker --
Arthur Ma is drawing in the corner, and it sorta goes like this generally:
"That's what old men do, Cody, they drive slowly backwards in Safeway
Supermarket parking lots" -- "Yes that's right, I was tellin you about that
bicycle of mine but that's what they do yes you see that's because while the
old woman is shoppin in that store they figure they'll park a little closer
to the entrance and so they spend a half hour to think their big move out
and they back in out slowly from their slot, can hardly turn around to see
what's in back, usually nothin there, then they wheel real slow and trembly
to that slot they picked but all of a sudden some cat jumps in it with his
pickup and them old men is scratchin their heads saying and whining "Owww,
these young fellers nowadays" and all that obvious, ah, yes, but that
BICYCLE of mine in Denver I tell you I had it twisted and that wheel used to
wobble so by necissity I had to invent a new way to maneuver them handlebars
see... " -- 'Hey Cody have a drink, " I'm yelling in his ear and meanwhile
McLear is reading: "Kiss my thighs in darkness the pit of fire" and Monsanto
is chuckling saying to Fagan: "So this crazy character comes down stairs and
asking for a copy of Aleister Crowley and I didnt know "bout that till you
told me the other day, then on the way out I see him sneak a book off the
shelf but he puts another one in its place that he got out of his pocket,
and the book is a novel by somebody called Denton Welch all about this young
kid in China wanderin around the streets like real romantic young Truman
Capote only it's China" and Arthur Ma suddenly yells: "Hold still you buncha
bastards, I got a hole in my eye" and generally the way parties go, and so
on, ending with the steak dinner (I dont even touch a bite but just drink
on), then the big bonfire on the beach to which we march all in one
armswinging gang, I've gotten the idea in my head I'm the leader of a
guerilla warfare unit and I'm marching ahead the lieutenant giving orders,
with all our flashlights and yells we come swarming down the narrow path
going "Hup one two three" and challenging the enemy to come out of hiding,
some guerillas. Monsanto that old woodsman starts a huge bonfire on the
beach that can be seen flaring from miles away, cars passing across the
bridge way up there can see there's a party goin on in the hole of night, in
fact the bonfire lights up the eerie weird beams and staunches of the bridge
almost all the way up, giant shadows dance on the rocks -- The sea swirls up
but seems subdued -- It's not like being alone down in the vast hell writing
the sounds of the sea.
The night ending with everybody passing out exhausted on cots, in
sleepingbags outside (McLear goes home with wife) but Arthur Ma and I by the
late fire keep up yelling spontaneous questions and answers right till dawn
like "Who told you you had a hat on your head? " -- "My head never questions
hats" -- "What's the matter with your liver training? " -- 'My liver
training got involved in kidney work" -- (and here again another great
gigantic little Oriental friend for me, an eastcoaster who's never known
Chinese or Japanese kids, on the West coast it's quite common but for an
eastcoaster like me it's amazing and what with all my earlier studies in Zen
and Chan and Tao) -- (And Arthur also being a gentle small soft-haired
seemingly soft little Oriental goofnik) And we come to great chanted
statements, taking turns, without a pause to think, just one then the other,
bing and bang, the beauty of them being that while one guy is yelling like
(me):... "Tonight the full apogee August moon will out, early with a
jaundiced tint, and pop angels all over my rooftop along with Devas
sprinkling flowers" (any kind of nonsense being the rule) the other guy has
time not only to figure the next statement but can take off from the
subconscious arousement of an idea from "angels all over my rooftop" and so
can yell without thinking an answer the stupider or rather the more
unexpectedly insaner sillier brighter it is the better 'Pilgrims dropping
turds and sweet nemacular nameless railroad trains from heaven with
omnipotent youths bearing monkey women that will stomp through the stage
waiting for the moment when by pinching myself I prove that a thought is
like a touch" -- But this is only the beginning because now we know the
routine and get better and better till at dawn I seem to recall we were so
fantastically brilliant (while everyone snored) the skies must have shook to
hear it and not just foil: let's see if I can recreate at least the style of
this game:
ARTHUR: "When are you going to become the Eighth Patriarch? "
ME: "As soon as you give me that old motheaten sweater" -- (Much better
than that, forget this for now, because I want to talk first about Arthur Ma
and try again to duplicate our feat).
As I say my first little Chinese friend, I keep saying "little" George
and "little" Arthur but the fact is they were both small anyway -- Altho
George talked slowly and was a little absent from everything in the way of a
Zen Master actually who realizes that everything is indifferent anyway,
Arthur was friendlier, warmer in a way, curious and always asking questions,
more active than George with his constant draw-ng, and of course Chinese
instead of Japanese -- He wanted me to meet his father the following weeks
-- He was Mon-santo's best friend at the time and they made an extremely
strange pair going down the street together, the big ruddy happy man with
the crewcut and corduroy jacket and sometimes pipe in mouth, and the little
childlike Chinese boy who looked so young most bartenders wouldn't serve him
tho he was actually 30 years old -- Nevertheless the son of a famous
Chinatown family and Chinatown is right back there behind the fabled beatnik
streets of Frisco -- Also Arthur was a tremendous little loverboy who had
fabulously beautiful girls on the line and however'd just separated from his
wife, a girl I never saw but Monsanto told me she was the most beautiful
Negro girl in the world -- Arthur came from a large family but as a painter
and a Bohemian his family disapproved of him now so he lived alone in a
comfortable old hotel on North Beach tho sometimes he went around the corner
into Chinatown to visit his father who sat in the back of his Chinese
general store brooding among his countless poems written swiftly in Chinese
stroke on pieces of beautiful colored paper which he then hanged from the
ceiling of his little cubicle -- There he sat, clean, neat, almost shiney,
wondering about what poem to write next but his keen little eyes always
jumping to the street door to see who's going by and if someone came into
the shop itself he knew at once who it was and for what -- He was in fact
the best friend and trusted adviser of Chiang Kai Shek in America, true and
no lie -- But Arthur himself was in favor of the Red Chinese which was a
family matter and a Chinese matter I had nothing to say about and didnt
interest me except insofar as it gave a dramatic picture of father and son
in an old culture -- The point of the matter anyway being that he was
goofing with me just like George had done and making me happy somehow like
George had done -- Something anciently familiar about his loyal presence
made me wonder if I'd ever lived before in some other lifetime in China or
if he'd been an Occidental himself in a previous lifetime of his own
involved with mine somewhere else than China -- The pity of it is that I
have no record of what we were yelling and announcing back and forth as the
birds woke up outside but it went generally like this: -- ME: "Unless
someone sticks a hot iron in my heart or heaps up Evil Karma like tit and
tat the pile of that and pulls my mother out her bed to slay her before my
damning human eyes... "
ARTHUR: "And I break my hand on heads... "
M E: "Everytime you throw a rock at a cat from your glass house you
heap upon yourself the automatic Stanley Gould winter so dark of death after
death, and growing old
ARTHUR: "Because lady those ashcans'll bite you back and be cold too...
"
ME: "And your son will never rest in the imperturbable knowledge that
what he thinks he thinks as well as what he does he thinks as well as what
he feels he thinks as well as future that... "
ARTHUR: "Future that my damn old sword cutter Paisan Pasha lost the
Preakness again... "
ME: "Tonight the moon shall witness angels trooping at the baby's
window where inside he gurgles in his pewk looking with mewling eyes for
babyside waterfall lambikin hillside the day the little Arab shepherd boy
hugged the babylamb to heart while the mother bleeted at his bay heel... "
ARTHUR: "And so Joe the sillicks killit no not... "
ME: "Shhhhoww graaa... "
ARTHUR: "Wind and carstart... "
ME: "The angels Devas monsters Asuras Devadattas Ved-antas McLaughlins
Stones will hue and hurl in hell if they dont love the lamb the lamb the
lamb of hell lambchop... "
ARTHUR: "Why did Scott Fitzgerald keep a notebook? "
ME: "Such a marvelous notebook... "
ARTHUR: "Komi donera ness pata sutyamp anda wanda vesnoki shadakiroo
paryoumemga sikarem nora sarkadium baron roy kellegiam myorki ayastuna
haidanseetzel ampho andiam yerka yama chelmsford alya bonneavance koroom
cemanda versel... "
ME: "The a6th Annual concert of the Armenian Convention? "
Incidentally I forgot to mention that during the three weeks alone the
stars had not come out at all, not even for one minute on any night, it was
the foggy season, except the very last night when I was getting ready to
leave -- Now the stars were out every night, the sun shone considerably
longer but a sinister wind accompanied the Autumn in Big Sur: it seemed like
the whole Pacific Ocean was blowing with all its might right into Raton
Canyon and also over the high gap from another end causing all the trees to
shudder as the big groaning howl came newsing and noising from downcanyon,
when it hit there was raised a roar of noise I didn't like -- It seemed ill
omened to me somewhere... It was much better to have fog and silence and
quiet trees -- Now the whole canyon by one blast could be led screaming and
waving in all directions in such a confused mass that even the fellows with
me were a little surprised to see it -- It was too big a wind for such a
little canyon.
