Desolation Angels

by Jack Kerouac

  “And that’s what I’m doing, see?—do you dig it? do you understand?” The way he says “understand,” like, “stahnd,” like Frank Sinatra, like something New York, like something new in the world, a real down-from-the-bottom city Poet at last, like Christopher Smart and Blake, like Tom O Bedlam, the song of the streets and of the alley cats, the great great Raphael Urso who’d made me so mad in 1953 when he made it with my girl—but whose fault was that? mine as much as theirs—it’s all recorded in The Subterraneans—

  “Great great Raphael I’ll see you tomorra—Let’s sleep and be silent—Let’s dig silence, silence is the end, I’ve had it all summer, I’ll teach you.”

  “Great, great, I dig that you dig silence,” comes his sad enthusiastic voice over the pitiful telephone machine, “it makes me sad to think you dig silence, but I will dig silence, believe it, I will”—

  I go to my room to sleep.

  And lo! There’s the old night clerk, an old Frenchman, I dont know his name, when Mal my buddy used to live in the Bell (and we’d drink big toasts of port wine to Omar Khayyam and pretty girls with short haircuts in his bulb-hanging room) this old man used to be angry all the time and screaming at us incoherently, annoyed—Now, two years later, he’s completely changed and with it his back has bent all the way, he’s 75 and walks completely bent over muttering down the hall to unlock your transient room, he’s completely sweetened, death is soothing his eyelids, he’s seen the light, he’s no longer mad and annoyed—He smiles sweetly even when I come on him (1 A.M.) standing bent on a chair trying to fix the clerk cage clock—Gomes down painfully and leads me to my room—

  “Vous êtes francais, monsieur?” I say. “Je suis francais moimême.”

  In his new sweetness is also new Buddha-blankness, he doesnt even answer, he just unlocks my door and smiles sadly, way down bent, and says “Good night, sir—everything all right, sir”—I’m amazed—Crotchety for 73 years and now he’ll bide right out of time with a few dewdrop sweet years and they’ll bury him all bent in his tomb (I dont know how) and I would bring him flowers—Will bring him flowers a million years from now—

  In my room invisible eternal golden flowers drop on my head as I sleep, they drop everywhere, they are Ste. Terese’s roses showering and pouring everywhere on the heads of the world—Even the shufflers and madcaps, even the snarling winos in alleys, even the bleating mice still in my attic a thousand miles and six thousand feet up in Desolation, even on the least her roses shower, perpetually—We all know that in our sleep.

  78

  I sleep a good solid ten hours and wake up roses-refreshed—But I’m late for my meet with Cody and Raphael and Chuck Berman—I jump up and put on my little checkered cotton shortsleeved sportshirt, my canvas jacket over that, and my chino pants, and hurry out into the bright ruffling Monday Morning harbor wind—What a city of whites and blues!—What air!—Great churchbells bonging, the hint of tinkling flutes from Chinatown markets, the incredible Old Italy scene on Broadway where old dark-garmented Wops gather with twisted black little cigarillos and chot the black coffee—It’s their dark shadows on the white sidewalk in the clean bell-ringing air, with white ships seen coming in the Golden Gate down below the etched Rimbaud milky rooftops—

  It’s the wind, the cleanness, great stores like Buon Gusto’s with all the hanging salamis and provelones and assortments of wine, and vegetable bins—and the marvelous oldworld pastry shops—then the view of the tangled wood tenement child-screaming daydrowsy Telegraph Hill—

  I swing along on my new heavenly softsoled canvas blue-shoes (“Oog, like the shoes queers wear!” comments Raphael next day) and lo! there’s bearded Irwin Garden coming down the opposite side of the street—Wow!—I yell and whistle and wave, he sees me and throws out his arms with rounded eyes and comes running across the traffic with that peculiar gazotsky run of his, flapping feet—but his face is immense and serious surrounded by a great solemn Abrahamic beard and his eyes are steady in a candlesteady gleam in their ogling sockets, and his sensuous fulsome red mouth shows out thru the beard like the poopoo lips of old prophets about to say something—Long ago I’d dug him as a Jewish prophet wailing at the final wall, now it was official, a big article had just been written about him in the New York Times mentioning that—The author of “Howling,” a big wild free verse poem about all of us beginning with the lines:—

  “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroy’d by madness”—etc.

