Raw Cut | Rudi Krausmann | Travel Diary 6/9

TODAY

The pontoon plane
takes off, turns,
goes off over Jakolov Bay.
Gulls wait for
for the tide to go out.
A flock of white commas
scattered on the rocks
every which way
each one a pause.

You see nothing happens
until something begins to happen
Then, all of a sudden, the day
goes off in a different direction.
Or turns, and
comes back again
to the same rock.

(from Means of Approach by Anita Wilkins, Hard Press Publications, 1989)

For us it was time again to move, this time to Big Sur, which we called the Henry Miller country. Amongst the illustrious writers which had penetrated Europe in the fifties, like Faulkner, Steinbeck or Hemingway was also Henry Miller, the last bohemian, who starved, loved and wrote 'Tropic of Cancer' in a cheap room in the 'Villa Seurat' in Paris. What Hemingway did for the body, Miller did for sex, someone had told me at the time when I was still at school. And a well-known poet in Germany had said in an interview: 'A down and out American in Paris writes our most sophisticated writers under the table. He dares to say things as no-one else had done before.'
Miller, who is inclined to exaggerate at times, did not overpraise it when he described the landscape and the sea around Big Sur in his book 'Big Sur and the Oranges of Hironymus Bosch'. Like the characters in this area, also nature is over life size here. It was disappointing though that it's present inhabitants did not know anything about him. Whether were he had lived nor what he had written. A waitress in a popular restaurant, frequented by tourists, had never heard of him and the owner of the place could only recall Orson Welles, who had once stayed a few months nearby. Yet Miller had lived in a Log Cabin a few metres from where the restaurant now resides. Henry Miller being practically unknown in Big Sur for me was like a cultural nightmare. No wonder that he doubted his talent here. 'Big Sur nearly finished me off as a writer, there were months when I could no longer write a sentence' he mentioned in one of his autobiographical novels. It was not that the grandeur of nature had crushed him here temporarily, rather the indifference of the pragmatic Americans. A celebrity in France, in his homeland he only kept going through gifts by friends. At least a sales assistant of the Phoenix bookshop knew about the Henry Miller Memorial Library located in the log cabin which a friend of Miller, Emile White, had once built by himself. Unfortunately it was closed this day and all we could do was to glance through the window at books and posters. One poster was of Anaïs Nin. In homage to Henry Miller we sat in a revolving chair on the verandah perhaps this literary enfant terrible had sat there too, one gloomy afternoon. From there I saw the sardonic smile of Anaïs Nin through the window. I knew from her diaries that she liked the Henry Miller of Paris, not the Henry Miller of Big Sur. But that is another story. We know that Miller is still largely ignored in America because he criticised it, in particular in his book 'The Air-conditioned Nightmare' The European writers are allowed to criticise their country, they receive honours for it, even by the government, in America he is condemned or ignored, because America does not want to be criticised by anyone, least of all by Henry Miller, the son of a German immigrant, who had once been poor and begged on the streets. That America does not want to be criticised by anyone could be its strengths and its weakness. Be that as it may, we knew we had to return our rented car the very same day in San Francisco. The return drive on the coast road is magnificent and at certain places technology and nature blend harmoniously. By the time we reached San Francisco it was dusk. From our tourist guide book, Let's go America M had picked out a cheap hotel close to the 'Tender Loin District' in the inner city. In the street where our hotel was supposed to be we only saw prostitutes and pimps moving about, most of them black, hardly any pedestrians. Yet there was no parking spot to be found and I had to double park and wait in the car, while M inquired about the accommodation. As soon as she had left, a middle-aged Negro with a crew cut wearing a trench coat so large that he could have wrapped himself twice in it, grinned at me from the pavement and then approached me.
"Change please."
I was in a generous mood and gave him a dollar.
"Thank you, Sir" he replied and whispered coming closer to the car.
"For one dollar I can buy myself two hamburgers." He moved off but suddenly turned around again, ran back and put his head through the car window.
"Do you want a girl, any colour, black, brown, white, yellow, any size, tall, tiny, fat, slim, only fifty bucks an hour?"
As I shook my head he got angry and said:
Okay man, I arrange it for you for forty bucks, which colour do you want?"
When I shook my head again, he shouted:
"Fuck off," and banged the car with his hands and shoes. I had no other option than to drive on.
M had found an old-fashioned hotel, outdated but not run down, which offered a room with cooking facilities for 150 dollars a week. From the window one could see a fragment of the sky, the rest being blocked by skyscrapers and down below the flickering lights of seedy nightclubs, of which one of them was called Blue Lamp.
The first day in San Francisco we could not escape certain tourist attractions like the old-fashioned tramway taking you to Fisherman's Wharf where across the bay Alcatraz, the ex-penitentiary was clearly visible. On the dock a 18-th century cargo ship had been renovated and was open for visitors It gave, amongst others things, a good insight into the social conditions of the 'glorious past'. The captain had a luxurious living room with an attached kitchen and bath, where his wife could entertain her guests in a splendid fashion, while the crew slept under the most primitive conditions in bunks under the mast. They earned 3 Pound Sterling a month.
When we walked on the quay amongst souvenirs shops and cafes, a young man on roller skaters held out his hand and said: "Have you got some small change please?"
"What for?"
"A taco, it costs only 69 cents."
"Why don't you get a job?"
"There aren't any jobs."
"Have you tried?"
"I sure have."
Although I did not believe him, I dropped a nickel in his hand. From Fisherman's Wharf we took a bus to the City Lights Bookshop. In front of the shop, where there is a bus stop, stood a fantastic looking crowd of the most different races, totally disinterested in literature, at least the one the bookshop was promoting. I glanced up at a street sign saying Kerouac Street.
"Who would have thought that San Francisco would have a Kerouac Street?" I said to M.
"Why not, he was the King of the Beat Generation."
"And he drank himself to death because he could not handle the American way of life."
"So it goes."
The City Light's Bookshop was stocked with local and international contemporary literature and its walls and windows were decorated with posters of the heroes of the Beat generation, like Ferlinghetti, Ginsburg, Corso, Kerouac, Burroughs, and others. Ferlinghetti is still in control of the shop, has an office on the top floor but is hardly there. He has become the grey eminence of a colourful, literary movement, whose protagonists were on the road to destroy themselves. But only the author of On the Road succeeded in time, the others linger on or cash in on its fame. As we left the bookshop we saw as notice pinned on the cash register.

