Desolation Angels Read online

  “I am the greatest writer in America.”

  “I am the greatest jazz pianist in America,” says he, and we shake on it, drink to it, and at the piano he whangs me strange new chords, crazy atonal new chords, to old jazz tunes—Little Al the waiter pronounces him great—Outside it’s October night in Manhattan and on the waterfront wholesale markets there are barrels with fires left burning in them by the longshoremen where I stop and warm my hands and take a nip two nips from the bottle and hear the bvoom of ships in the channel and I look up and there, the same stars as over Lowell, October, old melancholy October, tender and loving and sad, and it will all tie up eventually into a perfect posy of love I think and I shall present it to Tathagata my Lord, to God, saying “Lord Thou didst exult—and praised be You for showing me how You did it—Lord now I’m ready for more—And this time I wont whine—This time I’ll keep my mind clear on the fact that it is Thy Empty Forms.”

  … This world, the palpable thought of God …

  35

  Up until that lightning storm which was a dry one, the bolts hitting dry timber, followed only afterwards by rain that banked the fires awhile, fires start popping up all over the wilderness—One on Baker River sends a big cloud of hazy smoke down Little Beaver Creek just below me making me mistakenly assume a fire there but they calculate the way the valleys run and how the smoke drifted—Then, when during the lightning storm I’d seen a red glow behind Skagit Peak on my east, then no more, four days later the airplane spots a burned-out acre but it is mostly dead making a haze in Three Fools Creek—But then comes the big fire on Thunder Creek which I can see 22 miles south of me billowing smoke out of Ruby Ridge—A high southwest wind makes it rage from a two-acre fire at 3 to an eighteen-acre fire at 5, the radio is wild, my own gentle district ranger Gene O’Hara keeps sighing over the radio at every new report—In Bellingham they assemble eight smokejumpers to fly in and drop on the steep ridge—Our own Skagit crews are shifted from Big Beaver to the lake, a boat, and the long high trail to the big smoke—It’s a sunny day with a high wind and lowest humidity of the year—This fire was at first mistakenly assumed by excitable Pat Garton on Crater to be closer to him than where it is, near Hoot Owl pass, but sneering Jesuit Ned Gowdy on Sourdough verifies with the airplane the exact location and so it is “his” fire—these guys being forestry careerists they are very religiously jealous of “his” and “my” fire, as tho—“Gene are you there?” says Howard on Lookout Mountain, relaying a message from the Skagit crew foreman who is standing under the fire with a walkie-talkie and the men staring at the steep inaccessible slide it’s on—“almost perpendicular—Ah How 4, he says that you might get down from the top, it would probably be a rope job and couldnt pack in what you needed—”—“Okay,” sighs O’Hara, “tell him to stand by—How 33 from 4”—“33”—“Has McCarthy got out the airport yet?” (McCarthy and the bigwig Forest Supervisor are flying over the fire), 33 has to call the airport to see—“How one from 33”—repeats four times—“Back to How four, I cant seem to get a hold of the airport”—“Okay, thank you”—But turns out McCarthy is in the Bellingham office or at home, apparently not much concerned yet because it isnt his fire—Sighing O’Hara, a sweet man, never a harsh word (unlike bossy cold-eyed Gehrke), I think if I should find a fire in this crucial hour I should have to preamble my announcement with “Hate to pile sorrows on you—” Meanwhile nature innocently burns, it’s only nature burning nature—Myself I sit eating my Kraft Cheese Noodle dinner and drinking strong black coffee and watching the smoke 22 miles away and listening to the radio—Only got three weeks to go and I’m off to Mexico—At six o’clock in the still hot sun but high wind the plane sneaks up on me, calling me, “We’re about to drop your batteries,” I go out and wave, they wave back like Lindbergh in their monoplane and turn around and make a run over my ridge dropping a miraculous bundle from heaven which whips out in a burlap parachute and goes sailing sailing far over the target (high wind) and as I watch it gulping I see it’s going to go clear over the ridge and down the 1500-foot Lightning Gorge but a lordly little fir captures the shrouds and the heavy bundle hangs on the cliff side—I put on my empty rucksack after finishing the dishes and hike down, find the stuff, very heavy, put it in my rucksack, cutting shrouds and tapes and sweating and slipping in the pebbles, and with the rolled-up parachute under my arm lugubriously I labor on back up the ridge to my lovely little shack—in two minutes my sweat’s gone and it’s done—I look at the distant fires in distant mountains and see the little imaginary blossoms of sight discussed in the Surangama Sutra whereby I know it’s all an ephemeral dream of sensation—What earthly use to know this? What earthly use is anything?

