Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  In any case we take big trip together somewhere, or do something, sometime, again, copain.

  I recently had horrible visions of the too-muchness of the world which requires really too much of our attention, our mind essence is completely blasted by music, people, books, papers, movies, games, sex, talk, business, taxes, cars, asses, gasses yak ack etc. and I almost died chocking over this (choking)—Like, now I’m outs with Gregory almost, we had a big jubilant reunion in April or so and hallelujahed to write a big article for Playboy about Beat and so he’d have money for his wedding with Sally November who hates me I think and it all deteriorated with Gregory rewriting the whole thing behind my back and cursing me and Luce and everybody as creeps, and him a “pure lyric poet” which is what Lucien told him the day before and it went to his head—Mainly, I had the sensation that Gregory is insane, because he kept me up and down all the time with him, suddenly realizing he’s crazy and doesn’t want to be friends with anyone at all, maybe wants to be punished for this? The article we wrote together, dictating to girlfriends of mine etc., was ridiculous, not even an article but a drunken whisky chain poem meaning nothing whatever—I think H [heroin] is going to G[regory]’s head really—That Sally of his is sullen, I think—But maybe they’ll have a baby and coo quietly together and it might turn out good for poor tortured Gregory Corso—But on these visits to NY, worse than ever, I come back with visions of horror as bad as the Ayahuasca vision on the Neanderthal million years in caves, the gruesomeness of life!—Yet all my future be bright, with On the Road gonna be a movie, a new novel in the Fall, two new novels not yet published (Desolation Angels and its sequel about you and me and Pete and Laf and Gwegowy in Mexico Passing Through) and I see nothing ahead for me but ease and joy and yet my mind is so dark, and so lonesome sometimes I could cry on your shoulder or Bill’s or Neal’s any minute. And what of poor Neal? Carolyn marrying another man, couldn’t I be a millionaire and make Neal my chauffeur? Do I need a crazy teahead chauffeur with broads hiding in the trunk? And Bill, how come I don’t ever get to see him anymore and if I journeyed to Paris via Air France or Lufthansa jet would he be kind to me when I rushed up to him? or laugh at me for being fat? or WHAT? Where’s Peter, why did you leave Peter? Why did you and Peter leave Laf to such a fate? How could you carry Laf around the world on your shoulders anyway? It’s hopeless. How’s Gary? I guess he’s alright. Whalen is very sad and neutral with big sad neutral blue eyes. Scares me sometimes. Lew Welch is spending his time in an isolated shack, naked, at Forks of Salmon Calif. and says he’s going crazy like Han Shan. Did you see Big Sur novel which I had sent to you? and what you think of the ridiculous denouement in THAT? all too true. Ow. Meanwhile all these subsidiary bores keep hammering at ya, Aquinas monks denying my theology in long silly letters writtenlikethiswithJoycean arrangements, or bores around Los Gatos assuring me I WAS of some importance while America needed me and thanks,—nevertheless, Allen dear friend, I feel a strange ecstasy, right now, always in fact, always. Holmes has been bombarding me with huge questions for his non-fiction book which will be about everything: I spent three nights answering his questions in detail, on typewriter, he oughta be glad right now. Book will be about you, me, Mailer, Baldwin, etc., whole scene . . . But it’s raining, great straight drops of sheet rain falling through glen dark tree glades . . . very pretty day. A day for getting drunk on whiskey, in fact, but dammit I did that yesterday. A lost day. Wonder what Joan Adams is thinking . . . Where’s Huncke? How’s Laf? What is Paul Bowles thinking, and where? And Ansen? And Walter Adams? How sad the garbage can! Anyway, when you get back here, I’ll show you all the piled up papers relating to everything since you left, letters, poems of Gregory, etc. and let us hope that the great calm hearts of Melville, Whitman and Thoreau do sustain us in the coming hectic years of overcommunicating Americas and Telstars and other Galaxies . . . What have we accomplished? Good new poetry, that oughta be enough. “Charming bedraggled little princes” everywhere on accounta you . . . and sudden waves of intelligent teenage football players somehow. Somehow my ass. Incidentally I liked your “honking Eliot” dream and just now in fact was studying an old dream of yours in a letter from Chiapas, no San Jose, about Chiapas, a dream you had there of Burroughs being photographed in a Rome trolley, and a dream of me leading tourist millions wandering in endless Brooklyns . . . I just had drink dream that I was shitting all the time whether I was in the toilet or not, shit all over the floor, over my hands, shoes, over my face really, just shit all over, like balloons . . . Lucien Ah . . . He had a little fling with Lois [Sorrells Beckwith] but Cessa straightened that out . . . not a fling really, but lying around all day on the floor with her at Jacques’ [Beckwith], as Jacques fumed—I just can’t keep up with Jacques and all that, I wanta go back to my simple Lucien and Allen and Bill. Anyway my present job is to write Vanity of Duluoz novel about 1939 to 1946, won’t be easy, football, war, Edie, etc. Bronx Jail, you, Columbia, etc. ouch.

