Writing Across the Landscape by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Author:Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2015-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

FERLINGHETTI—GINSBERG AUSTRALIAN TRIP

Hawaii / Fiji /Australia / to Adelaide Festival of Arts

March 1972

Honolulu—Fiji, March 1

With Lorenzo (age nine) and Allen— Wild sunrise above a plateau of clouds fragmented upward in towering headlands & peaks—brilliant crimson-pink streaks on the horizon—white ranges stretched everywhere below like huge blown-up snowfields and avalanches—shattered, shredded endless fields—eggshell blue delicate now over crimson streaks at world’s edge—sun almost up. Lorenzo draws sunrise with trees on hills: red sun, red rays, blue hills, black trees, clouds with birds in them. Sun brighter & brighter, piercing iceberg clouds—towering snowfields & pinnacle of clouds, with veils of lighter cloud streaming downward from them, like sheets of sea-spray off white plunging bows of icebreakers. Suddenly the round ball orange sun burns free of the horizon—crimson, yellow light thrown horizontal onto cabin walls—fireball roars in the gloaming, purpling the snowlike fields and shredded peaks and ranges of white air—bright, burning eye of sun blinding the eyes—fields of flame— And sun eats earth—eats the world and its consciousness of nothing. Plane banks and descends to sound of cultured British (BOAC) voices, as I remember last night’s dream of descending thru some huge high apartment house or warehouse with Lorenzo, only all the stairways & doors were closed, so that we had to descend tortuously floor by floor thru various forgotten windows trapdoors or back escapes—across rooftops and down, thru apartments and lofts, past a final goodnatured “caretaker” guard or night watchman—out into daylight street—

Sun has turned white, as Lorenzo sights a “teeny island down there.” Down close now—tiny islands in bay, all green, beautiful winding river up close, palm trees & grass huts, down onto runway in brown green savannah. . . . “On behalf of Captain Cook and the crew we bid you goodbye and fair journey” (British accent). And Allen saying, “Here we is in Fiji, here we is in Fiji.”

Crossed equator like a dark horizon in the sea and crossed International Dateline and it is March 2 here. Change for Fijian dollars in airport & off in people’s bus, for Sigatoka and Suva on other side of island. Three hours ride in open bus—first into Nadi, then on out into green open country. Bus open all around—wood bank seats, full of Fijians & Indians (from India as laborers in last fifty years, now outnumbering the Fijians). Women in saris, some with marks on forehead, men in very clean white shirts—Fijians in colored shirts and dresses, very different in every way. Bus roof keeps sun off and bus motion keeps cool air going—no need for air-conditioned taxi tourists ride in. Bus zooms on single winding road around island, thru jungle trees into open farmland, lush deep green everywhere—we are sunk into deep green dream of life with no sense of history to be fulfilled. . . . Palm trees, cattle, goats, mynah birds, sugarcane plantations, thatched houses & huts. Whole thatched villages with babies on ground as in aboriginal photos in National Geographic. . . . Bus roars and rocks on through the photos, leaving a thin smear of pollution on the virgin unexposed film.

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