Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (33 page)

As ever

Jack

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [Merida, Mexico] to Jack Kerouac,
Neal Cassady, and Carolyn Cassady [San Jose, California]

before January 12, 1954

 

Dear Jack and Neal and Carolyn:

I am sitting here on the balcony of my Merida “Casa de Huespedes” looking down the block to the Square at twilite—have a big $5 peso room for the nite, just returned from eight days inland. Came by plane from horrid Havana and more horrid Miami Beach. All these tropical stars—just filled my gut with big meal and codeinettas and am sitting down to enjoy the nite—first rest I've had in longtime.

Saw Bill [Burroughs]'s Marker [Lewis Marker] in Jacksonville—a sweet fellow who donated $12 to my trip on his own hook, very simpatico—but, and, I
must
say Bill's taste in boys is macabre—(to say the least etc.) he is so starved looking and rickety and pitifully purseymouthed and “laid”—French for ugly and with a disgusting birthmark below left ear—and skin the texture of a badly shaved hemophiliac. The first sight of him was a shock—poor poor Bill! To be in love with that sickly myopic pebblemouthed scarecrow! Had great long talk about mystical ignus personality and drank rum and stayed in big moldy apartment in slums house that he owns.

In Palm Beach I called up the Burroughs family and was given big welcome—Xmas dinner and put me up at fancy hotel and drove me around town sightseeing and asked me about Bill, who I told them was “a very good and perhaps become a very great writer” which I think they liked to hear said, and was glad to say it in most conservative Bob Merims
⁹⁰
considering manner. Old Burroughs very nice, some of Bill's innate wisdom-tooth. Miami Beach I stopped overnite for $1.50 and saw all the mad hotels—miles of them—too much for the eye, the lushest unreal spectacle I ever saw. Also ran into Alan Eager
⁹¹
at a Birdland they have there. Key West pretty like Provincetown, nothing happened there, rode on Keys on truck at nite. Havana I won't talk of—kind of dreary rotting antiquity, rotting stone,
heaviness
all about and don't dig Cubans much even in Cuba. Got lost penniless twenty miles out of town in small village and had to be sent home on train with man who bought me drinks. So sad, so hospitable, but I wanted to get away, can't dig his fate. Marvelous first airplane air vistas of the earth, Carib Isles, great green maplike Yucatan Coast maplike below with sinkholes in earth of limestone crust and narrow road and trails like antpath down below and little cities like mushrooms in pockets and hollows of afternoon hills, and windmills.

Stayed in Merida three days at this place, ran into two Quintana Roo Indians and drove in horse carriage round city, met mayor's brother so got invited to big City Hall ceremonies New Years day—free beer and sandwiches overlooking plaza on balcony City Hall; that nite, New Years, formal dress—New York-Paris-London society type “Country Cloob” (Club) champagne free and French and English and German speaking industrialists and young Yucatan Spanish girls fresh from New Orleans finishing school—all dressed in tux and party evening dress at tables under stars—nothing happened I just wandered around and talked to people, then after went downtown and heard poor mambo in dancehalls and drank little and slept at 5 AM. Next day to Chichen Itza where I got free house next to pyramid and spent days eating in native hut for 7 pesos a day, wandering around great ruins—at nite take hammock up on top of big pyramid temple (whole dead city to myself as living in archeologists' camp) and look at stars and void and deathheads engraved up on stone pillars and write and doze on codeinetta. Free guide from where I eat, and drink every nite before supper at Richman's Mayaland Hotel talk to rich Americans, meet thirty-five year old Ginger B. all hung up on Yucatan songs and costumes, dumb, drag, talking bitch sad. Stars over pyramids—tropic nite, forest of chirruping insects, birds and maybe owls—once I heard one hooting—great stone portals, bas relief of unknown perceptions, half a thousand years old—and earlier in day saw stone cocks a thousand years old grown over with moss and batshit in dripping vaulted room of stone stuck in the wall. A high air silent above niteforest—tho a clap of hands brings great echoes from various pillars and arenas. So then left for Valladolid—money already running out—in central Yucatan and nite there with amigo speaking English who showed me the tower and I ate at his middleclass family house where his wife bowed respectful and a movie about ghosts—and next day awful miserable ten hour train to town name of Tizinia [
sic
: Tizimin] for the oldest fiesta of Mexico; most venerable Indians from Campeche and Tabasco on train with great sacks full of food and babies and hammocks; started on train at 4 A.M. morning rode till afternoon cramped no place to stand, train ran off rails, hold-ups, arrive at really crowded small town middle of nowhere—with silly bullring and 400 year old cathedral, mobbed by old Indians, candles, three wooden kings old as the conquest they came to see (three Mages)—the air of cathedral so smoky and so full of candles the wax on the floor was inches deep and slippery—thought I was the only American in town but later found a Buffalo optometrist on train back who said famous documentary film maker named Rotha
⁹²
was there with movie cameras—(I saw Rotha pix in Museum of Modern Art once)—trip back horrible—the
boxcars
with benches on sides and down center, wood, Mex-made and all crude, 110 people to car, people hanging on platform and even
steps
for hours—me too—so uncomfortable to sit it was insane, for 10 hours—and had left my codeine behind! (
No
have habit by the way only used two times) old women and babies falling asleep on my shoulder and lap, everybody suffering meaningless hour-long stops in the nite to change tracks or engines.

