Big Sur Madness

I've got the directions all memorized from a little map Monsanto's mailed me but in my imagination dreaming about this big retreat back home there'd been something larkish, bucolic, all homely woods and gladness instead of all this aerial roaring mystery in the dark. (3.1)

The road's up there on the wall a thousand feet with a sheer drop sometimes, […] And worst of all is the bridge! I go ambling seaward along the path by the creek and see this awful thin white line of bridge a thousand unbridgeable sighs of height above the little woods. (4.1)

In August a horrible development took place, huge blasts of frightening gale like wind came pouring into the canyon making all the trees roar with a really frightening intensity that sometimes built up to a booming war of trees that shook the cabin and woke you up -- And was in fact one of the things that contributed to my mad fit. (6.5)

So once again I'm Ti Jean the Child, playing, sewing patches, cooking suppers, washing dishes (always kept the kettle boiling on the fire and anytime dishes needed to be washed I just pour hot hot water into pan with Tide soap and soak them good and then wipe them clean after scouring with little 5-&-10 wire scourer) (7.1)

The blue sky adds "Dont call me eternity, call me God if you like, all of you talkers are in paradise: the leaf is paradise, the tree stump is paradise, the paper bag is paradise, the man is paradise, the fog is paradise" -- Can you imagine a man with mar-velous insights like these can go mad within a month? (7.5)

Suddenly, boom, the door of the cabin is flung open with a loud crash and a burst of sunlight illuminates the room and I see an Angel standing arm outstretched in the door! -- It's Cody! all dressed in his Sunday best in a suit! beside him are ranged several graduating golden angels from Evelyn golden beautiful wife down to the most dazzling angel of them all little Timmy with the sun striking off his hair in beams! -- It's such an incredible sight and surprise that both Pat and I rise from our chairs involuntarily, like we've been lifted up in awe, or scared, tho I dont feel scared so much as ecstatically amazed as tho I've seen a vision... (23.4)

"Her voice is the main point—she talks with a broken heart—her voice lutes brokenly like a heart lost […], it's almost too much to bear sometimes […]. I just sit and marvel and stare at her mouth wondering where all the beauty is coming from and why" (26.4)

"O the sad music of it all, I've done it all, seen it all, done everything with everybody." (31.7)

I see it all raving before me the endless yakking kitchen mouthings of life, the long dark grave of tomby talks under midnight kitchen bulbs, in fact it fills me with love to realize that life so avid and misunderstood nevertheless reaches out skinny skeleton hand to me and to Billie too -- But you know what I mean.

And this is the way it begins. (33.1-2)