  36

  And that is precisely what maya means, it means we’re being fooled into believing in the reality of the feeling of the show of things—Maya in Sanskrit, it means wile—And why do we go on being fooled even when we know it?—Because of the energy of our habit and we hand it down from chromosome to chromosome to our children but even when the last living thing on earth is sucking at the last drop of water at the base of equatorial ice fields the energy of the habit of Maya will be in the world, embued right in rock and scale—What rock and scale? There are none there, none now, none ever were—The simplest truth in the world is beyond our reach because of its complete simplicity, i.e., its pure nothingness—There are no awakeners and no meanings—Even if suddenly 400 naked Nagas came solemn tromping over the ridge here and say to me “We have been told the Buddha was to be found on this mountaintop—we have walked many countries, many years, to get here—are you alone here?”—“Yes”—“Then you are the Buddha” and all 400 of em prostrate and adore, and I sit suddenly perfectly in diamond silence—even then, and I wouldn’t be surprised (why be surprised?) even then I would realize that there are, there is no Buddha, no awakener, and there is no Meaning, no Dharma, and it is all only the wile of Maya

  37

  For morning in lightning Gorge is only a beautiful dream—the wick wicky wick of a bird, the long blue-brown shadow of primal mist dews falling sun wise across the firs, the hush of the creek ever-constant, the burlying bum trees with smoke heads around a dewdrop central pew pool, and all the phantasmagoria of orange golden imaginary heaven light-blossoms in my eyeball apparatus that connects in Wile to see it, the porches of the ear that balance liquidly to purify hearings into sounds, the ever busy gnat of mind that discriminates and vexes differences, the old dry turds of mammals in the shed, the bizong bizong of morning flies, the few wisps of cloud, Amida’s silent East, the hill bump heavy matter-knock balled, it’s all one rare liquid dream imprinting (imprinting?) on my end plates of nerves and as I say not even that, my God why do we live to be fooled?—Why do we fool to be alive—holes in the wood wurl, wiss water from sky to jean kidney, pulp from park to paper stall, dirt from dry to reening receive, soak, in, up, twirl, green worm leaves wrung out of toil of constant—eeeeing little bug dingly lingers whinging sings morning void devoid of loi—Enough I’ve said at it all, and there’s not even a Desolation in Solitude, not even this page, not even words, but the prejudiced show of things impinging on your habit energy—O Ignorant brothers, O Ignorant sisters, O Ignorant me! there’s nothing to write about, everything is nothing, there’s everything to write about!—Time! Time! Things! Things! Why? Why? Fools! Fools! Three Fools Twelve Fools Eight and Sixty Five Million Swirls of Innumerable Epochs of Fools!—Whatyawamme do, rail?—It was the same for our forefathers, who are long dead, long of dirt compounded they, fooled, fooled, no transmission of Great Knowing to us from their chromosome worms—It will be the same for our great grandchildren, long unborn, of space compounded they, and dirt and space, whether as dirt or whether as space what matters it?—come, now, children, wake up—come, now is the time, wake up—look closely, you’re being fooled—look close, you’re dreaming—come, now, look—being and not being, what’s the difference?—Prides, animosities, fears, contempts, slights, personalities, suspicion
s, sinister forebodings, lightning storms, death, rock, WHO TOLD YOU THAT RADAMANTHUS WAS ALL THERE? WHO WRITES WRONG ON THE WHO THE WHY THE WHAT WAIT O THING I I I I I I I I I I I I I O MODIIGRAGA NA PA RA TO MA NI CO SA PA RI MA TO MA NA PA SHOOOOOOO BIZA RIIII – – – – – – – I O O O O—M M M—S O–S O–S O–S O–S O–S O—SO–S O S O—SO—S O

