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