Page:Big Sur (1963).djvu/22

14BIG SUR But Ah, at first there were fine days and nights, right after Monsanto drove me to Monterey and back with two boxes of a full grub list and left me there alone for three weeks of solitude, as we'd agreed—So fearless and happy I even spotted his powerful flashlight up at the bridge the first night, right thru the fog the eerie finger reaching the pale bottom of that high monstrosity, and even spotted it out over the farmless sea as I sat by caves in the crashing dark in my fisherman’s outfit writing down what the sea was saying—Worst of all spotting it up at those tangled mad cliffsides where owls hooted ooraloo—Becoming acquainted and swallowing fears and settling down to life in the little cabin with its warm glow of woodstove and kerosene lamp and let the ghosts fly their asses off—The Bhikku’s home in his woods, he only wants peace, peace he will get— Tho why after three weeks of perfect happy peace and adjustment in these strange woods my soul so went down the drain when I came back with Dave Wain and Romana and my girl Billie and her kid, I'll never know—Worth the telling only if I dig deep into everything.

Because it was so beautiful at first, even the circumstance of my sleepingbag suddenly erupting feathers in the middle of the night as I turned over to sleep on, so I curse and have to get up and sew it by lamplight or in the morning it might be empty of feathers—And as I bend poor mother head over my needle and thread in the cabin, by the fresh fire and in the light of the kerosene lamp, here come those damned silent black wings flapping and throwing shadows all over my little home, the bloody bat’s come in my house—Trying to sew a poor patch on my old crumbly sleepingbag (mostly ruined by my having to sweat out a fever inside of it in a hotel room in Mexico City in 1957 right after the gigantic earthquake there), the nylon all rotten almost from all that old sweat, but still soft, tho so soft I have to cut out a piece of old shirt flap and patch over the rip—I remember looking up from my middle of the night chore and saying bleakly “They, yes, have bats in