  But I never know what he means by mad, like, he had a vision in a Harlem pad in 1948 one night of a “giant machine descending from the sky,” a big ark-dove of his imagination, and keeps saying “But do you realize the state of mind I was in—have you ever really had a real vision?”

  “Sure, whattayou mean?”

  I never understand what he’s driving at and sometimes I suspect he’s Jesus of Nazareth reborn, sometimes I get mad and think he’s only Dostoevsky’s poor devil in poorclothes, giggling in the room—An early idealistic hero of my days, who’d come on the scene of my life at 17—I remember the strangeness of the firmness of his voice-tone even then—He talks low, distinct, excited—but he looks a little pooped with all this San Francisco excitement which for that matter will wear me out in 24 hours—“Guess who’s in town?”

  “I know, Raphael—I’m going there to meet him and Cody now.”

  “Cody?—where?”

  “Chuck Berman’s pad—everybody’s there—I’m late—let’s hurry”

  We talk a million forgettable little things as we race, almost run up the sidewalk—Desolation Jack is now ankling along with a bearded compatriot—my roses wait—“Simon and I are going to Europe!” he announces. “Why dont you come with us! My mother left me a thousand dollars. I’ve got another thousand saved! We’ll all go visit the Old World Strange!”

  “Okay with me”—“I’ve got a few bucks too—Might as well—About time, hey ole buddy?”

  For Irwin and I had discussed and dreamed Europe, and of course read everything, even unto the “weeping on the old stones of Europe” of Dostoevsky and the gutters-saturated-with-symbols of early Rimbaud excitements when we wrote poems and ate potato soup together (1944) on the Columbia Campus, even unto Genêt and the Apache heroes—even unto Irwin’s own sad dreams of spectral visits to a Europe all drenched with old rain and woe, and standing on the Eiffel Tower feeling silly and effete—Arm over each other’s shoulder we hurry up the hill to Chuck Berman’s streetdoor, knock and walk in—There’s Richard de Chili on the couch, as foretold, turning around to give us a weak grin—A couple other cats with Chuck in the kitchen, one a crazy Indian with black hair who wants change for a poorboy, a French-Canadian like me, I’d talked to him the night before in the Cellar and he’d called out “So long brother!”—Now it’s “Good morning brother!” and we’re all milling around, no Raphael there yet, Irwin suggests we go down to the hep coffee place and meet everybody there—

  “They all go there anyway”

  But nobody’s there so we head for the bookstore and bang! up Grant here comes Raphael with his John Garfield longstride and swinging arms, talking and yelling as he comes, bursting all over with poems, we’re all yelling at the same time—We mill around bumping into one another, across streets, down streets, looking for a place to drink coffee—

  We go in the coffee joint (on Broadway) and sit in a booth and out come all the poems and books and bang! here comes a redheaded girl and behind her Cody—

  “Jackson me boyyyy” says Cody as usual imitating old W. C. Fields railroad conductors—

  “Cody! Aye! Sit down! Wow! Everything’s happening!”

  For it comes, it always comes in great vibrating seasons.

  79

  But it’s only simple morning in the world, and the waitress only brings simple coffee, and all our excitements are simple and will end.

  “Who is the girl?”

  “She’s a mad girl from Seattle who heard us read poetry up there last winter and’s c
ome down in an MG with another girl, looking for a ball,” Irwin informs me. He knows everything.

  She says “Where does that Duluoz get all that vitality?”

  Vitality, shmitality, by midnight roaring beers I’ll be done for another year—

  “I lost all my poems in Florida!” Raphael is screaming. “In the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Miami Florida! These new poems are all the poems I’ve got! And I lost my other poems in New York! You were there Jack! What’d that editor do with my poems? And I lost all my earlier poems in Florida! Imagine that! Balls on that!” It’s the way he talks. “For years after that I went from Greyhound office to Greyhound office talking to all kinds of presidents begging them to find my poems! I even cried! You hear that Cody? I cried! But they werent moved! In fact they began to call me a nuisance all because I used to go to this office on 50th Street most every day begging them for my poems! It’s the truth!”—and as someone else is saying something he hears that too and interjects: “I’d never call the police unless a horse fell and cripples itself or something! Balls on that!” He bangs the table—

