Page:Big Sur (1963).djvu/24

16BIG SUR even the flies on the porch are as so sad as the fog on the peaks—As daylight retreats the flies retreat like polite Emily Dickinson flies and when it’s dark they’re all asleep in trees or someplace—At high noon they’re in the cabin with you but edging further towards the open doorsill as the afternoon lengthens, how strangely gracious—There’s the hum of the bee drone two blocks away the racket of it you'd think it was right over the roof, when the bee drone swirls nearer and nearer (gulp again) you retreat into the cabin and wait, maybe they got a message to come and see you all two thousand of em—But getting used to the bee drone finally which seems to happen like a big party once a week—And so everything eventually marvelous.

Even the first frightening night on the beach in the fog with my notebook and pencil, sitting there cross-legged in the sand facing all the Pacific fury flashing on rocks that rise like gloomy sea shroud towers out of the cove, the bingbang cove with its seas booming inside caves and slapping out, the cities of seaweed floating up and down you can even see their dark leer in the phosphorescent seabeach nightlight—That first night I sit there and all I know, as I look up, is the kitchen light is on, on the cliff, to the right, where somebody’s just built a cabin overlooking all the horrible Sur, somebody up there’s having a mild and tender supper that’s all I know—The lights from the cabin kitchen up there go out like a little weak lighthouse beacon and ends suspended a thousand feet over the crashing shore—Who would build a cabin up there but some bored but hoary old adventurous architect maybe got sick of running for congress and one of these days a big Orson Welles tragedy with screaming ghosts a woman in a white nightgown’ll go flying down that sheer cliff—But actually in my mind what I really see is the kitchen lights of that mild and tender maybe even romantic supper up there, in all that howling fog, and here I am way below in the Vulcan’s Forge itself looking up with sad eyes—Blanking my little Camel cigarette on a billion year old rock that rises behind my head to a height