December 30, 2008

• Jack Kerouac

  Anna said that because she could pronounce his name and i couldn’t…that proved that SHE should get the book.

  i said pronunciation had nothing to do with it, but that Lindsay had given it to me for a travel book, so i could pass it on to Anna for a travel book…

  although…you know how those books can be rather dangerous.

  when mixed with a personality named Anna.

  So. Jack Kerouac. “On the Road” my favorite parts.

  “But then they danced down the street like dingledoodies, and i sshambled after as i’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desireous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn of  a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awwww!”

  “Lucille would never understand me because i like too many things and get all confused and hung up running from one falling star to another til i drop. this is the night, what it does to you. i had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

  “It was remarkable how Dean could go mad then suddenly continue with his soul–which i think is wrapped up in a fast car, a coast to reach, and a woman at the end of the road–calmly and sanely as though nothing had happened.”

  “I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilizd-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road all of it inside endless and beginningless emptiness pitiful forms of ignorance.”

  “(Driving through Mexico) Sal, i am digging the interiors of those homes as we pass them–these gone doorways and you look inside and see beds of straw and little brown kids sleeping and stirring to wake, their thoughts congeling from the empty mind of sleep, their selves rising, and the mothers cooking up breakfast in iron pots, and dig them shutters they have for windows and the old men, the old men are so cool and grand and not bothered by anything. there’s no suspicion here, nothing like that. everybody’s cool, everybody looks at you with such straight brown eyes and they don’t say anything, just look and in that look all the human qualities are soft and subdued and still there.”

  not that i would really recommend reading the book. lots of things to skip. but these things were lovely. and i read them on the plane. even lovelier.

  • 6:57 pm
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