Letter 3.50

I think you're right: our virtues and vices complement each other, at least in the realm of what you call scribbledehobble (I haven't yet decided what I call it, but it won't be nice). Well, I've done my half, and since you said you were starting at the other end and working forward, you will presumably be meeting me very soon in some dark volcanic tunnel somewhere. So I'd better stop and let you get on with it. But that, of course, is making a virtue of writer's block, which may not be necessary but what else can a poor lad do when he comes to feel that it's all vanity, all a useless exercise in manipulating, and all so obvious? And so poorly spelled? Even with characters killed off. Worthy Bones is overstaffed. In fact that's the problem, or part of it. Too many characters spending too much time explaining to each other a plot that's too involved and doesn't spend enough time happening, what with all the talking about it that goes on. You and me are the only ones who like the book, and I'm not so sure about me. The few others who've seen it try to find something nice to say about it. It's a good title. That Bourree Jizi plays is groovy, too. Good use of the semi-colon. Keep it up and it'll be just the right length. Not that praise would eliminate the blockage. Maybe a plunger is needed, or a roto-rooter. (Actually, though, it's not a blockage at all; it's emptiness. There's just nothing left to squeeze out except words, and there's already so many of them... Think I'll take up painting. Particularly since I ain't got no paints. Just brushes.)

Oh, I'm going on with it, atleast for a bit, but it feels flat now and dry. The dryness can be solved by soaking the mss. thoroughly in a bucket of water; but what about the flatness? Yeast? Maybe, I'll save it for Chanukah. It would go great with bitter herbs. And how can I concentrate with all those people meditating out there?

what I really need's a stringhopper.

V.

(What's it all about, huh?
What's it all about?
What's it all about?
What's it all about?
What's it all?
What's it?
What?
huh?)

Letter 3.49

Forty years old today. Stocktaking. Thinking of what I'm glad for, what not. One of my most glad things is your friendship.

That said, everything else seems trivial: reports on the condition of the jungle today.

By now you should have the first 200 pages or so of Worthy Bones. Probably, the most intensive stretch of writing I've done: a pace I'm already unable to maintain. But while it happened it was exhilarating to see it coalesce -- perhaps as it was, in the beginning? I feel pretty good about it so far, but of course don't know whether that's anything more than throwing myself a bone for the trick. Does it in fact seem to be 'taking shape' instead of just being a pile of shapeless old clothes thrown into a forgotten corner? Have I dropped any stitches? Probably be a peculiar hump-backed critter who'll wind up fleshing out the stitchery, but can he walk, does he have bad breath, dirty toenails and warts, or is he just a slab of meat cooling itself in the butcher's display case, on its way to becoming shit? Maybe I should go back to poetry.

V.

Letter 3.48

BEAD [1]

Your miscellaneous variety (or various miscellanies) received with thanks. Bits of transparent obscuration through which I get glimpses of...what? Style? Fact? Poetry? Truth? Why did you quit the local rag? Feeling too secure? Forced to take a raise or go? Or just tired of inky thumbs? Anyway, glad your Passovers are regular. Saves the need to swallow Pax Lax. There is no coprolite at the end of the tunnel. You'll see. Or you won't.

Khomeini would hate Bab Khatmo.
Bab Khatmo would love Khomeini
Bani Sadr would try to work with both.

A few of your good solid clues as to what it's all about have been useful, but nothing more gossamer, please, as there are plenty of cobwebs here already. Aside from the odd good line (which I will steal), what's it all about? I'm beginning to wonder the same about Bones Redux. Pity...

The troglodytes are in bloom again. Pterodactyls sing their rhymic songs. Secretary birds take dictation. Sumerians cum in.

V.

__________
[1] In Worthy Bones, Sir Makepeace Gravenhenge, the English collector, who hires Mohel to pinch the Buddha's bones, dated his letters BEAD -- Before Enlightenment After Death. My letters to Bob were dated likewise: good luck to any chronicler of them. -- Hūm

Letter 3.47

Part of the Xerox machine -- the human part -- seems to be non-functioning these days. Since that means nothing is getting sent to either friend or publisher, I'm trying a remote repair, like with space satellites (except that it's the satellite that's sending out repair-instructions to ground control); but it may be all the thought and typing I've put into marketing may be for naught. A pretty depressing thought after a year's work. So I won't think about it for both of us.

I'm about 100 pages ahead of you having a hard time working out a plausible sequence for the Big Scene -- i.e. when Khalid and the army and everybody confront each other just before the cremation. It's complicated. Motivations -- both the characters' and mine -- seem a bit forced. Fortunately, I can soon start killing then off wholesale (if they don't get me first) and thereby simplify all future action. Your min-autobiography of Mohel -- M by M (M²) -- received, which marvellous piece seems to have just tripped off your fingers in one sitting. I don't even see you chewing the end of a pencil . How do you do it?

(Thanks, too, for Freedom at Midnight -- loved it, especially the raja with the toy trains that ran amok. I think anyone who has read this would be saddened at the killing of Lord Mountbatten. Shed a tear for your Sufi saint, too. Khalid just killed Bab Khatmo.)

V.

Letter 3.46

Your encyclopedia arrives and arrives and arrives. Helps in many ways, of course. For instance, to my question of why Mohel didn't fly to Samadhi, your reply that he likes 'boat lag' explains everything, and no further explanation is necessary. On the other hand, the explanation that you once saw a bomb-scare at a U.S. consulate explains nothing, for the question here, as elsewhere, is not the question of 'is it possible?', nor is it the question, 'is it in accordance with the philosophy of the book'? ditto for your 'holy-man-bullshit' explanation. It may very well be the point of the story, but is it the story? If the story isn't a coherent story, its point isn't a coherent point. How does the holy-man-bullshit routine help Mohel get the bones? Regardless of the point of the story. (I can invent reasons, of course, or else change the story; but I'd like to have your reasons, either on the level of 'he did it because it accomplished -- he hoped -- this and that...' or the 'he likes boat lag' level. But to say that it's philosophically correct is merely philosophically correct. What you say about the 'nursery-school notion' of cause-and-effect is perfectly true, and also beside the story. Perhaps to the point, but beside the story, which at least creates -- or tries to create -- the illusion of reason, connection, one action following another not merely sequentially but with some logic, moving with reason and economy towards a definite stated and promised goal. More gristle, please! More, more, more...

Your 'overloaded oakie in his old Model T' simile was excellent -- I had visions of you breaking down yourself when seeing all the paraphernalia I've unloaded from the story to lighten the load on the axles so it'll go somewhere -- that's what happened to me when I unloaded Getting Off, and it was me doing the unloading, not some stranger sleeping with my book -- and am now glad that you'll be glad to sec it lighter.

what fun it is to rummage through the pile, seeing what can be used here, what there, as I lighten the load and head that ol' Tin Lizzie into the westering sun...

V.

Letter 3.45

I've finished Bones now. I must be in very select company, having read it twice -- once in Ceylon. It's the only book of yours I've been able to read through. The density of your prose requires an effort that few will care to make, even if assured in advance of the value of the effort. For myself, I could only make such an effort when in very suitable surroundings, such as the monastery I'm now at -- Buddhadasa's (you may have heard of him).

