Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  So, after waking up from four of these in two weeks I realized (especially after dream of Burroughs on Italian 2nd class train going to Spain) that as soon as possible must go to live awhile in Europe—think of the marvelous facades and palaces of dank Venice alone for instance, which will be digged in spacious St. Mark’s Square dusk by us among pigeons of Europe and Eyetalian beggars as in some slow silent stage presentation of melancholy cloaked Byronic traveler passing thru in sad ballet. To say nothing of hollow old Catholic Rome. Prague! the very name conjures a mirage of centuries, the Golem, ghettoes, stone kings and fountains of dark lions and grey cherubs, students drinking beer and dueling thru the night. And perhaps sweet Moscow. Then there is Paris. Paris! City of Light! ici mouru Racine! Here Proust sipped his delicate tea, here Jean Gabin stared out over the roofs with his mistress crying in bed, glum. Memories, ancient waltzes, tristesse de la lune, all the tenderness of antiquity and the angel gentility of civilization, with the Eiffel tower and strange city mystics a la Cocteau and Rimbaud and most the tearful reality of the old world places. Even wish to see Londres, London of great bells and banking houses old as time, where liveth still in silence Seymour [Wyse] waiting for a winking eye from us undoubtedly.

  As I sit here under the mountain at the moment of noon, sun white in that green high palm tree leaves, butterflies in the meadow, contemplating a voyage to the old world, having seen a ruin in the new, head full of abstraction and memory, there are sitting beside me four Gauguin maids conversing in Spanish (I half understand and can follow) barefoot in bright store clothes, with big safety pins in bosom of dresses for ornament, complaining about their ailments to the senora who has medicines: codeine, barbiturates, W.C. Fields Wampole drink for the weary and worried, vitamins that would mystify and delight Burroughs. And last week a murderer, having avenged the death of his father (sister of one of these girls), young boy with bullet holes in hand and arm, came at dawn for refuge from law and help, and we operated, cutting open upper arm to take out bullet (I felt faint, watching her cut with a Gillette double edged blade) and put him up for two days till rumors of a posse (just like frontier) reached us one night and we sent him to the woods to hide. Two weeks ago we had a meteor so grand, big as star of Bethlehem, illuminated blue and red the whole half horizon. Same day my first trembler; which earthquake, I later found, had half destroyed the back-interior town of Yajalon (Yah-ha-lone), the church in ruins, lava coming up, a new volcano like Paracutin—though this is rumor, another man passing thru said the mountain top went to the bottom and the bottom went to the top—meaning a landslide? Quien sabe? however adding that the priest who was supposed to have perished screaming in the tottering cathedral four centuries old really was still alive though seriously wounded, as he had been konked by a single brick shook loose. As well as a perfect lunar eclipse I saw the nite I left Palenque.

  I live among the thatch roof huts, eat tortillas and frijoles at every meal with mucho pleasure, amazing how a real strong taste for them can be developed, like for potatoes with eggs, meat, vegs. etc. I pass banana groves and work in them for an hour or so weekly, cutting, pruning, gathering the bunches, eat them fried and raw, daily also. And work a few hours or a day in the cocoa grove, cutting, washing, fermenting and drying cocoa (makes chocolate)—washing particularly, very pleasant, with group of injuns barefoot each with a woven basket swushing the gooey nuts around to rid them of guk, squatting in sunlite under hot greenery by rocky stream. Well not always a group of injuns, but often. And at nite I sit in huts by fires watching violin and drum, sometimes.

  La Senora, in case I forgot to say last time, is a Giroux-Harcourt authoress, once wrote a best seller about jungle (Three in the Jungle). Ugh. Writing another about mystical Mayans, interesting facts for Bill but she’s a strange case, some good and some nutty and some tiresome about her; her best feature aside from real (tho perhaps indefinite mystic hang-up) being pioneer type-operating-on-the-indians-grew-up-around-here-carries-a-machete-and-runs-plantation aloneness, real archeological pro.

