Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (42 page)

The night is cold. Freezing. Snow. Ice. My legs are cold. This afternoon I had a long meditation and tried to dwell in Mind Essence. You can't dwell in it, can only glance and stare at it even, and think about it, but being hung with the three gunas of sattva, rajas and the other one [tamas] (intelligence of light, inertia of dark body, and energy that moves) one can't sit all the time, etc. But the greatness of Dickens is like the thing in [John Clellon] Holmes that does make him great . . . a vast O What The Hell Live It Up ness . . . like Holmes at old parties raising beerglass . . . with Lyndons and Durgins and what the hellers. . . . like Cannastra. May I someday be like Scrooge, a reformed dour Buddhist suddenly going mad dancing in the street? It doesn't matter, all's the same. Our Balzacs and Dickenses and Holy Dostoevskys knew that.

Goodbye,

Jack

 

P.S. Be sure to be sure to be sure to be sure.

But in truth, Scrooge was attached at first to his niggardly selfness; then he became liberated from that and became attached to people.

As for dwelling in Mind Essence, it's like Edie [Parker] who used to want to crawl up my ass hole she said and curl up. I can't crawl into mind essence and curl up because it is No Body, No Womb. But I can dwell
with
it. The secret of Buddhism is the practice of Dhyana in the morning, Dhyana in the afternoon, Dhyana in the night, every day. No other way. Finally when you've intuited so long it opens and opens to the illimitable void and vastness and etc. This is all clear. Don't show my stuff to [Robert] Duncan the Holmes. I'll see my agent soon about
Sax
mail.
BEAT
has been recommended now by editor in chief [Joe] Fox . . . the others are reading it. Happy New Year.

Jean

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]

December 29, 1954

 

Dear Kind King Mind:

Fraid you were mad then because of me unkind, the paper, was unkind. Never yet have seen Alistair Sim, I'm sick, home a day from work, deep cold, penicillin, I'm deaf almost, sick with love again also, moved to Gough Street artist bohemian pad, Sheila [Williams] comes surprise dressed up on her lunch hour to find me in clothes sweating in cell on pallet on floor, Neal is giggling and playing games with redhead [Natalie Jackson] in other room down the hall, I'm in love with twenty-two year old saint boy who loves me, lives there too, but terrible scene is here. I ran into painter Robert LaVigne, ignu-deep souled twenty-six year Polk-Sutter beard a month ago, we went up to see his paintings, walking up Sutter from Polk-Sutter Fosters Cafeteria where I went one night drunk to dig subterranean scene and look for Peter Carl—Sol DuPeru (who I met first nite in [Al] Sublette's room here in SF), so I went up to beard lonely to ask after DuPeru who he didn't know, we talked, he invited me to see paintings, went to house on Gough St. I walked in room—this was a month ago—and saw huge modern true painting of naked youth, and others of same, clothed and unclothed. Then in walked the boy his model, who painter, made it with too, gentle souled tall Russian red Kafka, respectful, silent, and so I came back that week, expected, and began season—great house, I told you, I brought Neal to dig the redhead girl, he made it with her last week and thereafter—long hall, big messy rooms, tea in kitchen, just like youth, we gather, talk, Neal rushes in 9AM WC Fields—Oliver Hardy pulling on or off his pants, makes it with girl, laughs again, puts on her clothes, she his vest, they blast,—and he and I agree on nostalgia of the front door, we've both gained so much tender youth kicks in last two weeks entering the apartment first floor of huge Victorian wood house, big smell of paintings and studio for LaVigne up front, Peter Orlovsky studying in a room in the middle (he's the boy) and Natalie the ex-Stanley Gould girlfriend here for four months in the back—so sweet and promising 115th St. tender joys entering the house again, for me, Neal feels same like I say, so one night before I leave for NYC—LaVigne telling me he's leaving, mysterious, leaving town to go paint (after his show running now, wild colored nudes and pix of Fosters) near San Diego, end of his season with Peter as perhaps mine ended when I left Houston for Dakar Doldrums, so he says he's leaving, will I see please Peter much when he's gone, needs a friend, needs sweet companion, I shudder, I see the love, I'm doomed, my heart melts again—how I hate women, can't stand not to be in love, can't stand not to be melting with real tenderness, childlike need sweetnesses, that's what's wrong with me and Sheila, I don't love like sad love can be, my heart's chill there. So I tell LaVigne, OH, god not again, what lord are you asking me for? I can't kneel and cocksuck forever like of old—but he says Peter knows and digs me, mind, man, I'm changed in Calif., like a dream—I'm waited for. So I went to NYC with that in mind, except also a night I spend there and talk to Peter who tells me he dreamt that he had walked up to me, put arms round my waist, I was surprised in dream. Then in hall in life, embraced, real sweetness in my breast, too much, I'd almost cry, but it's such poor pitiful fleeting human life, what do I want anyway? Nature boy—to be loved in return. So followed a night of embraces, not sex. Then NYC, then I return, move out of Sheila's to here—meanwhile, she suddenly digs Al Hinkle in my absence (in fact had before I left one evening when I was out all night, Al came visiting, got some wine, they talked on the floor rapport)—so in absence she made it with Hinkle, sweet, I am pleased—so she waits for him one night, I'm in NYC, then she goes out, he cuts by, doesn't know where she is, nor know I'm in NY, he goes up to Polk and Sutter Fosters looking for me or her, she has just left there, he goes up to the Gough street house, looking for Ginsberg, redhead says I'm away, he asks to flop for few hours, sleeps, wakes up, goes to take a piss, turns hall corner, there's naked Neal bumping into him (he didn't know Neal ever was there—all in my absence) they laugh, the circles of Dostoevsky in this house. I return, everybody making it full blast, Peter having got hi first time with Neal and redhead Natalie and suddenly DUG also, in strange drooling Peter Lorre way—he's a Myshkin too—BUT alas, now the sad horrors begin, LaVigne also digs me, I make it with him in bed, for life's sake tho not really want to, then when I move here we set up bed, all three of us making it in same bed, but I only dig Peter really, Peter begins guilty only digging me, tho all love Robert LaVigne for sad genius ignu self and beard he wears—and one thing, I can't understand why he's bowing out, what genius of sad knowledge of loss he had (as I had with Neal in Texas)—meanwhile Peter and I have mad conversations about Thought, I read
Visions of Neal
aloud to Natalie and all, Neal expected hourly again, night of wild balling with Peter with Bob there too—and then Bob (LaVigne) goes mad, sees self losing, Peter changing, I seem smug and over bestial, he's angry, won't speak, locks self in room with Peter to plead, threaten? I never heard, we try to talk, Bob and I being more or less equal souls, fruits, can't say, hate and love each other, Peter scared and guilty and faithful to Robert, I suffer now, anger in the house, all wrought up for days, who will kill who? But I not want to deceive or offend Robert so drag pallet into my lone room, tension yet mounts, Bob feels I've betrayed him, I'm falling more in love, he's falling more in despair—love though he is leaving any week now, still can't give up hope for golden love boy, he thinks I'm evil mocking (Hal Chase thought) grabbing kid fast for kicks, Peter meanwhile promised to me, promise fades, we finally all three meet in kitchen and evil hate scenes, Peter loving both, old fidelities, new sensual mental kicks, Bob and I digging each other perhaps the most yet thru clouds of fear, the maya mists, irony between us, he accusing, I can't stand it as he thinks I'm being dirty toward Peter, but I love, meanwhile Peter more and more offended by scene we can't stop as it's in cards—Robert saying “You're both waiting for me to kick off so you can make it together.” I saying, “We can't have a rose without your blessing = rose requires perfection which you added don't take it away now.” Robert saying, “I won't again” irony, Peter saying finally ah comedies, “You're both a pain in the ass”—only Burroughs would appreciate. But finally we all melting in sadness, I can't hide that I want, Robert can't hide that he too wanted, Peter that he didn't need—his innocence going to see us old farts go woeful, he also wants girls, after all, as well as teacher kind king mind yet sweet prince would love us too, and me after all these hopeless years—that is to say, this be some self deception but actual promise of Peter nature more harmonious for kind of sweet comradeship than any other I had yet met, I having given up hoping long ago, so now hardly begun to thaw to the rue and sadness of love, just beginning tonight in my sick bed. Well we all made up in a kind, Peter to go alone, Bob to go alone, I alone, Sheila appearing at noon digging my kick sadly, she loves me, I dig her but can't make it, with final conversation neither of us really wanting to betray Robert between self and Peter, that we would wait and see—but already in sad old love heart I know it never came that way, that easy, unless this was prelude of torments to some bliss, will never manifest with such innocence again, I'm sad, lay in bed sweating with cold, too olden to really remember self pities of eighteen-twenty again, but unhappy till I began thinking of the unlikely possible accidental sweetnesses of life, maybe that's all they are, transient. And in his journal (where I peeked tho he would have killed me) Robert writing suffering lines about god shaping him with torment to bareness and true beauty, he really digs, though we can't talk.

