Page:Big Sur (1963).djvu/29

RV 21 (BIG SUR21) weird Ripley situation of a huge tree that’s fallen across a creek maybe 500 years ago and’s made a bridge thereby, the other end of its trunk is now buried in ten feet of silt and foliage, strange enough but out of the middle trunk over the water rises straight another redwood tree looking like it’s been planted in the treetrunk, or stuck down into it by a God hand, I cant figure it out and stare at this chewing furiously on big choking handfulls of peanuts like a college boy—(and only weeks before falling on my head in the Bowery)—Even when a rancher car goes by I daydream mad ideas like, here comes Farmer Jones and his two daughters and here I am with a 60-foot redwood tree under my arm walking slowly pulling it along, they are amazed and scared, “Are we dreaming? can anybody be that strong?” they even ask me and my big Zen answer is “You only think I'm strong” and I go on down the road carrying my tree —This has me laughing in clover fields for hours—I pass a cow which turns to look at me as it takes a big dreamy crap—Back in the cabin I light the fire and sit sighing and there are leaves skittering on the tin roof, it’s August in Big Sur—I fall asleep in the chair and when I wake up I’m facing the thick little tangled woods outside the door and I suddenly remember them from long ago, even to the particular clumpness of the thickets, stem by stem, the twist of them, like an old home place, but just as I'm wondering what all this mess is, bang, the wind closes the cabin door on my sight of it! —So I conclude “I see as much as doors’ll allow, open or shut”—Adding, as I get up, in a loud English Lord voice nobody can hear anyway, “An issue broached is an issue smote, Sire,” pronouncing “issue” like “iss-yew’—And this has me laughing all through supper—Which is potatoes wrapped in foil and thrown on the fire, and coffee, and hunks of Spam roasted on a spit, and applesauce and cheese—And when I light the lamp of aftersupper reading, here comes the nightly moth to his nightly death at my lamp—After I put out the lamp temporarily, there’s the moth sleeping on the wall not realizing I've put it on again.