When I read an earlier draft of Bones in Ceylon I recall a much stronger plot line than I seem to find in this version. Indeed, on reading this version quite carefully, and spending some time considering it, there are still some points of importance that are not at all clear to me. Now, no doubt I could sit dawn and invent what needs to be invented to fill in these gaps (and no doubt in some cases I will), but still this book has been with you for many years now, and I'm sure you've got it figured out in your mind, even if not on paper, to the point where all action and motivation (apart from language) are clear. (I remember in Afghanistan you told me the whole plot, quite coherently, in about 5 minutes. Something like that would be useful to me in writing.) Therefore, I pose to you the following questions and ask that you reply in as mundane a vocabulary as possible, being as specific as possible. Your collaboration in removing these uncertainties (or, atleast, raising them to a higher level than the mundane level of plot and motivation) can best be affected by replying in this manner...

Why does Mohel have to go through all this holy man shit, or even talk with Premier Takataka, as part of his effort to get the Buddha's bones? His doing so is great, but it must be believable; i.e. we must feel he is acting sensibly, with suitable motivation to reach the goal set for him, in the most efficient way. If we can be made to believe that the holy-man-cum-politics is the only way the bones can be had, we'll love it; but first we're not made to believe this and second, Ven. Tanha's offer, with no apparent motive, completely undermines all these efforts, making them seem pointless posing or lunatic activities which, somehow -- how? -- manage not to destroy the purpose, but waste our time in trying to get to the point of the book, which, whatever it is, has to do, surely, with obtaining the bones...

I could also use more about the political involvement of the various characters. Like a chronological account of the Samadhi political events, as if it were a magazine account, say -- identifying the various factions, their main interests, strengths, and weaknesses, etc., and what they do-with/to each other.

If the story hangs together in a coherent context, it's beautiful. If it doesn't, it's just a lot of beautiful words floating past in the gutter.

Consider these questions and comments no put-down of your work on Bones, but a real interest on my part to find a way to retell what I remember to be a good story (good stories are always worth a retelling). You've got much of your story in your head, and the book is for yourself. I'd like to share the story around and need to have some answers to do so -- your answers if I can get them; otherwise I'll have to find my own.

Love to you, brother,

V.

Letter 3.44

(Sometimes news of the world took its time to get to the Sooke hills, so I was always glad when Bob included a few newspaper clippings with his missives. The two enclosed with this one informed me that an eight-year old elephant named Jumbo, who had perhaps the world's biggest sinus problem, died of a heart attack during tusk surgery; and that to mark the occasion of Karen Ann Quinlan's 25th birthday a mass was celebrated at her bedside where she'd lain in a coma for some years. 'We have so much to be thankful for,' her mother, Julia Quinlan, said. She never thought Karen would celebrate her 25th birthday. -- Hūm)

Wat Suan Moke -- '79

Yes! I've always (!) thought that if Achan Cha ever went to India he would promptly be re-named Achan Acha[1]. Even his name goes around twice! He too goes around twice: having been once to the West, he goes again, at the end of the month. And, possibly in late June, he may be in or around Vancouver. If you can drag your hill over there (will the ferry take it? would it float? are there city ordinances about hills walking the streets?), it might be worthwhile to meet him. (He also brings his hill.)

I'm at Ven, Buddhadasa's place in the South. He has no plans to go anywhere. Neither do I. It's flat, nearly sea-level, and muggy, but it has a distinction only shared by Kandy, in Ceylon and Almora, in India, both in hill country, among all the Asian jungle I've been in: no mosquitos, I haven't figured out why. (Maybe the mosquitos are still figuring out me.) Gnawing on Bones, I also haven't figured out how the hip bone's connected to the thigh bone, or any other, for that matter. Where's dat ol' heart bone? Amazing how bones can be fleshed out.

On this long narrow isthmus if I go long either east or west I'll soon be in the sea. Up or down -- the yoyo bit again (again!) -- is the only way, I can only be lost in half as many ways. Lost? Isthmus be de place. Merry isthmus!

V.

(Dr. Johnson met Descartes: I stink, therefore, I am.)

__________

[1] ah cha (Hindi) Yep! OK! Right-on! etc.

Letter 3.43

(While caroming cross-legged between wats, Bob was not only gnawing on Bones, but had picked up his verse translation of the Dhammapada again, which he eventually completed and called The Track of Truth. -- Hūm)

102.
However many verses one might say,
set, to no set purpose, side by side,
far better is one line about the Way
which, having heard, one's pacified.

171.
Come, behold this world; 'tis as
the well-wrought carriage of a king.
Where fools are lost the wise man has
no desire for anything.

172.
He who was heedless before,
but is heedless no more,
illumines this world,
once dark and in shrouds,
like the moon freed from clouds.

212.
Sorrow is born from what's dear.
From attraction springs fear.
When from that liking one's fled,
there's no more sorrow. Whence dread?

174.
This world is blind; there's few with sight.
As birds, escaped from nets, take flight,
those few go to realms of light.

179.
His victory no one can alter or change.
No part of his conquest partakes of this plane.
That wakened one is beyond measure or range.
How trace a trackless one?
Where's that domain?

Letter 3.42

Wat Pah Barn Tard

A rough one hour flight in a sputtering 2-engine prop over heavy cloud cover up north to Udorn Thani -- spent more time on the ground going through formalities than in the air -- glad to land, 'cause I was getting tired of paddling.

Now it's noon. I'm sitting underneath the hut (in Thailand houses are almost always built on stilts: this one rests about 5 feet off the ground on 9 substantial concrete pillars) in a chair whose legs each sit in a cup of old engine oil, to keep the ants off. It's about 105°F, down here, and a lot hotter upstairs' A breeze is like sitting next to a giant 1000 watt hair dryer. About 1:30 we'll gather for a cold drink (assuming the ice that's been ordered has been delivered as ice, not cold water) to manage the peak of the heat. Mornings are crisp, evenings pleasantly cool, nights edging toward chilly. Lizards don't mind the heat -- they scuttle about in the sunshine, then pop down holes or chase each other about, seemingly not in play. They have green markings with an orange band on each side. Strange swift movements, then long pauses. Pineapple plants and mango trees (with fruit still too green) surround this hut -- others have bananas, coconut, papaya. Oddly, there are few birds, perhaps it's the off-season. But the continual squawking of a couple tame parakeets fills in. The sand here, too, is bored with hermit spider traps. The spiders live hidden below their traps, waiting for an unwary ant to slip in. There are plenty of ants, though I've yet to see one get caught. The other day I left out a square of chocolate laxative. Within a few hours the ants had eaten a large portion of it. For the next two days there was ant shit everywhere.

This place is more intensively directed towards meditation than any wat I've seen yet. There's no routine other than morning meal and late afternoon leaf-sweeping and water hauling. No chanting or other group activities. But the sun is fierce, and so too is the teacher here. I'll sit a while longer he then likely go to the South, although I've just received an invitation to go to a place near Chiang Rai beside a waterfall on a cool hillside, and this off is presently rather tempting.