  Come home soon

  Jack

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to

  Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York]

  City Lights 261 Columbus

  SF Calif USA

  Oct 6, 1963

  Dear Jack:

  Kept thinking I should write you back fast huge love lovely belly flowers letter, received yours in Japan, I just got TOO MUCH to tell you TOO TOO TOO much whoops where could I begin Japan or somewhere? India, Ganges I’m bathing all the time and praying for transcendentalist Blakes and visiting holy-men and all they got to say is “Take Blake for your Guru,” or “Your own Heart is Your Guru,” or “O how wounded you and Peter are, Oh how wounded, Oh how wounded,” till finally I left when time was up and flew to Viet Nam and everybody killing everybody else hardhearted America paranoia and weeks in Cambodia ruins Ankor Wat and pot and Bangkok Chinese boys and finally peaceful Kyoto, sat in monastery with Gary [Snyder] and did belly breathing and that calmed my mind and then the sweetness of all those Gurus sinking in to me and then Joanne [Kyger] and Gary both so nice to me both took me to bed even Gary made love to me and all of a sudden I dug Joanne since it was alright for me to feel what anyway I felt, I want a woman wife lady, I want I want, want life not death, wound up crying on train from Kyoto to Tokyo and wrote final poem: On My Train Seat I Renounce My Power: So That I Do Live I Will Die therefore accepting Christ see also, and no more mental universe arguments: I am that I am and what exactly am I? Why I’m me, and me is my feelings by gum and those feelings are located to be exact in my belly trembling when eyes say Yes and in my breast all along that’s my me NOT my head not Christ ideas not Buddha—Christ and Buddha are in my body not no where else. And everything else is arbitrary conceptions. So from now on I won’t take nothing but love and give same, in feelings, except—well I came back weeping to Vancouver and there was Olson Duncan Creeley Levertov all to teach together and I said, I can’t eliminate them from my universe or anyone even Norman Podhoretz they are all selfs too like me alas we been arguing and seeing each other like beatniks and poets and everything but crying self so I just cried and didn’t teach just went around feeling everybody up till we were all there together having a happy earth picnic with no ideas in head about put up poetry or put down poets NO MORE WARS all are immortal laugh and lie down no superior poets no inferior poets furthermore no more need ayahuascas or peyotes because already flowing from belly and breast is infinity when feeling’s open and that feels good not scary—all I saw in Blake 1948 finally came true, lasted weeks and weeks, lovely Jerusalem blisses, I even realized (finally) my mother died having seen and told me her last day the key is in the sunlight, but I didn’t realize what she meant and felt till I felt myself back home in my own body on earth and knew she had been there and knew it. So all’s well, I go get married and have little hairy losses someday—and I am not a hairy loss, I’m me, and me’s nameless, but certainly not a bad feeling OOK like hairy loss, you put me under a spell for years, and Burroughs about killed me off with his cut
ups—his cut ups fine since it cuts up the head but he wants to cut up his body feelings too, and that don’t feel good at all—your hairy loss served to get me down off my high head too, but you coulda saved me faster by calling me tender heart, honey—everything’s fine we’re all going to be what? be what we is! ain’t that great. I’m too mental and hungup to explain right, but anyway Jack I’m telling you like you tell me, yup, everything is alright, in fact I can’t explain it anymore I just FEEL it and that’s better than explaining so next time we meet I’ll make you feel good. I’ll kiss you and pet you and read you little poemlets about ispy diddle and I’ll also kiss your mama and ask her forgiveness and ask her to love me and I done already prayed for your poppa and I go see my poppa and thank him for borning me and make him feel it’s all alright and I go back to human universe just as in prophecy of Dr. Sax (which last chapters of which I read to class in Vancouver) THE SNAKE’S ALL TOOK CARE OF. And your letter full of tenderness so I won’t sermonize you anymore either, despite I do detect doubts in your mind whether it’s alright for you to have been born, well you go right over to your mother and REASSURE her that she did right giving life to you. And why right? Because god is feeling and it makes her feel bad you complaining alla time you didn’t want to be born. Wouldn’t you feel bad if your son told you he was mad at your for borning him. And wouldn’t you feel good if son came home and said, dad, we made it, I’m glad I’m alive you did right. Wouldn’t you feel better? and what else have we got but feelings, have we got some big ideas, or something else to be? besides our hearts? All the gurus in India say Abhya mudra abhya mudra and so says Buddha and so I say to little English Kerouac, except we NOW are in the tents of god so let’s like lambs rejoice: and no more specters.

