the gloom of Basho behind it all, the huge thunderous scowl of Issa or of Shiki, kneeling in the frost with the bowed head like the bowed-head-oblivion of all the old horses of Japan long dust. He sits there on the lawn bench looking down and when Dave asks him "Well you gonna be alright soon George" he says simply "I don't know" -- He really means "I dont care" -- And always warm and courteous with me he now hardly pays any attention to me -- He's a little nervous because the other patients, GI vets, will see that he's received a visit from a bunch of ragged beatniks including Joey Rosenberg who is bouncing around the lawn looking at flowers with that bemused sincere smile -- But little neat George, just five feet five and a few pounds over that and so clean, with his soft feathery hair like the hair of a child, his delicate hands, he just stares at the ground -- His answers come like an old man's (he's only 30) -- "I guess all the Dharma talk about everything is nothing is just sorta sinking in my bones, " he concedes, which makes me shudder -- (On the way Dave's been telling us to be ready because George's changed so) -- But I try to keep things going, "Do you remember those dancing girls in St Louis? " -- "Yen, whore candy" (he's referring to a piece of perfumed cotton one of the girls threw at us in her dance, which we tacked up later to a highway accident cross we'd yanked out of the ground one blood red sunset in Arizona, tacking this perfumed beautiful cotton right where the head of Christ was so that when we brought the cross to New York naturally we had everybody smelling it but George pointed out how beautiful we'd done all this subconsciously because the net result was that all the hepcats of Greenwich Village who came in to see us were picking up the cross and putting their heads [noses] to it) -- But George doesn't care any more -- And anyway it's time to leave. But ah, as we're leaving and waving back at him and he's turned around tentatively to go into the hospital I linger behind the others and turn around several times to wave again -- Finally I start to make a joke of it by ducking around a corner and peeking out and waving again... He ducks behind a bush and waves back I dart to a bush and peek out... Suddenly we're two crazy hopeless sages goofing on a lawn -- Finally as we part further and further and he comes closer to the door we are making elaborate gestures and down to the most infinitesimal like when he steps inside the door I wait till I see him sticking a finger out -- So from around my corner I stick out a shoe -- So from his door he sticks out an eye -- So from my corner I stick out nothing but just yell "Wu! " -- So from his door he sticks out nothing and says nothing -- So I hide in the corner and do nothing -- But suddenly I burst out and there HE is bursting out and we start waving gyrations and duck back to our hiding places -- Then I pull a big one by simply walking away rapidly but suddenly I turn and wave again -- He walking backwards and waving back -- The further I go now also walking backwards the more I wave -- Finally we're so far apart by about a hundred yards the game is almost impossible but we continue somehow -- Finally I see a distant sad little Zen wave of hand -- I jump up into the air and gyrate both arms -- He does the same -- He goes into the hospital but a moment later he's peeking out this time from the ward window! -- I'm behind a tree trunk thumbing my nose at him -- There's no end to it, in fact -- The other kids are all back at the car wondering what's keeping me -- What's keeping me is that I know George will get better and live and teach the joyful truth and George knows I know this, that's why he's playing the game with me, the magic game of glad freedom which is what Zen or for that matter the Japanese soul ultimately means I say, "And someday I will go to Japan with George" I tell myself after we've made our last little wave because I've heard the supper bell ring and seen the other patients rush for the chow line and knowing George's fantastic appetite wrapped in that little frail body I don't wanta hang him up tho he nevertheless does one last trick: He throws a glass of water out the window in a big froosh of water and I don't see him any more. "Wotze mean by that? " I'm scratching my head going back to the car. 16 To complete this crazy day at 3 o'clock in the morning here I am sitting in a car being driven 100 miles an hour around the sleeping streets and hills and waterfronts of San Francisco, Dave's gone off to sleep with Romana and the others are passed out and this crazy nextdoor neighbor of the roominghouse (himself a Bohemian but also a laborer, a housepainter who comes home with big muddy boots and has his little boy living with him the wife has died) -- I've been in his pad listening to booming loud Stan Getz jazz on his Hi Fi and happened to mention I thought Dave Wain and Cody Pomeray were