it all this particular summer is that the front right seat is broken and just rocks back and forth gently to every one of Daveâs driving movesâItâs like sitting in a rocking chair on a porch only this is a moving porch and a porch to talk on at thatâAnd insteada watching old men pitch horseshoes from this here talking porch itâs all that fine white clean line in the middle of the road as we go flying like birds over the Harrison ramps and whatnot Dave always uses to sneak out of Frisco real fast and avoid all the trafficâSoon weâre set straight and pointed head on down beautiful fourlane Bayshore Highway to that lovely Santa Clara ValleyâBut Iâm amazed that after only a few years the damn thing no longer has prune fields and vast beet fields like at Lawrence when I was a brakeman on the Southern Pacific and even after, itâs one long row of houses right down the line 50 miles to San Jose like a great monstrous Los Angeles beginning to grow south of Frisco.
At first itâs beautiful to just watch that white line reel in to Willieâs snout but when I start looking around out the window thereâs just endless housing tracts and new blue factories everywhereâSez Dave âYes thatâs right, the population explosion is gonna cover every bit of backyard dirt in America someday in fact theyâll even have to start piling up friggin levels of houses and others over that like your cityCityCITY till the houses reach a hundred miles in the air in all directions of the map and people looking at the earth from another planet with super telescopes will see a prickly ball hangin in spaceâItâs like real horrible when you come to think of it, even us with all our fancy talks, shit man itâs all millions of people and events piling up almost unimaginable now, like raving babboons weâll all be piled on top of each other or one another or whatever youâre sposed to sayâHundreds of millions of hungry mouths raving for more more moreâAnd the sadness of it all is that the world hasnt any chance to produce say a writer whose life could really actually touch all this life in every detail like you always say, some writer who could bring you sobbing thru the bed fuckin bedcribs of the moon to see it all even unto the goddamned last gory detail of some dismal robbery of the heart at dawn when no one cares like Sinatra singsâ (âWhen no one cares,â he sings in his low baritone but resumes):ââSome strict sweeper sweeping it all up, I mean the incredible helplessness I felt Jack when Céline ended his Journey To The End Of The Night by pissing in the Seine River at dawn there I am thinkin my God thereâs probably somebody pissing in the Trenton River at dawn right now, the Danube, the Ganges, the frozen Obi, the Yellow, the Paraña, the Willamette, the Merrimac in Missouri too, the Missouri itself, the Yuma, the Amazon, the Thames, the Po, the so and so, itâs so friggin endless itâs like poems endless everywhere and no one knows any bettern old Buddha you know where he says itâs like âThere are immeasurable star misty aeons of universes more numerous than the sands in all the galaxies, multiplied by a billion lightyears of multiplication, in fact if I were to go on youâd be scared and couldnt comprehend and youâd despair so much youâd drop dead,â thatâs what he just about said in one of those sutrasâMacrocosms and microcosms and chillicosms and microbes and finally you got all these marvelous books a man aint even got time to read em all, what you gonna do in this already piled up multiple world when you have to think of the Book of Songs, Faulkner, César Birotteau, Shakespeare, Satyricons, Dantes, in fact long stories guys tell you in bars, in fact the sutras themselves, Sir Philip Sidney, Sterne, Ibn El Arabi, the copious Lope de Vega and the uncopious goddamn