Ghost

« O growing old! O haggard ugly ghoul is life’s decay! Started a life sweet child believing everything beneath his father’s roof; went from that, immersed and fooled, to that mask of disgusted flesh called a face but not the face that love had hoped for and to that soul of a gruesome grieving ghost that now goes shuddering through nightmare life cluttering up the earth as it dies. »

Kerouac, Jack. Visions of Cody. 1960. Penguin Books. p. 69

Pretty powerful talk

« IN FALL 1950 when I was so much on weed, three bombs a day, thinking about unhappiness all the time I one night really carefully and high listened to George Handy’s The Blues (Vicki had his picture up on wall with mine and Charlie Parker’s, the mind, the hand, and me the heart she said) but to really drift and I found it a big mocking sound and specifically the joy of bop in the middle with Herby Steward is rejected for this modern or rather sadomasochistic modernity, on I I was able to see that Handy was sacrificing joy which naturally existed in his heart for the glooms and despairs and great disappointed deaths, the deadly loss of ego, the last acknowledgment of self – the music seemed to say “There are still a few things that you can cling to and this I supposed you should be soothed about – ha ha – but you won’t even get that – though there’s joy in our souls (bop interlude) we are nothing but shits and we’ll all die and eat shit in graves and are dying now.” Pretty powerful talk! »

Kerouac, Jack. Visions of Cody. 1960. Penguin Books. p. 25

Cave

« Life is sweet, inside of a big cave. »

Kerouac, Jack. Maggie Cassidy. Penguin Books, 1959. p. 160

Get ready to be busy in the world

« Thing was – Maggie wanted me to be more firm and binding in my contractual marriages of mate and heart with her – she wanted me to stop acting like a schoolboy and get ready to be busy in the world, make headways for her and our brood, and breed. Spring rank suggested this in breezes of prim river that now I began to enjoy as the iced ruts in Maggie’s Massachussetts Street began to uncongeal, crystal, crack, and swim – “Frick frack” would have the goodlooking hoodlum on the corner of Aiken and Moody Street and still your May’d come. “Damfool” will be the lark saying on a branch and I know that juices and syrup sops would pulse come throbbing springtime – “Never know would ye the wood was damp on the bottom” would be saying the old champions out in pine fields. I’d walk all over Lowell aweing and ooing my measures to the brain. Doves too coo. The wind like harp’ll blow blah blah over Lowell. »

Kerouac, Jack. Maggie Cassidy. Penguin Books, 1959. p. 150

All our misunderstandings

« If I’d laugh, and throw love teeth in her face, the big grin of accepting rapportive joy, she’d have just a twinge of suspicion in my motives – which would deepen – all night – till the bottomless sorrows of the dark – all my dark walks back from her house – all our misunderstandings – all her schemes, dreams – floop – all gone. »

Kerouac, Jack. Maggie Cassidy. Penguin Books, 1959. p. 124

The freigh trains still rumbles

« “Mag-gie!” The kids are calling under the railroad bridge where they’ve been swimming. The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and left, lost, down a path – the gloom of love. Maggie, the girl I loved. »

Kerouac, Jack. Maggie Cassidy. Penguin Books, 1959. p. 33

The Horror

“The profound ignorance of the world is Horrible. “The Horror” is why I’ll have to take refuge in the Apocalypse of the Fellaheen.”

Kerouac, Jack. « To Allen Ginsberg, December, 1954 », Selected Letters 1940-1956. Penguin Books, 1995, New York. Page 453.

Masturbatory

"Men everywhere sit on their own insignificant pot, they dandle the gland all doom."

Kerouac, Jack. « To Neal Cassady, Jan. 10, 1951 », Selected Letters 1940-1956. Penguin Books, 1995, New York. Page 304.

Jumble

“That’s right where I lost it – trying to remember how I got there, for then the onrushing memory of those events tangled with my own American or “real-life” memories and everything became jumbled just like a shortwave radio at midnight that brings sounds from all over the world in a discordant but definite MEDLEY. I’d been there; I knew I’d been there; and now I’d never know how, or when, or why, or what, and life was still a foolish hassle when the vision died down and I stood dreaming on the pavement.”

Kerouac, Jack. « To Neal Cassady, Jan. 8, 1951 », Selected Letters 1940-1956. Penguin Books, 1995, New York. Page 280.

Words

“I have nothing to offer but the words that spring from my heart and mind in this enormous story.”

Kerouac, Jack. « To Neal Cassady, Dec. 28, 1950 », Selected Letters 1940-1956. Penguin Books, 1995, New York. Page 261

Self

“It has suddenly been revealed to me the extent of our common madness, and I mean not only you or me, but all of us. Particularly since our madness sets itself no vital goal, but only a kind of sustained and unrelieved heaviness of personality. We don’t want to move, we are caught inert in the contrived intertwining stupidity of the common preconceived notion of ourselves.”

Kerouac, Jack. « To Allen Ginsberg, Nov. 13, 1945 », Selected Letters 1940-1956. Penguin Books, 1995, New York. Page 100.

