{"id":2661,"date":"2010-10-14T08:55:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T16:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=2661"},"modified":"2011-07-29T08:25:58","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:25:58","slug":"wild-west-6-yellowstone-ginsbergs-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/14\/wild-west-6-yellowstone-ginsbergs-journals\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild West #6. Yellowstone. Ginsberg’s Journals."},"content":{"rendered":"

A new story, “Good Night, Moon,” that I wrote with Bruce Sterling is now online <\/a>for free at Tor.com. And if you want, you can listen to it in podcast form, read by me. You can click on the icon below to access the podcast via Rudy Rucker Podcasts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently I\u2019ve been reading a book of journals by Alan Ginsberg, edited by Gordon Ball, Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties<\/em>, Grove Press 1977. My idea is to have Alan Turing meet up with Ginsberg in Berkeley in the spring of 1955, at the time when Ginsberg was writing Howl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve copied out some passages that seem useful in terms of getting Allen G\u2019s character or in terms of fitting him into my novel. The photos today are from the Yellowstone portion of our recent road trip through the Wild West.<\/p>\n


\n[Varicolored algae in a hot-spring stream.]<\/em><\/p>\n

New York City, March-June, 1952<\/em><\/p>\n

Alan gets marijuana (\u201cT\u201d\u009d) and peyote from a friend, Bill Keck, who says the sense of God is, \u201cWhen the universal order seems organized\u2014when everything I see seems to belong to one organism, when everything about me swings, together.\u2026 With T you are observing everything in unison order harmony swinging organized organism\u2014with peyote you are part of it.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

He eats some peyote at his parents house and sits in the backyard writing notes while his relatives visit with the family inside. \u201c\u2026eyes closed toward light leaves in eye a golden glow hue\u2014which darkens when you pass hand over lidded eye. It made me feel like a very transparent sort of organism.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the wind rushed through the grass you can see the green grass vibrating on the brown ground.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Still on that trip… \u201cThe houses around here seem so primitive, with their poor television antennae tacked on to the patched up chimney\u2014\u201d\u009d \u201cAnd I hear relatives\u2019 honking mechanical voices in the house.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026there\u2019s so much to say from the bottom of the heart\u2014but not say in open\u2014people really can\u2019t stand much reality\u2014or me, hate to think of anyone talking back to me.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can you do with such a f*cking universe?\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

A dream. \u201c\u2026I am in bed with a [lover] who covers me over with cloth on which are obscene hieroglyphs, one for each part of my body\u2014they are supposed to act on my skin\u2014while he watches I have sex with hieroglyphs.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[Car mirror reflection of a U-Hal van with Mt. Rushmore painted on the side, seen in the parking lot for Old Faithful.]<\/em><\/p>\n

In the Yucatan, Mexico, 1954<\/em><\/p>\n

He dreams a movie of William Burroughs and reconstructs the dream, which is rather apposite for my novel.<\/p>\n

\u201cBill in Europe\u2014but can\u2019t remember the dream O flat horrible reality closing in at morn after night of spectacles\u2026Bill is shadowed by a spy from the future\u2014spy from another dimension in hideous 3rd class train ride\u2014set in background of Europe in the rain and decay\u2026involving cross-passages of time. Fragments of a great \u201d\u02dcroutine.\u2019 Bill looks frightened\u2014realizes he\u2019s been followed all along\u2026 Then\u2014great change\u2014a look of weariness & boredom, ennui, powerlessness and resentment. Deenergized. Then rage, a look of great annoyance\u2014He lapses into a kind of insanity\u2026 Fate or the future was after him with its rational inanity\u2014his insanity defeats their plans\u2014Bill still conscious playing the routine. Like the routine which felled him laughing on kitchen floor\u2026in N.Y.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[The steaming vents like portals to the underworld.]<\/em><\/p>\n

In Uxmal alone. \u201cChich\u00c3\u00a9n\u2014the main kick was the wild acoustic\u2014somewhere in the middle of all these buildings is a place where you can clap your hands and be heard in heaven.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026only intensest writing is interesting, in which whole life direction is poured for profusion of image & care of surface and stipple & and sensual muscle of soul river thought.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Worrying about my fate again\u2014that a small breeze of nostalgia fluttered in my heart, thinking a moment past I had someone in the room I loved with me\u2014no ghosts\u2014a man of flesh to talk to and hug.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cSudden clearing where the sunlite bursts down as a great white shower.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[People waiting for Old Faithful to spout.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Visiting on the finca (ranch) of a woman he\u2019s befriended, Karena Shields. \u201cAll the Jungle: all these rocky ruins: And suddenly in the ease and lethargy of monthlong guesthood on the ranch the singleminded conception of a vast Unfathomable god\u2014and writing, the gift of writing thought seems like a candle in the wood.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