So the situation stands now, Natalie making me tea to drink, meanwhile rent is due, Robert due to leave, house to break up, I have to find new pad or hotel—will move in or near area near Peter and Polk Gulch in some hotel for two weeks till paycheck comes enough to get small pad, meanwhile reading
Visions of Neal
and
San Francisco Blues
.

Yes, I know maybe you will wind up throwing up arms at life's mess and accept it Dickens way but I still say Jack that though I did not attain sanctity because I was too egotistically hung upon the idea of pure vision continuous in order to be saint, and had no stern bare guru who KNEW, just Van Dorens who made me doubt—there is the goal of the Nameless that is the most worthy for us if we've the faith or insight to persist. I wait for life like this to break me down to no attachments maybe because none so sublime as I can emotionally imagine exist

(This silly simpleminded after all our conversation and your last letter, maybe to a point where as before I'll sit in silence cooking vegetables again as I did in 49 in Harlem hopeless till my door was silent and silently swung open and let in heaven's light) to persist in seeking it whatever way is offered, directer the better. But what a madness gamble it is. I'll try to live it up first, then die again, when I'm sure there's nothing left in life for me to dig of beauty, but that's almost endless, at least sadness is, recurrent. So practice thy Dhyana and bring me holy news.

Will not show your prose to Duncan, will to Rexroth. Mail
Sax
. Now as to
S.F. Blues
, that excellent book: I've reread it (having read it thru over Kansas on plane back) slowly halfway thru taking notes on what I like. I'd say there were therein great original poems, so far I found namely: that is to say the absolutely most classic ones

but it's obvious how many of them are great original poetry besides. By the way the plastic coverlets and several others are also very like imagistic poems and W.C. Williams. I haven't finished reading thru again tho. Where's Neal on Trial?

I had a copy of Joan Rawshanks typed up in case I need, otherwise you'll have that extra. Will publish Joan Anderson Neal letter.
¹⁰³
Have written Bill the dope, and also long letter, he wrote me too. “Goddam there's nobody to talk to here,” or “I wish there were somebody to talk to,” he said.

Neal is going to NYC direct the 8th or 16th maybe of January he says at the moment. May bring Redhead, or Sheila, or anyone who knows. If he goes. If he does I'll write you when and where.

Allen

 

(also received Xmas card via Paterson from Lizzie Lehrman in South Africa. She's married.)

Carl Solomon has not arrived, can you investigate?

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]

Jan 12, 1955

 

Dear Jack:

I have your new letter—I can't answer, too much thought, tonight, must wait till tomorrow or Friday nite (today's Wednesday) but I did write you big letter, not mailed, was going to add to it, haven't yet, so I send it, it's all about world war-lings, forgive me for answering holy letter with inflammatory. Read other letters first.

Since then (I wrote it almost soon as got back) I've moved into room on corner Polk Sutter with sixteen windows on corner of building overlooking Polk Sutter Fosters cafeteria where everything happens red neon scene streetlight, I look down from above, watch everybody's window, big secret plots, I'm still in love, boy loves me we don't sleep we talk, never flesh really yet (except a few times) we talk, great lover for me, young, digs my curiosity heart, I dig his saints, he has visions too, trees bowing in park on startled mornings for him on way to school—but Robert LaVigne hates me and him now, we all live across street from each other, I'm keeping an hour to hour journal of it, fifty pages since the first of the year, record for me, something great happens to me in Frisco after girl now for first time in life boy—I will at least be able to know what it is I am losing in losing life when I go by holy—if ever—