This development also prevented the constant hearing of the reassuring
creek. One good thing was that when jet planes broke the sound barrier
overhead the wind dispersed the clap of empty thunder they caused, because
during the foggy season the noise would come down into the canyon,
concentrate there, and rock the house like an explosion making me think the
first time (alone) that somebody'd set off a blast of dynamite nearby.
While I woke up groaning and sick there was plenty of wine right there
to start me off with the hounds of hair, so okay, but Monsanto had retired
early and typically sensibly to sleep by the creek and now he was awake
singing swooshing his whole head into the creek and going Brrrrr and rubbing
his hands for a new day -- Dave Wain made breakfast with his usual lecture
"Now the real way to fry eggs is to put a cover over them so that they can
have that neat basted white look on the yellows, soon's I get this pancake
batter ready we'll start on them" -- My list of groceries was so all
inclusive in the beginning it was now feeding guerilla troops.
A big axe chopping contest began after breakfast, some of us sitting
watching on the porch and the performers down below hacking away at the tree
trunk which was over a foot thick'- They were chopping off two foot chunks,
no easy job -- I realized you can always study the character of a man by the
way he chops wood -- Monsanto an old lumberman up in Maine as I say now
showed us how he conducted his whole life in fact by the way he took neat
little short handled chops from both left and right angles getting his work
done in reasonably short time without too much sweat -- But his strokes were
rapid -- Whereas old Fagan pipe-in-mouth slogged away I guess the way he
learned in Oregon and in the Northwest fire schools, also getting his job
done, silently, not a word -- But Cody's fantastic fiery character showed in
the way he went at the log with horrible force, when he brought down the axe
with all his might and holding it far at the end you could hear the whole
treetrunk groaning the whole length inside, runk, sometimes you could hear a
lengthwise cracking going on, he is really very strong and he brought that
axe down so hard his feet left the earth when it hit -- He chopped off his
log with the fury of a Greek god -- nevertheless it took him longer and much
more sweat than Monsanto
-- "Used to do this in a workgang in southern Arizony" he said,
whopping one down that made the whole treetrunk dance off the ground -- But
it was like an example of vast but senseless strength, a picture of poor
Cody's life and in a sense my own -- I too chopped with all my might and got
madder and went faster and raked the log but took more time than Monsanto
who watched us smiling -- Little Arthur thereupon tried his luck but gave up
after five strokes... The axe was like to carry him away anyway... Then Dave
Wain demonstrated with big easy strokes and in no time we had five huge logs
to use -- But now it was time to get in the cars (McLear had re-arrived) and
go driving south down the coast highway to a hot springs bath house down
there, which sounded good to me at first. But the new Big Sur Autumn was now
all winey sparkling blue which made the terribleness and giantness of the
coast all the more clear to see in all its gruesome splendor, miles and
miles of it snaking away south, our three jeeps twisting and turning the
increasing curves, sheer drops at our sides, further ghostly high bridges to
cross with smashings below -- Tho all the boys are wowing to see it -- To me
it's just an inhospitable madhouse of the earth, I've seen it enough and
even swallowed it in that deep breath -- The boys reassure me the hot
springs bath will do me good (they see I'm gloomy now hungover for good) but
when we arrive my heart sinks again as McLear points out to sea from the
balcony of the outdoor pools: "Look out there floating in the sea weeds, a
dead otter! " -- And sure enough it is a dead otter I guess, a big brown
pale lump floating up and down mournfully with the swells and ghastly weeds,
my otter, my dear otter, my dear otter I'd written poems about
-- "Why did he die? " I ask myself in despair -- "Why do they do that?
" -- "What's the sense of all this? " -- All the fellows are shading their
eyes to get a better look at the big peaceful tortured hunk of seacow out
there as tho it's something of passing interest while tome it's a blow
across the eyes and down into my heart -- The hot water pools are steaming,
Fagan and Monsanto and the others are all sitting peacefully up to their
necks, they're all naked, but there's a gang of fairies also there naked all
standing around in various bath house postures that make me hesitate to take
my clothes off just on general principles -- In fact Cody doesnt even bother
to do anything but lie down with his clothes on in the sun, on the balcony
table, and just smoke -- But I borrow McLear's yellow bathingsuit and get in
-- "What ya wearing a bathingsuit in a hot springs pool for boy? " says
Fagan chuckling -- With horror I realize there's spermatazoa floating in the
hot water... I look and I see the other men (the fairies) all taking good
long looks at Ron Blake who stands there facing the sea with his arse for
all to behold, not to mention McLear and Dave Wain too -- But it's very
typical of me and Cody that we wont undress in this situation (we were both
raised Catholics? ) -- Supposedly the big sex heroes of our generation, in
fact -- You might think -- But the combination of the strange silent
watching fairy-men, and the dead otter out there, and the spermatazoa in the
pools makes me sick, not to mention that when somebody informs me this bath
house is owned by the young writer Kevin Cudahy whom I knew very well in New
York and I ask one of the younger strangers where's Kevin Cudahy he doesnt
even deign to reply -- Thinking he hasnt heard me I ask again, no reply, no
notice, I ask a third time, this time he gets up and stalks out angrily to
the locker rooms -- It all adds up to the confusion that's beginning to pile
up in my battered drinking brain anyway, the constant reminders of death not
the least of which was the death of my peaceful love of Raton Canyon now
suddenly becoming a horror.
From the baths we go to Nepenthe which is a beautiful cliff top
restaurant with vast outdoor patio, with excellent food, excellent waiters
and management, good drinks, chess tables, chairs and tables to just sit in
the sun and look at the grand coast -- Here we all sit at various tables and
Cody starts playing chess with everybody will join while he's chomping away
at those marvelous hamburgers called Heavenburgers (huge with all the side
works) -- Cody doesn't like to just sit around and lightly chat away, he's
the kind of guy if he's going to talk he has to do all the talking himself
for hours till everything is exhaustedly explained, sans that he just wants
to bend over a chessboard and say "He he heh, old Scrooge is saving up a
pawn hey? cak! I got ya! " -- But while I'm sitting there discussing
literature with McLear and Monsanto suddenly a strange couple of gentlemen
nearby strike up an acquaintance -- One of them is a youngster who says he
is a lieutenant in the Army -- I instantly (drunk on fifth Manhattan by now)
go into my theory of guerilla warfare based on my observations the night
before when it did seriously occur to me that if Monsanto, Arthur, Cody,
Dave, Ben, Ron Blake and I were all members of one fighting unit (and all
carrying canteens of booze on our belts) it would be very difficult for the
enemy to hurt any of us because we'd be, as dear friends, watching so
desperately closely over one another, which I tell the first lieutenant,
which attracts the interest of the older man who admits that he's a GENERAL
in the Army -- There are also some further homosexuals at a separate table
which prompts Dave Wain to look up from the chess game at one quiet drowsy
point and announce in his dry twang "Under redwood beams, people talking
about homosexuality and war... call it my Nepenthe Haiku" -- "Yass" says
Cody checkmating him "see what you can ku about that m'boy and get out of
there and I'll noose you with my queen, dear. " I mention the general only
because there is also some-thing sinister about the fact that during this
long binge I came across him and another general, two strange generals, and
I'd never met any generals in my life -- This first general was strange
because he seemed too polite and yet there was something sinister about his
steely eyes behind goof darkglasses -- Something sinister too about the
first lieutenant who guessed who we were (the San Francisco poets, a major
nucleus of them indeed) and didn't seem at all pleased tho the general
seemed amused -- Nevertheless in a sinister way the general seemed to take
great interest in my theory about buddy units for guerilla warfare and when
President Kennedy about a year later ordered just such a new scheme for part
of our armed forces I wondered (still crazy even then but for new reasons)
if the general had got an idea from me... The second general, even stranger,
coming up, occurred when I was even more far gone.
Manhattans and more Manhattans and finally when we got back to the
cabin in late afternoon I was feeling good but realized I was going to be
finished tomorrow -- But poor young Ron Blake asked me if he could stay with
me in the cabin, the others were all going back to the city in the three
cars, I couldn't think of any way to reject his request in a harmless way so
said yes... So when they all left suddenly I was alone with this mad beatnik
kid singing me songs and all I wanta do is sleep -- But I've got to make the
best of it and not disappoint his believing heart. Because after all the
poor kid actually believes that there's something noble and idealistic and
kind about all this beat stuff, and I'm supposed to be the King of the
Beatniks according to the newspapers, so but at the same time I'm sick and
tired of all the endless enthusiasms of new young kids trying to know me and
pour out all their lives into me so that I'll jump up and down and say yes
yes that's right, which I cant do any more -- My reason for coming to Big
Sur for the summer being precisely to get away from that sort of thing --
Like those pathetic live highschool kids who all came to my door in Long
Island one night wearing jackets that said "Dharma Bums" on them, all
expecting me to be 25 years old according to a mistake on a book jacket and
here I am old enough to be their father -- But no, hep swinging young jazzy
Ron wants to dig everything, go to the beach, run and romp and sing, talk,
write tunes, write stories, climb mountains, go hiking, see everything, do
everything with everybody But having one last quart of port with me I agree
to follow him to the beach.
