Big Sur (10 page)

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 doesnt understand anything in the first place—My old thoughts about the slit 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 ça—Papa Papa aide mué—Aw j'ai mal au coeur—J'envie d'aller à toilette ‘pi ça m'interesse pas—Aw ‘shu malade
—Owaowaowao—” (I go into a long “awaowaowoa” 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 cant 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.

22

B
UT 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”—“Aint 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 money 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 cant 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 wasnt 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 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 aint snow, wouldnt 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 how 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 doesnt 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 everywhichawhere 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 Siècle
poets called Theo Marzials and Henry Harland—I take a nap after supper and dream of the U.S. Navy, a ship anchored near a war scene, at an island, but everything is drowsy as two sailors go up the trail with fishingpoles and a dog between them to 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 exhilirated—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 dont 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 Ovaltine 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 summernight 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. . . O h you innumerable motherlike beings, by the force of imaginary destiny you see a myriad visions and experience endless emotions. . . I smile. . . To a Yogi, everything is fine and splendid!. . . . . In the goodly quiet of this Self-Benefitting sky Enclosure, the timely sounds I hear are all my fellows' sounds. . . At such a pleasant place, in solitude, I, Milarepa, happily remain, meditating upon the void-illuminating mind—The more Ups and Downs the more Joy I feel—The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I feel. . .”

23

B
UT IN THE MORNING
(and I'm no Milarepa who could also sit naked in the snow and was seen flying on one occasion) here comes Ron Blake back with Pat McLear and Pat's wife the beautiful one, and by God their little sweet 5 year old girl who is such a pleasant sight to see as she goes jongling and jiggling through the fields to look for flowers, everything to her is perfectly new beautiful primordial Garden of Eden morning here in this tortured human canyon—And a rather beautiful morning develops—There's fog so we close the blinds and light the fire and the lamp, me and Pat, and sit there drinking from the jug he brought talking about literature and poetry while his wife listens and occasionally gets up to heat more coffee and tea or goes out to play with Ron and the little girl—Pat and I are in a serious talkative mood and I feel that lonely shiver in my chest which always warns me: you actually love people and you're glad Pat is here.

Pat is one if not THE most handsome man I've ever seen—Strange that he's announced in a preface to his poems that his heroes, his Triumvirate, are Jean Harlow, Rimbaud and Billy the Kid because he himself is handsome enough to play Billy the Kid in the movies, that same darkhaired handsome slightly sliteyed look you expect from the myth appearance of Billy the Kid (I suppose not the actual real life William Bonnie who's said to've been a pimply cretin monster).

So we launch on a big discussion of everything in the comfortable gloom of the cabin by the warm red glow of the girly fire, I'm wearing dark glasses anyway for fun, Pat says “Well Jack I didnt have a chance to talk to you yesterday or even last year or even ten years ago when I first met you, I remember I was terrified of you and Pomeray when you ran up my steps one night with sticks of tea, you looked like a couple of car thieves or bank robbers—And you know a lot of this sneery stuff they've written against us, against San Francisco or beat poetry and writers is because a lot of us dont LOOK like writers or intellecuals or anything, you and Pomeray I must say look awful in a way, I'm sure I dont fill the bill either”—“Man you oughta go to Hollywood and play Billy the Kid”—“Man I'd rather go to Hollywood and play Rimbaud”—“Well you cant play Jean Harlow”—“I'd really like to just get my ‘Dark Brown' published in Paris, do you know that when you think it's possible a word from you to Gallimard or Girodias would help”—“I dunno”—“Do you know that when I read your poems Mexico City Blues I immediately turned around and started writing a brand new way, you enlightened me with that book”—“But it's nothing like what you do, in fact it's miles away, I am a language spinner and you're idea man” and so on we talk till about noon and Ron's been in and out, ‘s'made jaunts to the beach with the little ladies and Pat and I dont realize the sun has come out but still sit there deep in the cabin by now talking about Villon and Cervantes.

