Page:Big Sur (1963).djvu/98

RV 90 (BIG SUR90) silliness—You feel sick in the greatest sense of the word, breathing without believing in it, sicksicksick, your soul groans, you look at your helpless hands as tho they were on fire and you cant move to help, you look at the world with dead eyes, there’s on your face an expression of incalculable repining like a constipated angel on a cloud—In fact it’s actually a cancerous look you throw on the world, through brown-gray wool fuds over your eyes—Your tongue is white and disgusting, your teeth are stained, your hair seems to have dried out overnight, there are huge mucks in the corners of your eyes, greases on your nose, froth at the sides of your mouth: in short that very disgusting and wellknown hideousness everybody knows who's walked past a city street drunk in the Boweries of the world—But there's no joy at all, people say “Oh well he’s drunk and happy let him sleep it off”—The poor drunkard is crying—He’s crying for his mother and father and great brother and great friend, he’s crying for help—He tries to pull himself together by moving one shoe nearer to his foot and he cant even do that properly, hell drop the shoe, or knock something over, hell do something invariably that’ll start him crying again—He’ll want to bury his face in his hands and moan for mercy and he knows there is none—Not only because he doesnt deserve it but there’s no such thing anyway—Because he looks up at the blue sky and there’s nothing there but empty space making a big face at him—He looks at the world, it’s sticking its tongue out at him and once that mask is removed it’s looking at him with hollow big red eyes like his own eyes—He may see the earth move but there’s no significance of any particular kind to attach to that—One little unexpected noise behind him will make him snarl in rage—He’ll pull and tug at his poor stained shirt—He feels like rubbing his face into something that isnt.

His socks are thick tired moisty slimes—The beard on his cheeks itches the running sweats and annoys the tortured mouth—There’s a twisted feeling of no-