the two greatest drivers in the world -- "What? " he yells, a big blond husky kid with a strange fixed smile, "man I used to drive the getaway car! come on down I'll show ya! " -- So almost dawn and here we are cuttin down Buchanan and around the corner on screeching wheels and he opens her up, goes zipping towards a red light so takes a sudden screeching left and goes up a hill fullblast, when we come to the top of the hill I figger he'll pause awhile to see what's over the top but he goes even faster and practically flies off the hill and we head down one of those incredibly steep San Fran streets with our snout pointed to the waters of the Bay and he steps on the gas! we go sailing down a hundred m. p. h. to the bottom of the hill where there's an intersection luckily with the light on green and thru that we blast with just one little bump where the road crosses and another bump where the street is dipping downhill again -- We come down to the waterfront and screech right In a minute we're soaring over the ramps around the Bridge entrance and before I can gulp up a shot or two from my last late bottle we're already parked back outside the pad on Buchanan -- The greatest driver in the world whoever he was and I never saw him again -- Bruce something or other -- What a getaway. 17 I end up groaning drunk on the floor this time beside Dave's floor mattress forgetting that he's not even there. But a strange thing happened that morning I remember now: before Cody's call from downvalley: I'm feeling hopelessly idiotically depressed again groaning to remember Tyke's dead and remembering that sinking beach but at the side of the radiator in the toilet lies a copy of Boswell's Johnson which we'd been discussing so happy in the car: I open to any page then one more page and start reading from the top left and suddenly I'm in an entirely perfect world again: old Doc Johnson and Boswell are visiting a castle in Scotland belonging to a deceased friend called Rorie More, they're drinking sherry by the great fireplace looking at the picture of Rorie on the wall, the widow of Rorie is there, Johnson suddenly says "Sir, here's what I would do to deal with the sword of Rorie More" (the portrait shows old Rorie with his Highlands flinger) "I'd get inside him with a dirk and stab him to my pleasure like an animal" and bleary with hangover I realize that if there was any way for Johnson to express his sorrow to the widow of Rorie More on the unfortunate circumstance of his death, this was the way -- So pitiful, irrational, yet perfect -- I rush down to the kitchen where Dave Wain and some others are already eating breakfast of sorts and start reading the whole thing to the lot of them -- Jonesy looks at me askance over his pipe for being so literary so early in the morning but I'm not being literary at all -- Again I see death, the death of Rorie More, but Johnson's response to death is ideal and so ideal I only wish old Johnson be sitting in the kitchen now -- (Help! I'm thinking). The call comes from Cody in Los Gatos that he lost his job tire recapping -- "Because we were there last night? " -- 'No no something entirely different, he's gotta lay off some men because his mortgage is bleeding him and all that and some girl is tryna sue him for forging a check and all that, so man I've got to find another job but I have to pay the rent and everything's all fucked up down here, Oh old buddy how about, cant you, I plead or I don't plead, or honestly, Jack, ah, lend me a hundred dollars willya? " -- 'By God Cody I'll be right down and GIVE you a hundred dollars'... "You mean you'll really do that, listen just to lend to me is enough but if you insist, hm" (fluttering his eyelashes over the phone because he knows I mean it) "you old loverboy you, how you gonna get down here there and give me that money there son and make my old heart glad" -- "I'll have Dave drive me down" -- "Okay I'll pay the rent with it right away and because it's now Friday, why, Thursday or whatever, that's right Thursday, why I dont have to be lookin for a new job till next Monday so you can stay here and we'll have a long weekend just goofin and talkin boy like we used to do, I can demolish you at chess or we can watch a baseball game" and in a whisper "and we can sneak into the City see and see my purty baby" -- So I ask Dave Wain and yes he's ready to go anytime, he's just following me like I often follow people myself, and so off we go again. And on the way we drop in on Monsanto at the bookstore and the idea suddenly comes to me for Dave and me and Cody to go to the cabin and spend a big quiet crazy weekend (how? ) but when Monsanto hears this idea he'll come too, in fact he'll bring his little Chinese buddy Arthur Ma and we'll catch McLear at Santa Cruz and go visit Henry Miller and suddenly another big huge ball is begun. So there's Willie waiting down on the street, I go to the store, buy the bottle, Dave wheels