Suddenly, boom, the door of the cabin is flung open with a loud crash and a burst of sunlight illuminates the room and I see an Angel standing arm outstretched in the door!—It's Cody! all dressed in his Sunday best in a suit! beside him are ranged several graduating golden angels from Evelyn golden beautiful wife down to the most dazzling angel of them all little Timmy with the sun striking off his hair in beams!—It's such an incredible sight and surprise that both Pat and I rise from our chairs involuntarily, like we've been lifted up in awe, or scared, tho I dont feel scared so much as ecstatically amazed as tho I've seen a vision—And the way Cody stands there not saying a word with his arm outstretched for some reason, struck a pose of some sort to surprise us or warn us, he's so much like St. Michael at the moment it's unbelievable especially as I also suddenly realize what he's just actually done, he's had wife and kiddies sneak up ever so quiet up the porch steps (which are noisy and creaky), across the wood planks, easy and tiptoeing, stood there awhile while he prepared to fling the door open, all lined up and stood straight, then pow, he's opened the door and thrown the golden universe into the dazzled mystic eyes of big hip Pat McLear and big amazed grateful me—It reminds me of the time I once saw a whole tiptoeing gang of couples sneaking into our back kitchen door on West Street in Lowell the leader telling me to shush as I stand there 9 years old amazed, then all bursting in on my father innocently listening to the Primo Carnera-Ernie Schaaft fight on the old 1930's radio—For a big roaring toot—But Cody's oldfashioned family tiptoe sneak carries that strange apocalyptic burst of gold he somehow always manages to produce, like I said elsewhere the time in Mexico he drove an old car over a rutted road very slowly as we were all high on tea and I saw golden Heaven, or the other times he's always seemed so golden like as I say in a davenport of some sort in Heaven in the golden top of Heaven.

Not that he means to produce this effect: he's just standing there with innate dramatic mystery holding forth his arm as if to say Behold, the sun! and Behold, the angels! sorta pointing at all the golden heads of his family and Pat and I stand aghast.

“Happy birthday Jack!” yells Cody or some such ordinary crazy inane greeting “I've come to you with good news! I've brought Evelyn and Emily and Gaby and Timmy because we're all so grateful and glad because everything has worked out absolutely dead perfect, or living perfect, boy, with that little old hunnerd dollars you gave me let me tell you the fantastic story of what happened” (to him it was utterly fantastic), “I went out and traded in my Nash that as you know wont even start but I have to have m'old buddies push it down the road for me, this guy had a perfect gem of a purple or what color is it Maw? magenty, slamelty, a
jeepster
station-wagon Jack but a perfect beauty mind you listen with a beautiful radio, a brand new set of backup lights, thisa and thata down to the perfect new tires and that wonderful shiney paint job, that color'll knock you out, that's what it is, Grape!” (as Evelyn murmurs the color) “Grape color for all the old grape wine jacks, so we've come here to not only thank you and see you again but to celebrate this, and on top of all that, occasion, goo me I'm all so gushy and girly, hee hee hee, yes that's right come on in children and then go out and get that gear in the car and get ready to sleep outdoors tonight and get that good open fresh air, Jack on top of all that and my heart is jess OVERflowin I got a NEW JOB!! along with that splissly little old beautiful new jeep! a new job right downtown in Los Gatos in fact I dont even have to drive to work any more, I can walk it, just half a mile, now Ma you come in here, meet old Pat McLear here, start up some eggs or some of that steak we brought, open up that vieen roossee wine we brought for drunk old Jack that good old boy while I personally private take him to walk with me back down the road where the jeep is parked, unlock that gate, you got the corral key Jack, okay, and we'll talk and walk just like old times and drive back real slow in my new slowboat to China.”

So it's a whole new day, a whole new situation the way it is with Cody, in fact a whole new universe as suddenly we're alone again really for the first time in ages walking rapidly down the road to go get the car and he looks at me with that hand-rubbing wicked look like he's about to spring a surprise on me that's the top surprise of them all, “You guessed it old buddy I have here the LAST, the absolutely LAST yet most perfect of all blackhaired seeded packed tight superbomber joints in the world which you and I are now going to light up, 's'why I didnt want you to bring any of that wine right away, why boy we got time to drink wine and wine and dance” and here he is lighting up, says “Now dont walk too fast, it's time to stroll along like we used to do remember sometimes on our daysoff on the railroad, or walkin across that Third and Townsend tar like you said and the time we watched the sun go down so perfect holy purple over that Mission cross—Yessir, slow and easy, lookin at this gone valley” so we start to puff the pot but as usual it creates doubtful paranoias in both our minds and we actually sort of fall silent on the way to the car which is a beautiful grape color at that, a brand new shiney Jeepster with all the equipments, and the whole golden reunion deteriorates into Cody's matter-of-fact lecture on why the car is going to be such a honey (the technical details) and he even yells at me to hurry up with that corral gate, “Cant wait here all day, hor hor hor.”

But that's not the point, about pot paranoia, yet maybe it is at that—I've long given it up because it bugs me anyway—But so we drive back slowly to the shack and Evelyn and Pat's wife have met and are having woman talk and McLear and I and Cody talk around the table planning excursions with the kids to the beach.

