BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.... it was the new year and I had diarrhea. The Indians were turning on the music full blast. I was taking the loss of my Tibetan Family very hard. I was stuck with Rosie and Nanina, a French student of Bero's and a German dharma groupie. "It's getting worse and worse, Michael," lamented Rosie. "Ten years ago there was nothing here. Now the Indians are destroying this place," she sighed. But Rosie got me to a doctor. I was saved in the nick of time. Nanina was also sick and spent most of her time lying nude in her room. She asked me if I wanted to fuc k her. I said no. But it was Bero's appearance during his difficult time that inspired me. He was an ox of a man, beefy and huge. My head would swell and shoot sparks whenever he passed me. I followed him to the stupa and sat with him inside the giant monolith's guts; we faced a huge glowing Buddha figure. It seemed to sit in suspended anima tion.
All Buddhist statues pierced you with their weird trance. I began to feel light and free. I heard the Buddha speak: CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE. My rib-cage was smarting. I could feel Summer's subtle body. It was denser than mine. She had a lot of witchcraft behind her. "Don't get lost in a dream world with her," the Buddha warned. "Balance your energies CORRECTLY and CONSISTENTLY, RELEASE MORE!" I could hear the New Year crowds heaving and barging outside. It sounded like empty bottles rolling and clanking away. But in a strange muffled sort of way. I gazed ruefully at the floor. Memories of Bero's frescoes flooded my mind. I saw strange half-clad figures; they tied knots in their heads and had deep nasty stares; these were the wrathful Maha-siddahs, the crazy adepts Jim had so admired. I started to cry. I was disgusted with Jim and at the same time missed him terribly. Jim's weird legacy still haunted me. Summer was on my mind, too. Was she also a new sacrificial victim? Was she also a victim or just another perpetrator of the black arts? Did she abuse her powers and skid off into an illness spiral? My head began to tingle. Bero was getting up. A strange humming entered my ears. Bero was blessing me, I could feel it. Now was the time to plunge into the unknown.
I took a bus to Gaya, a miserable and ugly town, dark, intense, menacing. A medical student who had befriended me at the stupa showed me off to his roomies. These young Indians were obsessed with the dazzling mammon of the west. My Olympus camera and worn-out Walkman were minutely inspected, and I was hosted to a dinner prepared on the premises and served steaming hot. My hosts wanted visas for the promised land. I was noncommittal.
I was on my way to Calcutta. My train arrived on time in Gaya. I was in desperate straits. I was running out of money in a foreign land at the very start of a brand new year. My hosts were from Uttar Pradesh and were looking for a hustle. They guided me to my cabin and left me in a Bengali world. The screech of the train pulled me back from my self-imposed trance. I was frightened and now had to face KALI. The black Madonna of India, licking the world's sins with her lethal tongue, making my movements absolutely mad. No words, no words .... inside KALI'S mouth. I began hearing her haunting refrain .... CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, KOFFEE, KOFFEE .... CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, KOFFEE, KOFFEE. I looked outside my window and saw a wall of thick haze and tropical vegetation. I could see industrial infrastructure everywhere. If Delhi was like Beijing, than Calcutta was like Shanghai. The train crawled into Howrah station.
Howrah was a monster. All kinds of noise and squalor, videos and beggars, huge lines and crowds, touts too. I was in shock. I could not afford a taxi and didn't know which bus to take, so I walked across Howrah bridge. It was mesmerizing, zillions of people and moving objects swarmed over the bridge in both directions. The smog was astonishing, like a vision from hell. The Hooghly river was barely visible. Calcutta was madness.
I was inside KALI's belly and a monster was now shaking up and down, first sideways, quick walking, sitting, then crossing its legs, then uncrossing them, then getting up and rubbing its hands, now rubbing its fly, hitching its pants, then slitting its eyes to see everything, then grabbing me by the ribs, and screaming, screaming. This was KALI'S song. There was no money waiting for me at the bank. I had given my stepmother the wrong wiring instructions. I had to contact her and start from scratch. money was running out and I was in a hot spot. I found lodgings at a Theravadan temple, just in time. I plunged back into the maelstrom and sent two telegrams.
