Big Sur/Chapter 22
But look at this: in the afternoon restless youngster Ron wants to go hitch hiking to Monterey of all things to go see McLear and I say “Okay go ahead”—“Aint you coming with me?” he asks. surprised to see the champion on-the-roader wont even hitch hike any more, “No I’ll stay here and get better—I gotta be alone,” which is true, because as soon as he’s gone and has yelled one final hoot from the canyon road directly above and gone on, and I’ve sat in the sun alone on the porch, fed my birds finally again, washed my socks and shirt and pants and hung them up to dry on bushes, slurped up tons of water kneeling at the creek race, stared silently at the trees, soon as the sun goes down I swear on my arm I’m as well as I ever was: just like that suddenly.
“Can it be that Ron and all these other guys, Dave and McLear or somebody, the other guys earlier are all a big bunch of witches out to make me go mad?” I seriously consider this—Remembering that childhood revery I always had, which I used to ponder seriously as I walked home from St. Joseph’s Parochial School or sat in the parlor of my home, that everybody in the world is making fun of money me and I dont know it because everytime I turn around to see whos behind me they snap back into place with regular expressions, but soon’s I look away again they dart up to my nape of neck and all whisper there giggling and plotting evil, silently, you cant hear them, and when I turn quickly to catch them they’ve already snapped back perfectly in place and are saying “Now the proper way to cook eggs is” or they’re singing Chet Baker songs looking the other way or they’re saying “Did I ever tell you about Jim that time?”—But my childhood revery also included the fact that everybody in the world was making this fun of me because they were all members of an eternal secret society or Heaven society that knew the secret of the world and were seriously fooling me so I’d wake up and see the light (i.e., become enlightened, in fact)—So that I, “Ti Jean,” was the LAST Ti Jean left in the world, the last poor holy fool, those people at my neck were the devils of the earth among whom God had cast me, an angel baby, as tho I was the last Jesus in fact! and all these people were waiting for me to realize it and wake up and catch them peeking and wed all laugh in Heaven suddenly—But animals werent doing that behind my back, my cats were always adornments licking their paws sadly, and Jesus, he was a sad witness to this, somewhat like the animals—He wasnt peeking down my neck—There lies the root of my belief in Jesus—So that actually the only reality in the world was Jesus and the lambs (the animals) and my brother Gerard who had instructed me—Meanwhile some of the peekers were kindly and sad, like my father, but had to go along with everybody else in the same boat—But my waking up would take place and then everything would vanish except Heaven, which is God—And that was why later in life after these rather strange you must admit childhood reveries, after I had that fainting vision of the Golden Eternity and others before and after it including Samadhis during Buddhist meditations in the woods, I conceived of myself as a special solitary angel sent down as a messenger from Heaven to tell everybody or show everybody by example that their peeking society was actually the Satanic Society and they were all on the wrong track.
With all this in my background, now at the point of adulthood disaster of the soul, through excessive drinking, all this was easily converted into a fantasy that everybody in the world was witching me to madness: and I must have believed it subconsciously because as I say as soon as Ron Blake left I was well again and in fact content.
In fact very contented—I rose that following morning with more joy and health and purpose than ever, and there was me old Big Sur Valley all mine again, here came good old Alf and I gave him food and patted his big rough neck with its various cocotte’s manes, there was the mountain of Mien Mo in the distance just a dismal old hill with funny bushes around the sides and a peaceful farm on top, and nothing to do all day but amuse myself undisturbed by witches and booze—And I’m singing ditties again “My soul aint snow, wouldnt you know, the color of my soul, is interpole” and such silly stuff—And I yell “If Arthur Ma is a witch he sure is a funny witch! Har har!”—And there's the bluejay idiot with one foot on the bar of soap on the porch rail, pecking at the soap and eating it, leaving the cereal unattended, and when I laugh and yell at him he looks up cute with an expression that seems to say “What’s the matter? wotti do wong?”—“Wo wo, got the wong place,” said another bluejay landing nearby and suddenly leaving again—And everything of my life seems beautiful again, I even start remembering the nutty things of the binge and go back even farther and remember nutty things all through my life, it’s just amazing how inside our own souls we can lift out so much strength I think it would be enough strength to move mountains at that, to lift our boots up again and go clomping along happy out of nothing but the good source power in our own bones—And when I visit the sea it doesnt scare me anymore, I just sing out “Seventy thousand schemers in the sea” and go back to my cabin and just quietly pour my coffee in the cup, afternoon, how pleasant!