  Yesterday I laughed to myself with delight at the thought of finally leaving here sometime and really making it to Frisco; and tho I will, and arrival in Frisco is sure shooting barring unforeseen changes in soul atmosphere here or there or seismic phenomena unwonted or civil states and wars unheard of here as yet (no seen newspaper in two months) (me), I don’t know when. It’s like a dream of Europe. I ordered my mail sent down here from D.F. and other places so if you’ve written me, I’ll get it this coming week. Can be reached here: HOTEL ARTURO HUY, c/o Karena Shields, Allen Ginsberg, Salto De Agua, Chiapas, Mexico. When I leave mail if any will be forwarded and I’ll write then anyway.

  Shutting up shop—man bit by bushmaster in next village and must find horses in field rush with razors and antiviperina. But eat first, we sent medicine ahead. Stupid corrupted blood Indians who play poor drums don’t even know enuf to cut open and bleed snakebite. Older time real Indians know savvy more lore.

  Croak.

  A. Groan.

  Jack Kerouac [San Jose, California] to

  Allen Ginsberg [n.p., Mexico City, Mexico?]

  ca. March 1954

  Dear Allen:

  This large enclosed interesting letter from Burroughs in Tangier indicates that he needs a “completely new approach” and shows how all of us in only the past four or five months have suddenly changed and taken up new positions around what we like to think is the sun, or the moon, or the everything and zenith. Neal, for instance, has suddenly become religious and is espousing Reincarnation and Karma.94 Carolyn is firm on the subject of Karen Horney (“Inner Conflicts” or the later one.)95 . . . saying it’s all the same thing, in different approach. In fact a general Bahiaism all over and even on the radio you hear a preacher say that it is “false individualism” that makes a man refrain from “labor.”—and so everybody getting wise to the terms “false” and “true,” “essence” and “form” and etc. I, on receiving your Chiapas letter, was high with Al Sublette and Neal, listening to Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, and read about your proper bong drums how the Indians come single file to the store and you jump up and drum popeyed to impress them and they call you Jalisco and you have an act with medicine. Did not ye find those secret eroticism you went there for? Is it worth visiting?

  Shall I come down there and sit, or shall I go back to New York, or shall I live under a tree by the railroad track in California, or shall I move into an abandoned dobe hut in the Valley of Mexico and see [Bill] Garver every Saturday afternoon? Alone or with Al Sublette? Or go down to Chiapas with or without Al Sublette? Al says he wants to sit and let it all go but admits his weakness for drugs, lush, cunt and all the countless anxious intoxications of the jazz age and the machine. He’s not an intellectual. I prefer going off alone on all counts for everything now but can’t tear myself away from bondage and bondhood to friendhood ship and have long since realized that not only am I the Messiah deceived but you too, and Neal too, and Bill, and Zilen, and Zunkey, and Mush, and Crush. From the ten quarters of the universe it is said they come and lay radiant hands in a wheel on your brow. This is in appearance, like the moths of light, and that Atlantis radar machine we saw in the sky over the New School when you said it had been there since the beginning in eternity anyway, and now Neal claims they had atomic power in Atlantis and Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and Bill Keck and all the social details so drearsome come flooding in to repeat what we know has already happened and will happen again. A girl will come to me again; and I will be an accomplice after the fact to a crime again; and I will find rest again and sleep deep within the golden light in the womb of the mind again. But all of it has to be, we must have a conference, or nothing, east meets west or nothing; that’s why, I want to arrange a meeting between us or none at all, naming place, time, laying bare plans for livelihood, ideas; I have the teaching to impart to you. The teaching, the Dharma, is lost to Neal. He has already and as I say at the same time espoused a teaching (of Edgar Cayce a supernatural
ist recently dead who cured people by self hypnotic diagnosis) and is like a Billy Graham in a suit, and talks rapidly explaining that here at last is “scientific proof” of the truth of reincarnation and Neal’s interest in the subject curiously Melvillean, “the world would be flooded with evil if there wasn’t an inner good” and a wheel of justice turning us dog murderers from bad to worse till we repent and become dogs and are killed by dog murderers and are reborn contemplatives and perfect to finish. But let him tell you himself. That’s the big main thing, that he tell you himself, so you’ll judge for yourself (the nature of his what amounts to materialistic heresy here). But the difference amounts only to choice of celestial contacts, different connections, I suppose the pusher is the same. Neal begins there is no beginning and end to the world, the karmic etheric akasha essence substance vibrating continuously in all the billion universes and our atman-entities rushing around . . . and I believe that there was emptiness and silence, and will be, after this hassle ends, by our own volition undone thread by thread and our egos and entities vanish but so we took benny tonight and I’ll write this big letter and empty my notebooks to you so you can judge and Neal will dictate later.

