Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  Well we drew up a declaration of La Ventana later and I returned to Yajalon and read the mayor my declarations. I became a local hero—the cave was legendary, I was the first to verify it officially, as I had the forty La Ventana witnesses and the seal, etc. So they asked me to stay and write up my story for newspaper and inform the Geological Institute at Mexico and have them come down and see if the tremblers have anything to do with the cave (I don’t know)—and gave me a room in the president’s house and told the local restaurant to send the bill to city hall and everybody in town wants to talk with me and invites me for coffee and merchants sell me cigarette packages cheap and don’t charge me for pineapples and suchlike.

  Chapter 2: Treachery in New York

  Meanwhile first thing I do is spend thirty pesos wiring Claude [Lucien Carr], giving him a scoop for his Mexican U.P.—for Mexican newspapers are full of Acavalna tho no mex newsman as I say has ever seen the place, just typical Mexican rumors via the geologist about secret lakes that don’t exist (the cave has a river)—and mail him the documents to make sure and write up 3000 words describing trip, Indians, night of quakes on mountain, discovery of cave. Asking him to have mex U.P. inform the geologist, etc. so he can have the story first and me maybe a little money like 50 bucks say for expenses.

  In this telegram I said went to the top unvolcanic and next day discovered legendary cave secret of name.

  In the middle of this sentence my typewriter began shaking—and the room trembling back and forth, dust falling from walls, I’m in the president’s house in Yajalon, another earthquake, a kind of shuddering sound, but not like in the subway up in the mountain. No damage, though they say a house fell down at the end of the street near the airfield, I’ll go and see when I’m done writing.

  And said to Claude in this telegram that geologist don’t know, etc. and described cave. I wait three days and I get back: UNVOLCANIC CONDITIONS KNOWN STATESIDE APPLAUD MAGNIFICENT DISCOVERIES GONE BRAZIL WRITE

  Which means, the ironic stupid bastard, that he misunderstood my telegram and thought that I thought I was telling him something new about the top of the volcano (whereas I was giving him my itinerary shorthand) and that the cave didn’t register, or mean anything to him—and that he was going to Brazil (his vacation is April 2 or something to visit De Onis) and wouldn’t receive my explanation about the cave nor the interesting description in detail about what it’s like in a primitive Indian church in the middle of the night when an earthquake shakes the mountain. In short I am left hung up on Yajalon with no money to telegraph anybody about anything, all my sweat writing three days no carbon in air to no hands in N.Y. and all my adventure slipping from my hands into the anonymity which it so richly deserves. So I’m leaving this dump, I’ve got 10 pesos left and soon my welcome here will be worn thin. I wrote Von Harz to read Claude’s mail from me and use what he can—but it will be a week before anybody in N.Y. gets the idea and meanwhile I can’t delay informing the Mexicano Institute, which will give the story to the Mexican press and maybe I’ll get my name in the papers here but no chance of collecting any small $$$ if there ever was one—though to be sure I haven’t seen a paper for months and have no idea how absurd all this sounds in U.S. ears unless anybody has enough imagination to see the importance and news value, however minor, of the cave. Well, I have some money—20 dollars in Salto, will return to the finca for rest and to still my troubled irritated nerves and explore legendary mountain Don Juan there and wait for another 20 bucks in checks the stupid embassy in D.F. returned to sender with the rest of my mail. World Telegram back wages they were. If I get that I’ll have enuf money I guess to get out, and come to Frisco right off the bat. Meanwhile if you get a sudden wire from me asking for 25 dollars please get it to me if you have to pawn the family jewels because it will mean I am desperate and broke. Incidentally anyplace I wire from, Salto if anywhere, will receive money wired back. I add this glumly since the last time my family sent me money the U.S. bureaucracy tried to say there was no such place on the wireless maps. Write me if you haven’t since last.

  Love,

  Allen

  And if that damned cave hasn’t been reported by the time you get this letter do something—write Giroux or my mother in Pilgrim State.

