BOOK ONE
DESOLATION ANGELS
PART ONE
DESOLATION IN SOLITUDE
1
Those afternoons, those lazy afternoons, when I used to sit, or lie down, on Desolation Peak, sometimes on the alpine grass, hundreds of miles of snowcovered rock all around, looming Mount Hozomeen on my north, vast snowy Jack to the south, the encharmed picture of the lake below to the west and the snowy hump of Mt. Baker beyond, and to the east the rilled and ridged monstrosities humping to the Cascade Ridge, and after that first time suddenly realizing âItâs me thatâs changed and done all this and come and gone and complained and hurt and joyed and yelled, not the Voidâ and so that every time I thought of the void Iâd be looking at Mt. Hozomeen (because chair and bed and meadowgrass faced north) until I realized âHozomeen is the Voidâat least Hozomeen means the void to my eyesââStark naked rock, pinnacles and thousand feet high protruding from hunch-muscles another thousand feet high protruding from immense timbered shoulders, and the green pointy-fir snake of my own (Starvation) ridge wriggling to it, to its awful vaulty blue smokebody rock, and the âclouds of hopeâ lazing in Canada beyond with their tittlefaces and parallel lumps and sneers and grins and lamby blanks and puffs of snout and mews of crack saying âHoi! hoil earth!ââthe very top tittermost peak abominables of Hozomeen made of black rock and only when storms blow I dont see them and all they do is return tooth for tooth to storm an imperturbable surl for cloudburst mistâHozomeen that does not crack like cabin rigging in the winds, that when seen from upsidedown (when Iâd do my headstand in the yard) is just a hanging bubble in the illimitable ocean of spaceâ
Hozomeen, Hozomeen, most beautiful mountain I ever seen, like a tiger sometimes with stripes, sunwashed rills and shadow crags wriggling lines in the Bright Daylight, vertical furrows and bumps and Boo! crevasses, boom, sheer magnificent Prudential mountain, nobodyâs even heard of it, and itâs only 8,000 feet high, but what a horror when I first saw that void the first night of my staying on Desolation Peak waking up from deep fogs of 20 hours to a starlit night suddenly loomed by Hozomeen with his two sharp points, right in my window blackâthe Void, every time Iâd think of the Void Iâd see Hozomeen and understandâOver 70 days I had to stare it.
2
Yes, for Iâd thought, in June, hitch hiking up there to the Skagit Valley in northwest Washington for my fire lookout job âWhen I get to the top of Desolation Peak and everybody leaves on mules and Iâm alone I will come face to face with God or Tathagata and find out once and for all what is the meaning of all this existence and suffering and going to and fro in vainâ but instead Iâd come face to face with myself, no liquor, no drugs, no chance of faking it but face to face with ole Hateful Duluoz Me and manyâs the time I thought I die, suspire of boredom, or jump off the mountain, but the days, nay the hours dragged and I had no guts for such a leap, I had to wait and get to see the face of realityâand it finally comes that afternoon of August 8 as Iâm pacing in the high alpine yard on the little wellworn path Iâd beaten, in dust and rain, on many a night, with my oil lamp banked low inside the cabin with the four-way windows and peaked pagoda roof and lightning rod point, it finally comes to me, after even tears, and gnashing, and the killing of a mouse and attempted murder of another, something Iâd never done in my life (killing animals even rodents), it comes in these words: âThe void is not disturbed by any kind of ups or downs, my God look at Hozomeen, is he worried or tearful? Does he bend before storms or snarl when the sun shines or sigh in the late day drowse? Does he smile? Was he not born out of madbrained turmoils and upheavals of raining fire and nowâs Hozomeen and nothing else? Why should I choose to be bitter or sweet, he does neither?âWhy cant I be like Hozomeen and O Platitude O hoary old platitude of the bourgeois mind âtake life as it comesââTwas that alcoholic biographer, W. E. Woodward, said, âThereâs nothing to life but just the living of itââBut O God Iâm bored! But is Hozomeen bored? And Iâm sick of words and explanations. Is Hozomeen?
Aurora Borealis
over Hozomeenâ
The void is stiller
âEven Hozomeenâll crack and fall apart, nothing lasts, it is only a faring-in-that-which-everything-is, a passing-through, thatâs whatâs going on, why ask questions or tear hair or weep, the burble blear purple Lear on his moor of woes he is only a gnashy old flap with winged whiskers beminded by a foolâto be and not to be, thatâs what we areâDoes the Void take any part in life and death? does it have funerals? or birth cakes? why not I be like the Void, inexhaustibly fertile, beyond serenity, beyond even gladness, just Old Jack (and not even that) and conduct my life from this moment on (though winds blow through my windpipe), this ungraspable image in a crystal ball is not the Void, the Void is the crystal ball itself and all my woes the Lankavatara Scripture hairnet of fools, âLook sirs, a marvelous sad hairnetââHold together, Jack, pass through everything, and everything is one dream, one appearance, one flash, one sad eye, one crystal lucid mystery, one wordâHold still, man, regain your love of life and go down from this mountain and simply beâbeâbe the infinite fertilities of the one mind of infinity, make no comments, complaints, criticisms, appraisals, avowals, sayings, shooting stars of thought, just flow, flow, be you all, be you what it is, it is only what it always isâHope is a word like a snow-driftâThis is the Great Knowing, this is the Awakening, this is VoidnessâSo shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and dont be sorryâPrunes, prune, eat your prunesâAnd you have been forever, and will be forever, and all the worrisome smashings of your foot on innocent cupboard doors it was only the Void pretending to be a man pretending not to know the Voidâ
I come back into the house a new man.
