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.But there’s old Ben Fagan puffing and chuckling over his pipe so what the hell, why bother grownup men and poets at that with your own troubles—So Ben and I and his chum Jonesy also a chuckly pipesmoker go out to the bar (Mike’s Place) and sip a few beers, at first 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—We’re 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 I’ll 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 he’ll 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 sitting crosslegged on the back mattress of Dave’s jeepster (Willie the Jeep), a terrific trip through Las Vegas, St.Louis, stopping off at expensive motels and drinking nothing but the best Scotch out of the bottle all the way—And what better way to go back to New York, I could have blown 190 dollars on an airplane—And Dave’s never met the great Cody and will be looking forward to that—So me and Ben leave the park and slowly walk to the bar on Columbus Street and I order my first double bourbon and gingerale.The lights are twinkling on outside in that fantastic toy street, I can feel the joy rise in my soul—I now remember Big Sur with a clear piercing love and agony and even the death of Tyke fits in with everything but I dont realize the enormity of what’s yet to come—We call up Dave Wain who’s back from Reno and he comes blattin down to the bar in his jeepster driving that marvelous way he does (once he was a cab-driver) talking all the time and never making a mistake, in fact as good a driver as Cody altho I cant imagine anybody being that good and asked Cody about it the next day—But old jealous drivers always point out faults and complain, “Ah well that Dave Wain of yours doesnt takes his curves right, he eases up and sometimes even pokes the brake a little instead of just ridin that old curve around on increased power, man you gotta work those curves”—Obvious at this time now, by the way and parenthetically, that there’s so much to tell about the fateful following three weeks it’s hardly possible to find anyplace to begin [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]