Naturlig fjerne

Over: Beatguruen Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) avbildet på taket av leiligheten sin i Varanasi. Året er 1963. I bakgrunnen skimtes Ganges, der gjestende pilegrimer bader i den hellige elva, nedenfor; det folkerike grønnsaksmarkedet.

Og apropos beatpoeter på reisefot: ti år tidligere reiste William Burroughs rundt i Amazonas på jakt etter yagé, en plante som påstås å ha telepatiske egenskaper. Burroughs og Ginsberg korrensponderte underveis. Disse brevene, The Yage Letters, ble utgitt i bokform i 1963.

January 15, 1953
Hotel Colon, Panama
Dear Allen,

I stopped off here to have my piles out. Wouldn't do to go back among the Indians with piles I figured... I checked into the hospital junk sick and spent four days there. They would only give me three shots of morphine and I couldn't sleep from pain and heat and deprivation besides which there was a Panamanian hernia case in the same room with me and his friends came and stayed all day and half the night - one of them did in fact stay until midnight.

Recall walking by some American women in the corridor who looked like officers' wives. One of them was saying, "I don't know why, but I just can't eat sweets."

"You've got diabetes, lady," I said. They all whirled around and gave me an outraged stare.

After checking out of the hospital I stopped off at the U.S. Embassy. In front of the Embassy is a vacant lot with weeds and trees where boys undress to swim in the polluted waters of the bay home of a small venomous sea snake. Smell of excrement and sea water and young male lust. No letters. I stopped again to buy two ounces of paregoric. Same old Panama, whores and pimps and hustlers."

...