The Dharma Bums

I said to Japhy "What the hell you go

"Take whichever one you want. I'm neutral tonight."

I went out to the bonfire to hear Cacoethes' latest witticisms. Arthur Whane was sitting on a log, well dressed, necktie and suit, and I went over and asked him "Well what is Buddhism? Is it fantastic imagination magic of the lightning flash, is it plays, dreams, not even plays, dreams?"

"No, to me Buddhism is getting to know as many people as possible." And there he was going around the party real affable shaking hands with everybody and chatting, a regular cocktail party. The party inside was getting more and more frantic. I began to dance with the tall girl myself. She was wild. I wanted to sneak her up on the hill with a jug but her husband was there. Later in the night a crazy colored guy showed up and began playing bongos on his own head and cheeks and mouth and chest, whacking himself with real loud sounds, and a great beat, a tremendous beat.

Everybody was delighted and declared he must be a Bodhisattva.

People of all kinds were pouring in from the city, where news of the great party was going the rounds of our bars. Suddenly I looked up and Alvah and George were walking around naked.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, we just decided to take our clothes off."

Nobody seemed to mind. In fact I saw Cacoethes and Arthur Whane well dressed standing having a polite conversation in the firelight with the two naked madmen, a kind of serious conversation about world affairs.

Finally Japhy also got naked and wandered around with his jug. Every time one of his girls looked at him he gave a loud roar and leaped at them and they ran out of the house squealing. It was insane. I wondered what would ever happen if the cops in Corte Madera got wind of this and came roarin up the hill in their squad cars. The bonfire was bright, anybody down the road could see everything that was going on in the yard. Nevertheless it was strangely not out of place to see the bonfire, the food on the board, hear the guitar players, see the dense trees swaying in the breeze and a few naked men in the party.

I talked to Japhy's father and said "What you think about Japhy bein naked?"

"Oh I don't give a damn, Japh can do anything he wants far as I'm concerned. Say where's that big old tall gal we was dancin with?" He was a pure Dharma Bum father. He had had it rough too, in his early years in the Oregon woods, taking care of a whole family in a cabin he'd built himself and all the horny-headed troubles of trying to raise crops in merciless country, and the cold winters. Now he was a well-to-do painting contractor and had built himself one of the finest houses in Mill Valley and took good care of his sister. Japhy's own mother was alone living in a rooming house in the north. Japhy was going to take care of her when he got back from Japan. I had seen a lonely letter from her. Japhy said his parents had separated with a great deal of finality but when he got back from the monastery he would see what he could do to take care of her. Japhy didn't like to talk about her, and his father of course never mentioned her at all. But I liked Japhy's father, the way he danced sweating and mad, the way he didn't mind any of the eccentric sights he saw, the way he let everybody do what they wanted anyway and went home around midnight in a shower of thrown flowers dancing off down to his car parked in the road.

Al Lark was another nice guy who was there, just kept sitting sprawled with his guitar plucking out rumbling rambling blues chords or sometimes flamenco and looking off into space, and when the party was over at three a. m. he and his wife went to sleep in sleeping bags in the yard and I could hear them goofing in the grass. "Let's dance," she said.

"Ah, go to sleep!" he said.

Psyche and Japhy were sore at each other that night and she didn't want to come up the hill and honor his new white sheets and stomped off to leave. I watched Japhy going up the hill, weaving drunk, the party was over.

I went with Psyche to her car and said "Come on, why do you make Japhy unhappy on his farewell night?"

"Oh he was mean to me, the hell with him."

"Aw come on, nobody'll eat you up the hill."

"I don't care, I'm driving back to the city."

"Well, that's not nice, and Japhy told me he loved you."

"I don't believe it."

"That's the story of life," I said walking away with a huge jug of wine hooked in my forefinger and I started up the hill and heard Psyche trying to back up her car and do a U-turn in the narrow road and the back end landed in the ditch and she couldn't get out and had to sleep on Christine's floor anyway. Meanwhile Bud and Coughlin and Alvah and George were all up in the shack sprawled out in various blankets and sleeping bags on the floors. I put my bag down in the sweet grass and felt I was the most fortunate person of the lot. So the party was over and all the screaming was done and what was accomplished? I began to sing in the night, enjoying myself with the jug. The stars were blinding bright.

"A mosquito as big as Mount Sumeru is much bigger than you think!" yelled Coughlin from inside the shack, hearing me sing.

I yelled back, "A horse's hoof is more delicate than it looks!"

Alvah came ru

Bang! Come on, you girls! gimps! punks! thieves! pimps! hangmen! Run!"

Then I suddenly had the most tremendous feeling of the pitifulness of human beings, whatever they were, their faces, pained mouths, personalities, attempts to be gay, little petulances, feelings of loss, their dull and empty witticisms so soon forgotten: Ah, for what? I knew that the sound of silence was everywhere and therefore everything everywhere was silence. Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at all? I staggered up the hill, greeted by birds, and looked at all the huddled sleeping figures on the floor. Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me? And who was I? Poor Japhy, at eight a. m. he got up and banged on his frying pan and chanted the "Gocchami" chant and called everybody to pancakes.