Letter 3.41

I'm still in the Northeast at Wat Boong Wai. The Northeast is very different from Bangkok and the North -- the people are of Laotian descent and are much like the Laotians I met in the refugee village in the North -- the finest people I've met in Thailand, though I believe they're scorned in the city as ignorant village peasants. Not to say there isn't banditry etc. around here (though I've not been bothered), but the people seen naturally friendly and helpful, not reserved. They have ways different from Bangkok and foods also. For instance, their staple is a heavy sticky brown rice that I quite like -- the light white rice will seem insubstantial after this. We get one meal a day here, but the food is good, and vegetarian for those (like me) who wish it -- fresh green leaves of many strange sorts (including the touch-me-not plant that closes its leaves when touched-I never knew they were edible before, but now I know why they close their leaves), some of which take some getting used to, are steamed and eaten spinach-like. One villager brings a pot of soy milk every morning, and we each have a glassful. Eggplant made into a kind of spicy paste is common. Fried crickets are considered a special delicacy (I'll try one when they come up with a vegetable variety). Also a sort of olive that, pickled, is quite tasty -- sharp, a bit musty. Only after I ate some did I learn that they're pickled in urine. And then, there are other delicacies that not only will I not even consider trying, I wouldn't even consider describing to you. Fortunately, I can depend on plenty of less exotic fare for my meals-bamboo shoots, yams, boiled pickles, fried cucumbers, boiled peanuts, raw ears of baby corn, about 2-3 inches long and eaten cob and all -- all quite satisfying.

Bits and pieces of fact and rumor about the trouble in Vietnam filter through the jungle, but it doesn't affect us here though we're closer to Saigon than to Bangkok -- not only in terms of miles, but in terms of culture too, perhaps.

Letter 3.40

To my paper bed of dormant intentions, I add your generous letter. In NY the bums use the Sunday NY Times for keeping warm. In Thailand, I've got words to heat my brain, if not my body, that neither they nor I (but you) have ever heard of.

Last month I was robbed, while chanting the evening chanting. The thieves took the costly goodies, the cheap goodies, the useless stuff, the indispensable stuff. But, among the few things they left behind was your manuscript, Bones. Talk about devastating literary criticism!

This month I paid a visit to Achan Cha (Ajahn Chah), the meditation master of NE Thailand. Most impressive dude. No time, no place, for scribbledehobble (as you call it), save on the sly or on the run. Day starts 3 AM -- much group work, not my bag, but, they say, put aside your ego, your wishes. Do it this way and see, so I do but don't see. If you feel like doing it, he says (about meditation), do it. If you don't feel like doing it, he says, still do it. Put aside this ego -- 'I want my Dhamma this way -- I like my Dhamma hard-boiled/ soft-boiled/ sunny-side-up/ all of the above/ none of the above/ etc. etc.' First see Dhamma, he says. Then decide how you like it. What a way to spend a February! From 9 PM to 3 AM I can do as I like, except on the full, new, and 2 half-moons, when we stay up all night, chanting and meditating (and drinking a lot of tea). The Western followers of Achan Cha include some of the most impressive of the Western monks I've met in the East. Too bad. If it weren't so I could dismiss his way as so much self-abnegation as to be unworthwhile. But he is not so easily dismissed, this Achan Cha... What will I do next month? (Hmm, dormant intentions?)

Don't see any universal truths I wouldn't see.

V.

Letter 3.39

The postal system, inscrewtably, has coughed up (with much clearing of the throat) your Bones, and I sit in my kuti sucking on the marrow, even after midday. It's a big book and with all the fat on it, it goes well with the lean diet of my morning meal. The book -- like much of Joyce -- is unreadable without the help of a dictionary, a Britannica, several Who's Who, a What's What, a set of almanacks, and primers for Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.

I remember when my agent (who may be, like yours, dead, for all I hear from him) told me that Getting Off was badly overwritten and had to be cut, my reaction was -- How could I possibly cut any of those sweat-drenched words, all so... so... so expressive of the very being of my soul... And I took the knife (Occam's razor) and carefully sliced a word -- and it hurt, and I bled, but when the wound healed (I heal fast) I saw that maybe there was, well, just a slight superfluity -- maybe this sentence here wasn't truly essential. Another lop.... And after a few days I was going at it tooth and nail, slash and burn, rip, rend, and reduce, cutting away all those joyful words that, beautifully organized as they were, had nothing to do, actually, with the story I was trying to tell....

I've still got many of them, in an envelope in my sister's garage. (My mother saved my baby hair, baby shoes, etc. -- the habit comes to me honestly.) About 25%-30%, in my case; I lost a lot of words, a lot of pages, and in the end Getting Off was a lot lighter and a lot healthier for it. It doesn't need to include every witticism, every verbal cleverness, every show of dexterity of which I'm capable. It can't, It need only be a spare sparse and straight story. (No doubt there's still some veins of marbling through it, but that's another matter.)

What I remember about Bones -- from the 1st time I read it, back in Ceylon -- was not all the verbal play (which is mostly unintelligible to me, lacking the erudition which you acquired – how? -- in the Canadian woods) and association-through-sound (which is soon wearying), but the story of the search for dem bones, and a large (but definitely unstated) body of implications which grows (in my mind, not on paper) from that story, and, which, 10 years later, is still remembered, and that's what I intend to rediscover from your mss. (which, thick as it is, also makes a nice desk on which to write this letter) and that's what you'll get back from me... Alam.

The Schizo Expert, by the way, is Silvano Arieti; the book is 'Interpreting Schizophrenia', You might find it worthwhile. Elsewhere he writes: '..There was nothing for her to look forward to. It was the end of her time; if by time we mean dimension in which we wish and will.

As for myself, Thailand is long and narrow, not straight and so I seem to imitate a yoyo (like Yoyosarian) or a vertical ping-pong ball bouncing about between the wats of the North and South, caroming cross-legged from kuti to kuti, and shedding a certain amount of superfluous weight with the exercise.

V.

Letter 3.38

(Between Wat Suan Moke and the Sooke hills Bob and I winged our dispatches about Worthy Bores, after he started to see if he could get the head bone atleast not connected to the butt-bone -- though perhaps it ended up that way on purpose, and consequently most of the correspondence would be incomprehensible to anybody who hadn't read half a dozen drafts over 15 years of an unpublished novel -- among whom was, perhaps, neither of the co-authors. Nonetheless some of the shop talk is amusing, even if incomprehensible, so I've included snippets of it for my own perverse pleasure, -- Hūm)

Thailand feels like the end of a long trek from Indonesia: no more borders to cross for a while. There's a very deja vu feeling to the whole trip, since it touches in so many ways upon that trip in '66. Yossarian was also involved in going around twice. Bangkok, however, offers a totally different contrast than Calcutta: there the overriding factor was the contrast between the wealthy few -- the old elite and the nouveau riche -- with their highrises and edifices -- and the utter poverty and squalidness of millions of lives, and the inescapable awareness of the wretchedness that could be, that was... here the contrast is between the quietness of the forest places and the feeling of the city temples (noisy, but always a relief from the wretched traffic noises and fumes of these clogged streets) and on the other hand the utter accessibility of means of gratifying any of the sensual pleasures. Abstinence and indulgence. Abstinence -- a withered and sere old crone. Indulgence -- a seductive young wench if ever there was one. Why do I keep entertaining this notion for the ugly one? There must be something perverse in my nature.

Meanwhile, I guess I'll wander over the P.O. and see if there are any Bones there for me. If there be and they don't slap me with death duties or bust me for grave robbing, I intend to spirit 'em someplace I can set for a spell to gnaw on 'em. I've just noticed my handwriting. If it keeps getting smaller as I near the end of the page it will eventually become illegible, but that won't matter for I would never get to the bottom of the page, where this letter will end.

