Re: THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN: LIFE WITH JOHN STEINBECK
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2016 7:44 pm
27. The Kerouac Festival
NANCY
Friends of ours had planned their wedding date for March 6, 1982, and so John and I decided to have a double wedding. These were common, as Rinpoche was urging many couples to marry. The Sternbergs, our therapists, helped us make certain the event would be a peaceful celebration of our love. They negotiated a contract between us that John would be sober for the ceremony, and he agreed to moderate his consumption for the reception. Thom was not to stay too late on our wedding night and he was not to accompany us on our honeymoon. When I asked Johnny if he wanted to invite Elaine, he shrugged. "She doesn't care enough about me to warrant an invitation. Last I spoke to her, she asked, 'Dear, are you still a Muslim?'"
I found a wonderful Victorian white gown and a wide-brimmed hat with a long veil trailing down the back. Johnny and I decided not to see each other for twenty-four hours before the ceremony, to create a sacred moment when we met in the community shrine room. A meek and sober Thom came to town and he and John rented a room in the Boulderado. There was no stag party, no final send-off for the Sex Czar at his stomping grounds. The aura of dignity surrounding the event delighted both of us.
One of those cosmic coincidences occurred on our wedding day, reminding us of the mythic bonds that tied us together. I'd invited a girlfriend to stay at my house the night before, to help me with last-minute preparations. On the way to check the wedding cake, she had to pick up some graphics for her job. To my amazement, we stopped at the house where John had grabbed me seven years ago and admired my Salvation Army shirt. This was a deja vu of a deja vu and I was speechless. I remembered backing into that Mercedes, wondering what the significance was. Connecting the dots, I recalled with shock how Paul had brought a Mercedes up to Lake Louise, hoping to woo me back. I totaled that car on an icy road shortly after John moved in with us. I had been driving with Megan after picking her up from a Girl Scout meeting. A speeding car slid on the ice, melting into my grill like butter, just as the other one had done that night we met. As Megan and I examined the damage, John drove up immediately, as if he'd been called. He was the first car to pass on the silent narrow street and he pulled over to comfort us. I felt that time had stood still since that night four years prior when he saw me in that Salvation Army shirt. Had the universe been dancing circles around us, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in case we got lost, holding its breath to see if we'd make it that far?
For years after, we loved to pore over our wedding pictures. My eyes were backlit, glowing with delight. It was the happiest day of our lives. We were able to stand outside the shadows and celebrate our mutual love and devotion. Many guests said it was the most moving wedding they'd ever attended because they could feel the depth of our commitment. We offered our vows with confidence and pride. Looking movie-star gorgeous in his tuxedo, John wept during the ceremony.
Buddhist wedding vows are not about 'til death do us part. They are based on the Six Paramitas. We promised to extend transcendent generosity, morality, patience, exertion, contemplation, and wisdom and always be a friend to the other.
Transcendent generosity means giving without expecting anything in return. Transcendent morality means working with pain, not trying to avoid it. Transcendent patience means staying nonaggressive in the face of tremendous challenge, not trying to avoid the hurt with denial, continuing to work with confusion. Transcendent exertion means never giving up, working and practicing diligently to maintain the vows. Transcendent meditation means practicing mindfulness all the time, remaining fearless of the ongoing journey, like a benevolent elephant plodding through the jungle. Rinpoche called it "Twenty-four-hour awareness." Transcendent wisdom means the clear, continuous perception that results from practicing the preceding five vows. Then you can afford to relax, your psychological state is no longer threatening because you trust your discriminating awareness and intuition.
Two hundred friends attended the wedding. At the reception, of all the endless toasts, Thom's was my favorite. "Here's to Nancy's courage." I loved that. We went back to the Boulderado for our wedding night and the next morning we drove through the snow to Glenwood Springs, a place Johnny loved because of the hot mineral baths. Our honeymoon was a flurry of black negligees, talks till dawn, and room service. Johnny drank only a little. We had reclaimed our heaven and he was very proud of the whole accomplishment.
My parents were unable to attend the ceremony. My mother had cancer and would die a year later. "I have a wonderful feeling about your relationship," she said with tremendous enthusiasm. "You will inspire each other to achieve the greatest heights of your potentials. He will make you become your true self and you'll do the same for him."