  After that there never was

  That’s all there is to what there’s not—

  Boom

  Up in the valley

  and down by the mountain,

  The bird—

  Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake

  Wake Wake Wake AWAKEN

  AWAKEN AWAKEN

  AWAKEN

  NOW

  This is the wisdom

  of the millennial rat

  —Theriomorphous, highest perfect

  Rat

  Black black black black bling bling bling

  bling black black black black

  bling bling bling bling

  black black black black

  bling bling bling

  38

  Sword etc., flat part of an oar or calamity, sudden vio-dashing young fellow, lent gust of wind; forcible stream of leaf, air, blare of a trumpet or horn, blamable deserving of Explosion as of gunpowder, blame, find fault with Blight; censure, Imputation of a blatant Brawling noisy, Speak ill, blaze, Burn with a blameful meriting flame, send forth a flaming light, less without blame innocent, torch, firebrand, stream of blamelessly blameless flame of light, bursting out, actness, worthy of blame, cul-blaze, Mark trees by pable, paring off part of the bark, mark blanch, whiten, par-out a way or path in this manner, boil, parboil and skin, as almonds, mark made by parking bark from grow white, a tree, white spot on the face of white, a horse or cow, pale, blancmange, blazon, publish or Jelly like preparation of sea-moss, proclaim extensively, herald, em-arrowroot, corn-starch or the like, blazon, embellish, adorn, eat art of accurately describing coats of bland, mild, balmy suave arms, blazonry art smooth of delineating or of explaining coats, blandishment of arms, coat of arms, art of expressing fondness, artful bleach, make pale or white caress, amenity pleasure, grow pale, flatter bleak, unsheltered deso-blank, white or pale late, cheerless cold cutting, not written or printed upon or keen, bleakly bleakness marked, void empty vacant pale, confused unqualified complete blear, make the eyes unrhymed, paper un-sore and watery, becloud bedim written upon, form not filled in observe, inflamed and watery lottery ticket which draws no prize dim or blurred, with inflammation empty space, mental vacancy modification of blur, white bleat cry as a sheep, blanket woolen cor-cry of a sheep, bleatering for beds, covering for horses bleed, bleeding bled bled broad wrapping or covering or draw blood from shed

  Anykind blanket dim of blood

  Blare sound loudly as a blemish impair tar

  Trumpet blast nigh that which tarnishes

  Blarney smooth wheed-flaw defect soil

  Ling speech cajole wheedle stain fault

  speak de

  From Castle Blarney in Ireland

  Blast and rend praise or glorify

  Part of a bridle which is placed

  in a fidence

  Tattle telltale

  Vain boast—

  box, blow on the head or er boastful

  Combining of persons to have nobles

  and rich gravy,

  And slow baking commercial dealings

  with a person afterward,

  Meat so cooked

  See?