We go down the old sad path of the bhikku and suddenly I see a dead
mouse in the grass -- "A wee dead mousie" I say cleverly poetically but
suddenly I realize and remember now for the first time how I've left the
cover off the rat poison in Monsanto's shelf and so this is my mouse -- It's
lying there dead -- Like the otter in the sea -- It's my own personal mouse
that I've carefully fed chocolate and cheese all summer but once again I've
unconsciously sabotaged all these great plans of mine to be kind to living
beings even bugs, once again I've murdered a mouse one way or the other --
And on top of that when we come to the place where the garter snake usually
lie; sunning itself, and I bring it to Ron's attention, he suddenly yells
"LOOKOUT! you never can tell what kind of snake it is! " which really scares
me, my heart pounds with horroi -- My little friend the garter snake turns
therefore with my head from a living being with a long green body into the
evil serpent of Big Sur.
On top of that, at the surf, where long streamers o: hollow sea weed
always lie around drying in the sun some of them huge, like living bodies
with skin, pieces of living material that always made me sad somehow, here's
the young hepcat lifting them up and dancing a dervish around the beach with
them, turning my Sur into something sea-change -- Something brainchange.
All that night by lamplight we sing and yell songs which is okay but in
the morning the bottle is gone and I wake up with the "final horrors" again,
precisely the way I woke up in the Frisco skidrow room before escaping down
here, it's all caught up with me again, I can hear myself again whining "Why
does God torture me? " -- But anybody who's never had delirium tremens even
in their early stages may not understand that it's not so much a physical
pain but a mental anguish indescribable to those ignorant people who dont
drink and accuse drinkers of irresponsibility -- The mental anguish is so
intense that you feel you have betrayed your very birth, the efforts nay the
birth pangs of your mother when she bore you and delivered you to the world,
you've betrayed every effort your father ever made to feed you and raise you
and make you strong and my God even educate you for "life', you feel a guilt
so deep you identify yourself with the devil and God seems far away
abandoning you to your sick silliness -- You feel sick in the greatest sense
of the word, breathing without believing in it, sicksicksick, your soul
groans, you look at your helpless hands as tho they were on fire and you
cant move to help, you look at the world with dead eyes, there's on your
face an expression of incalculable repining like a constipated angel on a
cloud -- In fact it's actually a cancerous look you throw on the world,
through browngray wool fuds over your eyes -- Your tongue is white and
disgusting, your teeth are stained, your hair seems to have dried out
overnight, there are huge mucks in the corners of your eyes, greases on your
nose, froth at the sides of your mouth: in short that very disgusting and
well-known hideousness everybody knows who's walked past a city street drunk
in the Boweries of the world... But there's no joy at all, people say "Oh
well he's drunk and happy let him sleep it off -- The poor drunkard is
crying... He's crying for his mother and father and great brother and great
friend, he's crying for help -- He tries to pull himself together by moving
one shoe nearer to his foot and he cant even do that properly, he'll drop
the shoe, or knock something over, he'll do something invariably that'll
start him crying again -- He'll want to bury his face in his hands and moan
for mercy and he knows there is none -- Not only because he doesn't deserve
it but there's no such thing anyway -- Because he looks up at the blue sky
and there's nothing there but empty space making a big face at him He looks
at the world, it's sticking its tongue out at him and once that mask is
removed it's looking at him with hollow big red eyes like his own eyes -- He
may see the earth move but there's no significance of any particular kind to
attach to that -- One little unexpected noise behind him will make him snarl
in rage -- He'll pull and tug at his poor stained shirt -- He feels like
rubbing his face into something that isn't. His socks are thick tired moisty
slimes -- The beard on his cheeks itches the running sweats and annoys the
tortured mouth -- There's a twisted feeling of no-more, never-again, agh...
What was beautiful and clean yesterday has irrationally and unaccountably
changed into a big dreary crock of shit... The hairs on his fingers stare at
him like tomb hairs -- The shirt and trousers have become glued to his
person as tho he was to be drunk forever -- The ache of remorse sinks in as
tho somebody was pushing it in from above -- The pretty white clouds in the
sky hurt his eyes only -- The only thing to do is turn over and lie face
down and weep -- The mouth is so blasted there's not even a chance to gnash
the teeth -- There's not even strength to tear the hair.
And here comes Ron Blake starting off his new day singing at the top of
his voice -- I go down by the creek and throw myself in the sand and lie
looking with sad eyes at the water which no longer friends me but sorta
wants me to Go away -- There isnt a drop to drink left in the cabin, all the
goddamn jeeps are gone with all its healthy cargo of people and I'm alone
with an enthusiastic kid on a lark -- The little bugs I'd saved from
drowning just because I was bemused and alone and glad, now drown unnoticed
within my reach anyway -- The spider is still minding his own business in
the outhouse -- Alf lows mournfully in the valley far away to express just
the way I feel... The bluejays yak around me as tho because I'm too tired
and helpless to feed them any more they're figuring on trying me if they
can, "They're friggin vultures anyway" I moan with my mouth in the sand --
The once pleasant thumpthump gurgle slap of the creek is now an endless
jabbering of blind nature which doesn't understand anything in the first
place -- My old thoughts about the silt of a billion years covering all this
and all cities and generations eventually is just a dumb old thought, "Only
a silly sober fool could think it, imagine gloating over such nonsense"
(because in one sense the drinker learns wisdom, in the words of Goethe or
Blake or whichever it was "The pathway to wisdom lies through excess') --
But in this condition you can only say "Wisdom is just another way to make
people sick" -- "I'm SICK" I yell emphatically to the trees, to the woods
around, to the hills above, looking around desperately, nobody cares... I
can even hear Ron singing at his lunch inside. What's even more horrible he
tries to show compunction and wants to help me. "Anything I can do" -- Later
he goes for a lone walk so I go in the cabin and lie on the cot and spend
about two hours groaning out a lament: "O mon Dieux, pourquoi Tu m'laisse
faire malade comme fa -- Papa Papa aide mue -- Aw j'ai mal au coeur --
J'envie Owaowaowao-" (I go into a long "awaowaowao" that I guess lasted a
whole minute) -- I toss over and find new reasons to groan -- I think I'm
alone and I'm letting it all go a whole lot like I'd heard my father do when
he was dying of cancer in the night in the bed next to mine... When I do
manage to stagger up and go lean on the door I realize with double upon
double horror that Ron Blake has been sitting there all this time listening
to everything over a book -- (I wonder now what he told people about this
later, it must have sounded horrible) (Idiotic too, cretinous even, maybe
only French Canadian who knows? )
... "Ron I'm sorry you had to hear all that, I'm sick" -- "I know, man,
it's okay, lie down and try to sleep" -- "I can't sleep! " I yell in a rage
-- I feel like yelling "Fuck yourself you little idiot what do you know what
Im going through! " but then I realize how oldman disgusting and hopeless
all that is, and here he is enjoying his big weekend with the big writer he
was supposed to tell all his friends what a great swinging ball it was and
what I did and said But methinks and mayhap he took away a lesson in
temperance, or a lesson in beatness really -- Because the only time I've
ever been sicker and madder was a week later when Dave and I came back with
the two girls leading to the final horrible night.
But look at this: in the afternoon restless youngster Ron wants to go
hitch hiking to Monterey of all things to go see McLear and I say "Okay go
ahead" -- "Ain't you coming with me? " he asks surprised to see the champion
on-the-roader wont even hitch hike any more, "No I'll stay here and get
better -- I gotta be alone, " which is true, because as soon as he's gone
and has yelled one final hoot from the canyon road directly above and gone
on, and I've sat in the sun alone on the porch, fed my birds finally again,
washed my socks and shirt and pants and hung them up to dry on bushes,
slurped up tons of water kneeling at the creek race, stared silently at the
trees, soon as the sun goes down I swear on my arm I'm as well as I ever
was: just like that suddenly.
