I vow I’m not going to get drunk after all, we even go out to the park to have a long talk in the warm sun that always turns to delightful cool foggy dusk in that town of towns—Werre sitting in the park of the big Italian white church watching kids play and people go by, for some reason I'm bemused by the sight of a blonde woman hurrying somewhere “Where's she going? does she have a secret sailor lover? is she only going to finish her typing afterhours in the office? what if we knew Ben what every one of these people goin by is headed for, some door, some restaurant, some secret romance”—“You sound like you stored up a lot of energy and innerest in life in those woods”—And Ben knows that for sure because he’s been months in the wilderness too, alone—Old Ben, much thinner than he used to be in our madder Dharma Bum days of 5 years ago, a little gaunt in fact, but still the same old Ben who stays up late at night chuckling over the Lankavatara Scripture and writing poems about raindrops—And he knows me very well, he knows Ill get drunk tonight and for weeks on end just on general principles and that a day will come in a few weeks when I'll be so exhausted I wont be able to talk to anybody and hel come and visit me and just silently at my side be puffing his pipe, as I sleep—The kind of guy he is—I trying to explain about Tyke to him but some people are cat lovers and some aint, tho Ben always has a little kitty around his pad—His pad usually has a straw rug on the floor, with a pillow ’pon which he sits crosslegged, by a smoking teapot, his bookshelves full of Stein and Pound and Wallace Stevens—A strange quiet poet who was only beginning to be recognized as a big rosy secret sage (one of his lines “When I leave town all my friends go back on the sauce” )—And I’m on my way to the sauce right now.
Because anyway old Dave Wain is back and Dave I can see him rubbing his hands in anticipation of another big wild binge with me like we had the year before when he drove me back to New York from the west coast, with George Baso the little Japanese Zen master hepcat sit-