***
The Naropa poetry department, the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, hosted a weeklong Kerouac Festival that summer. All the poets from the first summer at Naropa were back and this time, Ginsberg and Corso, Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs, Kesey, and Norman Mailer were hanging out at our house. A video production company was filming them daily in our living room. Of all the glitterati, John was most fond of Burroughs. They shared a silent understanding about the pain of being a famous father, and the lethal danger of being that father's son.
"I think it is hardest for writers' sons," William told me, but he couldn't say why.
He touched us deeply. In person, you never sensed the degradation he wrote about. His patrician manners were gracious and understated. Compared with the other macho beat heroes, I found him the most courteous and attentive toward women. He loved to play with our Abyssinian cats and would disappear into Michael's room for long periods, petting and crooning to them. "Yes, you are such a magnificent beast. What a handsome boy."
One evening, after dinner, he lingered in the kitchen as I washed dishes.
"Well, what did you two do today?" he asked.
"Target practice with a twenty-two and balloons. We drove up to the mountains. It was my first time."
"How did it go?" he asked, eagerly.
"Actually, I discovered that Zen thing when I aimed. I hit the mark almost every time."
"Ah, the bull's eye," he rejoiced. "It's the greatest feeling."
I started to agree, and then remembered this is William Burroughs you're talking to. Looking down at the soapy water, I thought how strange it was to be having that conversation with the man who had missed his mark in such a disastrous way. Maybe I'd better change the subject. I mean, I'm standing here in my kitchen discussing the joys of shooting with a man who killed his wife while playing William Tell.
With his perception and her instincts skewed by drugs and mescal during a sojourn in Mexico, he shot her in the forehead. It had devastated him. Yet, he celebrated my marksmanship without a wince. I looked closely at him, and saw that he was guileless. It was precisely this innocence, in sharp contrast to his desiccated literary voice, that made him so touching.
I loved it when John and William spent hours sharpening John's knife collection, the long, curved Khukuri blades from Nepal, pocketknives, paring knives, and meat cleavers. They spoke of everything cosmic and mundane, but their favorite topic was weapons, in which they shared a boyish glee.
After John's death, I visited William at his home in Lawrence, Kansas. His gracious factotem, James Grauerholtz, prepared a sumptuous dinner for us. As usual, William was surrounded by admiring young men. Although he drank copious amounts of vodka-laced Coke, he remained lucid and entertaining. After dinner, he grabbed me by the hand and gave me a tour of his modest cottage. He showed me his paintings, created with a splatter technique achieved by shooting holes in paint cans. He was particularly proud of his koi pond, and an orgone box where Kurt Cobain had sat just days before his recent suicide.
"There's a cigarette he smoked," William mused, pointing to a crushed butt lying on the floor of the box. Then he brought out a primitive, long, and lethal blowgun. With a devilish glint, he deposited a dart in the column and poised the gun on his lips, aiming it at my head. Laughing, I ducked around the corner.
"Oh, no, you don't," I chided him. "I'm not as game as I used to be! Now I know when to get out of danger." In the hands of another man, it would have seemed a gesture of insanity. In William, it was a cosmic acknowledgment of the humor, however black, in every situation.
He told me his theory about World Assassination Day. ''That's when you get to shoot all the assholes."
"But William," I protested. "How do you know who's bad enough that he deserves to die?"
"Oh, you know," he said, grinning emphatically.
I remembered a time when my world had gone mad, and the only comfort I found was when Johnny told me sometimes William wished he could put an atom bomb in the Dharmachakra of the universe. His audacity put things in perspective.
Late in the evening, as I petted his cats, I looked up at the stars and felt the old familiar call of infinity that happens in communion with those extraordinary men. For the first time since John's passing, I felt truly at home on Earth. As I drove away, William stood on his porch and waved his arms like a madman under the two o'clock moon. It was the first time I'd been transported to the farthest reaches of the cosmos since John's death and the last time I saw William alive.
Old friends of John's from London, Fran and Jay Landesman, who had been one of the first to publish Kerouac, came to stay with us for the week. Of all the celebrities, we were most fond of Carolyn Cassady. Witty, wry, and beautiful, she was a cool oasis of gentility as opposed to the groupies' dry heat. There was an instant familiarity among the three of us. She was there when John pulled his "I'm the son of John Steinbeck" routine with Ken Kesey. She generously did not catch my eye during any of it. She had lived through Neal's excesses, and she knew what to let pass. As drunk as he was, that night had a profound impact on John. He never forgot what Kesey said, or that Carolyn had witnessed him making a fool of himself.
