Desolation Angels (11 page)

While meditating,

I am Buddha—

Who else?

50

And meanwhile there I'm sitting in the high alpine, leaning in my straps against the pack against a hump of grassy knob—Flowers everywhere—Jack Mountain same place, Golden Horn—Hozomeen now out of sight behind the peak Desolation—And far off at the head of the lake no sign yet of Fred and the boat, which would be a little bug-funnel in the circular watery void of the lake—“Time to go down”—No time to waste—I have two hours to make five miles down—My shoes have no more soles so I have thick cardboard slip-ins but already the rocks have cut into that and already the cardboard slip't so I've already tread on rocks (with 70 pounds on back) in my stockinged feet—What a laugh, for champeen mountain singer and King of Desolation cant even get down his own peak—I heave up, ugh, sweating and start again, down, down the dusty rocky trail, around switchbacks, steep, some switchbacks I cut and just sliver down the slope and slide to ski on my feet to next level—filling my shoes with pebbles—

But what a joy, the world! I go!—But the aching feet wont enjoy and rejoice—The aching thighs that quiver and dont feel like carrying down anymore from the top but have to, step by step—

Then I see the boat's mark coming 7 miles away, it's Fred comin to meet me at the foot of the trail where two months before the mules'd clambered full-packed and slipslided up rocks to the trail, off the tug-pushed barge, in the rain—“I'll be there right on the button with him”—“meet the boat”—laughing—But the trail gets worse, from high meadow swing-along switchbacks it comes to bushes that tug at my pack and boulders in the trail that murder the pinched squeezed feet—Sometimes a knee-deep weed trail full of invisible hurts—Sweat—I keep hitching my thumbs through the packstrap to hunch it high on my back—It's much harder than I thought—I can see the guys laughing now. “Old Jack thought he'd make it down the trail in two hours with his pack! He couldnt even make it halfway down! Fred waited with the boat an hour, went to look for him, and had to wait all night till he come in by moonlight cryin ‘O Mama why'd dyever do this to me?'”—I appreciate suddenly the great labor of those smokefighters at the big Thunder Creek burn—Not only to stumble and sweat with firepacks but only to get to a burning blaze and work even harder and hotter, and no hope anywhere in rocks and stones—Me who'd et Chinee dinners watching the smoke 22 miles away, hah—I was getting my come-on-down

51

The best way to come down a mountain is like running, swing your arms free and fall as you come, your feet will hold you up for the rest—but O I had no feet because no shoes, I was “barefooted” (as the saying goes) and far from stomping down on big trail-singin steps as I bash along tra la tra la I could hardly even mincingly place them the soles were so thin and the rocks so sudden some of them with a sharp bruise—A John Bunyan morning, it was all I could do to keep my mind on other things—I tried to sing, think, daydream, do as I did by the desolation stove—But Karma your trail is laid out for you—Could have no more escaped that morning of bruised torn feet and burning-ache thighs (and eventual searing blisters like needles) and the gasping sweats, the attack of insects, than I can escape and than you can escape being eternally around to go through the emptiness of form (including the emptiness of the form of your complaining personality)—I had to do it, not rest, my only concern was keeping the boat or even losing the boat, O what sleep on that trail that night would have been, full moon, but full moon was shining down on the valley too—and there you could hear music over the waters, and smell cigarette smoke, and listen to the radio—Here, all was, thirsty little creeks of September no widern my hand, giving out water with water, where I splashed and drank and muddled to go on—Lord—How sweet is life? As sweet