I make a wood run, axe and yank logs outa everywhichawhere and leave em by the side of the road to leisurely carry home—I investigate a cabin down the creek that has 15 wood matches in it for my emergency—Take a shot of sherry, hate it—Find an old San Francis Chronicle with my name in it all over—Hack a giant redwood log in half in the middle of the creek—That kind of day, perfect, ending up sewing my holy sweater singing “There’s no place like home” remembering my mother—I even plunge into all the books and magazines around, I read up on ’Pataphysics and yell contemptuously in the lamplight “’Tsa’n intellectual excuse for facetious joking,” throwing the magazine away, adding “Peculiarly attractive to certain shallow types”—Then I turn my rumbling attention to a couple of unknown Fin du Siécle poets called Theo Marzials and Henry Harland—I take a nap after supper and dream of the U.S. Navy, a ship anchored near a war scene, at an island, but everything is drowsy as two sailors go up the trail with fishingpoles and a dog between them to go make love quietly in the hills: the captain and everybody know they’re queer and rather than being infuriated however they’re all drowsily enchanted by such gentle love: you see a sailor peeking after them with binoculars from the poop: there’s supposed to be a war but nothing happens, just laundry. . .
I wake up from this silly but strangely pretty dream feeling exhilarated—Besides now the stars come out every night and I go out on that porch and sit in the old canvas chair and turn my face up to all that mooching going on up there, starmooched firmament, all those stars crying with happy sadness, all that ream and cream of mocky ways with alleyways of lightyears old as Dame May Whitty and the hills—I go walking towards Mien Mo mountain in the moon illuminated August night, see gorgeous misty mountains rising the horizon and like saying to me “You dont have to torture your consciousness with endless thinking” so I sit in the sand and look inward and see those old roses of the unborn again—Amazing, and in just a few hours this change—And I have enough physical energy to walk back to the sea suddenly realizing what a beautiful oriental silk scroll painting this whole canyon would make, those scrolls you open slowly at one end and keep unrolling and unrolling as the valley unfolds towards sudden cliffs, sudden Bodhisattvas sitting alone in lamplit huts, sudden creeks, rocks, trees, then sudden white sand, sudden sea, out to sea and you've reached the end of the scroll—And with all those misty rose darknesses of varying tint and tuckaway shades to express the actual ephemerality of night—One long roll unfurling from the range fence among the misty hills, moon meadows, even the hay rick near the creek, down to the trail, the narrowing creek, then the mystery of the AW SEA—So I investigate the scroll of the valley but I’m singing “Man is a busy little animal, a nice little animal, his thoughts about everything, dont amount to shit.”
In fact back at the cabin to make my bedtime hot Ovaltine I even sing “Sweet Sixteen” like an angel (by God bettern Ron Blake) and all the old memories of Ma and Pa, the upright piano in old Massachusetts, the old summernight sings—That’s how I go to sleep, under the stars on the porch, and at dawn I turn over with a blissful smile on my face because the owls are callin and answering from two different huge dead trunks across the valley, hoo hoo hoo.
So maybe it’s true what Milarepa says: “Though you youngsters of the new generation dwell in towns infested with deceitful fate, the link of truth still remains”—(and said this in 890!)—“When you remain in solitude, do not think of the amusements in the town. . . You should turn your mind inwardly, and then you’ll find your way. . . The wealth I found is the inexhaustible Holy Property. . . The companion I found is the bliss of perpetual Voidness. . . Here in the place of Yolmo Tag Pug Senge Dzon, the tigress howling with a pathetic trembling voice reminds me that her piteous cubs are playing lively. . . Like a madman I have no pretension and no hope. . . I am telling you the honest truth. . . These are the crazy words of mine. . . Oh you innumerable motherlike beings, by the force of imaginary destiny you see a myriad visions and experience endless emotions. . . I smile. . . To a Yogi, everything is fine and splendidl. . . . . In the goodly quiet of this Self-Benefitting sky Enclosure, the timely sounds I hear are all my fellows’ sounds. . . At such a pleasant place, in solitude, I, Milarepa, happily remain, meditating upon the void-illuminating mind—The more Ups and Downs the more Joy I feel—The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I feel. . .”