After John died, Carolyn wrote this in memory of our time together:
This was in reference to an opal ring that John's father had bought for Gywn in Mexico. Inside, it was inscribed "Tu requerdo, J. S." On our last night with her, I took it off my finger and asked John to give it to Carolyn. He was delighted at the idea and presented it to her with a great flourish.
Just before they left, Fran gave me a book of poems and lyrics she had written, including her most famous "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." There was one about John that she was worried might upset me.
John had seen the poem many times before. He had no visible reaction, but the words chilled me. Fran insisted there had been an enormous change in John. "He used to be such a brat. You've helped him grow up." In his younger days, Johnny had been incredibly self- centered and indulgent. It was precisely those vestiges I had kicked and screamed about. Grateful for the perspective of old friends who celebrated the turning of a new leaf, I also knew old ways died hard. As the festival came to a close, I felt the return of that familiar dread. John's burden was so heavy, and now I had formally shouldered half of it with our wedding vows.
_______________
Notes:
1. From The Ballad of the Sad Young Men and Other Verse by Fran Landesman (Permanent Press, 1982). Reprinted with permission of the author.
NANCY
Friends of ours had planned their wedding date for March 6, 1982, and so John and I decided to have a double wedding. These were common, as Rinpoche was urging many couples to marry. The Sternbergs, our therapists, helped us make certain the event would be a peaceful celebration of our love. They negotiated a contract between us that John would be sober for the ceremony, and he agreed to moderate his consumption for the reception. Thom was not to stay too late on our wedding night and he was not to accompany us on our honeymoon. When I asked Johnny if he wanted to invite Elaine, he shrugged. "She doesn't care enough about me to warrant an invitation. Last I spoke to her, she asked, 'Dear, are you still a Muslim?'"
I found a wonderful Victorian white gown and a wide-brimmed hat with a long veil trailing down the back. Johnny and I decided not to see each other for twenty-four hours before the ceremony, to create a sacred moment when we met in the community shrine room. A meek and sober Thom came to town and he and John rented a room in the Boulderado. There was no stag party, no final send-off for the Sex Czar at his stomping grounds. The aura of dignity surrounding the event delighted both of us.
One of those cosmic coincidences occurred on our wedding day, reminding us of the mythic bonds that tied us together. I'd invited a girlfriend to stay at my house the night before, to help me with last-minute preparations. On the way to check the wedding cake, she had to pick up some graphics for her job. To my amazement, we stopped at the house where John had grabbed me seven years ago and admired my Salvation Army shirt. This was a deja vu of a deja vu and I was speechless. I remembered backing into that Mercedes, wondering what the significance was. Connecting the dots, I recalled with shock how Paul had brought a Mercedes up to Lake Louise, hoping to woo me back. I totaled that car on an icy road shortly after John moved in with us. I had been driving with Megan after picking her up from a Girl Scout meeting. A speeding car slid on the ice, melting into my grill like butter, just as the other one had done that night we met. As Megan and I examined the damage, John drove up immediately, as if he'd been called. He was the first car to pass on the silent narrow street and he pulled over to comfort us. I felt that time had stood still since that night four years prior when he saw me in that Salvation Army shirt. Had the universe been dancing circles around us, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in case we got lost, holding its breath to see if we'd make it that far?
For years after, we loved to pore over our wedding pictures. My eyes were backlit, glowing with delight. It was the happiest day of our lives. We were able to stand outside the shadows and celebrate our mutual love and devotion. Many guests said it was the most moving wedding they'd ever attended because they could feel the depth of our commitment. We offered our vows with confidence and pride. Looking movie-star gorgeous in his tuxedo, John wept during the ceremony.
Buddhist wedding vows are not about 'til death do us part. They are based on the Six Paramitas. We promised to extend transcendent generosity, morality, patience, exertion, contemplation, and wisdom and always be a friend to the other.
