Big Sur by Jack Kerouac Read Free Book Online Page A

knowledge: that it didnt want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in the first place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period.
    That being the first indication of my later flip—But also on the day of leaving the cabin to hitch hike back to Frisco and see everybody and by now I’m tired of my food (forgot to bring jello, you need jello after all that bacon fat and cornmeal in the woods, every woodsman needs jello) (or cokes) (or something)—But it’s time to leave, I’m now so scared by that iodine blast by the sea and by the boredom of the cabin I take 20 dollars worth of perishable food left and spread it out on a big board below the cabin porch for the bluejays and the raccoon and the mouse and the whole lot, pack up, and go—But before I go I realize this isnt my own cabin (here’s the second signpost of my madness), I have no right to hide Monsanto’s rat poison, as I’ve been doing, feeding the mouse instead, as I said—So like a dutiful guest in another man’s cabin I take the cover off the rat poison but compromise by simply leaving the box on the top shelf, so nobody can complain—And go off like that—But during my absence, but—You’ll see.

10
    W ITH MY MIND EVEN AND UPRIGHT and abiding nowhere, as Hui Neng would say, I go dancing off like a fool from my sweet retreat, rucksack on back, after only three weeks and really after only 3 or 4 days of boredom, and go hankering back for the city—“You go out in joy and in sadness you return,” says Thomas à Kempis talking about all the fools who go forth for pleasure like high school boys on Saturday night hurrying clacking down the sidewalk to the car adjusting their ties and rubbing their hands with anticipatory zeal, only to end up Sunday morning groaning in bleary beds that Mother has to make anyway—It’s a beautiful day as I come out of that ghostly canyon road and step out on the coast highway, just this side of Raton Canyon bridge, and there they are, thousands and thousands of tourists driving by slowly on the high curves all oo ing and aa ing at all that vast blue panorama of seas washing and raiding at the coast of California—I figure I’ll get a ride into Monterey real easy and take the bus there and be in Frisco by nightfall for a big ball of wino yelling with the gang, I feel in fact Dave Wain oughta be back by now, or Cody will be ready for a ball, and there’ll be girls, and such and such, forgetting entirely that only three weeks previous I’d been sent fleeing from that gooky city by the horrors—But hadnt the sea told me to flee back to my own reality?
    But it is beautiful especially to see up ahead north a vast expanse of curving seacoast with inland mountains dreaming under slow clouds, like a scene of ancient Spain, or properly really like a scene of the real essentially Spanish California, the old Monterey pirate coast right there, you can see what the Spaniards must’ve thought when they came around the bend in their magnificent sloopies and saw all that dreaming fatland beyond the seashore whitecap doormat—Like the land of gold—The old Monterey and Big Sur and Santa Cruz magic—So I confidently adjust my pack straps and start trudging down the road looking back over my shoulder to thumb.
    This is the first time I’ve hitch hiked in years and I soon begin to see that things have changed in America, you cant get a ride any more (but of course especially on a strictly tourist road like this coast highway with no trucks or business)—Sleek long stationwagon after wagon comes sleering by smoothly, all colors of the rainbow and pastel at that, pink, blue, white, the husband is in the driver’s seat with a long ridiculous vacationist hat with a long baseball visor making him look witless and idiot—Beside him sits wifey, the boss of America, wearing dark glasses and sneering, even if he wanted to