  Allen Ginsberg [Yajalon, Mexico] to Neal Cassady,

  Carolyn Cassady, and Jack Kerouac [San Jose, California]

  Yaljalon

  March [sic: April] 4, 1954

  Neal:

  Carolyn:

  Jack:

  Forgive me for not answering your letter about spiritualism earlier. I received it in a kayuko in the Rio Michol traveling toward Salto de Agua when we met a messenger with months old mail, so I read it and a flippant letter from Claude [Lucien Carr] and Burroughs’ messages under the trees leaning back on my knapsack while the Indians rowed in green crocodile water. That Neal is religious is a great piece of news: I always wondered what he would be like with some overpowering Awful thought humbling his soul to saintliness. But wait! I have been doing some magnificent deeds in the last week, and now am sitting in awful dumps all gone wrong and will tell you about it first.

  I got to Salto with your letter two weeks ago. To make a long story short, I hitchhiked a plane ride into deeper Chiapas, Yajalon where all the earthquakes have been. I heard about Mt. Acavalna—Tzeltal for Night House? What does that mean—Refuge from Darkness, or Place to Suffer Darkness—casa obscura. A mystery. Acavalna (roll that name, its Blakean, on your lips)—in the mountains beyond Yajalon—haven’t got time to tell you all the Mayan sierra and mystery forest ruins details, nor the meaning of names—Tumbala, Bachahon, Lancandon etc. But Acavalna is in that direction. According to geologists source of the quakes—still going on here every day after two months.

  So in Yajalon with 100 pesos and no toothbrush and dirty clothes on my back, nothin but a fountain pen stepped off plane empty handed—small Mexican south town, 400 year church at end of ten blocks long, four blocks wide, walled in by high mountains on either side, fantastic scenery—approachable by plane that crashes every ten days or three days of mule inland from railroad town Salto.

  I went to Presidente and said I was a periodista on vacation and wanted to visit Acavalna—no newsman ever been there, just one geologist climbed it ten days before and reported nothing but a big crack in its front, said maybe no volcano. But two days later Instituto Geologica his office said maybe there was volcano, in papers. Much confusion, Yajalon frightened. President promised mule free and guide. Next day no mule, just guide, I started over La Ventana—mountain wall between Yajalon and Acavalna—till halfway up a kind of Mexican saw my beard and in midpassage gave me his mule to ride up (he continuing his trip down on foot—true courtesy of local road). I arrived in afternoon at finca or plantation named Hunacmec—was treated as honored important guest—we sent mule and guide back. Hunacmec is at foot of Acavalna. That late afternoon, was loaned hammock and blanket for cold air mountain, given guide and horse to go spend the night at Zapata—a central Indian village lost in side of Acavalna where men wear white and women wear black and pigs gobble your crap by the river, pushing you aside to get it before you’re finished. Meanwhile joined by two Laurel and Hardy Yajalontecans who ran up and down mountain after me to go along. Night—drums, primitive church, bamboo pipe, (greatest hollow primitive drums I ever saw by the way they make brilliant drums here) guitars, men on cedar logs around wall, women in black pool at center in front of altar lighting long sinister pagan candles in front of glasscase altar covered with bunting and 1890 German religious paintings containing dolls of Jesu Christi and bearded black Indian saints, another drum hanging from thatch roof—entertainment for me—suddenly boom, stupendous under ground roar like the subway of the End [West End Bar] under years of concrete pavement, and the whole mountain begins to shake, the thatch roof adobe church creaking, tortilla sized adobe chunks falling by my shoulders, women screaming and rushing out the door into the black shaking night, me trembling for my stupid pride in coming to dread Acavalna. Horror of the awful power under the mountain making so much noise and moving so much, and building up the noisy shuddering—then stopped, everything quiet except for dogs barking and cocks crowing and women screaming. It was the worst shake they had since Feb. 5, the first earthquake, and me on top of the fucking mountain right there. Nobody killed or nothing.