Spring

“ Spring is coming –
         Yep, all that equipment
For sighs”

Kerouac, Jack. « TANGIERS 1957 », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Page 402

“ I, poor French Canadian Ti Jean become
a big sophisticated hipster esthete in
the homosexual arts, I, mutterer to
myself in childhood French, I, Indian-
head, I, Moogloo, I the wild one,
the “wild boy,” I, Claudius Brutus
McGonigle Mckarroquack, hopper
of freights, Skid Rok habitué,
railroad Buddhist, New England Modernist,
20th Century Storywriter, Crum, Krap,
dope, divorcee, hype, type; sitter in win-
dows of life; idiot far from home; no
wood in my stove, no potatoes in my
field, no field; hepcat, howler, wailer,
waiter in the line of time; lazy
washed-out, workless; yearner after
Europe, poet manqué; pas tough! ”

Kerouac, Jack. « SAN FRANCISCO SKETCH (1954 now) », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Page 398-399

Fellaheen

“ – in fact life insulting me
because it no longer
included Gerard –
   Get rid of pride
   Get rid of sorrow
   Mix with the People
   Go among the People,
the Fellaheen not the
  American Bourgeois Middle-
  class World of neurosis
  nor the Catholic French
  Canadian European World
        – the People –
Indians, Arabs, the
Fellaheen in the country, village,
    of City slums – an
  essential World Dostoyevksy
    if you want to Gauguin on –
  but mainly, fulfill yr.
needs, live,  – sit staring
in the yard all day, if
  the other men laugh at
  you challenge them
  & ask them if “you would
  like it if I laugh at
   you” – Screw, drink,
     be lasy, roam, do
    nothing ... gather yr.
     food – Get out of
       America for good, it’s
         a Culture holding you,
           no Life – The People
          of No Good & Evil –
         of No Culture, no
        Prophets – nothing but
       essential politics & literature
    as Tales of the People –

  Gauguin practised a
neurotic civilization
  impressionism among
primitive fellaheen
  people – is his
  art so good as they
  say? – is it better
  really than all-out
  culture bourgeois dutch
 come-&-honey Rembrandt?
 – of course not – Impressionism
is & has always been
   a breakup & compromise
  in the art of picturing
 nature & is now a
wild scatological paint
blur call’d Surrealism etc

Primitive art nevertheless
is closer to Surrealism
than “Naturalism”
(which is unnaturally tech-
nical) – but primitive
art does not consider
Subconsciousness or
  Primitivism – & is in
any case Decoration
for Utilitarian Purposes,
not so called “expression
for expression’s sake”
& the difference is
millionfold down deep –
Gauguin would have done
better decorating their pots
  & boats – This humility
is the true artist’s –  ”

Kerouac, Jack. « Sun Apr 26 SWING THE HILLTOMBSTONE », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Page 273-276

Final Cog

“  The traffic problem is
merely that cars by the
millions enslave us to
new city systems requiring
hours of drivin to & from
  needs, on “congested” arteries,
  naturally – where once
 you’d-a walked – These
   are all conditions pointing
   to the imminent cancerous
   death of American, the
   Final Cog in the Western
    Civ. Machine – the
     supreme end-result of
     early Gothic Phallic forms
     is the skyscraper & the
       oil drill & powered
       compressor & pistons of
       great engines – the Machine
       copulates, men aren’t
         allowed to anymore.
The flesh gets numb
But the soul doesn’t.”

Kerouac, Jack. « MORE SKETCHES CALIFORNIA », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Page 216.

The nerve of yr. being

“You’ve got to put a
superstructure of love
on yr. life or you’ll
just be a skeleton in
  the grave of yr.
mortal days, shuddering
naked against the main
  nerve of yr. being,
unclothed for the
  Raiment Halls of
  Will, Severity of Purpose,
– God is a superaddition
to the frame of Man,
like the flesh & eyes –
Therefore unravel the
drama of yr. soul before
yr. eyes, be strong &
thoughtful, be not naked scared”

Kerouac, Jack. « OCT. 4 », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Page 204.

Security

“  Retirement annuities
that grow out of group
life insurance & hospital
plans & sick benefits, spon-
sored by the modern big
  company, are only an
  attempt to cut out turn-
  over of employees –
  imagine devoting yr. entire
  life, its soul & meaning
to a pineapple company
& accepting its retirement
annuities for reward –
  “Stay with the Machine,
  boys, dont need to run
  away or shift to other
  cogs, you’re just as well
  off in this one – we offer
  YOU SECURITY TILL THE
  GRAVE.”

Kerouac, Jack. « NOTES ON THE MILLENIUM OF THE HIP FELLAHEEN Oct. 1952, Calif. », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Page 188.

Decoration

“Come face to face with
the lonely grave now,
beyond it is Heaven
– the lonely hole you’ll
lie in is the only hole
you’ll have – round it
God has woven golden
 rewards the Fabric
    of His Glory –
 My father only now
is blinking his eyes on
the other side of Light –
       Jesus loved the
Individual –
      America is Decoration
Now – planted palms in
  San Jose –”

Kerouac, Jack. « NOTES ON THE MILLENIUM OF THE HIP FELLAHEEN Oct. 1952, Calif. », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Pages 178-179.

Monsters

“I’m going to excoriate
the cocksucker & save
my heroes from its doom.
It aint no atom
  bomb will blow up
  America, America
  itself is a bomb
  bound to go off
  from within – What
  monsters lurks there, bald
head, fat, 55, youg wife,
millions, Henry J Shmeiser,
out of his pissing cancerous
life will flow (from the
belly) a juice of ex-
   plosions – dowagers
     & young juicy cunts with
     high mannered ways on
     buses will gasp – I
     stick my finger in the cunt.”

Kerouac, Jack. « THE THING I LIKE ABOUT », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Page 148.

Scene

“[...] In any case this
scene is of no interest
to me & is only an
example. A scene
should be selected by
the writer, for haunted-
ness-of-mind interest.
  If you’re not haunted
  by something, as by a
  dream, a vision, or
a memory, which are
  involuntary, you’re not
interested, or even involved.”

Kerouac, Jack. « 1954 Richmond Hill Sketch On Van Wyck Boulevard », Book of sketches. Penguin Books, 1952-1953, New York. Pages 63-64.