  39

  The moon—she come peekin over the hill like she was sneakin into the world, with big sad eyes, then she take a good big look and show her no-nose and then her ocean cheeks and then her blemish jaw, and O what a round old moon lugu face it is, OO, and a lil twisted pathetic understanding smile for me, you—she got a swirl surl like a woman’s been dustin all day and didnt wash her face—she got tongue-a-cheek—and say “Is dis wort me comin?”—She say, “OO la la,” and got creases in her eye sides, and looketh over ridges of rocks, as yellow as a blind lemon, and O she sad—She let Old Sun go first cause he’s after her this month, now cat-mouse-play moon come, late—She got a rougey twooty mouth like little girls who dont know how to smear on lipstick—She got a bump in her forehead from a fire rock—She is bursting at the seams with moon goodness and moon fat and moon golden fire and over her Golden Eternal angels sprinkle imaginary flowers—She is Lord and Master Lesbian King of all the blue and purple survey of her ink kingdom—Though the sun’s left his ravage glow she looks on’t content and convinced in a minute his fire’ll bank as always then she’ll ensilver the night whole, rise higher too, her triumph is in our east-rolling kneel of earth—From her big pocky face I see (and planetary rims) epithalamial roses—Potpourri seas mark her smoothskin sailing, her character features that’s dry dust and hairy rock—The big mosquitoes of straw that smile on the moon are going bzzz—She wears a light fire-latent lavender veil, prettiest hat since rose was wove and garland made, and the hat bedazzles on an angle and now’ll drop like fair fire hair and soon be dim veil for brow of round hard woe—hack wow what a roll skull bowed bone sorrow that moon can hold in her roily poily joints—she is tendered on an insect’s leg—Violent black purple is the west as her veil spreads, face-covers, wisps, ineffates, mmm—Pretty soon now she blears in her veil of blurs—now mystery marks where oft you’ve seen expressive sadness—Now is just level sneer of moon conveying her round respects to us moon men mad—All right, I buy—It’s just a old dut ball burling into view because we’re rolling upside bulky down around in planetary arrangements and it’s just to come, what’s all the pose and posy about?—Finally she is abandoning her veil for cleaner pastures, she heads for higher stores, her veil drops off in little strips of silk as soft as a baby’s eyes and softer than what he sees in dreams of lambs and fairies—Blimps of clouds dimple her chin—She has a twisted round mustache tootered up and puckywucked and so the moon looks like Charley Chaplin—Not a breath of wind attend her rising, and the west is a still coal—the south is mauve and majesties and heroes—The north: white strips and lavender silks of ice and Arctic steadfast voids—

  The moon is a piece of me

  40

  One morning I find bear stool and signs of where the unseen monster has taken cans of frozen hardened can-milk and squeezed it in his apocalyptical paws and bit with one insane sharp tooth in, trying to suck out the sour paste—Never seen, and in the foggy dusk I sit and look down the mysterious Ridge of Starvation with its fog-lost firs and humping-into-invisibility hills, and the fog-wind blowing by like a faint blizzard, and somewhere in that Zen Mystery Fog stalks the Bear, the Primordial Bear—all of it, his house, his yard, his domain, King Bear who could crush my head in his paws and crack my spines like a stick—King Bear with his big mysterious black horseshit by my garbage pit—Tho Charley may be in the bunkhouse reading a magazine, and I sing in the fog, Bear can come and take us all—How vast that power must be—He is a tender silent thing crawling towards me with interested eyes, from the mist unknowns of Lightning Gorge—The Sign of the Bear is in the gray wind of Autumn—The Bear will carry me to my cradle—He wears on his might the seal of blood and reawakening—His toes are webbed and mighty—they say you can smell him downwind at a hundred yards—His eyes glint in the moonlight—He and the buck deer avoid each other—He will not show himself in the mystery of those silent foggy shapes, tho I look all day, as tho he were the inscrutable Bear that cant be looked into—He owns all the Northwest and all the Snow and commands all mountains—He prowls among unknown lakes, and at early morning the pearl pure light that shadows mountainsides of fir make him blink with respect—He has millenniums of thus-prowling here behind him—He has seen Indians and Redcoats come and go, and will see it again—He continually hears the reassuring rapturous rush of silence, except near creeks, he continually is aware of the light material the world is made of, and never discourses, nor makes signs for meaning, nor complains a breath, but nibbles and paws, and lumbers alo
ng snags paying no attention to inanimate things or animate—His big mouth chew-chews in the night, I can hear it across the mountain in the starlight. Soon he will come out of the fog, huge, and come and stare in my window with big burning eyes—He is Avalokitesvara the Bear