Alan Brooks Remembers – 5

We’ve been serializing this past week some random memories of Allen’s nephew, Alan Brooks, glimpses of a lost world – Mid “70’s New York City,  Beats and Punks and Yippies.

We’ll conclude it today with a few more Alan Brooks memories:

AB:  “I had told Peter Brooks (my brother) about the scene at the Yippies  (9 Bleecker Street), however he was very family-oriented, and stayed on Long Island, attempting to alleviate the soap opera histrionics that Dad (Eugene Brooks) unconsciously promoted.
It wasn’t much, but it was a little better than roaming the streets of Berkeley with
the Barbara Eden-guy and the Marching Napoleon of Berzerkeley among others.

Finally, in ‘78, he came to see the Yippies, and he fitted right in. They had, frankly, gotten a little tired of my dourness, and referred to me as “Lurch” (He and I became “the Brooks Brothers”). Pete was a family guy and spent time taking care of several of the Yippie children.

Overall, it was no crazier than Long Island, and camping in Berkeley’s Earth People’s Park for a winter had pretty much sapped our ambition. I always thought that that winter was the beginning and the end of my adulthood.

We soon started visiting 12th street again. Unlike in years past, Bleecker Publishing was now getting claustrophobic, even Pete needed time-away.

Pete had visited 12th street many times in the past, but now he had become a resident of the city  (‘The Big Apple’, as New York was affectionately called), and he would live there for the remaining four decades of his life, (mostly in the Bronx).

Allen and Orlovsky (as we called him, to differentiate the Peters) were usually happy to see us, Pete Brooks was as easy-going as Julius Orlovsky. Also, Allen didn’t have to tell us to leave when he needed his space. Pete and I knew how three’s company, six is a crowd.
Bob Rosenthal was often there, and frequently one or two others.

We never really stopped being the silly teenagers that we’d been back in Berkeley.  We joked with each other, and made numerous jokes concerning Allen – “That troublemaker who never shaves.” “Doesn’t he live in Green Witch Village?” – “Yeah, let’s not go anywhere near that place, we might get cooties! – Yes, I’ve been told, his beard is full of them!”

Allen, I remember, had a few diet books in the apartment, but, as he confided to us, “All those books contradict each other.”
Once I put down one of the diet books, and announced, “Everything causes cancer – we’ll have to give up eating.”
He pursed his lips, looked at me, and remarked,
“Alan, Your humor is as dumb as Gene’s (your father)!”

He was tolerant of our immaturity, as it could have been worse – we might have turned into junkies, lying in alleyways, and our parents would undoubtedly have placed some of the culpability on him. We tried not to be cretins when visiting… (well, almost, but I guess “almost” doesn’t really count in this particular instance!).

Washington Square Park was the sort-of center of the East to West Village axis
The park was a quick walk through an area less grungy than the East Village.
It wasn’t madness. It was actually something of an oasis. People there were chill, didn’t want to give the cops any reason to roust them. Drummers thumped out soothing rhythms much of the time.
Only once did Allen visit the park with us. Naturally, a few park regulars recognized him, walked up to him, all beatific smiles. Allen didn’t mind at all.  No one requested autographs.

When Pete and I visited 12th street, there we’d find, typically, Allen conferring with Bob Rosenthal, or reading the ever-present New York Times, (once I spied a bumper sticker in his neighborhood -“The New York Times Causes Cancer”,  wisely, I never told him about it) – or writing poetry (of course!), or maybe cooking supper.
Pete and I were vegetarians who liked a bit of meat with our dinners. We would visit later in the day, as things were winding down, and Allen could relax from the pressures of being “The Bard”.

“Twilight in the Manhattoes”, I once intoned slowly, as night moved in on 12th street. (It was a line from Allen’s book ‘Planet News’, if my memory serves me correct).
“Oh, so you read my books” Allen observed.
“Some of it”, I answered.
“Some of it’?” Allen mimicked.
“Well, there’s a lot of books out there to read”
Allen jokingly grimaced. He turned to the other Brooks brother – “And what about you?”
“The same”, Pete replied, “but I liked all of it.”

Outside of 12th Street, the other New York place was Cherry Valley.

Upstate New York, it really had nothing to do with 12th street, except for the occasional presence of Allen and his people.
Once in Manhattan, I’d talked, momentarily, with a stranger, an activist, strike-organizer. We’d chatted briefly about New York State, and I’d casually mentioned Cherry Valley.
“That’s where Allen Ginsberg lives”, he declared, “everyone knows that!”

Actually, he didn’t live there. But it was a part of the Buddhist sesame-seed meditation-contemplation thing you could experience on 12th street, (at least in my mind).  One big caveat, though – Cherry Valley was Roughing It. (If you wanted food on 12th street, all you had to do was walk down the block. At East Hill Farm, you’d have to go ten miles – or grow the food!  Walking down 12th street for food took minutes. Growing food at East Hill Farm took months). Allen visited Cherry Valley for mysterious reasons. (Well, perhaps not that mysterious – nostalgia? – to pay his rural dues?, to justify having purchased the property in the first place? – maybe for a vacation?  – though Allen could go anywhere he wanted to for a vacation)
There was fresh air at East Hill Farm, it’s true. It was quiet, yes, a good place to write poetry, to channel the Thoreau Whitman Leaves of Grass nitty-gritty down to Brown Earth greenness of being at One with Nature.
“There is no deceit in the cauliflower”

One cold winter night at East Hill Farm, Allen, Lucien Carr and I were sitting in the living room, listening to the dogs howling in the wind.
“Are those wild animals, Allen?”
“No, Lucien, they’re Blakean lambs of innocence!.”

I remember, one local farmer told me, Allen “can’t stand” being in Cherry Valley: “he can’t wait to leave.”
Maybe he was right?. After all, 12th street was his Home.