All I have to do is wait 30 long days to get down from the rock and see sweet life againâknowing itâs neither sweet nor bitter but just what it is, and so it isâ
So long afternoons I sit in my easy (canvas) chair facing Void Hozomeen, the silence hushes in my little shack, my stove is still, my dishes glitter, my firewood (old sticks that are the form of water and welp, that I light small Indian fires with in my stove, to make quick meals) my firewood lies piled and snaky in the corner, my canned goods wait to be opened, my old cracked shoes weep, my pans lean, my dish rags hang, my various things sit silent around the room, my eyes ache, the wind wallows and belts at the window and upped shutters, the light in late afternoon shades and bluedarks Hozomeen (revealing his streak of middle red) and thereâs nothing for me to do but waitâand breathe (and breathing is difficult in the thin high air, with West Coast sinus wheezings)âwait, breathe, eat, sleep, cook, wash, pace, watch, never any forest firesâand daydream, âWhat will I do when I get to Frisco? Why first thing Iâll get a room in Chinatownââbut even nearer and sweeter I daydream what Iâll do Leaving Day, some hallowed day in early September, âIâll walk down the trail, two hours, meet Phil in the boat, ride to the Ross Float, sleep there a night, chat in the kitchen, start early in the morning on the Diablo Boat, go right from that little pier (say hello to Walt), hitch right to Marblemount, collect my pay, pay my debts, buy a bottle of wine and drink it by the Skagit in the afternoon, and leave next morning for Seattleââand on, down to Frisco, then L.A., then Nogales, then Guadalajara, then Mexico CityâAnd still the Void is still andâll never moveâ
But I will be the Void, moving without having moved.
3
Aw, and I remember sweet days of home that I didnât appreciate when I had themâafternoons then, when I was 15, 16, it meant Ritz Brothers crackers and peanut butter and milk, at the old round kitchen table, and my chess problems or self-invented baseball games, as the orange sun of Lowell Octoberâd slant thru the porch and kitchen curtains and make a lazy dusty shaft and in it my catâd be licking his forepaw laplap with tiger tongue and cue tooth, all undergone and dust betided, Lordâso now in my dirty torn clothes Iâm a bum in the High Cascades and all Iâve got for a kitchen is this crazy battered stove with cracked stovepipe rustâstuffed, yea, at the ceiling, with old burlap, to keep the rats of night outâdays long ago when I could have simply walked up and kissed either my mother or my father and say âI like you because someday Iâll be an old bum in desolation and Iâll be alone and sadââO Hozomeen, the rocks of it gleam in the downgo sun, the inaccessible fortress parapets stand like Shakespeare in the world and for miles around not a thing knows the name of Shakespeare, Hozomeen or meâ
Late afternoon long ago home, and even recently in North Carolina when, to recall childhood, I did eat Ritz and peanut butter and milk at four, and played the baseball game at my desk, and it was schoolboys in scuffed shoes coming home just like me hungry (and Iâd make them special Jack Bananasplits, only a measly six months ago)âBut here on Desolation the wind whirls, desolate of song, shaking rafters of the earth, progenitating nightâGiant bat shadows of cloud hover on the mountain.
Soon dark, soon my dayâs dishes done, meal eaten, waiting for September, waiting for the descent to the world again.
4
Meanwhile the sunsets are mad orange fools raging in the gloom, whilst far in the south in the direction of my intended loving arms of seĂąoritas, snowpink piles wait at the foot of the world, in general silver ray citiesâthe lake is a hard pan, gray, blue, waiting at the mist bottoms for when I ride her in Philâs boatâJack Mountain as always receives his meed of little cloud at highbrow base, his thousand football fields of snow all raveled and pink, that one unimaginable abominable snowman still squatted petrified on the ridgeâGolden Horn far off is yet golden in a gray southeastâSourdoughâs monster hump overlooks the lakeâSurly clouds blacken to make fire rims at that forge where the nightâs being hammered, crazed mountains march to the sunset like drunken cavaliers in Messina when Ursula was fair, I would swear that Hozomeen would move if we could induce him but he spends the night with me and soon when stars rain down the snowfields heâll be in the pink of pride all black and yaw-y to the north where (just above him every night) North Star flashes pastel orange, pastel green, iron orange, iron blue, azurite indicative constellative auguries of her makeup up there that you could weigh on the scales of the golden worldâ
The wind, the windâ
And thereâs my poor endeavoring human desk at which I sit so often during the day, facing south, the papers and pencils and the coffee cup with sprigs of alpine fir and a weird orchid of the heights wiltable in one dayâMy Beechnut gum, my tobacco pouch, dusts, pitiful pulp magazines I have to read, view south to all those snowy majestiesâThe waiting is long.
