I met Philip Whalen!

Now, Pablo and I did a little arguing about this part of my travelogue. You see, if you're not a poet, or not big into Beat poetry, chances are very good you don't know who the hell Philip Whalen is. Originally, I had the above line, "I met Philip Whalen," centered, bolded, and capitalized. Pablo felt this was excessive, for a guy that you've probably never heard of. But my argument was that, even though you've never heard of this guy, meeting him was a really big deal to me, and I wanted to express that with lots of emphasis. As you can see, we compromised.

Now, if you're a poet, and you don't know who Philip Whalen is, you outta be ashamed of your scraggly self. (And you outta check out http://www.jackmagazine.com/beatnews/whalen.html and http://www.rooknet.net/beatpage/writers/whalen.html.) Philip Whalen, now 78, was one of the first Beats, and a prototypical hippie during the fifties. He was often regarded as the most scholarly of the famous Beats, and was the spiritual Zen leader for the Beats. He once said that the relationship between his being a Buddhist monk and writing poetry was similar to the relationship between overeating and getting fat.

And, as of this writing, he's dying. Rapidly. He's been bed-ridden for years, and has now been moved from a hospital to a more peaceful hospice, where the nurses are weird and new-agey.

The story of how I met him is incredibly strange, and even stranger to me now in my impaired mental state. Michael and Philip have been friends for about ten years. Philip was actually Michael's wife's Zen instructor. Naturally, Michael didn't really feel comfortable meeting Philip, since Michael didn't want to be the needy poet fawning over Philip's reputation. But Michael's wife Nancy eventually made them get together, and they hit it off fabulously. They discussed topics other than poetry, then eventually discussed poetry, and generally became very close friends.

Philip's health deteriorated, and Michael became a vital part of his support network. He now has Power of Attorney, which became necessary as he addressed problems with Philip's doctors and they refused to take him seriously, because he wasn't a relative. When Philip was going through a particularly rough patch, he and his friends arranged to have someone by Philip's bed 24-7, with Michael pulling many 12-hour shifts.

Philip is in a hospice now, rather than the hospital where he suffered before. He's no longer on morphine, which makes him happy, but when I visited him, he was beginning to have hallucinations again, and not the drug-induced kind. He's alive as I type this, but it's very unlikely that he will be for very long.

"I've got to visit Philip," said Michael. "Would you like to come with me?"

"Is that OK?" I asked.

"Sure. He doesn't like gawkers, of course, but you're my friend, so he doesn't mind you coming by to visit him. If he feels good, you can take a picture."

"OK."

"Did you bring your videocamera?"

"Absolutely."

"If he feels like it, you can shoot a few seconds of footage. I'll ask him."

"Cool."