IT WAS EVEN FRIGHTENING AT THE OTHER PEACEFUL END of Raton Canyon, the east end, where Alf the pet mule of local settlers slept at night such sleepfull sleeps under a few weird trees and then got up in the morning to graze in the grass then negotiated the whole distance slowly to the sea shore where you saw him standing by the waves like an ancient sacred myth character motionless in the sand—Alf the Sacred Burro I later called him—The thing that was frightening was the mountain that rose up at the east end, a strange Burmese like mountain with levels and moody terraces and a strange ricepaddy hat on top that I kept staring at with a sinking heart even at first when I was healthy and feeling good (and I would be going mad in this canyon in six weeks on the fullmoon night of September 3rd)—The mountain reminded me of my recent recurrent nightmares in New York about the “Mountain of Mien Mo” with the swarms of moony flying horses lyrically sweeping capes over their shoulders as they circled the peak a “thousand miles high” (in the dream it said) and on top of the mountain in one haunted nightmare I'd seen the giant empty stone benches so silent in the topworld moonlight as tho once inhabited by Gods or giants of some kind but long ago vacated so that they were all dusty and cobwebby now and the evil lurked somewhere inside the pyramid nearby where there was a monster with a big thumping heart but also, even more sinister, just ordinary seedy but muddy janitors cooking over small woodfires—Narrow dusty holes through which I'd tried to crawl with a bunch of tomato plants tied around my neck—Dreams—Drinking
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