THEREFORE:

Consider the extraordinary implications of this statement, made by one of the world's foremost authorities on schizophrenia:

'The ability to pretend, or to lie, is a good prognostic sign. Delusional life is reality for a patient, not pretension. When he is questioned about his delusions, he cannot deny them or lie about their existence, even when he knows that admitting them will have an unfavorable result, such as the rejection of his demand for discharge from the hospital. He cannot lie or pretend because he cannot shift to an imaginary assumption. (Schizophrenics treated even with moderate amounts of tranquilizers often reacquire the ability to lie.) The denial of delusions, which are so real to him, reacquire a power to abstract or to shift to a set of facts that from his point of view are unreal. At times, when he knows that admitting his truth would mean being kept in the hospital, he will try to be as evasive and defensive as possible, but he will not actually lie. When the patient is able to lie about his delusions, he is in the process of recovery. He will not have to lie for a long time, because the delusions will soon disappear...'

V.

Letter 3.37

A few days ago I was only out for a couple hours and came back to find I'd been robbed. They wiped me out of any items they could fence (cassette recorder, camera, and electronic calculator-alarm clock) and that I intended to sell, when I was finished playing with them. Now, it seems, I've, indeed, finish playing with them. Fortunately, I had my money and passport on me. I reported it to the police, of course, who made some show they were doing something (although it was I who was doing something: filling out useless reports) but really had no intention of actually catching a thief, finding and returning my stuff, or anything of that nature. I thought maybe because I lived at the Wat (temple) they might atleast put on a good show.

Since then the thieves haven't stolen anything more from me (though given their taste for substantial item, I don't know what I have left). One resident sage suggested one should always give the thieves more than they expect, so they'll be satisfied and won't return. Sage advice, indeed, if you haven't been robbed, or have something left to give (allow to take?). Just what do thieves expect, anyway? Whatever it my be, I doubt it promotes satisfaction, or they wouldn't be thieves (i.e. not return). Obviously, I didn't understand the sage advice.

Perhaps, the thieves wouldn't either, as they've been around the Wat atleast 4 times since my robbery. Once they tried to break into the kitchen through the front door (they cut a hole in the screen) and once through the back window (paint chips from the locked shutter could be seen the following morning), but failed both times. Simony doesn't appear to be a motive, further evidence they don't appear to be religious thieves. (I use the plural because there seems to be more than one of them; perhaps a small gang.)

I went back to the police to ask both what had been done towards following up the leads they had on my case, and what was going to be done towards ending these continuing burglary attempts, and, as I wouldn't fill out any more useless reports, they seemed slightly offended and definitely disinterested, so the next day I went to the US Consulate in Chiang Mai. The Consul told me right out that she'd been in Thailand 3 years and could offer no help. (Such a response from a U.S. Consul was atleast refreshingly honest.) The Thai government was generally corrupt, she said, but the police were the most corrupt of all. If I wanted them to protect me (and the others at the Wat) against the continuing harassment of the burglars I could get them to do it for about 100 baht ($5) a night, but otherwise they'd prefer to sleep on their desks. But she did send one of her Thai employess with me to the Provincial Cop HQ and we spoke with the chief, who said he'd speak with the Chiang Dao chief, etc., etc.

My last night in Kaeng Pan Dao I heard a lot of stones, or sticks, or something striking the roof of my hut, and I'm sure they were thrown from the path above, but didn't go out to investigate. The next day one of the monks (not the sage one) said he'd seen two men on the path at night, who ran at the sight of him, Were they cronies of the crooks trying to lure me outside to seek revenge? Village kids playing a prank? Whatever, I've decided it's over and done with, and to forget it.

The political situation here hasn't affected me as yet. The Vietnamese, who don't: seem able to stop fighting, still haven't a complete hold on Cambodia. (Though after Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge one wonders what there's left to hold.) There are various insurgents (Communist and Whastnot, especially the latter) in Thailand, but Vietnam is so far, it seems, not in a position to aid any of them. The Thai government is so corrupt that many people will welcome a change. (This is the real reason why Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fell -- corruption, not ideology.) But I don't see this as becoming a problem here for the immediate future, and by then it's possible other factors will come to dominate considerations -- China, famines, who knows.

So it goes.

Letter 3.36

In Thailand, I've noticed, dust pans have long handles on them (unlike in the States) so that one doesn't have to bend down when sweeping up the dust. The brooms, however, all seem to have short handles on them (unlike in the States) so that one does, after all, have to bend down when sweeping up the dust (just like in the States).

The Immigration Department no doubt sees the wisdom of it all, for they have said that they will consider my application for an extended visa and to report back to them in 30 days. In the meantime they committed me to a firm address (even a P.O. box wouldn't do, which, in any case, costs and doesn't leave much leg room). That'll be the hermitage in Kaeng Pan Dow, a place that pleases me, and since I expect someone will be checking up on me (though they haven't yet, not that I know of), it's probably a good place to be.

Letter 3.35

After breakfast, last Thursday, I walked out to the road, and before I could set down my rucksack I picked up a ride north to Thaton, the end of the road, north of Pang. At Thaton the river Kok flows east past Chiang Rai, and into the Mekong. I took a river boat to Chiang Rai, through some swift rapids, past jungle with small tribal villages here and there -- 3 to 10 houses make up a village -- for a 3,5 hour trip.

Chiang Rai, the 3rd largest city in Thailand, is not much more than an overgrown village pumped up with a few government facilities and offices. The main streets are not clogged with cars and motorbikes. A quiet and comfortable provincial place by all appearances. In the morning I took a bus east to Chiang Saen, a 40 mile 2 hour ride to the end of that road.

Chiang Saen is an ancient capital, but today it's just a town at the end of the road at the Mekong River with a few ruins. From there a dirt road parallels the Mekong and I went along it another 7 dusty miles to a village where the Mae Sai River joins the Mekong. Across the Mekong is Laos and across the Mae Sai is Burma -- both of them jungly hilly country. In Laos I could see a village. At night drums summoned the villagers to their nightly indoctrination meeting.

A party of trekkers arrived, with guide, at the same time as I did, to a collection of bamboo shacks that calls itself the Golden Village -- the only place to put up. The trekkers had been out 4 days going cross country to various remote villages. The usual intrepid band of odd travellers one encounters around unlikely bends of the world. That afternoon I joined them in a trek to a Laotian refugee village about 4 miles off, where we net the villagers and had a look around. The people of Chiang Rai, I'd thought, were the most attractive I'd seen in Thailand, but the Laotians were simply beautiful, fine, simple people. we were invited to stop for water at one of the houses, all very spontaneous, and with the guide translating there was a chance to ask them about conditions in Laos, what they've found in Thailand, etc. How they escaped, who they left behind -- it reminded me in many ways of the Tibetan refugees of Nepal, another very beautiful people.

I'm full of disorganized impressions, information, and tales of what is actually going on around here, and it's all quite astounding just how basic and difficult and dangerous a life they lead. (There's quite a bit of guerrilla activity in this area, not to mention out-and-out banditry by heavily armed bandits -- it's not rare for trekking parties to get held up, and once in a while people are killed or disappear.)