"Can it be that Ron and all these other guys, Dave and McLear or
somebody, the other guys earlier are all a big bunch of witches out to make
me go mad? " I seriously consider this... Remembering that childhood revery
I always had, which I used to ponder seriously as I walked home from St
Joseph's Parochial School or sat in the parlor of my home, that everybody in
the world is making fun of mooney me and I dont know it because everytime I
turn around to see who's behind me they snap back into place with regular
expressions, but soon's I look away again they dart up to my nape of neck
and all whisper there giggling and plotting evil, silently, you can't hear
them, and when I turn quickly to catch them they've already snapped back
perfectly in place and are saying "Now the proper way to cook eggs is" or
they're singing Chet Baker songs looking the other way or they're saying
"Did I ever tell you about Jim that time? " -- But my childhood revery also
included the fact that everybody in the world was making this fun of me
because they were all members of an eternal secret society or Heaven society
that knew the secret of the world and were seriously fooling me so I'd wake
up and see the light (i. e., become enlightened, in fact) -- So that I, "Ti
Jean', was the LAST Ti Jean left in the world, the last poor holy fool,
those people at my neck were the devils of the earth among whom God had cast
me, an angel baby, as tho I was the last Jesus in fact! and all these people
were waiting for me to realize it and wake up and catch them peeking and
we'd all laugh in Heaven suddenly -- But animals werent doing that behind my
back, my cats were always adornments licking their paws sadly, and Jesus, he
was a sad witness to this, somewhat like the animals -- He wasn't peeking
down my neck -- There lies the root of my belief in Jesus -- So that
actually the only reality in the world was Jesus and the lambs (the animals)
and my brother Gerard who had instructed me -- Meanwhile some of the peekers
were kindly and sad, like my father, but had to go along with everybody else
in the same boat -- But my waking up would take place and then everything
would vanish except Heaven, which is God -- And that was why later in life
after these rather strange you must admit childhood reveries, after I had
that fainting vision of the Golden Eternity and others before and after it
including Samadhis during Buddhist meditations in the woods, I conceived of
myself as a special solitary angel sent down as a messenger from Heaven to
tell everybody or show everybody by example that their peeking society was
actually the Satanic Society and they were all on the wrong track. With all
this in my background, now at the point of adulthood disaster of the soul,
through excessive drinking, all this was easily converted into a fantasy
that everybody in the world was witching me to madness: and I must have Х
believed it subconsciously because as I say as soon as Ron Blake left I was
well again and in fact content.
In fact very contented -- I rose that following morning with more joy
and health and purpose than ever, and there was me old Big Sur Valley all
mine again, here came good old Alf and I gave him food and patted his big
rough neck with its various cocotte's manes, there was the mountain of Mien
Mo in the distance just a dismal old hill with funny bushes around the sides
and a peaceful farm on top, and nothing to do all day but amuse myself
undisturbed by witches and booze -- And I'm singing ditties again "My soul
ain't snow, wouldn't you know, the color of my soul, is interpole" and such
silly stuff -- And I yell "If Arthur Ma is a witch he sure is a funny witch!
har har! "... And there's the bluejay idiot with one foot on the bar of soap
on the porch rail, pecking at the soap and eating it, leaving the cereal
unattended, and when I laugh and yell at him he looks up cute with an
expression that seems to say "What's the matter? wotti do wong? "
-- "Wo wo, got the wong place, " said another bluejay landing nearby
and suddenly leaving again... And everything of my life seems beautiful
again, I even start remembering the nutty things of the binge and go back
even farther and remember nutty things all through my life, it's just
amazing now inside our own souls we can lift out so much strength I think it
would be enough strength to move mountains at that, to lift our boots up
again and go clomping along happy out of nothing but the good source power
in our own bones -- And when I visit the sea it doesn't scare me anymore, I
just sing out "Seventy thousand schemers in the sea" and go back to my cabin
and just quietly pour my coffee in the cup, afternoon, how pleasant!
I make a wood run, axe and yank logs outa everywhicha-where and leave
em by the side of the road to leisurely carry home -- I investigate a cabin
down the creek that has 15 wood matches in it for my emergency -- Take a
shot of sherry, hate it -- Find an old San Francis Chronicle with my name in
it all over -- Hack a giant redwood log in half in the middle of the creek
-- That kind of day, perfect, ending up sewing my holy sweater singing
"There's no place like home" remembering my mother -- I even plunge into all
the books and magazines around, I read up on "Pataphysics and yell
contemptuously in the lamplight " "T'sa'n intellectual excuse for facetious
joking, " throwing the magazine away, adding 'Peculiarly attractive to
certain shallow types" -- Then I turn my rumbling attention to a couple of
unknown Fin du Siecle poets called Theo Marzials and Henry Harland -- I take
a nap after supper and dream of the US Navy, a ship anchored near a war
scene, at an island, but everything is drowsy as two sailors go up the trail
with fishing poles and a dog between them go make love quietly in the hills:
the captain and everybody know they're queer and rather than being
infuriated however they're all drowsily enchanted by such gentle love: you
see a sailor peeking after them with binoculars from the poop: there's
supposed to be a war but nothing happens, just laundry...
I wake up from this silly but strangely pretty dream feeling
exhilarated -- Besides now the stars come out every night and I go out on
that porch and sit in the old canvas chair and turn my face up to all that
mooching going on up there, starmooched firmament, all those stars crying
with happy sadness, all that ream and cream of mocky ways with alleyways of
lightyears old as Dame Mae Whitty and the hills... I go walking towards Mien
Mo mountain in the moon illuminated August night, see gorgeous misty
mountains rising the horizon and like saying to me "You don't have to
torture your consciousness with endless thinking" so I sit in the sand and
look inward and see those old roses of the unborn again Amazing, and in just
a few hours this change -- And I have enough physical energy to walk back to
the sea suddenly realizing what a beautiful oriental silk scroll painting
this whole canyon would make, those scrolls you open slowly at one end and
keep unrolling and unrolling as the valley unfolds towards sudden cliffs,
sudden Bodhisattvas sitting alone in lamplit huts, sudden creeks, rocks,
trees, then sudden white sand, sudden sea, out to sea and you've reached the
end of the scroll And with all those misty rose darknesses of varying tint
and tuckaway shades to express the actual ephemerality of night -- One long
roll unfurling from the range fence among the misty hills, moon meadows,
even the hay rick near the creek, down to the trail, the narrowing creek,
then the mystery of the AW SEA -- So I investigate the scroll of the valley
but I'm singing "Man is a busy little animal, a nice little animal, his
thoughts about everything, dont amount to shit. "
In fact back at the cabin to make my bedtime hot Oval-tine I even sing
"Sweet Sixteen" like an angel (by God bettern Ron Blake) and all the old
memories of Ma and Pa, the upright piano in old Massachusetts, the old
sum-mernight sings
-- That's how I go to sleep, under the stars on the porch, and at dawn
I turn over with a blissful smile on my face because the owls are callin and
answering from two different huge dead trunks across the valley, hoo hoo
hoo. So maybe it's true what Milarepa says: "Though you youngsters of the
new generation dwell in towns infested with deceitful fate, the link of
truth still remains" (and said this in 890! ) -- "When you remain in
solitude, do not think of the amusements in the town... You should turn your
mind inwardly, and then you'll find your way... The wealth I found is the
inexhaustible Holy Property... The companion I found is the bliss of
perpetual Voidness... Here in the place of Yolmo Tag Pug Senge Dzon, the
tigress howling with a pathetic trembling voice reminds me that her piteous
cubs are playing lively... Like a madman I have no pretension and no hope...
I am telling you the honest truth... These are the crazy words of mine... Oh
has already called PatMcLear, staying for the summer with wife and kid in
Santa Cruz, McLear with his own jeepster is following us a few miles down
the highway -- It's a big Big Sur day.
We wheel downhill to cross the creek and at the corral fence I proudly
get out to officially open the gate and let the cars through We go bumping
down the two-rutted lane to the cabin and park My heart sinks to see the
cabin. To see the cabin so sad and almost human waiting there for me as if
forever, to hear my little neat gurgling creek resuming its song just for
me, to see the very same bluejays still waiting in the tree for me and maybe
mad at me now they see I'm back because I havent been there to lay out their
Cherios along the porch rail every blessed morning- And in fact first thing
I do is rush inside and get them some food and lay it out -- But so many
people around now they're afraid to try it.
Monsanto all decked out in his old clothes and looking forward to a
wine and talkfest weekend in his pleasant cabin takes the big sweet axe down
from the wall nails and goes out and starts hammering at a huge log -- In
fact it's really a half of a tree that fell there years ago and's been
hammered at intermittently but now he's bound he's going to crack it in half
and again in half so we can then start splitting it down the middle for huge
bonfire type logs -- Meanwhile little Arthur Ma who never goes anywhere
without his drawing paper and his Yellowjack felt tip pencils is already
seated in my chair on the porch (wearing my hat now too) drawing one of his
interminable pictures, he'll do twenty-five a day and twenty-five the next
day too -- He'll talk and go on drawing -- He has felt tips of all colors,
red, blue, yellow, green, black, he draws marvelous subconscious glurbs and
can also do excellent objective scenes or anything he wants on to
cartoons... Dave is taking my rucksack and his rucksack out of Willie and
throwing them into the cabin, Ben Fagan is wandering around near the creek
puffing on his pipe with a happy bhikku smile, Ron Blake is unpacking the
steaks we bought enroute in Monterey and I'm already flicking the plastics
off the top of bottles with that expert twitch and twist you only get to
learn after years of winoing in alleys east and west. Still the same, the
fog is blowing over the walls of the canyon obscuring the sun but the sun
keeps fighting back -- The inside of the cabin with the fire finally going
is still the dear lovable abode now as sharp in my mind as I look at it as
an unusually well focused snapshot -- The sprig of ferns still stands in a
glass of water, the books are there, the neat groceries ranged along the
wall shelves -- I feel excited to be with the gang but there's a hidden
sadness too and which is expressed later by Monsanto when he says "This is
the kind of place where a person should really be alone, you know? When you
bring a big gang here it somehow desecrates it not that I'm referring to us
or anybody in particular? there's such a sad sweetness to those trees as tho
yells shouldnt insult them or conversation only" -- Which is just the way I
feel too.
