224 ZHDANOV: Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948) Bolshevik Central Committee Secy, Politburo member, etc., later noted for “anticosmopolitan” chauvinistic pronouncements, 1946, as Stalin’s literary and cultural affairs chief. “Doctors’ Plot” accusations that ten Jewish Kremlin physicians were responsible for the death of Zhdanov and other high military figures signaled a purging of the Party in the year preceding Stalin’s death in 1953.
225 METRAZOL: Used with insulin for shock treatment in common but now abandoned mental therapy experiments.
225 STENKA RAZIN: Russian song, name of folk-heroic Cossack river pirate, tortured and killed in Moscow in 1671.
226 WORKMEN’S CIRCLE: Newark-area Jewish immigrants’ Socialist community service organization.
227 YISBORACH … B’RICH HU: Heart of Kaddish prayer for the dead; for translation see lines 1–2, “Hymmnn” section of Kaddish.
229 BUBA: (Yiddish) Grandmother.
229 SHEMA Y’ISRAEL: (Hebrew) Listen, O Israel!
229 SRUL AVRUM: (Hebrew) Israel Abraham, equivalent to Irwin Allen, names on the author’s birth certificate.
231 CAMP NICHT-GEDEIGET: (Yiddish) Camp “No Worry,” near Monroe, N.Y., summer settlement used by left-wing families, 1930s.
Mescaline
236 MESCALINE: Active psychedelic ingredient in peyote cactus, Southwest Indian religious-vision use. See Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
Lysergic Acid
239 LYSERGIC ACID: Synthetic psychoactive chemical with which author first experimented at Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, whence poem is dated.
240 GHOST TRAP: A multicolor-stringed wool antenna, to trap stupid ghosts, used during LSD experiments at Stanford Mental Research Institute.
240 ELEPHANT MANDALA: A picture of the universe borrowed by the author from Prof. Frederic Spiegelberg for study during a Lysergic Acid vision and described in section six of the accompanying poem. The mandala and various Ghost Traps—see section five—were brought by Prof. Spiegelberg from a monastery in Sikkim. He writes: “The inscription consists mainly of Mantras, power-words in Sanskirt, which do not carry any mental symbolism, no intellectually expressible meaning, but are supposed to be directly effective as a transforming soul-influence” etc.
To an Old Poet in Peru
247 OLD POET: Martín Adán, pseud. (1908–1985) Refers to his celebrated sonnets in La Rosa de la Espenela, 1939.
247 DISAGUADEROS: Railroad station behind presidential palace in Lima, across from which, in Hotel Comercio, “Old Poet” and “Aether” were written.
247–254 CHANCAY, PACHACAMAC, NASCA: Pre-Incaic cultures of coastal desert Peru. Myriad relics were found by graverobbers opening the sand of these necropolises.
Aether
257 PHILIP WHALEN (1923–2002): San Francisco Renaissance poet and Soto Zen priest, born Northwest 1923, peer among poets Kerouac, Snyder, Welch, McClure, Creeley.
258 ADONOI ECHAD: (Hebrew) “The Lord is one,” end of the “Eli Eli” prayer song.
263–267 Magic Psalm, The Reply and The End record visions experienced after drinking Ayajuasca (Yage or Soga de Muerte, Banisteriopsis caapi), a vine infusion used by Amazon curanderos as spiritual potion, for medicine and sacred vision. See author’s The Yage Letters, w/ William S. Burroughs (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963). The message is: Widen the area of consciousness.
The End
267 YIN: Feminine principle, receptivity or emptiness, in Chinese Taoist apposition to Yang, active masculine form.
VI
PLANET NEWS: TO EUROPE AND ASIA
(1961–1963)
Who Will Take Over the Universe?
273 CLINT MURCHISON: (1895–1969) Dallas billionaire industrialist (banks, rail, steamships, real estate, gas, oil, publishing, office equipment, movie theaters, restaurants, fishing tackle), conservative establishment Democrat.