We lingered until we had to hurry back to return before dark, for in this neck of the jungle doesn't go about after dark -- there are not only guerrillas and bandits but also government patrols, Thai, Laotian, and Burmese, and one doesn't want to meet any of them. So after a bath in the Mekong -- at this point ¼ mile wide, muddy, and shallow -- we sat around a fire in the evening and swapped tales.

The next day I returned directly to Chiang Mai and then went out to U Mong, an artist colony/temple, where to sit myself for a bit. Galleries of paintings on Buddhist themes, some fine forest walks, and a gibbon who is very friendly and whose best friend is a puppy dog.

Letter 3.34

Kaeng Pan Dao, Thailand – '78

Though the days are warm, just short of being hot, it must drop to the low 40's at night, and a cold fog rolls in, which doesn't burn off until about 9 in the morning, and sets the trees dripping and is sharp enough to cut through cloth. Consequently, I need a few blankets at night. December, I'm told, is the coldest month here. In Ceylon, as I recall, January was the coldest, It's surprising how cold the tropics can be in winter. And this will be my third winter this year, for it was wintertime in LA, and when I arrived in Bali (south of the equator) it was winter there also. Though it wasn't cold in Bali -- far from it -- it got dark early and light late. Now it gets light shortly after 6 AM and dark by 6 PM. The thing I enjoy about Northern summers is the long summer days. I've had more than my share of short days this year.

Still, the north of Thailand seems to be the right place in the cold season (which ends in 2 months), for in the south it's still raining (they have two rainy seasons, as was the case in Ceylon at Dodanduwa), and in the east it is also cold, but without the hill tribes and the color and beauty of the hill country of the Golden Triangle. (There's gold in them thar hills: opium.)

The country hereabouts is mostly heavy jungle with clearings in the valleys. Some tea is grown, and some coffee, as well as more infamous crops. Houses are made of bamboo and are on stilts, raised about 2 feet off the ground. Beneath the house I stay in there are dozens of little indentations, the work of hermit spiders set to trap ants. One never sees the spider -- at most a leg flicks out and throws some more dirt out to steepen and deepen the inverted conical walls of their traps, and make it harder for ants to escape, etc. I remember these spiders also from Bin Gedi. (I doubt if they remember me.)

While not expecting to meet any more ghosts of Bin Gedi, I did. In a tea house I met a guy I'd met briefly at the kibbutz in '65, He was, at the time, on his way back to the States after 2 years in the Peace Corps in Thailand. Now he's made his home here (10 years ago). He didn't remember me, and I didn't remember him, until Bin Gedi just happened to pop into our conversation. He's a lawyer now with less idealistic interests.

In a few days I'm going up to Chiang Rai and Chiang Saen, right on the Mekong, where Thailand, Laos, and Burma meet -- the heart of the Triangle -- to see what there is to see, then move south again (there being no other direction to go from there), perhaps reaching Bangkok again in a few weeks from now.

Letter 3.33

Penang, Malaysia -- '78

Penang, and its town of Georgetown, is Somerset Maugham country. He used to write short stories at the E & O Hotel. I stayed in less prestigious surrounding in Batu Feranghi, a fishing village about 10 miles outside of Georgetown, and wrote no short stories. A Holiday Inn is a-building on the beach. I didn't build anything but didn't tear down anything either.

Loosest border I've ever crossed (atleast for this train; maybe it was carrying some midnight ramblers?). They didn't look at anybody's bags, and gave us our passports back in bunches to sort out for ourselves. The southern isthmus of Thailand has some very huge rocks, 50 and even 100 feet high, rising out of flat ground, rice fields; trees cling to the top of the rocks and the sides are barren granite. Cavesin some of them. They looked like they just dropped out of the clouds. Might linger here a while when I come back this way -- as I will since I have to renew my visa in a few months in Malaysia. The wretched cold I had in Singapore promptly disappeared (to my surprise) when, in Penang, I had a spicy curry meal. From my alms-collecting days in Ceylon, where chilies were a definite occupational hazard, I've viewed with rueful humor the Indian -- and Ceylonese -- claim that chilies are necessary for health in the tropics. Perhaps no pain's in vain.

Letter 3.32

Jogjakarta -- Singapore -- '78

I was several weeks in Jogjakarta, in central Java, taking a batik course from a fine old man, who looks like a fisherman in a Chinese painting, and is a master of the art famed throughout Indonesia. I don't know where he stashes his gold though, because he lives like a fisherman too, and is a man of few words even if I could catch them. I've made three batiks and have the basic knowledge now to carry on on my own -- given the right situation -- that is becoming like my teacher -- I might.

Jogja is not a bad town, small enough to be tolerable for a while, with some history to it -- several ancient temples, and of course the ruins of Borobudur about 25 miles away -- one of the Buddhist wonders of antiquity -- a 1200 year old monument of carved rocks and statuary covering a small hill. The plan of the site was a fantastic attempt to depict in sculpture the whole hierarchy of existence. On the lower levels are depicted the animal, the demonic, the vulgar human occupations; as one ascends the hill the sculpture becomes finer, more intricate, depicting the higher callings of service, healing, the arts and sciences; then the realms of the muses, graces, and fates, so to speak; until one reaches the plain and unadorned summit and within a bell-shaped stone niche sits a serene Buddha almost abstract in its austere lines. Unfortunately, the monument's being extensively renovated, and much of it was closed off when I was there.

Transportation around Jogja is by bicycle rickshaw. Streets are potholed; some cobbled. Buildings are old, tile-roofed; the paths in some places are too narrow for traffic. Beggars (the first I'd seen in Indonesia -- I saw none in Bali) wait outside the tourist-catering restaurants on Malioboro, the main street, named for the Duke of Marlborough (or the Marlborough Man? this brand of American cigarettes is a coveted black market item) -- only a few, not like Calcutta, and more ragged than thin, or even that serious about begging. Handicraft shops abound -- batik, silks, leather, buffalo-skin lampshades, elaborate fans, smoking pipes, puppets of the stylized traditional ilk, ivory and wood carving, and so on. The Central Market is a huge place with vendors selling everything there is to sell in Indonesia, and in the fantastic food section fantastically huge rats mosey about, unmolested and unafraid.

One better not show a whisker in Singapore: I'd expected to find unhappy people living under a strict authoritarian regime, and instead found a reasonably content and relatively prosperous people living under a strict authoritarian regime. It's a city-state that's crowded for space, and there's construction everywhere to further the plan (already well under way) to turn the city into a high-rise jungle. The streets are clean (it's $250 fine to litter), the water is safe to drink, the traffic hazardous, prices 3-4 times Indonesia's, goods are plentiful, food abundant there are high-rise shopping centers with supermarkets selling U.S. brands at slightly more than U.S. prices, and people poor enough that they sleep on the sidewalks, wrapped in a bit of cotton, but there are no beggars, for begging like littering and spitting and jaywalking and longhair is forbidden by a strict authoritarian regime. The city is 80% Chinese, but it still has an area that is known as Chinatown no different than any other part of the city I've seen. That says something. I'm not sure what.

Letter 3.31

Legian, Bali -- '78

Since you ask 'how far outside Bali' I am, I'd suggest you look at a map: Bali is an island, and if I were outside it I would be doing even more swimming than I do.

I have a room in a losman, or small family holding where rooms are rented, in the little village of Legian. It's a five minute walk from the Indian Ocean where the surf, I have learned, is up, but though I've already tried to ride it I have not yet been up, and see that there's a lot to learn about it. It will probably be my morning occupation for a while.