In a gang we all go down the path towards the sea, passing underneath
"That sonofabitch bridge" Cody calls it looking up with horror... "That
thing's enough to scare anybody away" -- But worst of all for an old driver
like Cody, and Dave too, is to see that upended old chassis in the sand,
they spend a half hour poking around the wreckage and shaking their heads --
We kick around the beach awhile and decide to come back at night with
bottles and flashlights and build a huge bonfire, now it's time to get back
to the cabin and cook those steaks and have a ball, and there's McLear's
jeep already arrived and parked and there's McLear himself and that
beautiful blonde wife of his in her tight blue jeans that makes Dave say
"Yum yum" and Cody just say "Yes, that's right, yes, that's right, ah hum
honey, yes. "
A roaring drinking bout begins deep in the canyon -- Fog nightfall
sends cold seeping into the windows so all these softies demand that the
wood windows be closed so we all sit there in the glow of the one lamp
coughing in the smoke but they dont care -- They think it's just the steaks
smoking over the fire -- I have one of the jugs in my hand and I won't let
go -- McLear is the handsome young poet who's just written the" most
fantastic poem in America, called "Dark Brown', which is every detail of his
and his wife's body described in ecstatic union and communion and inside out
and everywhichaway and not only that he insists on reading it to us -- But I
wanta read my "Sea" poem too -- But Cody and Dave Wain are talking about
something else and that silly kid Ron Blake is singing like Chet Baker --
Arthur Ma is drawing in the corner, and it sorta goes like this generally:
"That's what old men do, Cody, they drive slowly backwards in Safeway
Supermarket parking lots" -- "Yes that's right, I was tellin you about that
bicycle of mine but that's what they do yes you see that's because while the
old woman is shoppin in that store they figure they'll park a little closer
to the entrance and so they spend a half hour to think their big move out
and they back in out slowly from their slot, can hardly turn around to see
what's in back, usually nothin there, then they wheel real slow and trembly
to that slot they picked but all of a sudden some cat jumps in it with his
pickup and them old men is scratchin their heads saying and whining "Owww,
these young fellers nowadays" and all that obvious, ah, yes, but that
BICYCLE of mine in Denver I tell you I had it twisted and that wheel used to
wobble so by necissity I had to invent a new way to maneuver them handlebars
see... " -- 'Hey Cody have a drink, " I'm yelling in his ear and meanwhile
McLear is reading: "Kiss my thighs in darkness the pit of fire" and Monsanto
is chuckling saying to Fagan: "So this crazy character comes down stairs and
asking for a copy of Aleister Crowley and I didnt know "bout that till you
told me the other day, then on the way out I see him sneak a book off the
shelf but he puts another one in its place that he got out of his pocket,
and the book is a novel by somebody called Denton Welch all about this young
kid in China wanderin around the streets like real romantic young Truman
Capote only it's China" and Arthur Ma suddenly yells: "Hold still you buncha
bastards, I got a hole in my eye" and generally the way parties go, and so
on, ending with the steak dinner (I dont even touch a bite but just drink
on), then the big bonfire on the beach to which we march all in one
armswinging gang, I've gotten the idea in my head I'm the leader of a
guerilla warfare unit and I'm marching ahead the lieutenant giving orders,
with all our flashlights and yells we come swarming down the narrow path
going "Hup one two three" and challenging the enemy to come out of hiding,
some guerillas. Monsanto that old woodsman starts a huge bonfire on the
beach that can be seen flaring from miles away, cars passing across the
bridge way up there can see there's a party goin on in the hole of night, in
fact the bonfire lights up the eerie weird beams and staunches of the bridge
almost all the way up, giant shadows dance on the rocks -- The sea swirls up
but seems subdued -- It's not like being alone down in the vast hell writing
the sounds of the sea.
The night ending with everybody passing out exhausted on cots, in
sleepingbags outside (McLear goes home with wife) but Arthur Ma and I by the
late fire keep up yelling spontaneous questions and answers right till dawn
like "Who told you you had a hat on your head? " -- "My head never questions
hats" -- "What's the matter with your liver training? " -- 'My liver
training got involved in kidney work" -- (and here again another great
gigantic little Oriental friend for me, an eastcoaster who's never known
Chinese or Japanese kids, on the West coast it's quite common but for an
eastcoaster like me it's amazing and what with all my earlier studies in Zen
and Chan and Tao) -- (And Arthur also being a gentle small soft-haired
seemingly soft little Oriental goofnik) And we come to great chanted
statements, taking turns, without a pause to think, just one then the other,
bing and bang, the beauty of them being that while one guy is yelling like
(me):... "Tonight the full apogee August moon will out, early with a
jaundiced tint, and pop angels all over my rooftop along with Devas
sprinkling flowers" (any kind of nonsense being the rule) the other guy has
time not only to figure the next statement but can take off from the
subconscious arousement of an idea from "angels all over my rooftop" and so
can yell without thinking an answer the stupider or rather the more
unexpectedly insaner sillier brighter it is the better 'Pilgrims dropping
turds and sweet nemacular nameless railroad trains from heaven with
omnipotent youths bearing monkey women that will stomp through the stage
waiting for the moment when by pinching myself I prove that a thought is
like a touch" -- But this is only the beginning because now we know the
routine and get better and better till at dawn I seem to recall we were so
fantastically brilliant (while everyone snored) the skies must have shook to
hear it and not just foil: let's see if I can recreate at least the style of
this game:
ARTHUR: "When are you going to become the Eighth Patriarch? "
ME: "As soon as you give me that old motheaten sweater" -- (Much better
than that, forget this for now, because I want to talk first about Arthur Ma
and try again to duplicate our feat).
As I say my first little Chinese friend, I keep saying "little" George
and "little" Arthur but the fact is they were both small anyway -- Altho
George talked slowly and was a little absent from everything in the way of a
Zen Master actually who realizes that everything is indifferent anyway,
Arthur was friendlier, warmer in a way, curious and always asking questions,
more active than George with his constant draw-ng, and of course Chinese
instead of Japanese -- He wanted me to meet his father the following weeks
-- He was Mon-santo's best friend at the time and they made an extremely
strange pair going down the street together, the big ruddy happy man with
the crewcut and corduroy jacket and sometimes pipe in mouth, and the little
childlike Chinese boy who looked so young most bartenders wouldn't serve him
tho he was actually 30 years old -- Nevertheless the son of a famous
Chinatown family and Chinatown is right back there behind the fabled beatnik
streets of Frisco -- Also Arthur was a tremendous little loverboy who had
fabulously beautiful girls on the line and however'd just separated from his
wife, a girl I never saw but Monsanto told me she was the most beautiful
Negro girl in the world -- Arthur came from a large family but as a painter
and a Bohemian his family disapproved of him now so he lived alone in a
comfortable old hotel on North Beach tho sometimes he went around the corner
into Chinatown to visit his father who sat in the back of his Chinese
general store brooding among his countless poems written swiftly in Chinese
stroke on pieces of beautiful colored paper which he then hanged from the
ceiling of his little cubicle -- There he sat, clean, neat, almost shiney,
wondering about what poem to write next but his keen little eyes always
jumping to the street door to see who's going by and if someone came into
the shop itself he knew at once who it was and for what -- He was in fact
the best friend and trusted adviser of Chiang Kai Shek in America, true and
no lie -- But Arthur himself was in favor of the Red Chinese which was a
family matter and a Chinese matter I had nothing to say about and didnt
interest me except insofar as it gave a dramatic picture of father and son
in an old culture -- The point of the matter anyway being that he was
goofing with me just like George had done and making me happy somehow like
George had done -- Something anciently familiar about his loyal presence
made me wonder if I'd ever lived before in some other lifetime in China or
if he'd been an Occidental himself in a previous lifetime of his own
involved with mine somewhere else than China -- The pity of it is that I
have no record of what we were yelling and announcing back and forth as the
birds woke up outside but it went generally like this: -- ME: "Unless
someone sticks a hot iron in my heart or heaps up Evil Karma like tit and
tat the pile of that and pulls my mother out her bed to slay her before my
damning human eyes... "
ARTHUR: "And I break my hand on heads... "
M E: "Everytime you throw a rock at a cat from your glass house you
heap upon yourself the automatic Stanley Gould winter so dark of death after
death, and growing old
ARTHUR: "Because lady those ashcans'll bite you back and be cold too...
