Big Sur/Chapter 8
But there’s moonlit fognight, the blossoms of the fire flames in the stove—There’s giving an apple to the mule, the big lips taking hold—There’s the bluejay drinking my canned milk by throwing his head back with a miffle of milk on his beak—There’s the scratching of the raccoon or of the rat out there, at night—There’s the poor little mouse eating her nightly supper in the humble corner where I’ve put out a little delight-plate full of cheese and chocolate candy (for my days of killing mice are over)—There’s the raccoon in his fog, there the man to his fireside, and both are lonesome for God—There’s me coming back from seaside nightsittings like a muttering old Bhikku stumbling down the path—There’s me throwing my spotlight on a sudden raccoon who clambers up a tree his little heart beating with fear but I yell in French “Hello there little man” (allo ti bonhomme)—There’s the bottle of olives, 49¢, imported, pimentos, I eat them one by one wondering about the late afternoon hillsides of Greece—And there’s my spaghetti with tomato sauce and my oil and vinegar salad and my applesauce relishe my dear and my black coffee and Roquefort cheese and afterdinner nuts, my dear, all in the woods—(Ten delicate olives slowly chewed at midnight is something no one’s ever done in luxurious restaurants)—There's the present moment fraught with tangled woods—There’s the bird suddenly quiet on his branch while his wife glances at him—There’s the grace of an axe handle as good as an Eglevsky ballet—There’s “Mien Mo Mountain” in the fog illumined August moon mist among other heights gorgeous and misty rising in dimmer tiers somehow rosy in the night like the classic silk paintings of China and Japan—There’s a bug, a helpless little wingless crawler, drowning in a water can, I get it out and it wanders and goofs on the porch till I get sick of watching—There’s the spider in the out-house minding his own business—There’s my side of bacon hanging from a hook on the ceiling of the shack—There’s the laughter of the loon in the shadow of the moon—There’s an owl hooting in weird Bodhidharma trees—There’s flowers and redwood logs—There’s the simple woodfire and the careful yet absent-minded feeding of it which is an activity that like all activities is no-activity (Wu wei) yet it is a meditation in itself especially because all woodfires, like snowflakes, are different every time—Yes, there’s the resinous purge of a flame-enveloped redwood log—Yes the cross-sawed redwood log turns into a coal and looks like a City of the Gandharvas or like a western butte at sunset—There’s the bhikku’s broom, the kettle—There’s the laced soft fud over the sand, the sea—There's all these avid preparations for decent sleep like the night I'm looking for my sleeping socks (so’s not to dirty the sleepingbag inside) and find myself singing “A donde es me sockiboos?”—Yes, and down in the valley there’s my burro, Alf, the only living being in sight—There’s in mid of sleep the moon appearing—There’s universal substance which is divine substance because where else can it be?—There’s the family of deer on the dirt road at dusk—There’s the creek coughing down the glade—There’s the fly on my thumb rubbing its nose then stepping to the page of my book—There’s the hummingbird swinging his head from side to side like a hoodlum—There’s all that, and all my fine thoughts, even unto my ditty written to the sea “I took a pee, into the sea, acid to acid, and me to ye” yet I went crazy inside three weeks.
For who could go crazy that could be so relaxed as that: but wait: there are the signposts of something wrong.