  He’s got a crazy little pixy face of some kind which is actually a great brooding dark face when suddenly he feels sad and falls silent, the way he stares off—pouting—A little bit like the pout of Beethoven—A bit of a snubbed, or rubbed, rough Italian nose, rough features, with soft cheeks and soft eyes and pixy hair, black, he never combs, coming down from the back of his square head flat down over his brow, like a boy—He’s only 24—He actually is a boy, the girls are all mad for him—

  Whispers Cody in my ear “That guy, that Raff, that cat, why, shit, he’s got more broads’n he knows what to do with—I’m telling you—Jack, listen, everything’s set, it’s all arranged, we’re going to make a million in the races, it’s a sure thing, this year, THIS YEAR M’BOY” he rises to announce “that second choice of mine has been coming in and coming in like mad!”

  “Making up for last year,” I say, remembering the day I’d bet $350 on the second choice for Cody (while he worked) and he missed every race and I got drunk in a haystack with a 35¢ poorboy before going to the train to tell Cody he’d lost, whom it didnt disturb because he’d already lost $5,000 net—

  “This is the year—and next year” he insists—

  Meanwhile Irwin is reading his own new poems and the table is mad—I can tell Cody I’d like him (my old bloodbrother) to drive me to Mill Valley to pick up my old clothes and manuscripts, “Will do, we’ll all go, we’re all together”

  We rush out to Cody’s crazy little 1933 Chewy coupe, we cant fit in, we try it and burst out at the seams—

  “You think this little baby cant go?” says Cody.

  “But your great car you had when I left?”

  “Sugar in the transmission, she’s gone”

  Irwin says: “Listen, all of you go to Mill Valley and come back and meet me this afternoon”

  “Okay”

  The girl squeezes by Cody, Raphael because he’s shorter and lighter than me sits on my lap, and off we go, waving to Irwin who leaps with his beard and dances to show his sweet concern in the North Beach street—

  Cody bats the little car around unmercifully, he swings around corners perfect and fast, no squealing, he darts thru traffic, curses, barely beats lights, jams up hills in grinding second, swishes thru intersections, takes the blame, balls out to the Golden Gate bridge where finally (toll paid) we go zooming across the Gate of Dreams in high-above-the-water airs, with Alcatraz on our right (“I weep, I feel sorry for Alcatraz!” yells Raphael)—

  “What are they doon?”—the tourists on the Marin bluff looking towards white San Fran with cameras and binoculars, their sightseeing bus—

  All talking at the same time—

  Old Cody again! Old Visions-of-Cody Cody, the maddest one (as you’ll see) and as ever on our left the vast blue trackless Maw Pacific, Mother of Seas and Peaces, leading out to Japan—

  It’s all too much, I feel wonderful and wild, I’ve found my friends and a great vibration of living Joy and of Poetry is running thru us—Even tho Cody be yakking about this second choice betting system he does it in amazing rhythms of talk—“Why my boy inside five years I’ll have so much money why I’ll just be a pilantro—plilantrop—poff poff.”

  “Philanthropist”

  “Be givin money to all who deserve—Mete ye out as ye shall be received—” He’s always quoting Edgar Cayce the Seer, the American Okie healer who never learned medicine but would go into an ailing man’s house and undo his old sweaty tie and lay stretched out on his back and sleep into a trance and his wife’d take his answers to her questions down, “Why is so-and-so sick?” Answer: “So and so has thrombophlebitis, clotting of the veins and arteries, because in a previous lifetime he drank the blood of the living human sacrifice”—Question: “What is the cure?” Answer: “Stand on his head for three minutes every day—Also general exercise—A little glass of whisky or 100 proof whisky or bourbon every day, for thinning the blood—” Then he’d come out of his trance, and had healed thousands that way (Edgar Cayce Institute, Atlantic Beach, Virginia)—Cody’s new God—the God that was making even excited-over-girls Cody begin to say: “I’m almost finished with them little things”

  “Why?”