"
ME: "And your son will never rest in the imperturbable knowledge that
what he thinks he thinks as well as what he does he thinks as well as what
he feels he thinks as well as future that... "
ARTHUR: "Future that my damn old sword cutter Paisan Pasha lost the
Preakness again... "
ME: "Tonight the moon shall witness angels trooping at the baby's
window where inside he gurgles in his pewk looking with mewling eyes for
babyside waterfall lambikin hillside the day the little Arab shepherd boy
hugged the babylamb to heart while the mother bleeted at his bay heel... "
ARTHUR: "And so Joe the sillicks killit no not... "
ME: "Shhhhoww graaa... "
ARTHUR: "Wind and carstart... "
ME: "The angels Devas monsters Asuras Devadattas Ved-antas McLaughlins
Stones will hue and hurl in hell if they dont love the lamb the lamb the
lamb of hell lambchop... "
ARTHUR: "Why did Scott Fitzgerald keep a notebook? "
ME: "Such a marvelous notebook... "
ARTHUR: "Komi donera ness pata sutyamp anda wanda vesnoki shadakiroo
paryoumemga sikarem nora sarkadium baron roy kellegiam myorki ayastuna
haidanseetzel ampho andiam yerka yama chelmsford alya bonneavance koroom
cemanda versel... "
ME: "The a6th Annual concert of the Armenian Convention? "
Incidentally I forgot to mention that during the three weeks alone the
stars had not come out at all, not even for one minute on any night, it was
the foggy season, except the very last night when I was getting ready to
leave -- Now the stars were out every night, the sun shone considerably
longer but a sinister wind accompanied the Autumn in Big Sur: it seemed like
the whole Pacific Ocean was blowing with all its might right into Raton
Canyon and also over the high gap from another end causing all the trees to
shudder as the big groaning howl came newsing and noising from downcanyon,
when it hit there was raised a roar of noise I didn't like -- It seemed ill
omened to me somewhere... It was much better to have fog and silence and
quiet trees -- Now the whole canyon by one blast could be led screaming and
waving in all directions in such a confused mass that even the fellows with
me were a little surprised to see it -- It was too big a wind for such a
little canyon.
This development also prevented the constant hearing of the reassuring
creek. One good thing was that when jet planes broke the sound barrier
overhead the wind dispersed the clap of empty thunder they caused, because
during the foggy season the noise would come down into the canyon,
concentrate there, and rock the house like an explosion making me think the
first time (alone) that somebody'd set off a blast of dynamite nearby.
While I woke up groaning and sick there was plenty of wine right there
to start me off with the hounds of hair, so okay, but Monsanto had retired
early and typically sensibly to sleep by the creek and now he was awake
singing swooshing his whole head into the creek and going Brrrrr and rubbing
his hands for a new day -- Dave Wain made breakfast with his usual lecture
"Now the real way to fry eggs is to put a cover over them so that they can
have that neat basted white look on the yellows, soon's I get this pancake
batter ready we'll start on them" -- My list of groceries was so all
inclusive in the beginning it was now feeding guerilla troops.
A big axe chopping contest began after breakfast, some of us sitting
watching on the porch and the performers down below hacking away at the tree
trunk which was over a foot thick'- They were chopping off two foot chunks,
no easy job -- I realized you can always study the character of a man by the
way he chops wood -- Monsanto an old lumberman up in Maine as I say now
showed us how he conducted his whole life in fact by the way he took neat
little short handled chops from both left and right angles getting his work
done in reasonably short time without too much sweat -- But his strokes were
rapid -- Whereas old Fagan pipe-in-mouth slogged away I guess the way he
learned in Oregon and in the Northwest fire schools, also getting his job
done, silently, not a word -- But Cody's fantastic fiery character showed in
the way he went at the log with horrible force, when he brought down the axe
with all his might and holding it far at the end you could hear the whole
treetrunk groaning the whole length inside, runk, sometimes you could hear a
lengthwise cracking going on, he is really very strong and he brought that
axe down so hard his feet left the earth when it hit -- He chopped off his
log with the fury of a Greek god -- nevertheless it took him longer and much
more sweat than Monsanto
-- "Used to do this in a workgang in southern Arizony" he said,
whopping one down that made the whole treetrunk dance off the ground -- But
it was like an example of vast but senseless strength, a picture of poor
Cody's life and in a sense my own -- I too chopped with all my might and got
madder and went faster and raked the log but took more time than Monsanto
who watched us smiling -- Little Arthur thereupon tried his luck but gave up
after five strokes... The axe was like to carry him away anyway... Then Dave
Wain demonstrated with big easy strokes and in no time we had five huge logs
to use -- But now it was time to get in the cars (McLear had re-arrived) and
go driving south down the coast highway to a hot springs bath house down
there, which sounded good to me at first. But the new Big Sur Autumn was now
all winey sparkling blue which made the terribleness and giantness of the
coast all the more clear to see in all its gruesome splendor, miles and
miles of it snaking away south, our three jeeps twisting and turning the
increasing curves, sheer drops at our sides, further ghostly high bridges to
cross with smashings below -- Tho all the boys are wowing to see it -- To me
it's just an inhospitable madhouse of the earth, I've seen it enough and
even swallowed it in that deep breath -- The boys reassure me the hot
springs bath will do me good (they see I'm gloomy now hungover for good) but
when we arrive my heart sinks again as McLear points out to sea from the
balcony of the outdoor pools: "Look out there floating in the sea weeds, a
dead otter! " -- And sure enough it is a dead otter I guess, a big brown
pale lump floating up and down mournfully with the swells and ghastly weeds,
my otter, my dear otter, my dear otter I'd written poems about
-- "Why did he die? " I ask myself in despair -- "Why do they do that?
" -- "What's the sense of all this? " -- All the fellows are shading their
eyes to get a better look at the big peaceful tortured hunk of seacow out
there as tho it's something of passing interest while tome it's a blow
across the eyes and down into my heart -- The hot water pools are steaming,
Fagan and Monsanto and the others are all sitting peacefully up to their
necks, they're all naked, but there's a gang of fairies also there naked all
standing around in various bath house postures that make me hesitate to take
my clothes off just on general principles -- In fact Cody doesnt even bother
to do anything but lie down with his clothes on in the sun, on the balcony
table, and just smoke -- But I borrow McLear's yellow bathingsuit and get in
-- "What ya wearing a bathingsuit in a hot springs pool for boy? " says
Fagan chuckling -- With horror I realize there's spermatazoa floating in the
hot water... I look and I see the other men (the fairies) all taking good
long looks at Ron Blake who stands there facing the sea with his arse for
all to behold, not to mention McLear and Dave Wain too -- But it's very
typical of me and Cody that we wont undress in this situation (we were both
raised Catholics? ) -- Supposedly the big sex heroes of our generation, in
fact -- You might think -- But the combination of the strange silent
watching fairy-men, and the dead otter out there, and the spermatazoa in the
pools makes me sick, not to mention that when somebody informs me this bath
house is owned by the young writer Kevin Cudahy whom I knew very well in New
York and I ask one of the younger strangers where's Kevin Cudahy he doesnt
even deign to reply -- Thinking he hasnt heard me I ask again, no reply, no
notice, I ask a third time, this time he gets up and stalks out angrily to
the locker rooms -- It all adds up to the confusion that's beginning to pile
up in my battered drinking brain anyway, the constant reminders of death not
the least of which was the death of my peaceful love of Raton Canyon now
suddenly becoming a horror.
From the baths we go to Nepenthe which is a beautiful cliff top
restaurant with vast outdoor patio, with excellent food, excellent waiters
and management, good drinks, chess tables, chairs and tables to just sit in
the sun and look at the grand coast -- Here we all sit at various tables and
Cody starts playing chess with everybody will join while he's chomping away
at those marvelous hamburgers called Heavenburgers (huge with all the side
works) -- Cody doesn't like to just sit around and lightly chat away, he's
the kind of guy if he's going to talk he has to do all the talking himself
for hours till everything is exhaustedly explained, sans that he just wants
to bend over a chessboard and say "He he heh, old Scrooge is saving up a
pawn hey? cak! I got ya! " -- But while I'm sitting there discussing
literature with McLear and Monsanto suddenly a strange couple of gentlemen
nearby strike up an acquaintance -- One of them is a youngster who says he
is a lieutenant in the Army -- I instantly (drunk on fifth Manhattan by now)
go into my theory of guerilla warfare based on my observations the night
before when it did seriously occur to me that if Monsanto, Arthur, Cody,
Dave, Ben, Ron Blake and I were all members of one fighting unit (and all
carrying canteens of booze on our belts) it would be very difficult for the
enemy to hurt any of us because we'd be, as dear friends, watching so
desperately closely over one another, which I tell the first lieutenant,
which attracts the interest of the older man who admits that he's a GENERAL
in the Army -- There are also some further homosexuals at a separate table
which prompts Dave Wain to look up from the chess game at one quiet drowsy
point and announce in his dry twang "Under redwood beams, people talking
about homosexuality and war... call it my Nepenthe Haiku" -- "Yass" says
Cody checkmating him "see what you can ku about that m'boy and get out of
there and I'll noose you with my queen, dear. " I mention the general only
because there is also some-thing sinister about the fact that during this
long binge I came across him and another general, two strange generals, and
I'd never met any generals in my life -- This first general was strange
because he seemed too polite and yet there was something sinister about his
steely eyes behind goof darkglasses -- Something sinister too about the
first lieutenant who guessed who we were (the San Francisco poets, a major
nucleus of them indeed) and didn't seem at all pleased tho the general
seemed amused -- Nevertheless in a sinister way the general seemed to take
great interest in my theory about buddy units for guerilla warfare and when
President Kennedy about a year later ordered just such a new scheme for part
of our armed forces I wondered (still crazy even then but for new reasons)
if the general had got an idea from me... The second general, even stranger,
coming up, occurred when I was even more far gone.