Legian has no P.O., the nearest one being the beach village of Kuta, a mile away. I rent what they call in these parts a 'pushbike' for a few cents a day and that gets me around the neighborhood. Denpasar, the capital of Bali, is about 5 miles off, and none too close for me: it's a cauldron of noise, traffic, oil fumes, and other pestilential emanations of the modern world.

Morning on the verandah and I'm writing this as I sit in a comfortable bamboo chair, bare feet propped on an ottoman, the remains of a fruit salad and a thermos of tea on the table. No power here. But the sunrise provided plenty of electricity. I watch the family life around me. The patriarch is the uncle -- in his 80's -- spry, with a sly, almost toothless smile. There are several other old relatives, a few children, and a charming young woman who with grace combines the roles of waitress, maid, and servant. In front of me is a well-kept arbor with purple hyacinth flowers. The girl is shaking the dead leaves out. Beyond her is a vegetable garden with papaya trees, then a coconut grove. A cow pasture. Many exotic plants and flowers.

Last night was full moon and I went to a fire dance -- a quite spectacular affair with costumes, music, and fire -- at a local temple. There are nearly as many temples as coconut trees in the village. I've been to another dance -- the Legong, which ends with men in trances holding swords against themselves and pressing the points in, but somehow remaining uncut. The swords are very sharp, as I learned by examining them. Afterward, to come out of the trance, they drink the blood of a freshly decapitated chicken. The dance -- like all traditional Balinese dances -- required a great deal of technical proficiency and was done to the music of a gamelan orchestra -- an otherworldly cacophony of sounds. The gamelans are a sort of xylophone, which are accompanied by gongs, drums and flutes. I was reminded of the music at the Monkey Temple in Katmandu; though this seemed music of 'the spirits' rather than 'the spirit'.

I biked up to Singaraja, on the north side of the island, and stayed a few days on the beach. Singaraja has calm waters, no surf, and there are patches of coral with colorful tropical fish, though not so brilliant as the coral reefs off of Eilat or Belize, nor so clear as the water of the Caribbean. Both oil and shipping have contributed their filth. Still I enjoyed myself in snorkel and mask floating motionless over the reefs -- also I tied a rope behind a native trimirand, and, with snorkel, had it pull me around -- past a small shark, which caused me no trouble, as well as a beautiful iridescent blue starfish. Walking on the black lava sand beach is a quite different feeling than on a white sand beach; perhaps it's the memory of volcanos between one's toes.

Back in Legian, the rains -- of the rainy season -- seemed to have started early; the water is much cooler, so no more moon-lit surfing, but in the evenings I make music with friends at a local restaurant -- me on recorder, somebody else on guitar, sometimes a mouthharp or drums.

At first I wondered if I was hearing rightly, and it struck me as rather comical, but now I understand that all Balinese have one of 4 names, denoting their order of birth: #1 child is named Wyan, #2 is Madé, #3 Nyomin, #4 is Ketut, #5 starts again with Wayan -- there is no difference in names according to sex. I'm not sure if this makes learning names four times easier or four times harder.

Bali is such a fine place not because it has beautiful beaches and a tropical climate -- those are common enough -- but because it has, on top of this, a gentle and enduring culture which values most highly the creative arts -- not only music, dance, and painting, but also architecture (especially temple architecture), sculpting, carving, etc., as well as an appreciation for the natural beauty that is rare in Asia. But Bali is only one small island in Indonesia, and though its culture is Hindu (derived long ago from India, but long since gone its own way) the rest of the country is Moslem with its usual strictures and oppressions.

Sadly, my usual visa hassles will soon expel me from the island. But that's always the way with paradise isn't it?

Letter 3.30

Legian Kelod, Bali -- '78

For coastal island-type living Bali is as good as I've found. It's a very easy life, though, and it's rewards, the real, are not earned -- unlike in the Himalayas, where I felt (wrong-headedly, no doubt) that every wonder had been earned and was therefore (somehow) worthier, or perhaps it was I who was worthier, I don't know.

Your offer to give me Worthy Bones is incredibly generous. Before I accept, however, I'd like to see what I can do with it. That I gratefully accept. I quite agree that you should retain final approval -- after all, it's your story -- or rather, it seems, stories. How many versions have there been now? Perhaps you could send me both an 'ancient first edition' and the last re-write so I can see how your jungle has been growing. I don't expect to run any roads through it – more a matter of trimming back some of the overgrown undergrowth, leaving the trees free to reach sunwards. I want Bones to be something publishable, and something to be read. It's a great story, which impressed me when I read it. I would like to see it stand primarily as a story, revealing its meaning in its movement, rather than as a series of images succeeding each other, each beautifully portrayed but each basically static. I say this now so that should you not agree with this concept you can tell me so now instead of later. In any case, wait till I'm settled into my rabbit-hole in Thailand before sending Zem Bones for me to nibble on.

What is the difference between 'ceasing of activity' and 'ceasing of the activity of greed, hatred, and delusion'? True, the Buddha was active. The Buddha was an arahat. Not only are only arahats capable of non-karmic action (if by non-karmic you mean 'activity not involved with greed, hatred, and delusion') but that's the only sort of activity the arahat is capable of, or involved in. (This leaves out of account the sekha [1], whose position is in-between. In fact, anyone who succeeds in acting non-karmically is by that fact an arahat. The rest of us just keep scratching our itches. Activity without scratching is non-karmic. (The sekha doesn't always scratch, but he still itches.)

Balinese Buddhas, by the way, are rather unsettling, having breasts and very shapely bodies. Scratch, scratch.

V.

___________________________

[1] Sekha: (Pali) 'one in training' (synonymous with sotapanna or 'stream-winner'): he stands half way between the puthujjana, who has no realization of the Dhamma and the arahat (or asekha 'one finished the training') who has full realization of the Dhamma.

Letter 3.29

(When Bob hitched into Sooke for th last time, I just bumped into him walking down the street. Over a cup of coffee in a cafe he studied me thoughtfully, 'You don't look a lot older than when we first met.' 'When you saw me or were seen by me?' He smiled, a little tired, maybe -- 'You find a short cut from Kabul to Sooke?' 'I just went straight ahead,' 'I just went straight around.'

This trip, my 'stump' had sprouted in the hills and to it we repaired. He pitched his pup tent in the hillside clearing and we had a pot of rice and bean and talked. He told me about Guatemala; beautiful country and people -- the Indians; rotten politics, and the 'dark-eyed gringa yoga teacher', who 'helped me see -- then see that she was going one way and I was going another,' So how was the uncelibate life lately? He smiled, 'Too late,' I found that the old adage 'what you don't use you lose' seemed to be working out pretty good for me. He said it seemed to work differently for him: 'Even using it I can't lose it.'

Not that it had anything to do with the subject, but he was somewhat intrigued presently about the notion of 'black holes'. We came to the conclusion that although the Buddha's Teaching pointed out our main problem and what to do about it -- this was probably just the light edge of an ontological black hole.

I mentioned my work on the sequel to Worthy Bones -- Mohel in America -- more or less the same story: only instead of a plot to pinch the Buddha bones it was the Declaration of Interdependence. 'So what is it?' he lifted an eyebrow at me and his recorder to his lips. 'An accusation,' I said.