Then I went to visit KALI for she was the queen of Calcutta. Her face was everywhere. I found relief from the heat and noise in the unfinished subway system and zoomed down to Kaligut. Here KALI'S blood lust was satisfied. Priest touts showed me the sacrifice altar where goats were killed every morning. I poured water and flowers over a shiva lingam, a kind of stone penis , and said prayers for the family. I swished around some incense and got slammed for a donation. There was red paste on my forehead. The cry of ravens was everywhere. Beggars roamed in every corner smelling of strange purification. I thought about Brown Eyes. KALI knew how to work with the elements, with blood and water. Here I was exactly one year to the day since my final puja at the Burmese place. I could taste Summer's honey suck le breath. The world was in turmoil. The hard-liners were gaining ground all over the world. Exotic nickknacks and fast food absorbed my attention as I walked back at night. Men piss ed right on the street. Smoke was everywhere. I had survived my first day in Calcutta. KALI was laughing and taunting me, then making love to me, she was now my consort for this nightmare part of my journey. I was really protected
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This Harvest epic has been totally forgotten. Nobody knows now what Black and White Stress is anymore. You can read the news and say "Oh, boy." But it's now 8001 AD and all this weird history was just recently discovered buried in a mine-shaft on a DVD as these extra-terrestrial archeologists slowly excavated the lost and buried cities of Southern and Northern California. The hidden shaft was uncovered near this indistinctive mound somewhere near the Sierra mountains.
Standard scientific theory says a big bang created the universe many billions of years ago, but if this is true why are all the known galaxies so unevenly distributed? Why are they stretched out narrowly in single file throughout the known universe. It's a strange post-explosion configuration. Galaxies also are always dying and being reborn constantly. But what if this process lacks any kind of beginning?
What if the moon is simply a hollow space ship which was put into synchronous orbit around earth long ago by advanced beings? What if pyramids on Mars signaled some kind of advanced civilization?
What if Atlantis was real and got submerged by ice melts twelve thousand years ago? And what if these sunken pyramids off the coast of Okinawa are part of this lost Atlantean civilization?
What if Darwin was wrong about evolution and that random factors just don't add up when contemplating any complex kind of evolution?
What if Bohr was right, that all matter is basically psychic in nature. Now what would that do to Einstein's material universe and his diminishing hopes of finding any grand unification theory.
We still don't know what RJ is really. And we don't know what Atlantis was either. But this thing about UFOs. Now that's truly weird....
It could be this invisible field with strange curves. Maybe a cultural map about long distant conflicts. But we really don't know for sure.
All we can say today is this: Good maps certainly make a difference. If it's the right symbol then the cultural penetration will be successful. We are now trying to penetrate this critical riddle....
I'm eating this sweet and recently pilfered yogurt tonight on the drive to SF.
We're staying with some gay guy in this city of small steep hills and insidious parking hells. You know, ask Jeeves! I'm looking at the city, its lights. Some concerned guy now looking closely at his dog. The night's warm, a silent gleaming plane is flying in the distance. There's a half-moon in the mist. I'm reading this Zen companion in the toilet and Info-Culture in the guest bedroom. Now 1987 quickly comes full circle in 2000. It is The Third Wave or maybe Necromancer as Marx and Smith are retired. It's not just Alvin Toffler and Norbert Weiner reducing everything into digital hits in this unknown infamy.
We live in an age of BIG SPEED, TREMENDOUSLY KEEN PRECISION, and CONSTANT NOVELTY....
There's all this insidious disorienting fragmentation within this silent unseen centralization; there's this new freedom within this fiendishly efficient control, in the great age of the "smart machine." You see fuzzy logic is still controlling things at a distance in this white male corporate world.
