Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac Read Free Book Online Page B

closed eyes the delicate milky litter of papers piled, like some old dream of a picture of papers, like papers piled on a desk in a cartoon, like a realistic scene from an old Russian film, and the oil lamp shadowing some in half—And looking at my face closer in the tin mirror, I see the blue eyes and sun red face and red lips and weekly beard and think: “Courage it takes to live and face all this iron impasse of die-you-fool? Nah, when all is said and done it doesnt matter”—It must be, it is, the Golden Eternity enjoying itself with movies—Torture me in tanks, what else can I believe?—Cut me limbs off with a sword, what must I do, hate Kalinga to the bitter death and beyond?—Pra, it’s the mind. “Sleep in Heavenly Peace.”—
    27
    All of a sudden on an innocent moonlit tuesday night I turn on the radio for the bull session and hear all the excitement about lightning, the Ranger has leff a message with Pat on Crater Mountain for me to call at once, I do, he says “How is the lightning up there?”—I say “It’s a clear moonlit night up here, with a north wind blowing”—“Well,” he says a little nervous and harassed, “I guess you live right”—Just then I see a flash to the south—He wants me to call the trail crew at Big Beaver, which I do, no answer—Suddenly the night and the radio is charged with excitement, the flashes on the horizon are like the second-to-the-last stanza of the Diamond Sutra (the Diamondcutter of the Wise Vow), a sinister sound comes out of the heather, the wind in the cabin rigging takes on a hypersuspicious air, it seems as though the six weeks of lonely bored solitude on Desolation Peak has come to an end and I’m down again, just because of distant lightning and distant voices and the rare distant mumble of thunder—The moon shines on, Jack Mountain is lost behind clouds, but Desolation is not, I can just make out the Jack Snowfields surling in their gloom—a vast batwing 30 miles or 60 miles wide advances slowly, soon t’obliterate the moon, which ends sorrowing in her cradle thru the mist—I pace in the windy yard feeling strange and glad—the lightning yellowdances over ridges, two fires are already started in the Pasayten Forest according to excited Pat on Crater who says “I’m having fun here noting down the lightning strikes” which he doesnt have to do it’s so far away from him and from me 30 miles—Pacing, I think of Jarry Wagner and Ben Fagan who wrote poems on these lookouts (on Sourdough and Crater) and I wish I could see them to get that strange feeling that I’m down off the mountain and the whole bloody mess of boredom done—Somehow, because of the excitement, the door of my shack is more exciting as I open and close it, it seems to be peopled, poems written about it, washtubs and Friday night and men in the world, something, something to do, or be—It is no longer Tuesday Night August 14 in Desolation but the Night of the World and the Lightning Flash and there I pace thinking the lines from the Diamond Sutra (in case lightning should come and curl me up inside my sleeping bag with the fear of God or a heart attack, thunder crashing right on my lightning rod)—: “If a follower should cherish any limited judgment of the realness of the feeling of his own selfhood, the realness of the feeling of the selfness of others, the realness of the feeling of living beings, or the realness of the feeling of a universal self, he would be cherishing something that is non-existent” (my own paraphrase) and now tonight more than ever I see these words to be true—For all this phenomena, that which shows, and all noumena, that which shows not, is the loss of the Heavenly Kingdom (and not even that)—“A dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, the lightning’s flash …”
    â€œI’ll find out and let