With a ghost of a smile, he nodded, then blew -- quite beautifully -- a Bach bourrée.

Through my stump window I watched him in the autumn twilight sitting cross-legged by his tent watching the gulls wheel over the salmon-spawning river in the gorge below -- he seemed a natural part of the scene, with not a breath of pretension. (As I look out my stump window -- 12 years later -- I still see the rocks -- in the same place, just bearded with moss and lichen -- that he placed there as tent pegs.)

In the morning he pointed out to me a tiny, delicate, lacey white fungus with a bright red flower no bigger than a pinprick of blood. 'Sometimes I notice things,' he said quietly, then looked up at me, 'You're the only one I know who's kept at it, you know?'

We gave each other a 'rhino' hug. A tear in the eye.

After a few months back in LA, where he finished Getting Off, with little satisfaction, and even less satisfaction trying to find an agent, get it read, etc., etc., with a sigh of relief that even brushed by me in the Sooke hills, he flew the American coop once more -- and for the last time. In Asia again, he slipped into his Mexican premonition, his monk's robe again; it seemed to fit better this time around; anyhow, it fit for good. -- Hūm)

Letter 3.28

(Few months later I got a postcard of a semi-abstract water-color evoking a Gautemala-like landscape across which floated the words THERE IS ALWAYS IN YOUR CENTER A WARM LOVE CENTER -- OPEN -- ENTER with translation in a familiar hand Local Dirty Postcard. -- Hūm)

Movement afoot! Shall return to California before crossing the Pacific to Thailand. Some possibility I may get farther north first. Shall let you know as developments develop, possibilities possibilize, opportunities opportune, unless spared them myself. There's no doubt about it -- either I will or I won't. There's no doubt about it -- I wander what is.

How 'bout you? I'm less a writer these days than a musician, less a musician than a bum. I'm not even a bum.

Watch out or you might not be too.

V.

Letter 3.27

The earth continues trembling, following Kierkegaard's advice: 'The most that anybody can do for another in that sphere wherein each has to do solely with himself is to inspire him with concern and unrest.'

The earth fills me with a certain unrest as aftershocks remind me that the outer shell of the world is thin as a hen's egg, and has been incubating a long long time.

A dark-eyed gringa yoga teacher fills me with a certain concern as she gently reminds me, 'See this? This is. See that? That is.' Amazing what one doesn't see is, no?

And sandwiched in there somewhere is a slice of time when I manage to scribble messages to the outside world: I AM TRAPPED INSIDE A GUATEMAIAN FORTUNE COOKIE. DON'T HELP.

Monsoon approacheth. Very mild: sunny bright mornings, clouds at mid-afternoon building up, thundering but not yet strong enough for daily showers -- give that another week or so -- then clearing up after dark into starlit nights. May be the mildest tropical monsoon I've been through, yet it washes all the tourists right out, and Panajachel is entering its quiet part of the year.

Yes, if you want your books back you can get them from my sister, but I am bound to say that I would feel a personal reluctance to return them: they have, even unread, some value to me, and unless you truly need them I would ask you to let them stay where they are.

My own book, having creaked past the half-way point, is coming slowly to rest, perhaps for a bit, while I take a rest from such labors, plan an Easter trip to the Caribbean side, renewing inner wells of creativeness, now somewhat dry. Work out of the way, maybe they'll fill up.

V.

Letter 3.26

Panajachel -- February '76

To let you know I'm alright, i.e. unharmed physically, I'm working in the refugee camps and stricken villages. Towns consist of streets six inches deep with dust, surrounding neat squares of rubble, two or three feet high, covered by a sprinkling of rooftops, some at crazy angles. Here and there a door frame stands, connected to wall fragments, jammed shut, the only way one cannot enter upon these huge adobe-shattered courtyards. Refugee camps consist of endless twisting lines of people waiting, waiting for food, medical attention, used clothing, shelter against the cold winds, against the continuing tremors, against the fear of their own mortality. Villages consist of uncomprehending Indians standing about in piles of rubble too stunned to do anything more than that, or too hungry, or too hurt...

I've not disposed of your novels: they're stored in L.A. at me sister's place. Hope I don't have the world's only copy and that if you need to refer to yourself you'll be capable of doing so through other carbon papers, or perhaps even through none at all.

I finished Chapter IV of Getting Off the day before the quake and shall begin Chapter V after things settle down and return to complacent normalcy. These days there are more important things to do than to talk for hundreds of pages of my attempts -- my attempts, mine, mine, MINE! -- to become egoless, and crack a few jokes of doubtful humor.

Anyway, I have no intention of leaving Guatemala voluntarily (although there are rumors that they're going to clear the country of tourists because of food shortages, health dangers, the P.M.'s astrology chart, or whatever other reasons they wish to find), so my address remains unchanged (although I can't say the same for myself: the quake has left me changed, for how long, and whether for better or worse, remains to be seen).

V.

Letter 3.25

Rivers do more than gurgle, betimes. Sometimes, like people, they rage and destroy. The river here has never had much claim to banks -- a rather impoverished affair, it's always seemed, in a bed a hundred times its size, like an ill-fitting suit on a hobo -- and it's meandered down to the lake uncertain which way to go but choosing, for convenience, the path that led downhill. It was easily gone over with the help of a log for a footbridge. [...]

Rumors were rife. On the evening of the third day a friend made his way back to the village from Guatemala City and confirmed reports of vast destruction and high death tolls. It was also learned that the nearby village of Tecpan was completely destroyed and so those in Panajachel collected food, clothing, and medicine and made their way to the village.)

I've just returned from Tecpan. I went up there with no idea of what destruction looks like. Tecpan simply doesn't exist anymore.

There are streets of thick choking dust surrounding blocks of rubble and tin roofs sheltering ruins. And there a door stands, holding onto bits of wall, still standing, opening up onto fields of rubble.

People seem totally dazed, we wear kerchiefs on our faces against the dust. An emergency hospital has been set up in the school yard because little rubble is there. I've come up here in a van with some other people, including a doctor -- a young German woman.

We try to help at the hospital; people are screaming. The smell of decay is in the air. We treat a woman whose head has been cracked open, exposing her brains. A girl's hand is crushed and broken open, the wound filled with dirt, stones, and pus.

People wear the meanest of rags -- all that's left to them.

(Bob and his friends learned that in fields outside Tecpan a tent hospital had been set up and so they proceeded there.)

On the way, we see a man who has put his injured wife in a chair and is carrying her on his back. We stop and give the woman something for pain and then take her to the hospital.

(The 'hospital' was two tents with hundreds of people milling among armed soldiers 'doing nothing'.)

I helped pitch a third tent... brought water from a nearby well, dirty, and brackish. We began trying to treat people. I help the German doctor for a while, then find a Guatemalan who doesn't seem to know significantly more about medicine than I do. Except for the German, the doctors don't seem to know what to do. Casts are put on wrong. People who have huge bruises and probably internal injuries are given a painkiller and sent away without proper examinations.

(All the help he saw was from civilian volunteers with no government aid except in the form of the military which was there strictly to keep order -- or, as he also saw, occasionally to pilfer. He wondered about the plight of the other towns, Patsun and Chimulterengo, which at that time had not been heard from. -- Hūm)

If Tecpan is typical, this government is doing nothing for the countryside except sending its most inexperienced doctors reserving all benefits for Guatemala City itself.