He thinks about the reporters at U.P. (United Press) \u201c\u2026thinking how feeble & scrawny those reporters are in their nests, thinking they are men of action, all they do is sit up at their typewriters full of sharpness or wiseacre of cynical knowledge of limited situations priding themselves on scrawny specialties of knowledge like Bullfighting or Railroads etc. & drinking at nite, like fat short man of U.P. I spoke to, full of defensive own paltry pride, small lives up in the News building, their whole actual horizon.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[The awesomely gnarly staircase in the Old Faithful Lodge.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Mar 23, 1953, beautiful written Sketch of Salto de Agua<\/em>, using many unusual or coined words. \u201ctinred & tile rust roofs\u201d\u009d \u201csparsely dotted thatchroofs on little hill on other side\u201d\u009d \u201cvasty armadas of white fragmentary clouds in bright sky\u201d\u009d \u201crecurring crow of cocks from this side and that challenging and responding in various cockly hoarse tones as if the existed in a world of pure intuitive sound communicating to anonymous hidden familiar chickensouls from hill to hill.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

That evening he sits on the bridge there, \u201cwatching moon move over the hill you can see it rising and follow its destination thru the clear dimension of the sky in a slow circle from hill on one horizon to mountain on other, having the whole sky spread out unbroken but by stars in all 360 directions.\u201d\u009d [I saw something like this one night camping alone on a hill top in Big Sur.]<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[My old painting, \u201cBig Sur\u201d\u009d, oil, 30\u201d\u009d by 24\u201d\u009d, August, 2000. Finding the North Star via the Big Dipper, I noticed how Earth\u2019s turning around the axis through this Pole was bringing up the moon and bringing down the sun. The flies bit me.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Still in Salto de Agua<\/em>. \u201cThe Kiosk proprietor a civilized looking citizen in a disgusting sort of way\u2014acne and fatso glasses.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Back on the Shields finca, April 16, 1954, Good Friday. \u201c& palmtrees appearing again in the balmy wind presaging a rain\u2014shifting their fronds in the wind with a dry soft rattle sound, so much like animal hairy windmills\u2014insectlike in fact, like monstrous insects long white bodies encased in scales and at the top conglomerated in the head nerve center all these rattly animal feelers that move lethargically in in the direction of the wind, settling & unsettling as in water.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[The tourists in the steam like shades in the afterworld.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe word Time\u2014Like a great silver wall blocking the sky\u2026 One might sit in this Chiapas recording the appearance of time, like painting\u2014the palmtree so much suggesting an animal force spraying up in slow time.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Dream of walking around New York City with Jack Kerouac. \u201cImpression of the unknown miles of movies & bridges & houses & alien life in Brooklyn, how one could go walking alone (or with others) not to explore but to enjoy & be awed by the vast human scenery just as one goes walking thru mountains in awe. For kicks, not to map the streets.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[Yellowstone Lake]<\/em><\/p>\n

Back in California, 1954.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOf an eternity we have a number of score of years\u2026 I have had several months near joy, and of that perhaps one day doing what I inmost want and of that a minute of perfection.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On June 17, 2954, he\u2019s staying stay with Neal Cassady and his family in Monte Sereno, near San Jose, California. He\u2019s in love with Neal, mooning over him. \u201cI feel like a strange idiot, standing there among wife & children all to whom he gives needs of affection and attention, aching for some special side extra sacrifice of attention to me\u2014as if like some nowhere evil beast intruding I were competing for his care with his own children & wife and job which seems to occupy energize bore & tire him.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

He drafts a poem called \u201cSerenade\u201d\u009d with this phrase, \u201cThe bomb appeared intolerable, light and radiance, and afterwards the grey world appeared as a ghost.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In Berkeley, Fall, 1955.<\/em><\/p>\n

Allen writes some fourteen-syllable haikus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe madman
emerges from the movies:
the street at lunchtime.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moon over the roof,
worms in the garden.
I rent this house.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new story, “Good Night, Moon,” that I wrote with Bruce Sterling is now online for free at Tor.com. And if you want, you can listen to it in podcast form, read by me. You can click on the icon below to access the podcast via Rudy Rucker Podcasts. Recently I\u2019ve been reading a book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2661"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2672,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2661\/revisions\/2672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}