Transcendent generosity means giving without expecting anything in return. Transcendent morality means working with pain, not trying to avoid it. Transcendent patience means staying nonaggressive in the face of tremendous challenge, not trying to avoid the hurt with denial, continuing to work with confusion. Transcendent exertion means never giving up, working and practicing diligently to maintain the vows. Transcendent meditation means practicing mindfulness all the time, remaining fearless of the ongoing journey, like a benevolent elephant plodding through the jungle. Rinpoche called it "Twenty-four-hour awareness." Transcendent wisdom means the clear, continuous perception that results from practicing the preceding five vows. Then you can afford to relax, your psychological state is no longer threatening because you trust your discriminating awareness and intuition.
Two hundred friends attended the wedding. At the reception, of all the endless toasts, Thom's was my favorite. "Here's to Nancy's courage." I loved that. We went back to the Boulderado for our wedding night and the next morning we drove through the snow to Glenwood Springs, a place Johnny loved because of the hot mineral baths. Our honeymoon was a flurry of black negligees, talks till dawn, and room service. Johnny drank only a little. We had reclaimed our heaven and he was very proud of the whole accomplishment.
My parents were unable to attend the ceremony. My mother had cancer and would die a year later. "I have a wonderful feeling about your relationship," she said with tremendous enthusiasm. "You will inspire each other to achieve the greatest heights of your potentials. He will make you become your true self and you'll do the same for him."
***
The Naropa poetry department, the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, hosted a weeklong Kerouac Festival that summer. All the poets from the first summer at Naropa were back and this time, Ginsberg and Corso, Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs, Kesey, and Norman Mailer were hanging out at our house. A video production company was filming them daily in our living room. Of all the glitterati, John was most fond of Burroughs. They shared a silent understanding about the pain of being a famous father, and the lethal danger of being that father's son.
"I think it is hardest for writers' sons," William told me, but he couldn't say why.
He touched us deeply. In person, you never sensed the degradation he wrote about. His patrician manners were gracious and understated. Compared with the other macho beat heroes, I found him the most courteous and attentive toward women. He loved to play with our Abyssinian cats and would disappear into Michael's room for long periods, petting and crooning to them. "Yes, you are such a magnificent beast. What a handsome boy."
One evening, after dinner, he lingered in the kitchen as I washed dishes.
"Well, what did you two do today?" he asked.
"Target practice with a twenty-two and balloons. We drove up to the mountains. It was my first time."
"How did it go?" he asked, eagerly.
"Actually, I discovered that Zen thing when I aimed. I hit the mark almost every time."
"Ah, the bull's eye," he rejoiced. "It's the greatest feeling."
I started to agree, and then remembered this is William Burroughs you're talking to. Looking down at the soapy water, I thought how strange it was to be having that conversation with the man who had missed his mark in such a disastrous way. Maybe I'd better change the subject. I mean, I'm standing here in my kitchen discussing the joys of shooting with a man who killed his wife while playing William Tell.
With his perception and her instincts skewed by drugs and mescal during a sojourn in Mexico, he shot her in the forehead. It had devastated him. Yet, he celebrated my marksmanship without a wince. I looked closely at him, and saw that he was guileless. It was precisely this innocence, in sharp contrast to his desiccated literary voice, that made him so touching.
I loved it when John and William spent hours sharpening John's knife collection, the long, curved Khukuri blades from Nepal, pocketknives, paring knives, and meat cleavers. They spoke of everything cosmic and mundane, but their favorite topic was weapons, in which they shared a boyish glee.
After John's death, I visited William at his home in Lawrence, Kansas. His gracious factotem, James Grauerholtz, prepared a sumptuous dinner for us. As usual, William was surrounded by admiring young men. Although he drank copious amounts of vodka-laced Coke, he remained lucid and entertaining. After dinner, he grabbed me by the hand and gave me a tour of his modest cottage. He showed me his paintings, created with a splatter technique achieved by shooting holes in paint cans. He was particularly proud of his koi pond, and an orgone box where Kurt Cobain had sat just days before his recent suicide.
"There's a cigarette he smoked," William mused, pointing to a crushed butt lying on the floor of the box. Then he brought out a primitive, long, and lethal blowgun. With a devilish glint, he deposited a dart in the column and poised the gun on his lips, aiming it at my head. Laughing, I ducked around the corner.