Had met priest at Tizimin Cathedral who took me backstairs and smoked and cursed native pagan rite of the feast, and so went with him to his village “Colonia Yucatan” a lumber town
a la
Levittown or Vet housing project—and he drove me by jeep next day to forests of Quintana Roo and back—then to train and horrid ride. Then another day at great silent Chichen Itza—recalling a dream I once had about a future world of great plateaus covered with grass and levels and plains of plateau leading to horizon with grassy roofs on many levels of dripping stone chambers and wild sculptured ornament all round the sides—stood up and looked from top at jungle spread all around circle to horizon, dream actualized. Who came up but the optometrist, with his nice camera.

Came back to Merida today. Met bunch of Mexico City painters on junket to study provinces and talked French and will go to a big
gran baille
(dance) tonite (Sat. nite)—and tomorrow look up Professor Stromswich for info on Mayapan ruins—also must pick up letter from Bill from Rome at Consulate and telegram perhaps with money from home—down to $25 dollars, enuf to get to Mexico City but not much more and want to see more Mexico south so sent for some more $ from Gene [Eugene Brooks]. My Spanish is got to point where I can find out what I want easily but I keep making mistakes that have cost me money from time to time—enough to wish I knew—like I bought the wrong kind of hammock and so lost out nine pesos the other day.

Also in Merida a “homeopathic druggist” i.e. I don't know, different from pharmaceutical druggists—name of George Ubo been everywhere in U.S. and Yucatan and told me how to get everywhere on big ten foot map he has. So far everywhere I have run across someone or other who showed me the town in English or French or English-Spanish mixture but have not met anyone great—except one nite in the rich hotel in Merida last week, wandered into bar for one peso rich-man's tequila and ran into a drunk brilliant elderly Spaniard who talked to me in French in great world weary monologue full of filth and Paris and N.Y. and Mexico City and who was later led off by his bodyguard to be sick in the urinal—later found out he was the richest man in the area Yucatan Peninsula—famous character who married a whore twenty years ago and owns everything everywhere and gets drunk every nite with venerable looking Jaime de Angulo white bearded spic internationalists at the hotel—who were there that night winking and calming him down—sort of an old evil Claude [Lucien Carr] he was, full of misery and rich and drunken disregard of life.

Mosquitoes down here awful—all beds come with M-nets and I have bought one for my hammock.

Jack, incidentally—they won't let you past customs in Merida without health card and all the Indians have vaccination marks they wear “proudly”—it's really a 50-50 necessity. Have had dysentery and took pills and it went away, so no suffer. No such thing as a natural man untouched by medicine around here—it's not for touristas, tho it's a tourista routine—it is for everyone.

If I had more money, I found a way to get thru Quintana Roo involving busses and narrow gauge mule driven R.R. and an afternoon walk thirteen kilometers on rocky mule path thru jungle—or else a forty peso boat around peninsula—but cannot go cause too costly for my purse. But will be fine trip for someone someday. Many people all over ready to help the traveler—it's like a frontier—with engineers building a road thru that never gets done.

Received a letter from [Bill] Garver saying he's still in D.F. [Mexico City] and will see me there.

The man here, head of archeology, name given me by Museum Natural History in N.Y.—turned out valuable—gave me pass to stay on archeologist's camps, free, everywhere there's a ruin I go. Great way to travel and see ruins. Write me note to Mexico City Embassy.

Love,

Allen

 

P.S. Had a great dream—must go to Europe to make movie about Bill riding on trains from Italy.

Allen Ginsberg [Palenque, Mexico] to Neal Cassady,
Jack Kerouac, and Carolyn Cassady [San Jose, California]

January 18-25, 1954

Palenque, Chiapas, Mex.
Jan 18 '54

 

Dear Neal and Jack and Caroline [Carolyn]:

Since I last wrote I have been from Merida to Uxmal to Campeche (a port on the peninsula on the way) to Palenque where I am now.

I am beginning to really hate Mexico and almost wish I were out of it, as traveling with so little money I am continually obsessed with saving it, and consequently making mistakes in spending what I have and building up great reserves of anger at whoever gets in my way—usually a Mexican—when I spend it. As it is I have about thirty-four bucks left to get to D.F. on where (I presume) I have more waiting from the telegram and it better be there—though with dear old Bill Garver around I suppose I won't become a public charge. However I ain't going to hit a lot of cities on the way that I wanted to—partly no money to get there (San Cristobaldo Las Casas way down South Chiapas) or time and $ to find out how to get there—travel around here mainly by R.R. but I am sure there are roads. By R.R. it would take days and days to San Cristobal from here, which is only 100 or so miles away as bird flies.