  He too has his silences, rocky, severe—I can sense too now as we fly over the Gate of Gold that Cody and Raphael are not exactly on close terms—I study to know why—I dont want none of my boys fighting—It’s all going to be great—We’ll at least all die in harmony, we’ll have great Chinese Wailing and Howling and screaming funerals of joy because old Cody, old Jack, old Raphael, old Irwin, or old Simon (Darlovsky, coming up) is dead and free—

  “My head is dead, I dont care!” yells Raphael—

  “—why that dog couldnt even come in second and repair my losses with a measly five bucks, but I’ll show ya honey—” Cody is whispering to Penny (she’s just a big happy strange sad girl drinking this all in, I see now she hangs around my gang because they, except Cody, pay her no particular sexual attention) (in fact they’re always putting her down and telling her to go home)—

  But I’m amazed to see when we get to Mill Valley she’s a Buddhist, while we’re all talking at the same time in the shack on the horse-hill I turn and as in a dream there she is, like a solid ruby statue, sitting against the wall crosslegged with her hands joined and her eyes staring straight ahead, seeing nothing, maybe hearing nothing—a mad world.

  Mad above all the shack—It belongs to Kevin McLoch, my old buddy Kevin also with a beard but a working carpenter with a wife and two kids, always in sawdust paint pants, barechester usually, patriarchal, kind, delicate, subtle, extremely serious, intense, also a Buddhist, in back of his good old ramshackle wood house with the unfinished porch he’s building, rises a steep grassy hill till it becomes upper Deer Parks, real actual ancient deer parks where on moonlit nights as if from nowhere there you’ll see the deer sitting and munching under the immense Eucalypti—down from the mountain, the game refuge, as the Dharma Bums all know, the deer have been coming to this Holy Grove for longer than twelve histories of California—High up, on top, the shack lies hidden in rosebushes—Woodpiles, high grass, wild flowers, bushes, seas of trees swishing everywhere—The shack as I say built by an old man to die in, which he did, and a great carpenter he was—Kevin has it all fixed up with pretty burlap walls and pretty Buddhist pictures and teapots and delicate teacups and fronds in vases, and gasoline-primer to boil the tea-water, to make it his Buddhist refuge and ceremonial tea-house, for visitors and also long-staying 3-month guests (who must be Buddhists, that is, understand that the Way is not a Way) like I’d been, and so that on Thursdays when he tells his carpenter boss “I’m taking the day off” and the boss says “Who’s gonna lift the other end of the board?” “Get someone else” Kevin leaves pretty wife and kiddies downhill and climbs the Deer Park Eucalyptus trail, with Sutras under his arm, and spends that day in meditation and study—Meditates crossl
egged, on Prajna—reads Suzuki’s commentaries and the Surangama Sutra—says, “If every worker in America took a day off to do this, what a wonderful world it would be.”

  Very serious, beautiful man, 23, with blue eyes, perfect teeth, handsome Irish charm, and a lovely melodious way of speaking—

  Here we (Cody, Penny, Raff and I) after short talk with Kevin’s wife downstairs, climb that hot trail (leaving car parked by the mailbox) and barge in on Kevin’s meditation day—Tho it’s Monday, he’s not working today anyway—He’s on his haunches boiling tea, just like a Zen Master.

  He smiles wide and glad to see us—

  Penny establishes herself on his beautiful meditation mat and starts to meditate, while Cody and Raphael yak and Kevin and I listen laughing—

  It’s supremely funny—

  “What? What?” is yelling Raphael as Cody, standing, launches on a speech about the universality of God, “you mean to tell me all is God? She’s God, my God?” pointing at Penny.

  “Yes, sure,” I say, and Cody goes on:—

  “As we leave the astral plane—”

  “I’m not gonna listen to this guy, I’m not gonna be corrupted by his talk! Is Cody the devil? Is Cody an angel?”

  “Cody’s an angel,” I say.

  “Oh no!” Raphael grabs his head because Cody is still talking:—

  “—reaching Saturn where it might not be committable unto the Saviour’s higher graces to change into a rock, tho I know old Jack here that sonumbitch he’d just as soon turn into a rock”—

  “No! I’m going outside! This man is evil!”

  Here it looks like a verbal battle to see who’ll talk and hold the floor, and Penny is sitting there really rosy and radiant, with little freckles, on face and arms, red heart hair—

  “Go out and study the beautiful trees,” I advise Raphael, and he does go out anyway, to dig it, and comes back (during which time Cody has said: “Try a little a this here tea, boy,” handing me a cup of hot tea in a Jap cup, “and see if that dont put the cockles out of your hockles clean—agh!” (coughing, splurting on the tea) “hem!—”