"Oh, no, you don't," I chided him. "I'm not as game as I used to be! Now I know when to get out of danger." In the hands of another man, it would have seemed a gesture of insanity. In William, it was a cosmic acknowledgment of the humor, however black, in every situation.
He told me his theory about World Assassination Day. ''That's when you get to shoot all the assholes."
"But William," I protested. "How do you know who's bad enough that he deserves to die?"
"Oh, you know," he said, grinning emphatically.
I remembered a time when my world had gone mad, and the only comfort I found was when Johnny told me sometimes William wished he could put an atom bomb in the Dharmachakra of the universe. His audacity put things in perspective.
Late in the evening, as I petted his cats, I looked up at the stars and felt the old familiar call of infinity that happens in communion with those extraordinary men. For the first time since John's passing, I felt truly at home on Earth. As I drove away, William stood on his porch and waved his arms like a madman under the two o'clock moon. It was the first time I'd been transported to the farthest reaches of the cosmos since John's death and the last time I saw William alive.
Old friends of John's from London, Fran and Jay Landesman, who had been one of the first to publish Kerouac, came to stay with us for the week. Of all the celebrities, we were most fond of Carolyn Cassady. Witty, wry, and beautiful, she was a cool oasis of gentility as opposed to the groupies' dry heat. There was an instant familiarity among the three of us. She was there when John pulled his "I'm the son of John Steinbeck" routine with Ken Kesey. She generously did not catch my eye during any of it. She had lived through Neal's excesses, and she knew what to let pass. As drunk as he was, that night had a profound impact on John. He never forgot what Kesey said, or that Carolyn had witnessed him making a fool of himself.
After John died, Carolyn wrote this in memory of our time together:
My acquaintance with John was not a long one, but from the short time I spent with him, an indelible memory remains with me. He immediately impressed me by his warm and open welcome as though it were his delight to meet me. He was one of those rare individuals (my late husband was another) who make you feel you could say or do anything and he'd understand and approve, eager to give himself and anything else he had at hand you might enjoy.
This was in reference to an opal ring that John's father had bought for Gywn in Mexico. Inside, it was inscribed "Tu requerdo, J. S." On our last night with her, I took it off my finger and asked John to give it to Carolyn. He was delighted at the idea and presented it to her with a great flourish.
I sensed an inner joy, bursting to be unleashed, to learn, to do, and to give. Such an outlook is invariably accompanied by a healthy sense of humor, altogether creating an aura around him that "beamed you up" to your own increased awareness and inspiration, along with him.
Just before they left, Fran gave me a book of poems and lyrics she had written, including her most famous "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." There was one about John that she was worried might upset me.
SON OF A FAMOUS FATHER [1]
You might have been a writer, musician or a saint
You might have been an actor or told your tale in paint
But now you're just a hustler who travels with the tide
An easy riding con man who never even tried.
Son of famous father, you work hard having fun
Everyone hurries forward to meet your father's son
You started in your childhood to play a special game
Bearing a special burden, your famous father's name.
The people ask you questions about your father's life
His habits and his pastimes, his crazy second wife
You answer them with patience, supply the missing link
The only thing you ask them is buy another drink.
Women are what you win at, you never do them right
Watching the way they wind up is not a pretty sight
Women can hear your nightmares, they love the game you play
Somehow you must destroy them before you slip away.
Whenever you get busted somebody bails you out
With all your charm and talent you only fuck about
You can't ignore his footsteps on any side of town
He's too much to live up to and so you live him down.
You can't avoid his shadow no matter what you do
Though he was loved by many, he had no time for you
How could you ever touch him when all is said and done?
Son of a famous father, you load your father's gun.
John had seen the poem many times before. He had no visible reaction, but the words chilled me. Fran insisted there had been an enormous change in John. "He used to be such a brat. You've helped him grow up." In his younger days, Johnny had been incredibly self- centered and indulgent. It was precisely those vestiges I had kicked and screamed about. Grateful for the perspective of old friends who celebrated the turning of a new leaf, I also knew old ways died hard. As the festival came to a close, I felt the return of that familiar dread. John's burden was so heavy, and now I had formally shouldered half of it with our wedding vows.
_______________
Notes:
1. From The Ballad of the Sad Young Men and Other Verse by Fran Landesman (Permanent Press, 1982). Reprinted with permission of the author.