The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [63]
It got dark. I took my pot and went to get water but had to scramble through so much underbrush that when I got back to my camp most of the water had splashed out. I mixed it in my new plastic shaker with orange-juice concentrate and shook up an ice-cold orange, then I spread nutted cream cheese on the whole wheat bread and ate content. “Tonight,” I thought, “I sleep tight and long and pray under the stars for the Lord to bring me to Buddhahood after my Buddhawork is done, amen.” And as it was Christmas, I added “Lord bless you all and merry tender Christmas on all your rooftops and I hope angels squat there the night of the big rich real Star, amen.” And then I thought, later, lying on my bag smoking, “Everything is possible. I am God, I am Buddha, I am imperfect Ray Smith, all at the same time, I am empty space, I am all things. I have all the time in the world from life to life to do what is to do, to do what is done, to do the timeless doing, infinitely perfect within, why cry, why worry, perfect like mind essence and the minds of banana peels” I added laughing remembering my poetic Zen Lunatic Dharma Bum friends of San Francisco whom I was beginning to miss now. And I added a little prayer for Rosie.
“If she’d lived, and could have come here with me, maybe I could have told her something, made her feel different. Maybe I’d just make love to her and say nothing.”
I spent a long time meditating crosslegged, but the truck growl bothered me. Soon the stars came out and my little Indian fire sent up some smoke to them. I slipped in my bag at eleven and slept well, except for the bamboo joints under the leaves that caused me to turn over all night. “Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.” I was making up all kinds of sayings as I went along. I was started on my new life with my new equipment: a regular Don Quixote of tenderness. In the morning I felt exhilarated and meditated first thing and made up a little prayer: “I bless you, all living things, I bless you in the endless past, I bless you in the endless present, I bless you in the endless future, amen.”
This little prayer made me feel good and fool good as I packed up my things and took off to the tumbling water that came down from a rock across the highway, delicious spring water to bathe my face in and wash my teeth in and drink. Then I was ready for the three-thousand-mile hitchhike to Rocky Mount North Carolina, where my mother was waiting, probably washing the dishes in her dear pitiful kitchen.
18
The current song at that time was Roy Hamilton singing “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me.” I kept singing that as I swung along. On the other side of Riverside I got on the highway and got a ride right away from a young couple, to an air-field five miles out of town, and from there a ride from a quiet man almost to Beaumont, California, but five miles short of it on a double-lane speed highway with nobody likely to stop so I hiked on in beautiful sparkling air. At Beaumont I ate hotdogs, hamburgers and a bag of fries and added a big strawberry shake, all among giggling high-school children. Then, the other side of town, I got a ride from a Mexican called Jaimy who said he was the son of the governor of the state of Baja California, Mexico, which I didn’t believe and was a wino and had me buy him wine which he only threw up out the window as he drove: a droopy, sad, helpless young man, very sad eyes, very nice, a bit nutty. He was driving clear to Mexicali, a little off my route but good enough and far enough out toward Arizona to suit me.
At Calexico it was Christmas