  P.S. Jack: Re a meeting—I won’t be in Mexico much longer—don’t have plans yet, waiting for money to get out—write and wait.

  Jack Kerouac [New York, New York] to

  Allen Ginsberg [n.p., San Jose, California?]

  ca. late May 1954

  May

  Dear Allen,

  Please be reassured, angel, I think dearly of you whenever I do think of you, which is often, as I’m sure you do think of me often and dearly, naturally, and I’m not trying to be mysterious, or quiet, or anything, but just have reached the essence center of things where nothingness resides and does quite absolutely nothing, and this is my Chinese position.

  I won’t quote you the Tao, or make demands or impositions, or go into detail about what I been doing, except to mention, as you’ll hear from Edgar Cayce Cassady and Carolyn, my discovery and espousal of sweet Buddha, which has been I guess in a wordly maybe even you sense my undoing, because, tho I always did suspect that life was a dream, now I am assured by the most brilliant man who ever lived, that it is indeed so, consequently I don’t want to do anything any more, no writing, no sex, no nothing, I have abandoned and that is, hope to abandon, all evil outflowings of “life” for all good non-outflowings of mind essence recognition . . . no more Subterraneans to harass you with, or Alenes to kick myself in the ass with and no more anything but a kind of like 1948 realization of the nothingness and the who-cares-anyhow of Lucien drunks . . . tho once in a while I go out, because people call and write, and drink and fuck a little, but always come back, to my room, to do nothing, to take the privilege of doing nothing and claim it for my own, and so that, if my mother should want me to leave, I will and would go to El Paso Texas at first, to wash dishes and live across the river in $4 a month dobe cottage where with my Buddha Bibles and bean stews I would live life of mendicant thinker in this humble earth dream.

  As for all your latest Mayan discoveries and poems, I want to hear every word of it if you want to transmit it, or tell it when we meet, but don’t expect me to get excited by anything any more.

  I love you, you are a great man, a great little kid in my mind, full of bullshit but innocent of why you fully of bullshit, like a Lucien Carr hero properly, to give something for the Lucien Satan to rave and rant about I guess at dawn in front of his believing cribs and arrant wives, Allen boy, okay, make it Maya, Maya, Maya, which in Sanskrit, means, dreamlike, the earth, all living things in the Universe must be regarded as Maya, the reflection of the moon on the lake, ask Carolyn to let you read the big letter of about May 20 that I sent her, for a résumé of my philosophical expository thinking; and have good time with wonderful Neal who will certainly show you around as no one else could, the crazy inevitable American California, the likes of which, etc., and I’m so tired of all such discriminations which come and go with little radiant lifetimes one after another; if possible we meet again sometime and I’ll tell you about the gypsy shrouds, pull out the crystal meaning balls, and show you the secrets of the magic saints and the radiant perfumed hands of the Tathagatas that may one day be laid in a wheel shimmering upon your awakened brow, if I have anything to do with it before I lost myself in the recognition that I have no self, no ego, and therefore can no longer act as “I” and because of that don’t find you or see you; until which time I hope to see you, to help you angel, in the final great radiant final filial heavenly discovery that believe me your you-sad-sublime boy has accidentally and only accidentally recently and completely found—so after big Californias and washlines and rail roads and speeches and go dig my cactus grove in the backyard, and Jamie and Cathy and Johnny [Neal and Carolyn’s children], and Maw Cassady’s Pizzas, and the wine in the store across the street, and Neal’s tennis-chess-and kicks,
write, if you want, for full explanation of the Blessed One, and I send, if, as I say, I’m still alive, or still recognize that you are Allen Ginsberg old friend of Jack Kerouac, which I guess even in and after eternity I won’t forget, but don’t you forget our liquid giants ogling behind buildings, and the eternity radar machine in the sky, and dead eyes see, because, boy, I’ve now found out that it was all instinct pure and true, and I must say, we weren’t so dumb, as I will prove, as I say, if I ever see you again, which, after all, may not be, for I am weary of the world and wish to weary from this globe, to other blobs where bloblessness grows more apparent with each passing kalpa—O So have a drink of wine, and dig the liquid sad ungraspable, fault-sour suffering Samsara sea of mournfulness for me, O Allen saint, Arhat, goodbye . . . I’ll see you in the Tathagata Worlds anon.