as cold

water in a dell

on a dusty tired trail—

—on a rusty tired trail—bestrewn with the kickings of the mules last June when they were forced at stickpoint to jump over a badly hacked pathway around a fallen snag that was too big to climb, and Lord I had to bring up the mare among the frightened mules and Andy was cursing “I cant do this all by myself goddamit, bring up that mare!” and like in an old dream of other lifetimes when I handled the horses I came up, leading her, and Andy grabbed the reins and heaved at her neck, poor soul, while Marty stabbed her in the ass with a stick, deep—to lead the frightened mule—and stabbed the mule—and rain and snow—now all the mark of that fury is dry in September dust as I sit there and puff—A lot of little edible weeds all around—A man could do it, hide in these hills, boil weeds, bring a little fat with him, boil weeds over small Indian fires and live forever—“Happy with a stone underhead let heaven and earth go about their changes!” sang old Chinese Poet Hanshan—No maps, packs, firefinders, batteries, airplanes, warnings on radios, just mosquitoes humming in harmony, and the trickle of the streamlet—But no, Lord has made this movie in his mind and I'm a part of it (the part of it known as me) and it's for me to understand this world and so go among it preaching the Diamond Steadfastness that says: “You're here and you're not here, both, for the same reason,”—“it's Eternal Power munging along”—So I up I get and lunge along with pack, thumbed, and wince on ankled pains and turn the trail faster and faster under my growing trot and pretty soon I'm running, bent, like a Chinese woman with a pack of faggots on her neck, jingle jingle drunning and pumping stiff knees thru rock underbrush and around corners, sometimes I crash off the trail and bellow back on't, somehow, never lose, the way was made to be followed—Down the hill I'll meet thin young boy starting out on his climb, I'm fat with hugepack, I'm going to get drunk in the cities with butchers, and it's Springtime in the Void—Sometimes I fall, on haunches, slipt, the pack is my back bumper, I burnst right along bumbing for fair, what words to describe hoopely tootely pumling down a parpity trail, prapooty—Swish, sweat—Every time I hit my bruised football toe I cry “Almost!” but it never gets it straight so's to lame me—The toe, bruised in Columbia College scrimmages under lights in Harlem dusks, some big bum from Sandusky trod on it with his spikes and big boned calf all down—Toe never recovered—bottom and top both busted and sore, when a rock prods in there my whole ankle will turn to protect it—yet, turning an ankle is a Pavlovian
fait accompli,
Airapetianz couldnt show me any better how not to believe I've strained a needed ankle, or even sprained—it's a dance, dance from rock to rock, hurt to hurt, wince down the mountain, the poetry's all there—And the world that awaits me!

52

Seattles in the fog, burlesque shows, cigars and wines and papers in a room, fogs, ferries, bacon and eggs and toast in the morning—sweet cities below.

Down about where the heavy timber begins, big Ponderosas and russet all-trees, the air hits me nice, green Northwest, blue pine needles, fresh, the boat is cutting a swath in the nearer lake, it's going to beat me, but just keep on swinging, Marcus Magee—You've had falls before and Joyce made a word two lines long to describe it—brabarackotawackomanashtopatarata-wackomanac!

We'll light three candles to three souls when we get there.

The trail, last halfmile, is worse, than above, the rocks, big, small, twisted ravines for your feet—Now I begin sobbing for myself, cursing of course—“It never ends!” is my big complaint, just like I'd thought in the door, “How can anything ever end? But this is only a Samsara-World-of-Suffering trail, subject to time and space, therefore must end, but my God it will never end!” and I come running and thwapping finally no more—For the first time I fall exhausted without planning.

And the boat is coming right in.

“Cant make it.”

I sit there a long time, moody faced and finished—Wont do it—But the boat gets coming closer, it's like timeclock civilization, gotta get to work on time, like on the railroad, tho you cant make it you'll make it—It was blasted in the forges with iron vulcan might, by Poseidon and his heroes, by Zen Saints with swords of intelligence, by Master Frenchgod—I push myself up and try on—Every step wont do, it wont work, that my thighs hold it up's'mystery to me—plah—

Finally I'm loading my steps on ahead of me, like placing topheavy things on a platform with outstretched arms, the kind of strain you cant keep up—other than the bare feet (now battered with torn skin and blisters and blood) I could just plow and push down the hill, like a falling drunk almost falling never quite falling and if so would it hurt as much as my feet?—nu—gotta push and place each up-knee and down with the barbfoot on scissors of Blakean Perfidy with worms and howlings everywhere—dust—I fall on my knees.

Rest that way awhile and go on.

“Eh damn Eh maudit” I'm crying last 100 yards—now the boat's stopped and Fred whistles sharply, no a hoot, an Indian Hooo! which I answer with a whistle, with fingers in mouth—He settles back to read a cowboy book while I finish that trail—Now I dont want him to hear me cry, but he does he must hear my slow sick steps—plawrp, plawrp—timble tinker of pebbles plopping off a rock round precipice, the wild flowers dont interest me no more—

“I cant make it” is my only thought as I keep going, which thought is like phosphorescent negative red glow imprinting the film of my brain “Gotta make it”—

Desolation, Desolation

so hard

To come down off of

53

But that was okay, the water was shrill and close and lapping on dry driftwood when I rounded the final little shelf-trail to the boat—This I plodded and waved with a smile, letting the feet go by, blister in left shoe that I thought was a sharp pebble ground into my skin—

In all the excitement, dont realize I am back in the world at last—

And no sweeter man in the world to meet me at the bottom of it.