Manhattans and more Manhattans and finally when we got back to the
cabin in late afternoon I was feeling good but realized I was going to be
finished tomorrow -- But poor young Ron Blake asked me if he could stay with
me in the cabin, the others were all going back to the city in the three
cars, I couldn't think of any way to reject his request in a harmless way so
said yes... So when they all left suddenly I was alone with this mad beatnik
kid singing me songs and all I wanta do is sleep -- But I've got to make the
best of it and not disappoint his believing heart. Because after all the
poor kid actually believes that there's something noble and idealistic and
kind about all this beat stuff, and I'm supposed to be the King of the
Beatniks according to the newspapers, so but at the same time I'm sick and
tired of all the endless enthusiasms of new young kids trying to know me and
pour out all their lives into me so that I'll jump up and down and say yes
yes that's right, which I cant do any more -- My reason for coming to Big
Sur for the summer being precisely to get away from that sort of thing --
Like those pathetic live highschool kids who all came to my door in Long
Island one night wearing jackets that said "Dharma Bums" on them, all
expecting me to be 25 years old according to a mistake on a book jacket and
here I am old enough to be their father -- But no, hep swinging young jazzy
Ron wants to dig everything, go to the beach, run and romp and sing, talk,
write tunes, write stories, climb mountains, go hiking, see everything, do
everything with everybody But having one last quart of port with me I agree
to follow him to the beach.
We go down the old sad path of the bhikku and suddenly I see a dead
mouse in the grass -- "A wee dead mousie" I say cleverly poetically but
suddenly I realize and remember now for the first time how I've left the
cover off the rat poison in Monsanto's shelf and so this is my mouse -- It's
lying there dead -- Like the otter in the sea -- It's my own personal mouse
that I've carefully fed chocolate and cheese all summer but once again I've
unconsciously sabotaged all these great plans of mine to be kind to living
beings even bugs, once again I've murdered a mouse one way or the other --
And on top of that when we come to the place where the garter snake usually
lie; sunning itself, and I bring it to Ron's attention, he suddenly yells
"LOOKOUT! you never can tell what kind of snake it is! " which really scares
me, my heart pounds with horroi -- My little friend the garter snake turns
therefore with my head from a living being with a long green body into the
evil serpent of Big Sur.
On top of that, at the surf, where long streamers o: hollow sea weed
always lie around drying in the sun some of them huge, like living bodies
with skin, pieces of living material that always made me sad somehow, here's
the young hepcat lifting them up and dancing a dervish around the beach with
them, turning my Sur into something sea-change -- Something brainchange.
All that night by lamplight we sing and yell songs which is okay but in
the morning the bottle is gone and I wake up with the "final horrors" again,
precisely the way I woke up in the Frisco skidrow room before escaping down
here, it's all caught up with me again, I can hear myself again whining "Why
does God torture me? " -- But anybody who's never had delirium tremens even
in their early stages may not understand that it's not so much a physical
pain but a mental anguish indescribable to those ignorant people who dont
drink and accuse drinkers of irresponsibility -- The mental anguish is so
intense that you feel you have betrayed your very birth, the efforts nay the
birth pangs of your mother when she bore you and delivered you to the world,
you've betrayed every effort your father ever made to feed you and raise you
and make you strong and my God even educate you for "life', you feel a guilt
so deep you identify yourself with the devil and God seems far away
abandoning you to your sick silliness -- You feel sick in the greatest sense
of the word, breathing without believing in it, sicksicksick, your soul
groans, you look at your helpless hands as tho they were on fire and you
cant move to help, you look at the world with dead eyes, there's on your
face an expression of incalculable repining like a constipated angel on a
cloud -- In fact it's actually a cancerous look you throw on the world,
through browngray wool fuds over your eyes -- Your tongue is white and
disgusting, your teeth are stained, your hair seems to have dried out
overnight, there are huge mucks in the corners of your eyes, greases on your
nose, froth at the sides of your mouth: in short that very disgusting and
well-known hideousness everybody knows who's walked past a city street drunk
in the Boweries of the world... But there's no joy at all, people say "Oh
well he's drunk and happy let him sleep it off -- The poor drunkard is
crying... He's crying for his mother and father and great brother and great
friend, he's crying for help -- He tries to pull himself together by moving
one shoe nearer to his foot and he cant even do that properly, he'll drop
the shoe, or knock something over, he'll do something invariably that'll
start him crying again -- He'll want to bury his face in his hands and moan
for mercy and he knows there is none -- Not only because he doesn't deserve
it but there's no such thing anyway -- Because he looks up at the blue sky
and there's nothing there but empty space making a big face at him He looks
at the world, it's sticking its tongue out at him and once that mask is
removed it's looking at him with hollow big red eyes like his own eyes -- He
may see the earth move but there's no significance of any particular kind to
attach to that -- One little unexpected noise behind him will make him snarl
in rage -- He'll pull and tug at his poor stained shirt -- He feels like
rubbing his face into something that isn't. His socks are thick tired moisty
slimes -- The beard on his cheeks itches the running sweats and annoys the
tortured mouth -- There's a twisted feeling of no-more, never-again, agh...
What was beautiful and clean yesterday has irrationally and unaccountably
changed into a big dreary crock of shit... The hairs on his fingers stare at
him like tomb hairs -- The shirt and trousers have become glued to his
person as tho he was to be drunk forever -- The ache of remorse sinks in as
tho somebody was pushing it in from above -- The pretty white clouds in the
sky hurt his eyes only -- The only thing to do is turn over and lie face
down and weep -- The mouth is so blasted there's not even a chance to gnash
the teeth -- There's not even strength to tear the hair.
And here comes Ron Blake starting off his new day singing at the top of
his voice -- I go down by the creek and throw myself in the sand and lie
looking with sad eyes at the water which no longer friends me but sorta
wants me to Go away -- There isnt a drop to drink left in the cabin, all the
goddamn jeeps are gone with all its healthy cargo of people and I'm alone
with an enthusiastic kid on a lark -- The little bugs I'd saved from
drowning just because I was bemused and alone and glad, now drown unnoticed
within my reach anyway -- The spider is still minding his own business in
the outhouse -- Alf lows mournfully in the valley far away to express just
the way I feel... The bluejays yak around me as tho because I'm too tired
and helpless to feed them any more they're figuring on trying me if they
can, "They're friggin vultures anyway" I moan with my mouth in the sand --
The once pleasant thumpthump gurgle slap of the creek is now an endless
jabbering of blind nature which doesn't understand anything in the first
place -- My old thoughts about the silt of a billion years covering all this
and all cities and generations eventually is just a dumb old thought, "Only
a silly sober fool could think it, imagine gloating over such nonsense"
(because in one sense the drinker learns wisdom, in the words of Goethe or
Blake or whichever it was "The pathway to wisdom lies through excess') --
But in this condition you can only say "Wisdom is just another way to make
people sick" -- "I'm SICK" I yell emphatically to the trees, to the woods
around, to the hills above, looking around desperately, nobody cares... I
can even hear Ron singing at his lunch inside. What's even more horrible he
tries to show compunction and wants to help me. "Anything I can do" -- Later
he goes for a lone walk so I go in the cabin and lie on the cot and spend
about two hours groaning out a lament: "O mon Dieux, pourquoi Tu m'laisse
faire malade comme fa -- Papa Papa aide mue -- Aw j'ai mal au coeur --
J'envie Owaowaowao-" (I go into a long "awaowaowao" that I guess lasted a
whole minute) -- I toss over and find new reasons to groan -- I think I'm
alone and I'm letting it all go a whole lot like I'd heard my father do when
he was dying of cancer in the night in the bed next to mine... When I do
manage to stagger up and go lean on the door I realize with double upon
double horror that Ron Blake has been sitting there all this time listening
to everything over a book -- (I wonder now what he told people about this
later, it must have sounded horrible) (Idiotic too, cretinous even, maybe
only French Canadian who knows? )
... "Ron I'm sorry you had to hear all that, I'm sick" -- "I know, man,
it's okay, lie down and try to sleep" -- "I can't sleep! " I yell in a rage
-- I feel like yelling "Fuck yourself you little idiot what do you know what
Im going through! " but then I realize how oldman disgusting and hopeless
all that is, and here he is enjoying his big weekend with the big writer he
was supposed to tell all his friends what a great swinging ball it was and
what I did and said But methinks and mayhap he took away a lesson in
temperance, or a lesson in beatness really -- Because the only time I've
ever been sicker and madder was a week later when Dave and I came back with
the two girls leading to the final horrible night.
