Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (75 page)

Come home soon

Jack

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York]

City Lights 261 Columbus
SF Calif USA
Oct 6, 1963

 

Dear Jack:

Kept thinking I should write you back fast huge love lovely belly flowers letter, received yours in Japan, I just got TOO MUCH to tell you TOO TOO TOO much whoops where could I begin Japan or somewhere? India, Ganges I'm bathing all the time and praying for transcendentalist Blakes and visiting holy-men and all they got to say is “Take Blake for your Guru,” or “Your own Heart is Your Guru,” or “O how wounded you and Peter are, Oh how wounded, Oh how wounded,” till finally I left when time was up and flew to Viet Nam and everybody killing everybody else hardhearted America paranoia and weeks in Cambodia ruins Ankor Wat and pot and Bangkok Chinese boys and finally peaceful Kyoto, sat in monastery with Gary [Snyder] and did belly breathing and that calmed my mind and then the sweetness of all those Gurus sinking in to me and then Joanne [Kyger] and Gary both so nice to me both took me to bed even Gary made love to me and all of a sudden I dug Joanne since it was alright for me to feel what anyway I felt, I want a woman wife lady, I want I want, want life not death, wound up crying on train from Kyoto to Tokyo and wrote final poem: On My Train Seat I Renounce My Power: So That I Do Live I Will Die therefore accepting Christ see also, and no more mental universe arguments: I am that I am and what exactly am I? Why I'm me, and me is my feelings by gum and those feelings are located to be exact in my belly trembling when eyes say Yes and in my breast all along that's my me NOT my head not Christ ideas not Buddha—Christ and Buddha are in my body not no where else. And everything else is arbitrary conceptions. So from now on I won't take nothing but love and give same, in feelings, except—well I came back weeping to Vancouver and there was Olson Duncan Creeley Levertov all to teach together and I said, I can't eliminate them from my universe or anyone even Norman Podhoretz they are all selfs too like me alas we been arguing and seeing each other like beatniks and poets and everything but crying self so I just cried and didn't teach just went around feeling everybody up till we were all there together having a happy earth picnic with no ideas in head about put up poetry or put down poets NO MORE WARS all are immortal laugh and lie down no superior poets no inferior poets furthermore no more need ayahuascas or peyotes because already flowing from belly and breast is infinity when feeling's open and that feels good not scary—all I saw in Blake 1948 finally came true, lasted weeks and weeks, lovely Jerusalem blisses, I even realized (finally) my mother died having seen and told me her last day the key is in the sunlight, but I didn't realize what she meant and felt till I felt myself back home in my own body on earth and knew she had been there and knew it. So all's well, I go get married and have little hairy losses someday—and I am not a hairy loss, I'm me, and me's nameless, but certainly not a bad feeling OOK like hairy loss, you put me under a spell for years, and Burroughs about killed me off with his cut ups—his cut ups fine since it cuts up the head but he wants to cut up his body feelings too, and that don't feel good at all—your hairy loss served to get me down off my high head too, but you coulda saved me faster by calling me tender heart, honey—everything's fine we're all going to be what? be what we is! ain't that great. I'm too mental and hungup to explain right, but anyway Jack I'm telling you like you tell me, yup, everything is alright, in fact I can't explain it anymore I just FEEL it and that's better than explaining so next time we meet I'll make you feel good. I'll kiss you and pet you and read you little poemlets about ispy diddle and I'll also kiss your mama and ask her forgiveness and ask her to love me and I done already prayed for your poppa and I go see my poppa and thank him for borning me and make him feel it's all alright and I go back to human universe just as in prophecy of
Dr. Sax
(which last chapters of which I read to class in Vancouver) THE SNAKE'S ALL TOOK CARE OF. And your letter full of tenderness so I won't sermonize you anymore either, despite I do detect doubts in your mind whether it's alright for you to have been born, well you go right over to your mother and REASSURE her that she did right giving life to you. And why right? Because god is feeling and it makes her feel bad you complaining alla time you didn't want to be born. Wouldn't you feel bad if your son told you he was mad at your for borning him. And wouldn't you feel good if son came home and said, dad, we made it, I'm glad I'm alive you did right. Wouldn't you feel better? and what else have we got but feelings, have we got some big ideas, or something else to be? besides our hearts? All the gurus in India say Abhya mudra abhya mudra and so says Buddha and so I say to little English Kerouac, except we NOW are in the tents of god so let's like lambs rejoice: and no more specters.

So now I'm here in SF going around asking everybody if I can kiss them. Pathetic isn't it, asking everybody to love me? Which seeing I'm such a fucked up longhair goof naturally they melt and do, except it gets to be hard work. Nonetheless you look in those faces everywhere and what's to be seen but same self all over been wounded and pissed on—and Lucien was here and we blessed each other anew—and Neal now. Well I'm in a big apartment with some quiet young Kansas poets I got backroom and Neal and his girl have another room (same Ann [Murphy] you saw in Northport) and he understands why it was too difficult there (in Northport)—and beginning I hope Monday we sit down and Neal actually write his blop again, anyway he quit job and Carolyn divorced him (I spent days with her) and I singing hours of calm hindoo mantras to him soften the air till he get back in his body from racetrack specters and unfeeling frenzy and we all be back together again o la tierra est la nostra. I come see you Xmas without hair if you so desire me or with hair if you so accept me, if you want calm weeks come here reunion NO LUSHING it destroy feeling in fact get off that lush. I no take drugs no more nothing but belly flowers. I sleep with girls I reborn I happy I sing harikrishna lords prayer ipsky diddle I weep Sebastian [Sampas] knew all we know nothing unless we do love. Now we go out save America from lovelessness. I reverse
Howl
, I write white
Howl
, no more death O Walt Hello Jack!