Fred is an oldtime woodsman and ranger liked by all the old fellows and the young—Gloomily in bunkhouses he presents to you a completely saddened and almost disappointed face staring off into the void, sometimes he wont answer questions, he lets you drink in his trance—You learn from his eyes, which look far, that there's nothing further to see—A great silent Bodhisattva of a man, these woodsmen have it—Ole Blacky Blake loves him, Andy loves him, his son Howard loves him—Instead of good old soul Phil in the boat, whose day-off, it's Fred, wearing incredibly long visor, crazyhat, golf link hat he uses to shade in the sun while prorping the boat around the lake—“There comes the fire warden” say the buttonhatted fishermen from Bellingham and Otay—from Squohomish and Squonalmish and Vancouver and pine towns and residential suburbs of Seattle—They ease up and down the lake casting their lines for secret joyful fish who once were birds but fell—They were angels and fell, the fisherman, loss of wings meant need of food—But they fish for the joy of the joyous dead fish—I've seen it—I understand the gaping mouth of a fish on a hook—“When a lion claws ya, let him claw … that kind of courage wont help ya”———Fish submit,

fishermen sit

And cast the line.

Old Fred, all's he gotta do is see no fisherman campfire runs wild and burns up the timber scene—Big binoculars, he looks the far shore over—Illegal campers—Parties of drinkers on little islands, with sleepingbags and cans of beans—Women sometimes, some of them beautiful—Great floating harems in putput boats, legs, show all, awful them Samsara-World-of-Suffering women with they show you their legs for to turn the wheel along—

What makes the world

go around?

Between the stems

Fred sees me and starts up the motor to edge up closer, make it easier for easy-to-see-dejectable me—First thing he does is ask me a question which I dont hear and I say “Huh?” and he looks surprised but us ghosts that spend summer in the solitude wilds we lose all our touch, get ephemeral and not there—A lookout coming down the mountain is like a boy that was drowned reappearing in ghost form, I know—But he's only asked “How's the weather up there, hot?”

“No, a big wind's blowin up there, from the west, from the Sea, it's not hot, only down here”

“Gimme your pack”

“It's heavy”

But he reaches over the gunwale and hauls it in anyway, arms outstretched and strained, and lays it on the bilgey boards, and I clamber on and point to my shoes—“No shoes, look”—

Starts up the motor as we leave, and I put on Band-Aids after soaking my feet in the rush by the starboards—Wow, the water comes up and slams up my legs, so I wash them too, clear to the knee, and soak my tortured woolsocks too and wring em and lay em out to dry on the poop—oop—

And here we go putputtin back to the world, in a bright sunny and beautiful morning, and I sit in the front seat and smoke the new Lucky Strikes Camels he's brought me, and we talk—We yell—the engine is loud—

We yell like everywhere in the world of No-Desolation (?) people are yelling in telling rooms, or whispering, the noise of their converse is melded into one vast white compound of holy hushing silence which eventually you'll hear forever when you learn (and learn to remember to hear)—So why not? go ahead and yell, do what you want—

And we talk about deer

54

Happy, happy, the little gasoline fumes on the lake—happy, the cowboy book he has, which I glance at, the first rough dusty chapter with sneering hombres in dust hats pow-wowing murders in a canyon crack—hatred steeling in their faces all blue—woe, gaunt, worn, weathered horses and rough chaparral—And I think “O pooey it's all a dream, who care? Come on, that which passes through everything, pass through everything, I'm with you”—“Pass through dear Fred, make him feel the ecstasy of you, God”—“Pass through it all”—How can the universe be anything but a Womb? And the Womb of God or the Womb of Tathagata, it's two languages not two Gods—And anyway the truth is relative, the world is relative—Everything is relative—Fire is fire and isnt fire—“Dont disturb the sleeping Einstein in his bliss”—“So it's only a dream so shut up and enjoy—lake of the mind”—