273 JUDGE YALE MCFATE: His July 1960 decision affirmed constitutional protection for Native American Church use of psychedelic peyote cactus. Weston LaBarre, The Peyote Cult (New York: Shocken paperback, 1977), pp. 224–25: “The legal action most likely to set precedent, however, is the disposition of the case against Mary Attakai, a member of the Navaho Native American Church, under an anti-peyote ordinance of the Navaho Tribe. The local judge in Flagstaff, Arizona, H. L. Russell, disqualified himself, whereupon the Hon. Yale McFate was sent from Phoenix to preside over the case in the Superior Court of Coconino County in Flagstaff. In a notably lucid and well-informed opinion, rendered on 26 July 1960, the Court held that:
‘Peyote is not a narcotic. It is not habit-forming. … There are about 225,000 members of the organized church, known as the Native American Church, which adheres to this practice. … The use of peyote is essential to the existence of the peyote religion. Without it, the practice of the religion would be effectively prevented. … It is significant that many states which formerly outlawed the use of peyote have abolished or amended their laws to permit its use for religious purposes. It is also significant that the Federal Government has in nowise prevented the use of peyote by Indians or others.’
Inasmuch as the statute under which Mary Attakai was convicted of illegal possession is contrary to both the 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution and Article II Sections 4, 8, 12, and 13 of the Arizona Constitution, the Court found the statute unconstitutional, exonerated the bond, and dismissed the case. Expert opinion has widely admired the decision of Judge McFate.”
273 JOHN FOSTER DULLES: (1888–1959) Eisenhower secretary of state (1953–1959), who escalated cold war with China at 1954 Geneva Conference, where, refusing to shake hands or speak with Chinese foreign minister, he walked past icily, thereby initiating the thirty-year U.S.-China “containment policy.” U.S. refused to sign the French-Indo-Chinese Peace Agreement at Geneva for fear “80% of the populace [of united Vietnam] would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader.”
273 FORRESTAL: James V. Forrestal (1892–1949) First U.S. secretary of defense; inaugurated first U.S. peacetime draft 1948, early cold war time (never before in U.S. history!) by illegally spending military-budget money for pro-draft propaganda. Next year, in mental decline, obsessed with Zionists and Communist Russian invasion of America, he threw himself out of Bethesda government mental hospital window, May 22, 1949.
Journal Night Thoughts
275 HARRY SMITH (1923–1991): Celebrated experimental filmmaker, artist, philosopher, hermeticist; editor Ethnic Folkways Records’ The Kiowa Peyote Meeting (FE 4601, 1973) and three-volume, six-disc Anthology of American Folk Music (FA 2951–3, 1952), influential on midcentury world folk-rock renaissance.
275 ATMAN: Notion of individual self, identifiable with permanent self, Brahman.
275 KABBALA: Hebrew Gnostic numerical meditation practice using letters of Pentateuch (Torah). “Natural language letters.”—H. Smith.
277 SPIRO MOUND: Southern Cult (A.D. 1200) Indian mound in Spiro, Oklahoma.
277 PENFIELD’S HOMUNCULUS: Map of brain areas controlling motor and sensory functions. See design p. 70, Fig. III-15, in Wilder Penfield and Jasper Herbert, Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).
277 KALI YUGA: Present era is last aeon in Hindu cycle of four ages, an age of iron during which spiritual awareness is at nadir, and cosmic apocalyptic destruction follows.
Combination sensory and motor homunculus (as they appear from above on Rolandic cortex). Penfield’s Homunculus. (See n.p. 277.)
Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber
280 ENKIDU: Friend-servant of Gilgamesh, for whose shade’s sake Gilgamesh visited the dusts of Deathworld.
280 LAFCADIO: L. Orlovsky, brother of poet Peter Orlovsky; see “Lazarus” portrait, Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, Book Two, Part One, section 10.
280 CHANGO: Afro-Cuban Oricha, Lord of Drum, phallic creation divinity, somewhat equivalent to Hindu Shiva am
ong polytheistic systems.
280 BARDO THODOL: Experience of gap between death and rebirth; see The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, trans. Francesca Fremantle, commentary by Chögyam Trungpa (Boulder: Shambhala, 1975).
281 KULCHUR: Magazine of new writing, 1961, ed. Leroi Jones et al.
281 IRVING ROSE IN THRALL: Irving Rosenthal (with Paul Carroll), editing 1959 Big Table magazine, published first eighty-page chunk of Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, previously censored in Chicago Review.
281 KALPA: Complete Aeonic four-yuga cycle, according to Hindu mythology.
285 CHESSMAN: Caryl Chessman (1921–1960) Executed for murder in California after lengthy court appeals intelligently written by himself, and despite world protest in favor of his life.
285 CHATTERLEY ATTACKED: Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield laid copy of D. H. Lawrence’s long-banned masterpiece, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, on President Eisenhower’s desk with certain words underlined as “obscene,” and asked for permission to ban its transport by U.S. mail. “Terrible, we can’t have that,” said Ike in Time magazine (according to author’s memory, 1959).