Uxmal where I was last week is the 2nd most important Yucatan Roon [ruin] but is the best to live at I think—more glory though less grandeur than Chichen Itza. Have much to say about ruins but am more concerned with a typical paranoid incident occurring ten miles out of Merida the day before I left—having nothing to do I got on a local bus to a small town twenty miles away where there was a small party (a Kermesse they called it—sounds French) advertised. On the way two young fellers picked up on me—at a time when I didn't really want to try to talk this rotten language anymore—it's too exhausting just to work out the necessities like food drink and transportation to carry on further trying to make self understood—(in a very bad mood tonite having trekked in mud for hours in a real jungle too hung up picking my way thru slime and thorn trees to get to see any jungle though it was there—and thirsty, little water around—and slightly dysenteric, and with a lousy cold been with me ten days) so as I say not wanting to try to talk no more Spanish that day, just ride and see and eat tortillas, I got hung up.

The lights there went out (Jan 25 is today) and I have not had a chance to continue this letter till now (a week later) and am not at Palenque and the story is half forgotten—be that as it may I got on the bus and got involved in dull conversation with two youths and got off bus half way to get drunk with them and went on to fair and returned at dark and was given over in the small halfway town to what intuition and all told me was the local queer who began singing songs of Corazon on this road at nite and I really didn't dig the situation as he was a 35 yr old . . . child effeminate this Mexican, an archetype of a kind—I'm sure I've seen him somewhere—and I got a bus and returned home. Point is not understanding Spanish I couldn't make anything of the drunken paranoia—much like Jack's Mexico.

Well anyway to get off this bum kick of incomprehensible story.

I was walking around Palenque and ran into a woman who grew up around here—the edge of the most inaccessible jungle area of South Mexico—who had returned six years ago after various careers in the States, a professional archeologist whose family had owned the Palenque site so that she knew it inside out. As result I am spending a week on her cocoa finca (or plantation)—have been here seven days—don't yet know when I'll leave—located in middle of jungle a day's horseback ride out of Palenque. Last week we set out on march, took jeep to path, then she, I, another girl (wandered thru forest on foot to Palenque from city on Pacific, a student, ugly), an old Indian retainer and a boy being taken to live at the Senora's finca—four horses and a mule set out for seven hour ride thru beautiful dark jungle—soldier ants, anthills, lianas, orchids, vast trees covered with parasite cactus and fern, big leaved plantain trees, parrots screeching and wild deep roar of howler monkeys in trees sounding like Tarzan Jungle. First time I ever rode a horse—on mucky path, full of little up and downhill wind, trees fallen over path full of hunky-like fungus growths, small streams—and always every few miles a small hill covered with stones which was a part of the City of Palenque (forty square miles)—the woman knowing from childhood all parts everywhere, and more, being a sort of mystic and
medium
type personality, as well as
learned
in the subject—perhaps the person in the world most emotionally and knowledgably tied to these ruins and this area—so that I found after a few days talking, she had been on foot and plane all thru jungles down to Guatemala and in lost cities all places, some even she discovered, had written books (her editor is Giroux) and learned papers and worked for Mexican government reconstructing Palenque and others, owned a few cities in her great tract of land here (hundreds of sq. mi)
and
, most important, was the only person in the world who knew of a lost tribe of Mayans living in Guatemala on a river who still possibly could interpret codices and were specially on a mission to keep alive Mayan flame—and she told me all sorts of secrets, beginning with outline of Mayan metaphysics and mystical lore and history and symbolism, that would have delighted Bill, who doesn't know—that it is all still extant. This lost tribe apparently had brought her up as child, being in area where her father owned $3,000,000 dollar ranch here and having selected her for confidence. Well all this is sort of corny and amusing but the curious thing is that much of it is true in its most classically corny aspects. It is a great kick to enjoy her hospitality in the jungle—she being starved for ignu conversation tho she is not an ignu herself—and go out everyday with machete and rifle in jungle trails, on 3-4 mile walks, hunting, swimming in great clear little rock pools surrounded by giant ferns, in crystal water, returning at nite in darkness when jungle begins stirring, talking Mayan metaphysics. We live in an open sided room with continual fire for coffee and food at one end tended by an Indian, hammocks strung up across the room, a great unexplored mountain right ahead looking very near—a few hundred feet thru the brush behind the house are six native huts with families—who work on the plantation, a sort of feudal system of which she is queen and we are royal guests. Party includes a young Mexican Point 4 apprentice who is supervising the cultivation of the cocoa (which is chocolate). I will leave here sooner or later by horseback for two hours and then by Kayuko (a big tree hollowed out for a boat) up a river to a R.R. town. Then by plane for 80 pesos to San Cristobal, where I have decided to go after all. Plane is cheapest way—there being no way to get across Isthmus except by five day roundabout rail or five day by horse, just as expensive, more so, can't afford—tho horses are only 6 pesos a day here. At San Cristobal I meet Franz Blum who is a famous archeologist—Hal Chase in disgrace with universities in States, an old lush now gone tropical, who everybody says is the most brilliant man in Mexico and lived with Sherwood Anderson and Faulkner in New Orleans years ago before he came down here and discovered Palenque, etc.—he being now the foremost authority on Indians and Mayans and a friend of my hostess, etc.