On Starvation Ridge
little sticks
Are trying to grow.
5
Only the night before my decision to live loving, I had been degraded, insulted, and made mournful by this dream:
âAnd get a good tenderloin steak!â says Ma handing Deni Bleu the money, sheâs sending us to the store to get a good supper, also sheâs suddenly decided to put all her confidence in Deni these later years now that Iâve become such a vague ephemeral undeciding being who curses the gods in his bed sleep and wanders around bareheaded and stupid in the gray darknessâItâs in the kitchen, itâs all agreed, I dont say anything, we go offâIn the front bedroom by the stairs Pa is dying, is in his death bed and practically dead already, itâs in spite of that that Ma wants a good steak, wants to plank her last human hope on Deni, on some kind of decisive solidarityâPa is thin, pale, his bed sheets white, it seems to me heâs dead alreadyâWe go down in the gloom and negotiate our way somehow to the butcher store in Brooklyn in the downtown main streets around FlatbushâBob Donnelly is there and the rest of the gang, bareheaded and bummy in the streetâA gleam has now come in Deniâs eyes as he sees his chance to turn tail and become a con man with all Maâs money in his hand, in the store he orders the meat but I see him pulling shortchange tricks and stuffing money in his pocket and making some kind of arrangement to renege on her agreement, her last agreementâShe had pinned her hopes on him, I was of no more availâSomehow we wander from there and dont go back to Maâs house and wind up in the River Army which is dispatched, after watching a speedboat race, to swim downstream in the cold swirling dangerous watersâThe speedboat, if it had been a âlongâ one could have dived right under the flotillaâd crowd and come up the other side and completed its time but because of faulty short design the racer (Mr. Darling) complains that that was the reason his boat just ducked under the crowd and got stuck there and couldnt go onâbig official floats took note.
Me in the lead gang, the Army starts swimming downstream, we are going to the bridges and cities below. The water is cold and the current extremely bad but I swim and struggle on. âHowâd I get here?â I think. âWhat about Maâs steak? What did Deni Bleu do with her money? Where is he now? O I have no time to think!â Suddenly from a lawn by the St. Louis de France church on the shore I hear kids shouting a message at me, âHey your motherâs in the insane asylum! Your motherâs gone to the insane asylum! Your fatherâs dead!â and I realize whatâs happened and still, swimming and in the Army, Iâm stuck struggling in the cold water, and all I can do is grieve, grieve, in the hoar necessitous horror of the morning, bitterly I hate myself, bitterly itâs too late yet while I feel better I still feel ephemeral and unreal and unable to straighten my thoughts or even really grieve, in fact I feel too stupid to be really bitter, in short I dont know what Iâm doing and Iâm being told what to do by the Army and Deni Bleu has played a wood on me too, at last, to get his sweet revenge but mostly itâs just that heâs decided to become an out-and-out crook and this was his chanceâ
⌠And even though the saffron freezing message may come from the sunny ice caps of this world, O haunted fools we are, I add an appendage to a long loving letter Iâd been writing to my mother for weeks:
Dont despair, Ma, Iâll take care of you whenever you need meâjust yell.⌠Iâm right there, swimming the river of hardships but I know how to swimâDont ever think for one minute that you are left alone.
She is 3,000 miles away living in bondage to ill kin.
Desolation, desolation, how shall I ever repay thee?
6
I could go mad in thisâO carryall menaya but the weel may track the rattle-burr, poniac the avoid devoidity runabout, minavoid the crailâSong of my all the vouring me the part de rail-ing carry all the poneâpart you too may green and flyâwelkin moon wrung salt upon the tides of come-on night, swing on the meadow shoulder, roll the boulder of Buddha over the pink partitioned west Pacific fog mowâO tiny tiny tiny human hope, O molded cracking thee mirror thee shook pa t n a watalakaâand more to goâ
Ping.
7
Every night at 8 the lookouts on all the different mountaintops in the Mount Baker National Forest have a bull session over their radiosâI have my own Packmaster set and turn it on, and listen.
Itâs a big event in the lonelinessâ
âHe asked if you was goin to sleep, Chuck.â
âYou know what he does Chuck when he goes out on patrol?âhe finds a nice shady spot and just goes to sleep.â
âDid you say Louise?â
ââI doant knaowââ
ââWell I only got three...