But look at this: in the afternoon restless youngster Ron wants to go
hitch hiking to Monterey of all things to go see McLear and I say "Okay go
ahead" -- "Ain't you coming with me? " he asks surprised to see the champion
on-the-roader wont even hitch hike any more, "No I'll stay here and get
better -- I gotta be alone, " which is true, because as soon as he's gone
and has yelled one final hoot from the canyon road directly above and gone
on, and I've sat in the sun alone on the porch, fed my birds finally again,
washed my socks and shirt and pants and hung them up to dry on bushes,
slurped up tons of water kneeling at the creek race, stared silently at the
trees, soon as the sun goes down I swear on my arm I'm as well as I ever
was: just like that suddenly.
"Can it be that Ron and all these other guys, Dave and McLear or
somebody, the other guys earlier are all a big bunch of witches out to make
me go mad? " I seriously consider this... Remembering that childhood revery
I always had, which I used to ponder seriously as I walked home from St
Joseph's Parochial School or sat in the parlor of my home, that everybody in
the world is making fun of mooney me and I dont know it because everytime I
turn around to see who's behind me they snap back into place with regular
expressions, but soon's I look away again they dart up to my nape of neck
and all whisper there giggling and plotting evil, silently, you can't hear
them, and when I turn quickly to catch them they've already snapped back
perfectly in place and are saying "Now the proper way to cook eggs is" or
they're singing Chet Baker songs looking the other way or they're saying
"Did I ever tell you about Jim that time? " -- But my childhood revery also
included the fact that everybody in the world was making this fun of me
because they were all members of an eternal secret society or Heaven society
that knew the secret of the world and were seriously fooling me so I'd wake
up and see the light (i. e., become enlightened, in fact) -- So that I, "Ti
Jean', was the LAST Ti Jean left in the world, the last poor holy fool,
those people at my neck were the devils of the earth among whom God had cast
me, an angel baby, as tho I was the last Jesus in fact! and all these people
were waiting for me to realize it and wake up and catch them peeking and
we'd all laugh in Heaven suddenly -- But animals werent doing that behind my
back, my cats were always adornments licking their paws sadly, and Jesus, he
was a sad witness to this, somewhat like the animals -- He wasn't peeking
down my neck -- There lies the root of my belief in Jesus -- So that
actually the only reality in the world was Jesus and the lambs (the animals)
and my brother Gerard who had instructed me -- Meanwhile some of the peekers
were kindly and sad, like my father, but had to go along with everybody else
in the same boat -- But my waking up would take place and then everything
would vanish except Heaven, which is God -- And that was why later in life
after these rather strange you must admit childhood reveries, after I had
that fainting vision of the Golden Eternity and others before and after it
including Samadhis during Buddhist meditations in the woods, I conceived of
myself as a special solitary angel sent down as a messenger from Heaven to
tell everybody or show everybody by example that their peeking society was
actually the Satanic Society and they were all on the wrong track. With all
this in my background, now at the point of adulthood disaster of the soul,
through excessive drinking, all this was easily converted into a fantasy
that everybody in the world was witching me to madness: and I must have Х
believed it subconsciously because as I say as soon as Ron Blake left I was
well again and in fact content.
In fact very contented -- I rose that following morning with more joy
and health and purpose than ever, and there was me old Big Sur Valley all
mine again, here came good old Alf and I gave him food and patted his big
rough neck with its various cocotte's manes, there was the mountain of Mien
Mo in the distance just a dismal old hill with funny bushes around the sides
and a peaceful farm on top, and nothing to do all day but amuse myself
undisturbed by witches and booze -- And I'm singing ditties again "My soul
ain't snow, wouldn't you know, the color of my soul, is interpole" and such
silly stuff -- And I yell "If Arthur Ma is a witch he sure is a funny witch!
har har! "... And there's the bluejay idiot with one foot on the bar of soap
on the porch rail, pecking at the soap and eating it, leaving the cereal
unattended, and when I laugh and yell at him he looks up cute with an
expression that seems to say "What's the matter? wotti do wong? "
-- "Wo wo, got the wong place, " said another bluejay landing nearby
and suddenly leaving again... And everything of my life seems beautiful
again, I even start remembering the nutty things of the binge and go back
even farther and remember nutty things all through my life, it's just
amazing now inside our own souls we can lift out so much strength I think it
would be enough strength to move mountains at that, to lift our boots up
again and go clomping along happy out of nothing but the good source power
in our own bones -- And when I visit the sea it doesn't scare me anymore, I
just sing out "Seventy thousand schemers in the sea" and go back to my cabin
and just quietly pour my coffee in the cup, afternoon, how pleasant!
I make a wood run, axe and yank logs outa everywhicha-where and leave
em by the side of the road to leisurely carry home -- I investigate a cabin
down the creek that has 15 wood matches in it for my emergency -- Take a
shot of sherry, hate it -- Find an old San Francis Chronicle with my name in
it all over -- Hack a giant redwood log in half in the middle of the creek
-- That kind of day, perfect, ending up sewing my holy sweater singing
"There's no place like home" remembering my mother -- I even plunge into all
the books and magazines around, I read up on "Pataphysics and yell
contemptuously in the lamplight " "T'sa'n intellectual excuse for facetious
joking, " throwing the magazine away, adding 'Peculiarly attractive to
certain shallow types" -- Then I turn my rumbling attention to a couple of
unknown Fin du Siecle poets called Theo Marzials and Henry Harland -- I take
a nap after supper and dream of the US Navy, a ship anchored near a war
scene, at an island, but everything is drowsy as two sailors go up the trail
with fishing poles and a dog between them go make love quietly in the hills:
the captain and everybody know they're queer and rather than being
infuriated however they're all drowsily enchanted by such gentle love: you
see a sailor peeking after them with binoculars from the poop: there's
supposed to be a war but nothing happens, just laundry...
I wake up from this silly but strangely pretty dream feeling
exhilarated -- Besides now the stars come out every night and I go out on
that porch and sit in the old canvas chair and turn my face up to all that
mooching going on up there, starmooched firmament, all those stars crying
with happy sadness, all that ream and cream of mocky ways with alleyways of
lightyears old as Dame Mae Whitty and the hills... I go walking towards Mien
Mo mountain in the moon illuminated August night, see gorgeous misty
mountains rising the horizon and like saying to me "You don't have to
torture your consciousness with endless thinking" so I sit in the sand and
look inward and see those old roses of the unborn again Amazing, and in just
a few hours this change -- And I have enough physical energy to walk back to
the sea suddenly realizing what a beautiful oriental silk scroll painting
this whole canyon would make, those scrolls you open slowly at one end and
keep unrolling and unrolling as the valley unfolds towards sudden cliffs,
sudden Bodhisattvas sitting alone in lamplit huts, sudden creeks, rocks,
trees, then sudden white sand, sudden sea, out to sea and you've reached the
end of the scroll And with all those misty rose darknesses of varying tint
and tuckaway shades to express the actual ephemerality of night -- One long
roll unfurling from the range fence among the misty hills, moon meadows,
even the hay rick near the creek, down to the trail, the narrowing creek,
then the mystery of the AW SEA -- So I investigate the scroll of the valley
but I'm singing "Man is a busy little animal, a nice little animal, his
thoughts about everything, dont amount to shit. "
In fact back at the cabin to make my bedtime hot Oval-tine I even sing
"Sweet Sixteen" like an angel (by God bettern Ron Blake) and all the old
memories of Ma and Pa, the upright piano in old Massachusetts, the old
sum-mernight sings
-- That's how I go to sleep, under the stars on the porch, and at dawn
I turn over with a blissful smile on my face because the owls are callin and
answering from two different huge dead trunks across the valley, hoo hoo
hoo. So maybe it's true what Milarepa says: "Though you youngsters of the
new generation dwell in towns infested with deceitful fate, the link of
truth still remains" (and said this in 890! ) -- "When you remain in
solitude, do not think of the amusements in the town... You should turn your
mind inwardly, and then you'll find your way... The wealth I found is the
inexhaustible Holy Property... The companion I found is the bliss of
perpetual Voidness... Here in the place of Yolmo Tag Pug Senge Dzon, the
tigress howling with a pathetic trembling voice reminds me that her piteous
cubs are playing lively... Like a madman I have no pretension and no hope...
I am telling you the honest truth... These are the crazy words of mine... Oh