  So now I’m here in SF going around asking everybody if I can kiss them. Pathetic isn’t it, asking everybody to love me? Which seeing I’m such a fucked up longhair goof naturally they melt and do, except it gets to be hard work. Nonetheless you look in those faces everywhere and what’s to be seen but same self all over been wounded and pissed on—and Lucien was here and we blessed each other anew—and Neal now. Well I’m in a big apartment with some quiet young Kansas poets I got backroom and Neal and his girl have another room (same Ann [Murphy] you saw in Northport) and he understands why it was too difficult there (in Northport)—and beginning I hope Monday we sit down and Neal actually write his blop again, anyway he quit job and Carolyn divorced him (I spent days with her) and I singing hours of calm hindoo mantras to him soften the air till he get back in his body from racetrack specters and unfeeling frenzy and we all be back together again o la tierra est la nostra. I come see you Xmas without hair if you so desire me or with hair if you so accept me, if you want calm weeks come here reunion NO LUSHING it destroy feeling in fact get off that lush. I no take drugs no more nothing but belly flowers. I sleep with girls I reborn I happy I sing harikrishna lords prayer ipsky diddle I weep Sebastian [Sampas] knew all we know nothing unless we do love. Now we go out save America from lovelessness. I reverse Howl, I write white Howl, no more death O Walt Hello Jack!

  I make movie of Kaddish with Robert Frank later you help me with dialogue?

  I’ll write you soon again. Will you love me ever? Peter heading his footprints across Pakistan toward Persia and New York by Xmas.

  We are all babies! Feels good. The word at last!!!

  INDEX

  Note: AG refer to Allen Ginsberg. JK refers to Jack Kerouac.

  Academy of Political Science

  Acavalna (Mexico): AG visit to

  Ace Books

  and AG works

  and Burroughs works

  and JK finances

  and JK publications

  Solomon at

  See also Wyn, A. A.

  Ackerman, Mary

  Adams, Joan Vollmer

  AG comment about Celine to

  AG comments about

  AG inquiries about

  and AG in jail

  and AG in mental hospital

  and Burroughs trust fund

  and Columbia get-together

  and JK concerns about morality

  JK relationship with

  JK sees

  JK thoughts about

  pseudonyms of

  Adams, Walter

  Adler, Alfred

  Admiral Restaurant (New York City)

  “Aether” (AG)

  “After Gogol” (AG)

  aging: AG views about

  Airplane poems, AG

  Alaska: AG in

  Alfred A. Knopf Publishers

  Algren, Nelson

  Allen, Donald

  AG comments about

  AG discussions/meetings with

  and AG preface to Gasoline

  and AG request for copies of JK poems

  AG sends introduction to

  and AG works

  and anthology

  and banning of AG and JK works

  and Beat Traveler

  and Book of Blues

  and Burroughs

  and Corso works

  and Doctor Sax

  and Ferlinghetti

  and JK Buddhist writings

  and JK contracts/finances