285 ROCHESTER: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, Milton’s contemporary, whose brilliant gaudy lyrics, published 1950s Paris by Olympia Press, when imported to America were confiscated and burned by Eisenhower U.S. Customs, along with novels by Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, Jean Genet, etc.
296 2,000,000 PIECES MAIL: At beginning of cold war, 1945, U.S. Customs and Post Office departments burned as propaganda all second-class mail (books and printed matter) arriving from China, N. Vietnam, and other Communist lands. Two million items a year were incinerated. The practice was ended by President John Kennedy.
287 FABIAN BLDG.: Downtown Church and Market streets, Paterson, New Jersey, movie theater where author in boyhood saw movie phantoms of Jeanette Mac-Donald, Nelson Eddy, Ronald Reagan.
288 ANGELICA BALABANOFF: (1876–1965) Kiev-born aristocrat, first Secretary of Third Communist International 1919, quit disillusioned 1923 with Lenin’s & Trotsky’s use of “unscrupulous calumny” for centralization of power, went her own way, radical, poet. Earlier as Benito Mussolini’s mistress she sheltered and introduced him to Socialist ideology, co-edited Rome socialist daily Avanti; later broke with him, was betrayed and confined, when he formed Italian Fascist Party. See My Life as a Rebel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938; reprint Indiana University Press, 1978). Author met her briefly at pacifist gathering, Brooklyn, 1945.
289 SS SANTA MARIA: “Cruise ship Santa Maria, with 600 passengers aboard, seized … by armed band of 69 … leader identified as [Portuguese dictator] Salazar foe, Army ex-Capt Galvao … colonial policy manifesto demands creation of Fed Repub of the US of Portugal including overseas territories … Portuguese exiles in GB open drive against Salazar regime” (New York Times, January 24–27, 1961). See also Time, February 10, 1961.
290 DEVAS: Hindu or Buddhist gods, attendant psychological spirits.
290 RAY BREMSER: American poet (b. 1934) See The New American Poetry, ed. Donald M. Allen (New York: Grove Press, 1960). Much praised by Kerouac and Bob Dylan for his celebrated word-syncopation, as in Blowing Mouth (Cherry Valley Editions, 1978).
Seabattle of Salamis Took Place off Perama
296 PANYOTIS … YORGIS: Greek youths’ common given names.
296 AHARISTI … NA-TI-THE-MA-FEZ: Bouzouki songs, Athens suburb jukebox, 1961.
296 OPEN THE DOOR RICHARD, I’M CASTING A SPELL ON YOU: American jukebox songs, the latter by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, actually titled “I Put a Spell on You.”
Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions
298 YONI: Vagina, counterpart to lingam, in Hindu iconography.
Heat
302 HOOGHLY: River Ganges at Calcutta.
302 BIDI: Tiny cheap Indian cigarette.
Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat
303 KALI MA: Benares beggar lady with a holy name; see her photograph, Indian Journals (NY: Grove Press, 1996).
303 JAI RAM: “Victory to Ram” (aspect of Vishnu the Preserver).
304 JAI SHANKAR: Shankar or Shiva, patron lord of Benares.
304 BAUL: Mystical sect of wandering, patchwork-clothed Vaishnav singers, some devoted to Krishna, in North Bengal. See Obscure Religious Cults, Sashi Bhusan Das Gupta (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Makhopadhyay, 1959). “The elephant is caught in the spider web, and the ant bursts out laughing.” Influenced Tagore songs.
Death News
305 GANGA-MA: Mother Ganges, represented traditionally riding a crocodile.
305 HOLLAND: John P. Holland (1841–1914) Irish born. His invention, the first iron submarine, the Fenian Ram, launched and sank in 1878, was fished up rusty from the Passaic in 1927, and exhibited thereafter in the Paterson Museum. Holland cofounded Electric Boat Co., ancestor General Dynamics Corp.
Patna-Benares Express
308 MAIDAN: Area that contains a horse track and polo field in Bankipore, sector of Patna city.
308 PATNA: Capital, Bihar state on right bank of Ganges, 125 miles from Benares.
Angkor Wat*
314 AVALOKITESVERA: The gates to the palaces and some temples of Angkor Wat are made of giant heads of Avalokitesvera (Down-Glancing Lord, Buddha of Mercy) facing in four directions. Principal Bodhisattva of Lotus Sutra pantheon, Chinese Kwan-Yin mercy god, Japanese Lady Kannon, sometimes thousand-armed energetic in compassionate activity.