The Kerouac lineage was ubiquitously evident since 1991, but it really exploded with a bang in 1994. Yet it started to slowly die in 1996. Now we're desperately trying to break out in 2000 AD. Maybe in 2001 we'll succeed. But it's sure one rough hoe. Oh, it's just that sharp-edged bitter San Francisco feeling. It just bites you in the ass as it menacingly stares at you with its cold sunglasses even during an unusually warm day. It sounds like sinister footsteps, a distant sawing and hammering; it's the threatening drone of an accelerating car. It's living in the big city. It's where the mingling money is. And SF's got this creepy S&M feeling to it. It's just so congested. Jeeves just had its IPO last year. It's got 800+ employees. It went quickly from 60 to 180 and suddenly crashed last Spring with everybody else to a measly 30 on the Nasdaq.
Is old Walt Whitman inside the CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE? You know, the third floor is a sad haunted shrine-room to the Beats. I'm not sure what I feel. Perhaps nervousness, maybe confusion. Possibly also this feeling of impending release. It's a strange bardo into WHO KNOWS. Is old Andrei Voznesensky listening? Was he a Russian Kerouac? I'm looking at the creepy antiques. The lineage is crystal clear and I'm going now in a very different direction....
GOODBYE GUYS.
I'm trying to make closure here. The scattered White Stress of the Beats is not appealing. I'm a new species. I'm trying to find Ferlinghetti that old fart....
I CAN SEE HOWL AND KADDISH AND MIND BREATHES; I CAN SEE PLANET NEWS AND PLUTONIUM ODE, ALSO REALITY SANDWICHES, AND IT'S THE FALL OF AMERICA AND INDIAN JOURNALS; I CAN SEE ON THE ROAD AND SOME OF THE DHARMA, AND IT'S MEXICO CITY BLUES AND DR. SAX; IT'S THE SUBTERRANEANS AND NOW THE DHARMA BUMS; IT'S ALSO DESOLATION ANGELS AND ITS BIG SUR, AND IT'S THE BOOK OF BLUES AND THE LONESOME TRAVELER, AND IT'S SATORI IN PARIS AND ALSO THE BOOK OF DREAMS; IT'S PIC AND ALSO VISIONS OF CODY, AND IT'S VISIONS OF GERARD.
Anne Waldman is a fast-speaking woman. And would Jack London really be comfortable here? And O'Neill? How about Jeffers, and what about Steinbeck?
WE JUST GOT A GODDAM TICKET!
Thanks a lot, Lawrence! The twenty cents in my pocket would have made a big difference. Is this a bad or good omen? I didn't come here to kiss Ferlinghetti's ass. Jason's feeling a little out of touch and he just wants to tune out. Is it worth fighting for? Jason says YES, but these guys are not fucking icons to me anymore.
IT'S A BIG DISCONNECTION....
The kiss asses are walling in Lawrence with their panicky faces and phony smiles. I'm hot. I'm sweaty. I'm pissed. I don't want to fight and I don't want to leave. But things are starting to badly stagnate. It's so hot. There's no spirituality here. These guys talk it, but they're just jacking off and spacing out. I feel no real connection now with anybody except Jeffers and even then it's dicey. I mean why am I here? To say hello to some dinosaur? Maybe that's really not it....
SO WE'RE AT VESUVIO'S:
This was the dingy bar of the Beats. Old Jack used to drink here. What an honor. I see a sign that says: beware of pickpockets and loose women. It's just less uptight here. The trip is struggling to come to an end. And I don't drink. I'm just having an orange juice. The Sydney Olympics are on TV. I'd forgotten about them completely. The ticket's bugging me, but a little less. This all feels like an anti-climax. But the bar's cool. The heat outside is bad. I mean real bad ... I got a free ripped beat-up Gary Snyder book and an old issue of WIRED magazine, also the latest issue of Poetry Flash.
Now how about North Beach versus Olema? There's really no comparison.
So where's Ramakrishna?
I'm looking at these ancient condom dispensers in the bathroom. Stuff like....
GLOW BOY, MULTI-EXTENDER RING, DU-O-DELIGHT, THRILLER and FINGERS OF PASSION
" Just arouse her, it's only 75 cents. "
Use quarters only.
And don't forget try all 6 types in rotation.
AND NOW IT'S BACK TO THE BAR:
IT'S JUST OLD VESUVIO'S....
The bartender's worked two years here. He's not part of the scene really. And the parking ticket was $25 and gas for home was $22.57, and I fell asleep on the way to Stockton.
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