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Gary Snyder in Kyoto.
Petersen's stone prints
are
on the walls. |
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Will Petersen says we have
nothing to worry about: Mt. Hiei protects the northeast corner. Reference
is to the NE corner, in city planning, architecture, garden layout, etc.,
as the "demon entrance". [Thirty] years later [1985-86], in prints and
paintings, the reference reappears as a rectangle, upper right.
Gary Snyder, Letter from
Kyoto |
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Will Petersen in Kyoto,
Japan,
in the late 1950's |
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You remember Rol Sturlason,
[Will Petersen] my buddy who went to Japan to study those rocks of Ryoanji.
He went over on a freighter named Sea Serpent so he painted a big mural
of a sea serpent and mermaids on a bulkhead in the mess hall to the delight
of the crew who dug him like crazy and all wanted to become Dharma Bums
right there. Now he's climbing up holy Mount Hiei in Kyoto through a foot
of snow probably, straight up where there are no trails, steep steep, through
bamboo thickets and twisty pine like in brush drawings. Feet wet and lunch
forgot, that's the way to climb.
Jack Kerouac, The Dharma
Bums, 1958 |
the Buddha? I ask
Nothing! he laughs
looks around,
Something!
Dong!
A kind of chair!
A window!
Fire!
A tangerine!
He dances the garden
naming
things
Dong
Will Petersen
Yase, Dec. 1961- Evanston,
Jan. 1990 |
[Gary Snyder] wrote that
he had met some guys and there was going to be a poetry reading in a gallery
in San Francisco... I think he mentioned that the guy's name was Allen
Ginsberg... Anyway I came down and got a place to live in Berkeley, but
first of all I was staying at Gary's tiny doghouse that he was living in,
and then Will Petersen had this place that he was moving out of and I moved
into and I also took over Will's job at the Poultry Husbandry Department
at the University, washing laboratory glass half the day, to live on, a
very good job. Will was getting ready to go to Japan and then he took off...
Phil Whalen, Off the Wall,
1978 |
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