314 BANYANS: Banyan trees, whose giant roots grow out of ruined walls and temple roofs.
314 SITARAM: Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur, a Vaishnavite guru who told the author in Benares, “Give up desire for children,” and gave other instructions for purity.
316 CHURNING OF THE OCEAN: Bas-reliefs of old Hindu myth “Churning of the Ocean” cover one wall of Angkor Wat (a theme repeated throughout the temple areas).
317 BUDDHA DHARMA SANGHA: Buddham Saranam Gochamee—I take my refuge in the Buddha; Dhammam Saranam Gochamee—I take my refuge in the Dharma; Sangham Saranam Gochamee—I take my refuge in the Sangha. The Three Refuges, which the author interprets as: I take my refuge in my Self, I take my refuge in the nature of my Self, I take my refuge in the company of my fellow Selfs. [Non-Self interpretation.—A.G., 1984.]
317 HARE KRISHNA: This Maha Mantra (Great Prayer) for the Kali Yuga, first recommended to the author by Shivananda, consisting of different names of Vishnu the Preserver, can be sung with ecstatic rock beat.
318 ABHAYA MUDRA: Mudra—Buddhist hand gesture; Abhaya—gesture of calm, stilling stormy waters. Commonly seen on seated Buddhist statuary.
318 LEROI MOI: The American radical poet Leroi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka.
319 LEARY: Dr. Timothy Leary, an early heroic explorer of Psychedelic Consciousness.
319 AP BAC: Early guerilla battle in Vietnam won by Viet Cong, with many unreported losses of life by S. Vietnam Government soldiers and great confusion of leadership.
320 TA-PHROM … TA-KEO … THOMMANOM: Giant ruined Khmer civilization temple areas near Angkor Wat.
320 GARUDA: God of the Hindu pantheon, bird-headed, aide of King Ram in the Ramayana. [Spontaneously self-born enlightenment, Vajrayana Buddhist view—A.G., 1984.]
320 CHAMS: A northern tribe that conquered and burned the wooden Khmer cities that surrounded the temples.
320 TA-PHROM: Huge temple in giant stone-walled enclosure, unreconstructed by archaeologists, its paths cleaned of small overgrowth to show the Baynan jungle encroachment on the tumbling stone architecture.
322–323 “BLIND … RAIN!”: The entire text of this composition was written in one night half sleeping and waking, as transcription of passages of consciousness in the author’s mind made somnolent by an injection of morphine-atrophine in a hotel room in the town of Siemreap, adjacent to the ruins of Angkor Wat. The passage incorporated in quotation marks was notes taken earlier that day high on ganja (pot) on the roof of the temple of Angkor Thom.
324 LO
LEI: A small ruined temple with an active monastery in the same compound, a few miles on the highway out of Siemreap.
325 HUé: S. Vietnamese city on north coast above Saigon, where student protests against suppression of Buddhist radio ceremonies ended in blister-gas riots, reported by telephone to UP office in Saigon, June 1963.
325 RAINY NIGHT AT THE BORDER: “Rainy Night at the Border,” a popular song like “Lili Marlene,” and classic complaint of Oriental soldiers, was banned in the nightclubs of Saigon by Mme. Nhu (wife of Catholic Premier Diem) as being “too pessimistic and demoralizing.”
326 XALOI TEMPLE: Center of Buddhist Association hunger strike, early resistance to Diem government.
326 AFRAID TO PUBLISH: A letter from Jon Edgar Webb of Outsider magazine, apologizing for not publishing a dream of Negroes by the author, for fear of violent white gang reprisals against his office in New Orleans.
327 SUKOTHAI: Very graceful early Thai style of Buddha statues, one hand delicately flowing behind, one hand raised in reassurance, one foot set forward as he steps out into the world of action.
327 LINGAM: Stone phallus universally worshipped in India as basic form of Shiva the Creator.
328 BUDDHA FOOTPRINT: Three fish with one head—a sign of Buddhahood incised in giant stone carving of Buddha footprint found under Bo Tree at Bodh Gaya, mythological Indian site of the Buddha’s realization.
329 RADIOACTIVE DOLPHINS: From a letter from J. Kerouac describing the twentieth-century complaints of his Canuck cousins.