I make movie of
Kaddish
with Robert Frank later you help me with dialogue?

I'll write you soon again. Will you love me ever? Peter heading his footprints across Pakistan toward Persia and New York by Xmas.

We are all babies! Feels good. The word at last!!!

Note
: AG refer to Allen Ginsberg. JK refers to Jack Kerouac.

Academy of Political Science

Acavalna (Mexico): AG visit to

Ace Books

and AG works

and Burroughs works

and JK finances

and JK publications

Solomon at

See also
Wyn, A. A.

Ackerman, Mary

Adams, Joan Vollmer

AG comment about Celine to

AG comments about

AG inquiries about

and AG in jail

and AG in mental hospital

and Burroughs trust fund

and Columbia get-together

and JK concerns about morality

JK relationship with

JK sees

JK thoughts about

pseudonyms of

Adams, Walter

Adler, Alfred

Admiral Restaurant (New York City)

“Aether” (AG)

“After Gogol” (AG)

aging: AG views about

Airplane poems, AG

Alaska: AG in

Alfred A. Knopf Publishers

Algren, Nelson

Allen, Donald

AG comments about

AG discussions/meetings with

and AG preface to
Gasoline

and AG request for copies of JK poems

AG sends introduction to

and AG works

and anthology

and banning of AG and JK works

and
Beat Traveler

and
Book of Blues

and Burroughs

and Corso works

and
Doctor Sax

and Ferlinghetti

and JK Buddhist writings

and JK contracts/finances

JK gives poems to

and JK-Rosenberg meeting

and JK views about publishing

JK visit with

and Lamantia works

Lord lunch with

and
Mexico City Blues

and Persky works

and publication of JK works

in San Francisco

and “Sather Gate,”

and Snyder works

and
Subterraneans

and
Visions of Gerard

and
Visions of Neal

and “Zizi's Lament,”

Allen, Steve

“America” (AG)

Americana: JK views about

American Academy of Arts and Letters

American Mercury
magazine

American Revolution

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: AG in

Anderson, Joan

“The Angels in the World” (JK)

Ansen, Alan

AG invitation from

AG letters to/from

and AG as literary agent

and AG in Mexico

AG reading works of

and AG in San Jose

AG visits with

and AG writing abilities

as Auden secretary

and Burroughs

on Cape Cod

disappearance of

and drugs

Duncan abilities similar to

in Europe

and Gaddis

influence on AG of

invitation to JK from

JK comments about

JK inquiries about

JK letters to/from

JK missing of

and JK-Orlovsky letters

and JK plans to visit Europe

and JK in San Francisco

JK sends regards to

JK suggestion for writings by

JK visits with

nihilism of

publication of works by

and Whalen

writings of

anti-Semitism

Antoninus, Brother

Apollinaire

Aronowitz, Al

art

AG views about

JK views about

Arts and Sciences grants

Associated Press: AG job with

Auden, W. H.

Avalokitesvara
(JK)

Avon Publications

JK-AG editing anthology for

Tristessa
published by

Babbitt, Irving

Bach, Johann Sebastian

Bacon, Francis (English painter)

Baker, Jinny

Baldwin, James

Balzac, Honoré de

Bantam Books

Barnes, Djuna

Barzun, Jacques

Baudelaire, Charles

BBC

Beat Generation

AG advice to JK about writing about

AG promotion of

and brutality

and Burroughs
Junkey

communist infiltration of

confessions and honesties of 1947 of

definition of

Feldman-Citadel anthology about

Holmes article about

Holmes as co-expert on

image of

JK articles about

JK-Corso article about

JK interviews about

JK views about

and JK withdrawal

key figures of

as literary racquet

Mademoiselle
feature about

as “San Francisco Renaissance,”

Beat Generation
(Corso)

Beat Generation
(JK)

and Cowley

dreams about Hollywood buying

Giroux requests copy of

Harper
article about

publication of

as title for
On the Road

Beat Generation
(JK play)

Beat Generation
(movie)

Beat Generation Road
(JK)

The Beat Traveler
(JK)

Beatitude
magazine

Beckett, Samuel

Beebe, Lucius

Beethoven, Ludwig van

Belson, Jordan

Berkeley Blues
(JK)

Berkeley, California

AG in

AG plans to move to

JK in

JK move to

JK writings about

Bickford's cafeteria (New York City): AG job at

big meat poems, AG

Big Sur: JK at

Big Sur
(JK)

Big Table
magazine

“Birthday Ode” (AG)

Blake, Nin (JK sister)

Blake, Paul

Blake, William

Bles Blues
(JK)

Bloom (mental patient)

Bobbs-Merrill

Book of Blues
(JK)

Book of Dreams
(JK)

The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice
(AG)

Bowery Blues
(JK)

Bowles, Jane

Bowles, Paul

Brandel, Marc

Brando, Marlon

Brata Gallery: JK poetry reading at

Bremser, Ray

Brierly, Justin

Brody, Iris

Bronx County Jail: Kerouac in

Brooks, Eugene “Gene” (AG brother)

AG buying Corso records for