The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [55]
“Oh,” says Alvah sitting up glad, “and what else?”
“Think of barn swallows and nighthawks filling the fields. Do you know, say Ray, since yesterday I translated another stanza of Han Shan, lissen, ‘Cold Mountain is a house, without beams or walls, the six doors left and right are open, the hall is the blue sky, the rooms are vacant and empty, the East wall strikes the west wall, at the center not one thing. Borrowers don’t trouble me, in the cold I build a little fire, when I’m hungry I boil up some greens, I’ve got no use for the kulak with his big barn and pasture…he just sets up a prison for himself, once in, he can’t get out, think it over, it might happen to you.’”
Then Japhy picked up his guitar and got going on songs; finally I took the guitar and made up a song as I went along plucking on the strings any old way, actually drumming on them with my fingertips, drum drum drum, and sang the song of the Midnight Ghost freight train. “That’s about the midnight ghost in California but you know what it made me think of Smith? Hot, very hot, bamboo growing up to forty feet out thar and whipping around in the breeze and hot and a bunch of monks are making a racket on their flutes somewhere and when they recite sutras with a steady Kwakiutl dance drumbeat and riffs on the bells and sticks it’s something to hear like a big prehistoric coyote chanting…. Things tucked away in all youmad guys like that go back to the days when men married bears and talked to the buffalo by Gawd. Give me another drink. Keep your socks darned, boys, and your boots greased.”
But as though that wasn’t enough Coughlin says quite calmly crosslegged “Sharpen your pencils, straighten your ties, shine your shoes and button your flies, brush your teeth, comb your hair, sweep the floor, eat blueberry pies, open your eyes…”
“Eat blueberry spies is good,” says Alvah fingering his lip seriously.
“Remembering all the while that I have tried very hard, but the rhododendron tree is only half enlightened, and ants and bees are communists and trolley cars are bored.”
“And little Japanese boys in the F train sing Inky Dinky Parly Voo!” I yell.
“And the mountains live in total ignorance so I don’t give up, take off your shoes and put ’em in your pocket. Now I’ve answered all your questions, too bad, give me a drink, mauvais sujet.”
“Don’t step on the ballsucker!” I yell drunk.
“Try to do it without stepping on the aardvark,” says Coughlin. “Don’t be a sucker all your life, dummy up, ya dope. Do you see what I mean? My lion is fed, I sleep at his side.”
“Oh,” says Alvah, “I wish I could take all this down.” And I was amazed, pretty amazed, by the fast wonderful yak yak yak darts in my sleeping brain. We all got dizzy and drunk. It was a mad night. It ended up with Coughlin and me wrestling and making holes in the wall and almost knocking the little cottage down: Alvah was pretty mad the next day. During the wrestling match I practically broke poor Coughlin’s leg; myself, I got a bad splinter of wood stuck an inch up into my skin and it didn’t come out till almost a year later. Meanwhile, at some point, Morley appeared in the doorway like a ghost carrying two quarts of yogurt and wanting to know if we wanted some. Japhy left at about two a.m. saying he’d come back and get me in the morning for our big day outfitting me with full pack. Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you’ll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room,