night shores of Cornwall, or the soft sound of the Indian Ocean crashing at the mouth of the Ganges maybe”)—And I just sit there listening to the waves talk all up and down the sand in different tones of voice “Ka bloom, kerplosh, ah ropey otter barnacled be, crowsh, are rope the angels in all the sea?” and such[1]—Looking up occasionally to see rare cars crossing the high bridge and wondering what they'd see on this drear foggy night if they knew a madman was down there a thousand feet below in all that windy fury sitting in the dark writing in the dark—Some sort of sea beatnik, tho anybody wants to call me a beatnik for THIS better try it if they dare—The huge black rocks seem to move—The bleak awful roaring isolateness, no ordinary man could do it I’m telling you—I am a Breton! I cry and the blackness speaks back “Les poissons de la mer parlent Breton” (the fishes of the sea speak Breton)—Nevertheless I go there every night even tho I dont feel like it, it’s my duty (and probably drove me mad), and write these sea sounds, and all the whole insane poem “Sea.”
Always so wonderful in fact to get away from that and back to the more human woods and come to the cabin where the fire’s still red and you can see the Bodhisattva’s lamp, the glass of ferns on the table, the box of Jasmine tea nearby, all so gentle and human after that rocky deluge out there—So I make an excellent pan of muffins and tell myself “Blessed is the man can make his own bread”—Like that, the whole three weeks, happiness—And I'm rolling my own cigarettes, too—And as I say sometimes I meditate how wonderful the fantastic use I've gotten out of cheap little articles like the scourer, but in this instance I think of the marvelous belongings in my rucksack like my 25 cent plastic shaker with which I’ve just made the muffin batter but also I’ve used it in the past to drink hot tea, wine, coffee, whisky and even stored clean handker-
- ↑ The complete poems written by the sea are to be found at the end of this book, in the appendix, entitled “Sea”: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. JK