Willie around, Ron Blake and now Ben Fagan are on the back mattress, I'm sitting in my front seat rocking chair as now in broad afternoon we go blattin again down that Bay Shore highway to see old Cody and Monsanto's in back of us in his jeep with Arthur Ma, two jeeps now, and about to be two more as I'll show -- Coming to Cody's in mid afternoon, his own house already filled with visitors (local Los Gatos literaries and all kinds of people the phone there ringing continually too) and Cody says to Evelyn "I'll just spend a couple days with Jack and the gang like the old days and look for a job Monday" -- "Okay" -- So we all go to a wonderful pizza restaurant in Los Gatos where the pizzas are piled an inch high with mushrooms and meat and anchovies or anything you want, I cash a travelers check at the supermarket, Cody takes the 100 in cash, gives it to Evelyn in the restaurant, and later that day the two jeeps resume down to Monterey and down that blasted road I walked on blistered feet back to the frightful bridge at Raton Canyon And I'd thought I'd never see the place again. But now I was coming back loaded with observers. The sight of the canyon down there as we renegotiated the mountain road made me bite my lip with marvel and sadness. 18 It's as familiar as an old face in an old photograph as tho I'm gone a million years from all that sun shaded brush on rocks and that heartless blue of the sea washing white on yellow sand, those rills of yellow arroyo running down mighty cliff shoulders, those distant blue meadows, that whole ponderous groaning upheaval so strange to see after the last several days of just looking at little faces and mouths of people As tho nature had a Gargantuan leprous face of its own with broad nostrils and huge bags under its eyes and a mouth big enough to swallow five thousand jeepster stationwagons and ten thousand Dave Wains and Cody Pomerays without a sigh of reminiscence or regret -- There it is, every sad contour of my valley, the gaps, the Mien Mo captop mountain again, the dreaming woods below our high shelved road, suddenly indeed the sight of poor Alf again far way grazing in the mid afternoon by the corral fence -- And there's the creek bouncing along as tho nothing had ever happened elsewhere and even in the daytime somehow dark and hungry looking in its deeper tangled grass. Cody's never seen this country before altho he's an old Californian by now, I can see he's very impressed and even glad he's come out on a little jaunt with the boys and with me and is seeing a grand sight -- He's like a little boy again now for the first time in years because he's like let out of school, no job, the bills paid, nothing to do but gratefully amuse me, his eyes are shining -- In fact ever since he's come out of San Quentin there's been something hauntedly boyish about him as tho prison walls had taken all the adult dark tenseness out of him -- In fact every evening after supper in the cell he shared with the quiet gunman he'd bent his serious head to a daily letter or at least every-other-day letter full of philosophical and religious musings to his mistress Billie... And when you're in bed in jail after lights out and you're not sleepy there's ample time to just remember the world and indeed savor its sweetness if any (altho it's always sweet to remember it in jail tho harder in prison, as Genet shows) with the result that he'd not only come to a chastisement of his bashing bitternesses (and of course it's always good to get away from alcohol and excessive smoking for two years) (and all that regular sleep) he was just like a kid again, but as I say that haunting kidlikeness I think all ex cons seem to have when they've just come out -- In seeking to severely penalize criminals society by putting the criminals away behind safe walls actually provide them with the means of greater strength for future atrocities glorious and otherwise -- "Well I'll be damned" he keeps saying as he sees those bluffs and cliffs and hanging vines and dead trees, "you mean to tell me you ben alone here for three weeks, why I wouldn't dare that... must be awful at night ... looka that old mule down there... man, dig the redwood country way back in... reminds me of old Colorady b'god when I used to steal a car every day and drive out to hills like this with a fresh little high school sumptin" -- "Yum Yum, " says Dave Wain emphatically turning that big goofy look to us from his driving wheel with his big mad feverish shining eyes full of yumyum and yabyum too -- "S'matter with you boys not making extensive plans to bring a bevy of schoolgirls down there to wile away our conversation pieces thar" says Cody real relaxed and talking sadly. Behind 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. " 19 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). 20 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? " 21 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