Big Sur

by Jack Kerouac

  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 Genêt 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 wouldnt 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 here 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 Pat McLear, 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 Cheerios 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 25 a day and 25 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 drive
r 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 wont 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 sayin 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 Alisteir 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 books 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 arm-swinging 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 softhaired 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 drawing, and of course Chinese instead of Japanese—He wanted me to meet his father the following weeks—He was Monsanto’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 wouldnt 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 pint 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 ancientl
y 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 sicks 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—”

  ME:- “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—”