Marvelous opening moment in fact of the first afternoon I’m left alone in the cabin and I make up my first meal, wash my first dishes, nap, and wake up to hear the rapturous ring of silence or Heaven even within and throughout the gurgle of the creek - When you say AM ALONE and the cabin is suddenly home only because you made one meal and washed your first-meal dishes - Then nightfall, the religious vestal lighting of the beautiful kerosene lamp after careful washing of the mantle by the creek and careful drying with toilet paper, which spoils it by specking it so you again wash it in the creek this time just let the mantle drip dry in the sun, the late afternoon sun that disappears so quickly behind those giant steep canyon walls - Nightfall, the kerosene lamp casts a glow in the cabin, I go out and pick some ferns like the ferns of the Lankavatara Scripture, those hairnet ferns, ‘Look sirs, beautiful hairnet!’ - Late afternoon fog pours in over the canyon walls, sweep, cover the sun, it gets cold, even the flies on the porch are so sad as the fog on the peaks - As daylight retreats the flies retreat like polite Emily Dickinson flies and when its dark they’re all asleep in trees or someplace - At high noon they’re in the cabin with you but edging further towards the open doorsill as the afternoon lengthens, how strangely gracious - There’s the hum of the bee drone two blocks away the racket of it you’d think it was right over the roof, when the bee drone swirls nearer and nearer (gulp again) you retreat into the cabin and wait, maybe they got a message to come and see you all two thousand of em - But getting used to the bee drone finally which seems to happen like a big party once a week - And so everything eventually marvelous.
[Big Sur, Kerouac, J.]
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