  Well to make a long story short again, next day at dawn we got together an expedition of 54 men Indians all beautiful and numberless boys and dogs more, from Zapata, from Tzahala, dirty town south, and Chiviltic, over the next mountain—everybody scared, and we started a great high dreadful climb under hanging stone thru milpas, to the unknown forest at the top of the mountain to see if there was a volcanic fissure, or ruins, as was rumored, or a secret lake, also rumored. High cedar forest, we caught a monkey—they eat monkeys. Can’t tell you how I enjoyed the situation—curious my psychology but it was a perfect set up—I was the leader, I organized and supplied the general power and intelligence—and I was deferred to, boys carried my morale (little bag) and my food, special Indian coffee and eggs for me—the rest drank ground maize for lunch, they asked me questions, dozens of Indians ready to run up and down mountains to get me horses or carry messages or perform any mysterious white man with beard wish. At same time I was weaker on horse or mountain or locality know how, and my weakness deferred to with the greatest love and chivalry. This was the sensation I had anyhow. Well anyhow we got to the top—two or three small noisy tremblers on the way (there were twenty a day)—not exactly unknown, I should say as the geologist had got there with a few Indians last time. They were all afraid to go when he was here, but this time all the men of all three villages who weren’t sick or busy went with me—the point being to calm the injuns all over the area who think a volcano is smoking on top. So we got to the top and saw all the mountains around and found nothing and set afire for joke smoke a great cedar tree to scare Chiapas, came down and I sat in middle of a circle and took names and we made a declaration to send to the Indians and towns saying exactly what’s going on in the mountain—for there is immense rumor inaccurate of every kind all over around here—and stamped it with official seal of the three villages.

  Went back to Hunacmec thinking I’d had a great trip into rarely seen parts more obscure than where I’ve been all along, though I know well of parts more obscure toward the Usumacintly—and we must sometime with mule go traveling through these parts. I know Spanish now and a little bit of Mayan, pocitito, and I love Indians and get along with them great, really, I think I could go anywhere practically—but anyway, the next morning when I woke up I found forty Indians sitting on my doorstep of the tile roof finca house at the foot of Acavalna. They were from La Ventana, across the way, had got up and walked five miles before dawn to talk to me, they wanted to know what we saw on the mountain—and wanted me to come with them to the other side. There was a legendary cave, they said they didn’t know it, but two men from the village had been there years before, and the geologist didn’t believe them, and they wanted to see if the earthqua
kes had closed the mouth. They said [I] should come and spend the night at their village and they would give me horses and guides to get back to Yajalon next day. So I went along on foot, and we stopped at another village on the way and they put me up on a horse in the middle of them—a long line of forty white robed Indians filing up and down the hills—till we came to the end of the mulepath—and I got off horse and twenty men went ahead to clear a path, so we climbed up the east side of the mountain through the brush, till we reached great boulders of ancient volcanic rock, like the great waste plain at Paracutin—climbing over these—mountains ready to shake or explode or god knows what: then shouting ahead, they found it. When I came out in the clearing I saw a hole in the side of the mountain as big as St. Patrick’s cathedral, entrance to the great legendary cave—first stranger other than Indians ever there—solving riddle of name of mountain—House of Night—dark cave. Indians have great poetic imagination for names—a mountain anciently named house of night and forgotten why except for one or two who nobody believes centuries later. Well this cave was there, and I climbed over the brush and went in first—I had to do something brave to justify the honor—and we all started staring and wandering in the mouth—suddenly another boom from the mountain, I sat down hard and waited but nothing happened, and there was another innocent trembler fifteen minutes later when we were all deeper in, and could hear stalactites crashing down interior—the mouth of the cave had caved in and enlarged in earlier quakes, so it was very scary. Beautiful cathedral like stalactite formations—it’s an enormous cave, one of the big world caves. I never visited caves before like Crystal Cave, but this one is as big I’m sure or bigger, it’s just stupendous, and right now thinking of it, it’s like some awful dream vision, that big you know—and full of pulpit formations, and naves and arches, like a Piranesi drawing don’t you know, pilasters and arks and giant dark religious figurations.