  Jean

  Allen Ginsberg [San Jose, California] to

  Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]

  June 18, 1954

  Dear Jack:

  I am in San Jose, have your letters, have heard Neal’s Cayce; nothing has happened among us here yet. I sent you card from North Mexico; have answered Burroughs etc. all that’s out of the way, except to say that I wasn’t being mysterious in Mexico. I kept writing letters to one and all every week or so, some never got there, also I was in an isolated locality where mail was difficult; I didn’t intentionally create a mystery though was pleased afterward by all the fuss. In T and C [The Town and the City] you mention Stofsky’s ability to disappear as one of his virtues (disappear on trip or whatever and suddenly reappear) and that’s what I thought of when I got word that I was missed.

  Well, let me get on to this letter.

  If you left here the end of March you didn’t see the letters I wrote to you and Neal here; I don’t know if you’ve seen Lucien who also got account of what happened. But I will give you the story assuming you haven’t been informed. [Ginsberg retells the story of his Mexican earthquake visit, as already described in his April 4 letter.]

  [ . . . ]

  I wound up spending last night in Mexico overlooking the poor barrio Kasbah outside of my room on the garbage cliff of Mexicali, tin shacks down the cliff, white roofs and dirty little gardens with superhighway and other cliff leading to uptown border hipsters streets, so anyway I stood on a garbage cliff in the darkness to see I was at the end of my Mexico trip.

  The first night I got here (after spending week with relatives around L.A.) Neal got me hi and talked continually building the whole fragmentary Cayce structure like an unfinished reverie. The great thing, despite all obvious absurdities, is that he has conceived of possibility of a final idea, got religion, whether Voices of Rock or Buddha balloon or Cayce transmigrations, new level of conceptions opened for him as actual possiblies and necessaries. These are the roads to heaven, I do not forget liquid giants ogling, and forests of absolute Arden on 8th Ave., the sensations of the sublime we ken, great steps and hints of the stairway:

  On codeine on the bus up to Veracruz: an image, as in a Giotto painting, likeness of a heavenly file of female saints ascending a starry gold stairway winding up into the sky, daintily regularly stepping up the miniature gold steps, the thousands of little saintesses in blue hoods with round sweet smiling faces looking out directly at me the beholder, their hands beckoning up, palms out, as they climb. Salvation! it’s true, as simple as in the picture.

  The above is just a random conception.

  And now with all this conflict of theologies, I made out my credo:

  CREDO

  1. The weight of the world is love.

  2. The mind images all visions.

  3. Man is as far divine as his imagination.

  4. We go create a world of divine love as much as we can image. (That is, we must go on interpreting recreating the given blank world (lack of imagination is death by physical starvation) according to the most extreme absolute of divine love divinity that we can conceive.)

  I haven’t said much about Neal but will in next letter whenever it is. At the moment my greatest pleasure has been in looking at him as in a great dream, the unreality of it, that we are in the same space-time room again. As if resurrection from dead past, fresh and full of life, though with the drag of old knowledge, but we have not yet begun to talk. I don’t know what it is I want to tell him. Or he me yet.

  As to you Kerouac, it is clear that your heavenly duty, your Buddha balloon, is to write, and that your unhappiness is undeserved in a way that only acceptance can make clear.

  What I mean to say is there stands the structure of your works and sublimity towering in my imagination untarnished. My tea leaves still read $$$ and FAME for you whether or not in the next ten years probably in this lifetime.

  [ . . . ]

  Your isolation like mine is sad and frightful mainly the blind alleys of money and love but life is not over, and much to be written and much to be respected in all of us not just for being humanity but for having tried and actually achieved a thing, namely literature and also possibly a certain spiritual eye at this point. And Neal who has money and love is desperate at the gate of heaven for he is unhappy with his existence. God knows what starvation’s behind the blankness, was behind, now he is seeking in his soul. As for Bill he thinks he is lost. Lucien knows his way but may have a period of having to expand his spiritual horizon in order to accommodate the depth and height of possibility and this may be preceded by the appearance of a prison in his soul, not his existence.

