comes the nightly moth to his nightly
death at my lamp... After I put out the lamp temporarily, there's the moth
sleeping on the wall not realizing I've put it on again. Meanwhile by the
way and however, every day is cold and cloudy, or damp, not cold in the
eastern sense, and every night is absolutely fog: no stars whatever to be
seen... But this too turns out to be a marvelous circumstance as I find out
later, it's the "damp season" and the other dwellers (weekenders) of the
canyon don't come out on weekends, I'm absolutely alone for weeks on end
(because later in August when the sun conquered the fog suddenly I was
amazed to hear laughing and scratching all up and down the valley which had
been mine only mine, and when I tried to go to the beach to squat and write
there were whole families having outings, some of them younger people who'd
simply parked their cars up on the high bridge bluff and climbed down) (some
of them in fact gangs of yelling hoodlums)... So the rainforest summer fog
was grand and besides when the sun prevailed in August a horrible
development took place, huge blasts of frightening gale like wind came
pouring into the canyon making all the trees roar with a really frightening
intensity that sometimes built up to a booming war of trees that shook the
cabin and woke you up -- And was in fact one of the things that contributed
to my mad fit.
But the most marvelous day of all when I completely forgot who I was
where I was or the time of day just with my pants rolled up above my knees
wading in the creek rearranging the rocks and some of the snags so that the
water where I stooped (near the sandy shore) to get jugfuls would, instead
of just sluggishly passing by shallow over mud, with bugs in it, now come
rushing in a pure gurgly clear stream and deep too -- I dug into the white
sand and arranged underground rocks so now I could stick a jug in there and
tilt the opening to the stream and it would fill up instantly with clear
rushing unstagnated bugless drinking water -- Making a mill race, is what
it's called -- And because now the water rushed so fast and deep right by
the sandy stooping place I had to build a kind of seawall of rocks against
that rush so that the shore would not be silted away by the race -- Doing
that, fortifying the outside of the seawall with smaller rocks and finally
at sundown with bent head over my sniffling endeavors (the way a kid
sniffles when he's been playing all day) I start inserting tiny pebbles in
the spaces between the stones so that no water can sneak over to wash away
the shore, even down to the tiniest sand, a perfect sea wall, which I top
with a wood plank for everybody to kneel on when they come there to fetch
their holy water -- Looking up from this work of an entire day, from noon
till sundown, amazed to see where I was, who I was, what I'd done -- The
absolute innocence like of Indian fashioning a canoe all alone in the woods
-- And as I say only weeks earlier I'd fallen flat on my head in the Bowery
and everybody thought I'd hurt myself- So I make supper with a happy song
and go out in the foggy moonlight (the moon sent its white luminescence
through) and marveled to watch the new swift gurgling clear water run with
its pretty flashes of light -- 'And when the fog's over and the stars and
the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight. "
And such things -- A whole mess of little joys like that amazing me
when I came back in the horror of later to see how they'd all changed and
become sinister, even my poor little wooden platform and mill race when my
eyes and stomach nauseous and my soul screaming a thousand babbling words,
oh -- It's hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false.
7
Because on the fourth day I began to get bored and noted it in my diary
with amazement, "Already bored? " -- Even tho the handsome words of Emerson
would shake me out of that where he says (in one of those little redleather
books, in the essay on "Self Reliance" a man "is relieved and gay when he
has put his heart into his work and done his best') (applicable both to
building simple silly little millraces and writing big stupid stories like
this) Words from the trumpet of the morning in America, Emerson, he who
announced Whitman and also said "Infancy conforms to nobody" -- The infancy
of the simplicity of just being happy in the woods, conforming to nobody's
idea about what to do, what should be done -- "Life is not an apology" --
And when a vain and malicious philanthropic abolitionist accused him of
being blind to the issues of slavery he said "Thy love afar is spite at
home" (maybe the philanthropist had Negro help anyway) -- So once again I'm
Ti Jean the Child, playing, sewing patches, cooking suppers, washing dishes
(always kept the kettle boiling on the fire and anytime dishes needed to be
washed I just pour hot hot water into pan with Tide soap and soak them good
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 s