The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [41]
“Just about old buddy.”
That rock we were camped against was a marvel. It was thirty feet high and thirty feet at base, a perfect square almost, and twisted trees arched over it and peeked down on us. From the base it went outward, forming a concave, so if rain came we’d be partially covered. “How did this immense sonumbitch ever get here?”
“It probably was left here by the retreating glacier. See over there that field of snow?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the glacier what’s left of it. Either that or this rock tumbled here from inconceivable prehistoric mountains we can’t understand, or maybe it just landed here when the friggin mountain range itself burst out of the ground in the Jurassic upheaval. Ray when you’re up here you’re not sittin in a Berkeley tea room. This is the beginning and the end of the world right here. Look at all those patient Buddhas lookin at us saying nothing.”
“And you come out here by yourself…”
“For weeks on end, just like John Muir, climb around all by myself following quartzite veins or making posies of flowers for my camp, or just walking around naked singing, and cook my supper and laugh.”
“Japhy I gotta hand it to you, you’re the happiest little cat in the world and the greatest by God you are. I’m sure glad I’m learning all this. This place makes me feel devoted, too, I mean, you know I have a prayer, did you know the prayer I use?”
“What?”
“I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining any angers or gratitudes or anything, and I say, like ‘Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha,’ then I run on, say, to ‘David O. Selznick, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha’ though I don’t use names like David O. Selznick, just people I know because when I say the words ‘equally a coming Buddha’ I want to be thinking of their eyes, like you take Morley, his blue eyes behind those glasses, when you think ‘equally a coming Buddha’ you think of those eyes and you really do suddenly see the true secret serenity and the truth of his coming Buddhahood. Then you think of your enemy’s eyes.”
“That’s great, Ray,” and Japhy took out his notebook and wrote down the prayer, and shook his head in wonder. “That’s really really great. I’m going to teach this prayer to the monks I meet in Japan. There’s nothing wrong with you Ray, your only trouble is you never learned to get out to spots like this, you’ve let the world drown you in its horseshit and you’ve been vexed…though as I say comparisons are odious, but what we’re sayin now is true.”
He took his bulgur rough cracked wheat and dumped a couple of packages of dried vegetables in and put it all in the pot to be ready to be boiled at dusk. We began listening for the yodels of Henry Morley, which didn’t come. We began to worry about him.
“The trouble about all this, dammit, if he fell off a boulder and broke his leg there’d be no one to help him. It’s dangerous to…I do it all by myself but I’m pretty good, I’m a mountain goat.”
“I’m gettin hungry.”
“Me too dammit, I wish he gets here soon. Let’s ramble around and eat snowballs and drink water and wait.”
We did this, investigating the upper end of the flat plateau, and came back. By now the sun was gone behind the western wall of our valley and it was getting darker, pinker, colder, more hues of purple began to steal across the jags. The sky was deep. We even began to see pale stars, at least one or two. Suddenly we heard a distant “Yodelayhee” and Japhy leaped up and jumped to the top of a boulder and yelled “Hoo hoo hoo!” The Yodelayhee came back.
“How far is he?”
“My God from the sound of it he’s not even started. He’s not even at the beginning of the valley of boulders. He can never make it tonight.”
“What’ll we do?”
“Let’s go to the rock cliff and sit on the edge and call him an hour. Let’s bring these peanuts and raisins and munch on