  Love,

  Allen

  PS: I am not finished with my poem so will send this as is and send the fine poem soon.

  Neal will read Visions of Neal if you will send it registered and insured here. We talked about him not reading those things.

  What are you writing now since I last saw you?

  Have you seen Lucien?

  Have you seen Holmes, Kingsland, Solomon, and the others, Alene [Lee], and Dusty [Moreland]? Please give me news of them.

  Write me when and if you want, don’t worry.

  As ever

  Allen

  Please return the pages about Acavalna. There is no other copy.

  I will be reading Bagavad Gita and some Buddhism soon, if you have directions or advice.

  Jack Kerouac [New York, New York] to

  Allen Ginsberg [n.p., San Jose, California?]

  after June 18, 1954

  Dear Allen,

  Starting last Friday afternoon drunk on wine, and ending this morning sober, with bat in between in town seeing Kingsland, Ansen, Holmes, Cru and Helen Parker, here’s a big semi-silly letter; reason I won’t throw away silly parts is because they may amuse you and you would be amused instead of not amused. They were written drunk, are gossipy, but maybe funny; first four pages . . .

  I’m enclosing a Bill letter from Bill in Algiers containing material I’m not sure you’ve seen, and that I want you to be as sure of sending back, as I am right now of returning your Acavalna paper. Be sure now!

  Your letter was happily received, as I thought something had gone wrong and you wouldn’t write me big letters any more. I felt a warm glow of pride and happiness reading it, that you should write it to me.

  And I wanted to tell you many gentle and brotherly things. [ . . . ]

  I recently had an affair with a junky girl call’d Mary Ackerman that you may know of, friend of Iris Brody’s, saw me and Kells [Elvins] in his yellow jeepster in Cuernevacas in 1952; knows everybody, but is so hot and so Camille [Carolyn Cassady] like suicidal and crazy I can’t follow her around; she [Mary] just went to hospital for an overdose, for instance. And it’s too late anyway for me to love, to love love, that is, or love women, I mean, I mean sex and involvement and common-law marriage like, or I’m talking thru my hat. I saw your big letter to Kingsland.

  I see Chester Kallman96 all the time now, and his Pete [Butorac]. I’ve been getting sillydrunk again lately in Remo and disgusting myself a la Subterraneans. I want to live a quiet life but I am so weak for booxe b
ooze. I am very unhappy and have nightmares; when drinking; after a week of abstinence, I am happier than ever before in life, but slowly become bored and wondering what to do now; am writing two big books only because have nothing else to do and it would be a shame to waste all that experience in “talent”—as Carolyn says—and generally speaking, I have crossed the ocean of suffering and found the path at last. And am quite surprised that you, innocent, novice-like did enter the first inner chamber of Buddha’s temple in a dream; you’re going to be saved—There would be rejoicing and hosannas in heaven if anything once in heaven WERE a thing, or could rejoice, where rejoicing is is a naught—heaven is nothing—[ . . . ]

  WALTER ADAMS I ain’t seen.

  DIANA HANSEN CASSADY I seen, on the street, she showed me pictures of Curt [Diana and Neal’s son] and she said she got big letters about Edgar Cayce, is this giving something away? but she can’t find the books he alludes to and anyway she doesn’t care and she stood on the sidewalk goofing but I was late and she was the same.

  JOSE GARCIA VILLA was on the village sidewalk and as Lucien and I strolled along he came up, sad, Phillipino, and we talked, and he said, “How are you Lucien”? and then he gave us address of his new magazine . . . but I didn’t send him any poems.

  Little anger Japan

  Strides holding bombs

  To blow the West

  To Fuyukama’s

  Shrouded Mountain Top

  So the Lotus Bubble

  Blossoms in Buddha’s