This is due to the split in the culture between the European-born Latino minority which controls the country and the native Indians, by far the majority, who have no power at all. The Latinos have a long history of ignoring the needs of the Indians, and this is an example of it.

There are signs posted everywhere that we foreigners are using up precious food supplies and therefore should leave... that enough help is available.

But these are base government lies. Until I see convincing evidence to the contrary I have doubts as to whether the Indian population is receiving any significant help at all from any source other than the volunteers. I plan to stay until I'm forced out... We just had another jolt...

Letter 3.24

Met a fella the other day, a poet of sorts, sez he's putting together a book. 'Oh?' sez I, 'Yeah, it's an anthology,' sez he, 'Oh?' sez I, a bit more 'nerested this time 'cause it sounds like there's some action in it that's still loose. 'Yeah,' sez he, 'it's gonna be both prose and poetry, shorter pieces mostly, and mostly directed towards Eastern themes.' 'Eastern?' sez I, 'cause when I say 'Eastern' I mean India and the like, but I've talked to people who, when they say 'Eastern' mean like New York, or Boston, or someplace like that. Maybe even Cleveland. 'Yeah,' sez he. 'You know, Hindu, Buddhist, that whole thing.' 'Oh,' sez I seizing opportunity by the balls, 'Are you looking for contributions?' And then I tell him about myself, and so he gives me his name and address, sez he's mucho 'nerested and will seriously consider whatever I send him. He's a published poet who's spent the past summer with the other published poets who seem to flock each summer to the Naropa thing in Boulder. He's doing the book with another dude, the name escapes me at the mo. So anyway, I tell him too that I got this friend up in B.C. who lives in a stump and does prose poetry of a very unique nature but with an Eastern angle and mebbe he'd like a look at what my friend is doing too? And he sez, 'Why, sure thing. Just tell him to send three or four things, don't let any individual piece get much over 1000 words. Tell him that if I have to edit anything I'll send him an edited copy for approval. Then he writes down his name and address. We talk some more, and then before leaving he sez, 'Oh yeah, tell your friend to include a note so I'll know who he is and all that,' And he splits. About five minutes later I'm telling all this to someone else, and he asks me, 'Does he pay?' and gol'durn it to tarnation, I knew all along that there was an important question I wanted to ask him, but I couldn't remember in time what it was. Don't that beat all?

V.

Letter 3.23

Panajachel, Gautemala -- December '75

I ran into a big legal hassle in Mexico over possession of a roach, and the upshot of it all is that I left the country and have now found a place in Guatemala. Since that place fits well I'm not too perturbed over the situation, though it would have been nice to have continued my swing through Mexico. There's just more uptightness in this part of the world than in Asia, and so it's necessary to be careful.

Anyway, I've got an adobe hut in the barrio of Panajachel, which is the main town on Lake Atitlan, so I'm close to water, but pretty high up -- about a mile, like Colorado, and, like Colorado, in very hilly, even mountainous country. Unlike Colorado, however, there is no snow at all, and the highest peaks are volcanic. There are three volcanos around the lake, in fact, and it makes for a primeval scene.

My life here is organized along lines similar to my Mexican days (how few of them there were!): meditation, writing (I'm getting near the end of Chapter III of Getting Off, playing the recorder, going for walks (but no swimming: this lake would freeze your fipple!), just being quiet and peaceful. By the way, I'm finding the letters I wrote you (which you returned to me a while ago) a good source of ideas in reconstructing my attitudes and concerns in those days. Thanks, man. Give my love to Mirotchka, wherever she roams, and keep some for yourself: there's plenty for both of you.

Letter 3.22

(Fragments from a Mexican Diary – Hūm)

November '75 -- El Llano

Dumped bike twice today. Popping out of gear. Clutch-plate or what? Once it just slowly came to a stop and tipped over. Don't know why I can't handle it. Overloaded, overtired, maybe.

Pass commemorative monument at 28th parallel (commemorating, apparently, the 28th parallel). Without a doubt the ugliest monument I have ever seen; all angular, ending nowhere, and making no sense at all, like a staircase without a house.

Crest a hill to feast eyes on Gulf of California: fantastic. Descending to sea level: birds of prey, some hovering motionless, barely moving their wingtips, others by the side of road lunching on some creatures that didn't look both ways before crossing the road. Wayside chapels, two feet high adobe with crosses and fading wreaths. All Hallow's Day the wreaths put out. Forest of stately tall green cactus; beyond them clean beaches, white frothy surf, pale green waters of a lagoon, the deep dark waters of the gulf, white-capped. Some miles out a large island, barren red-brown, sharp jagged mountains jutting out with grey-white cliffs; a little village barely visible nestled in a cove of the island; and in the far far distance vague shadowy shapes of mainland Mexico.

Camp near the sea in the shade of a date palm grove; only natural sounds, no human signs. Lovely, lonely beach: volcanic stones, colored shells, fish skeletons. Desert cacti meeting pure sea and sparkling lagoons.

Pass a monster on the road -- it was going maybe 40 MPH, probably as fast as it could go: a half-ton truck with a big camper on it pulling a long trailer with a large boat on top of it and two trail bikes mounted to the front of the truck. Guy must have every toy going. Reminds me of someone who goes through a cafeteria line and takes one of everything there is, until his tray is so piled up he can hardly walk without spilling things. Monster passes me as I siesta. Later on a steep downgrade I see a truck missed a sharp turn and went over the side into the bay of La Paz. The toy truck?

Under the stars, power failure: I was watching the lights reflected on the ocean, when they all went out (except the stars of course) -- when that happened it reminded me of the solitude and peace of Godawaya, in Ceylon.

Morning: bit to hell by something, maybe everything -- notice lumpy spots in my arms smaller: competition? a case of self-arrest?

A glimpse of the future: had a flash, while working on Getting Off that its completion will require me to live up to its viewpoint by taking the robe again. There are several layers of irony in this fact, which makes it seem both extravagant and compelling.

Letter 3.21

(The next year Bob rode his motorcycle through the Rockies to see me in Sooke, on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia. At the time I had a room in a ramshackle old rooming house. One day I opened my door and saw Bob in my bed with bemused smile. How was the trip, man? Learned something about bikes. Nothing about Zen. Yeah. No real problems -- only going through a bridge. Wha?! Somewhere in Washington his front wheel went through a rotten plank of a wooden bridge and the bike flipped. But you're OK?! Some parts more than others. He poked his foot from beneath the covers: it was in a cast. Wha?!! A busted ankle. My twinge of shocked sympathy burst into hilarious laughter till tears ran down my face.

Bob could tell a joke -- like slowly, slowly setting a mousetrap -- a mellow-toned, most excellent teller of tales -- not even the glint in his eye telegraphed the punch-line. Me, I always just wanted to blurt it out, but Bob made getting there the best part.

Foot-cast humming in the wind, we rode into Victoria and that evening saw a movie: Sleuth with Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine. Some buddy picture. His review: Who did it ain't who done it. Hmm? We all do it -- and did it -- only a Buddha done it.

When he left Sooke -- with his dark, unruly hair and beard, shades, and leather jacket -- some heavenly Hell's Angel with a plaster foot -- he was heading for Mexico. --Hūm)