Our new and fabulous City Light's Publication
Poet LA LOCA is giving a reading at Cody's tonight at 8 pm sharp
Wine and cheese

As we walked in the streets of San Francisco with the intention to take the BART (bay area rapid transport) later to Berkeley we became aware that it was at dusk when the city becomes alive. From the expensive hotels tourists in evening clothes come out and take taxis to wherever they want to go. In Tender Loins, the red light district, just around the corner of our hotel, tall black prostitutes in black leather gear smiled rather provocatively at prospective customers. They seemed proud and not at all ashamed of their profession. It is more for their clients, bored and tired looking office workers, one could feel sorry for. But the real tragic figures in San Francisco are the numerous beggars who can be seen everywhere in the inner city. Some of them sit on the pavement, hunched over and whisper, without looking up into their own shadows. "Change please." Others stare at you directly and point one arm at you as you pass. "Got some small change?" And there are many, demented or destroyed by drugs who just walk around, flapping their arms like bird wings, too far gone to think of begging. They are the ones who had been released recently from psychiatric clinics by a government decree. The public purse could not afford it any longer to look after them, so it said in the newspapers.
Like in some cities in South America, where the mansions of the rich stand side by side with the corrugated iron huts of the poor, in the streets of San Francisco the rich and poor, sane and insane, feeble and clever pass each other mostly indifferently. One can only hope that San Francisco does not become like New York where, as I read somewhere, one can live only insensitively, that is by not taking any notice of what is going on around you. That would be a bleak future indeed.
Arriving in Berkeley at the poetry reading was some kind of relief from the social pressures experienced in the streets of San Francisco. Even here, when we crossed a park, a youth was pissing openly at a statue. The atmosphere at Cody's was genteel and the audience consisted of the white middle class with a touch of bohemian. La Loca was introduced casually by a bearded man, who perhaps was once a poet himself and had turned academic, in the process losing faith of the power of the word. La Loca, vivacious and natural, read her poems with charm. She had turned the bitter lessons she had learned from life in her poetry into a sophisticated American sense of humour. Even where she lacked depth, she got away with it due to her attractive personality. And in her ironies she had become a true disciple of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti, where was he? I saw him whether at City Lights Bookshop or at the reading. If he had disappeared, he had taken with him the cloak of the grey eminence of American literature. Of the poets of the Beat Generation it was only Kerouac who had lived and died for its ideas and ideals including its vices. After having written 'On the Road' the author himself was not able to hitch a ride on one of America's highways. An irony of fate? No, America had never been kind to its poets. It intends to let them starve. Goethe's exclamation 'Amerika, du hast es besser' (America, you have it easier) was hardly meant for its artists.
One morning I went to the Australian consulate at Union Square. At the entrance a woman was sitting on a blanket with two small children. The children were playing with toy guns while the mother was holding up a placard. "We are hungry." Occasionally some of the passers by dropped a nickel or a dime. But when these modern San Franciscans gave away some alms, it looked like the reflex of the hand muscle. Only by going through a security check up can one enter the Australian Consulate. In the waiting room the photographic image of a bird of paradise hits your eye. Underneath is written:

AUSTRALIA means BUSINESS

My business was to pay the Australian government 47 US dollars for a reentry visa -- being a resident with an Austrian passport. In order to extract money form you, the bureaucracy was working well. While waiting I browsed through some old Australian newspapers which reflected anything but a paradise. After I had received the visa I decided to visit the Museum of Modern Art situated on a huge square amongst rather uninspiring government buildings. As I crossed the square, I saw a monument representing a man on a horse. It was Bolivar, the hero of South America, who had liberated his country from oppression. As I looked up at the general a black derelict, who had been lying at the pedestal of the monument, lifted himself up and pissed on the statue most probably oblivious of what he was doing. In another corner of the square, in a narrow gap between two buildings, an avant-garde artist had made an open air installation. It showed rubber pipes pointing into the sky, perhaps into the void. The people on the square took as little notice of the derelict as they did have of the artwork. America seemed indeed a country of unlimited possibilities. When I finally entered the museum, it felt like being placed into a tomb. It was cool and silent and the visitors whispered to each other, if they wanted to express an opinion. The museum exhibited at the time figurative paintings from the Bay area, photographs from Mexico and a mixed exhibition of modern masters like Miro, Matisse, Beckman, Ernst plus some contemporary Americans like Rothko and Stella. I found the figurative work too derivative, the selection of modern masters not impressive, the abstract paintings of Rothko and Stella too pale an interpretation and only the photographs of Mexico inspiring and a new insight into the reality of another country. These remote and isolated images of Mexico made one wonder, and introduced again mystery to life. When I walked again in the open air I felt that museums in the States were superfluous, they could not compete with the complexity and intensity of life in the streets. Museums belonged to Europe, as Europe itself had somehow become a museum, or is in the process of it. In America art to me was not liberating, it was suffocating.
When it came to the last evening in San Francisco, we did not know what to do with it. We walked in the streets casually glancing at people, cars, restaurants, illuminated entrances, hotels etc. As we passed the Goethe-Institut, we noticed that it showed the film 'Christiana', with Greta Garbo playing the sensuous and adventurous Queen of Sweden. We sat in for a while, but got bored. It was a strange choice for this cultural institution to promote German art in the USA. Further down Union Square a group of Negroes were playing jazz leaning against the huge windows of a department store. We stopped and thought it was excellent music to listen to for a dime. As we moved on, we saw a restaurant specialising in Super Hamburgers. We went in to have our dinner there. In this place everything was oversized, the tables, the chairs, the cups, the plates and the cutlery, not to mention the food. No wonder the staff looked a bit diminished. The interior was brightly lit and painted in psychedelic colours and the music was electronic. Only the hamburgers tasted average, and the prices were double. After that we dropped into several bars only for drinks. In one of them most people were watching television. McEnroe was playing in the Australian Open Tournament. He shot the tennis ball into the audience and was generally clowning or abusing the referee. The drinkers were enjoying it. For us these were the first images we received from Down Under since we had left. It seemed that these modern gladiators, as my friend the poet in Salzburg calls them, were having a ball on the hard tennis courts of Melbourne and cashing considerable amounts of money in at the same time. For them it was no longer a question of life and death, nevertheless, they were the only millionaires I know of who had to sweat for their income.
As we had booked a plane for San Diego next morning we returned to our hotel just before midnight. Behind the reception desk stood an elderly man with grey long hair staring despairingly into space. As he handed over the key one could feel that he was totally absentminded. I was sure I had seen his face somewhere. "Have we met before?" I inquired.
"Not that I can remember," he replied in a deep, sonorous voice.
"I am sure." I said.
"Maybe you have seen me on stage?"
"Which stage?"
"The Magic Theatre. I am an actor, specialising in Beckett. My last role I had in Endgame. My name is Tom Luce. I am earning a bit of breadmoney as a nightporter in this hotel, where I also live. In a few months I am going to New York to play First Love, a Beckett story adapted for the stage. It will be a one man show. You see, San Francisco has no more theatre scene, it has gone to the dogs, it is artistically dead.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"We are living in a cultural depression." He took out a small bottle of Whisky from his inside pocket and had a sip. "San Francisco has become totally commercial, it is no longer a city of the arts. The Magic Theatre had to close down. What marvellous productions we used to have there. Do you want a sip?" I shook my head and said: "It looks as if the endgame is now in the streets?"
"Ha, that could be. Beckett is a visionary writer, for sure, and he has other formidable talents. But there is no more audience for him in the United States, except in New York. And nobody knows how long New York is going to last."
This last night in San Francisco had made us both restless and although we were tired we were unable to fall asleep. M started to read a detective story and I opened my 'literary companion' on this journey, 'lyrical and critical essays' by Albert Camus. Even for this passionate writer and master of the word I lacked the concentration and I decided to get up and stare out of the window.
Down below the neon light of the nightclub Blue Lamp was still flickering and the place was still open at four o'clock in the morning. I noticed a lonely figure pacing up and down in front of the club on the pavement and recognised him as the same black man in an oversized trenchcoat who had approached me when we first arrived in San Francisco. He had offered to get women of any colour, black, white, brown or yellow for 50 dollars an hour and abused me because I had declined. At this time of the morning he was no longer bareheaded but wore some colourful Irish sporting cap. Whenever a car passed, he lifted it, a vague attempt to attract customers for 'his girls' in the Blue Lamp. Perhaps he only paced up and down because he no longer could sleep?

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