And there's Evelyn and I havent had a chance to talk to her for years either, Oh the old days when we'd stay up late by the fireplace as I say discussing Cody's soul, Cody this and Cody that, you could hear the name Cody ringing under the roofs of America from coast to coast almost to hear his women talking about him, always pronouncing “Cody” with a kind of anguish yet there was girlish squealing pleasure in it, “Cody has to learn to control the enormous forces in him” and Cody “will always modify his little white lies so much that they turn into black ones,” and according to Irwin Garden Cody's women were always having transcontinental telephone talks about his dong (which is possible.)

Because he was always tremendously generated towards complete relationship with his women to the point where they ended up in one convoluted octopus mess of souls and tears and fellatio and hotel room schemes and rushing in and out of cars and doors and great crises in the middle of the night, wow that madman you can at least write on his grave someday “He Lived, He Sweated”—No halfway house is Cody's house—Tho now as I say sorta sweetly chastised and a little bored at last with the world after the crummy injustice of his arrest and sentence he's sorta quieted down and where he'd launch into a tremendous explanation of every one of his thoughts for the benefit of everybody in the room as he's putting on his socks and arranging his papers to leave, now he just flips it aside and may make a stale shrug—A Jesuit at work—Tho I remember one crazy moment in the shack that was typically Cody-like: complicated and simultaneous with a million nuances as though the whole of creation suddenly exploded and imploded together in one moment: at the moment that Pat's pretty little angel daughter is coming in to hand me an extremely tiny flower (“It's for you,” she says direct to me) (for some reason the poor little thing thinks I need a flower, or else her mother instructed her for charming reasons, like adornment) Cody is furiously explaining to his little son Tim “Never let the right hand know what your left hand is doing” and at that moment I'm trying to close my palm around the incredibly small flower and it's so small I cant even do that, cant feel it, cant hardly see it, in fact such a small flower only that little girl could have found it, but I look up to Cody as he says that to Tim, and also to impress Evelyn who's watching me, I announced “Never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing but this right hand cant even hold this flower” and Cody only looks up “Yass yass.”

So what started as a big holy reunion and surprise party in Heaven deteriorates to a lot of showoff talk, actually, at least on my part, but when I get to drink the wine I feel lighter and we all go down to the beach—I walk in front with Evelyn but when we get to the narrow path I walk in front like an Indian to show her what a big Indian I've been all summer—I'm bursting to tell her everything—“See that grove there, once in a while you'll be surprised out of your shoes to see the mule quietly standing there with locks of hair like Ruth's over his forehead, a big Biblical mule meditating, or over there, but up here, and look at that bridge, now what do you think of that?”—All the kids are fascinated by the upsidedown car wreck—At one point I'm sitting in the sand as Cody walks up my way, I say to him him imitating Wallace Beery and scratching my armpits “Cuss a man for dyin in Death Valley” (the last lines of that great movie
Twenty Mule Team
) and Cody says “That's right, if anybody can imitate old Wallace Beery that's the only way to do it, you had just the right timber there in the tone of your voice there,
Cuss a man for dyin in Death Valley
hee hee yes” but he rushes off to talk to McLear's wife.

Strange sad desultory the way families and people sorta scatter around a beach and look vaguely at the sea, all disorganized and picnic sad—At one point I'm telling Evelyn that a tidal wave from Hawaii could very easily come someday and we'd see it miles away a huge wall of awful water and “Boy it would take some doing to run back and climb up these cliffs, huh?” but Cody hears this and says, “What?” and I say “It would wash over us and take us all to Salinas I bet” and Cody says “What? that brand new jeep? I'm goin back and move it!” (an example of his strange humor).

“How'd'st rain rule here?” says I to Evelyn to show her what a big poet I am—She really loves me, used to love me in the old days like a husband, for awhile there she had two husbands Cody and me, we were a perfect family till Cody finally got jealous or maybe I got jealous, it was wild for awhile I'd be coming home from work on the railroad all dirty with my lamp and just as I came in for my Joy bubblebath old Cody was rushing off on a call so Evelyn had her new husband in the second shift then when Cody come home at dawn all dirty for his Joy bubblebath, ring, the phone's run and the crew clerk's asked me out and I'm rushing off to work, both of us using the same old clunker car in shifts—And Evelyn always maintaining that she and I were really made for each other but her Karma was to serve Cody in this particular lifetime, which I really believe and I believe she loves him, too, but she'd say “I'll get you, Jack, in another lifetime . . . And you'll be very happy”—“What?” I'd yell to joke, “me running up the eternal halls of Karma tryina get away from you hey?”—“It'll take you eternities to get rid of me,” she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I want her to say I'll never get rid of her—I wanta be chased for eternity till I catch her.