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One Fast Move Or I'm Gone,' I Realize, Gone The Way Of The Last Three Years Of Drunken Hopelessness Which Is A Physical And Spiritual And Metaphysical Hopelessness You Can't Learn In School No Matter How Many Books On Existentialism Or Pessimisn You Read, Or How Many Jugs Of Vision-producing Ayahuasca Drink, Or Mescaline Take, Or Peyote Goop Up With -

-Jack Kerouac

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One Fast Move Or

Jack Kerouac

...

One Fast Move Or I'm Gone,' I Realize, Gone The Way Of The Last Three Years Of Drunken Hopelessness Which Is A Physical And Spiritual And Metaphysical Hopelessness You Can't Learn In School No Matter How Many Books On Existentialism Or Pessimisn You Read, Or How Many Jugs Of Vision-producing Ayahuasca Drink, Or Mescaline Take, Or Peyote Goop Up With -

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This Was A Manuscript Of The Night We Couldn’t Read.

...but I Preferred Reading The American Landscape As We Went Along. Every Bump, Rise, And Stretch In It Mystified My Longing.

This Is The Story Of America. Everybody's Doing What They Think They're Supposed To Do.

The Fact That Everybody In The World Dreams Every Night Ties All Mankind Together.

A Fool Forgetting All The Ideals And Joys I Knew Before, In My Recent Years Of Drinking And Disappointment, What Does He Care If He Hasn't Got Any Money: He Doesn't Need Any Money, All He Needs Is His Rucksack With Those Little Plastic Bags Of Dried Food And A Good Pair Of Shoes And Off He Goes And Enjoys The Privileges Of A Millionaire In Surroundings Like This.

The Secret Of This Kind Of Climbing, Is Like Zen. Don't Think. Just Dance Along. It's The Easiest Thing In The World, Actually Easier Than Walking On Flat Ground Which Is Monotonous. The Cute Little Problems Present Themselves At Each Step And Yet You Don't Hesitate And You Find Yourself On Some Other Boulder You Picked Out For No Special Reason At All, Just Like Zen.~ Japhy

Eager For Bread And Love.

...notice How He Will Come To Manhood With His Own Particular Soul Bespeaking Itself Through The Windows Which Are His Eyes, And Such Lovely Eyes Surely Do Prophesy And Indicate The Loveliest Of Souls.

The Beat Generation (coined In Playboy)

Roaring Dreams Take Place In A Perfectly Silent Mind. Now That We Know This, Throw The Raft Away.

Last Night I Walked Clear Down To Times Square & Just As I Arrived I Suddenly Realized I Was A Ghost - It Was My Ghost Walking On The Sidewalk.

Never Mistake Talking About Writing For Actual Writing.

I Realized That I Had Died And Been Reborn Numberless Times But Just Didn't Remember Because The Transitions From Life To Death And Back Are So Ghostly Easy, A Magical Action For Naught, Like Falling Asleep And Waking Up Again A Million Times, The Utter Casualness And Deep Ignorance Of It.

I'd Rather Hop Freights Around The Country And Cook My Food Out Of Tin Cans Over Wood Fires, Than Be Rich And Have A Home Or Work.

Ah, You Always Go For The Ones Who Don't Really Want You

What A Horror It Would Have Been If The World Was Real, Because If The World Was Real, It Would Be Immortal.

Bop Began With Jazz But One Afternoon Somewhere On A Sidewalk Maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie Or Charlie Parker Or Thelonious Monk Was Walking Past A Men's Clothing Store On 42nd Street Or South Main In L.a. And From A Loudspeaker They Suddenly Heard A Wild Impossible Mistake In Jazz That Could Only Have Been Heard Inside Their Own Imaginary Head, And That Is A New Art. Bop.

Equally Empty, Equally To Be Loved, Equally A Coming Buddha

I'll Go To The South Of Sicily In The Winter, And Paint Memories Of Arles – I'll Buy A Piano And Mozart Me That – I'll Write Long Sad Tales About People In The Legend Of My Life – This Part Is My Part Of The Movie, Let's Hear Yours

Rest And Be Kind, You Don't Have To Prove Anything

We Should Be Wondering Tonight, "is There A World?" But I Could Go And Talk On 5, 10, 20 Minutes About Is There A World, Because There Is Really No World, Cause Sometimes I'm Walkin' On The Ground And I See Right Through The Ground. And There Is No World. And You'll Find Out.

Way Far Back In The Beginning Of The World Was The Whirlwind Warning That We Could All Be Blown Away Like Chips And Cry- Men With Tired Eyes Realize It Now, And Wait To Deform And Decay- With Maybe They Have The Power Of Love Yet In Their Hearts Just The Same, I Just Don't Know What That Word Means Anymore- All I Want Is An Ice Cream Cone

And I Realize The Unbearable Anguish Of Insanity: How Uninformed People Can Be Thinking Insane People Are "happy," O God, In Fact It Was Irwin Garden Once Warned Me Not To Think The Madhouses Are Full Of "happy Nuts." (p. 200)

I'm Right There, Swimming The River Of Hardships But I Know How To Swim.

Nothing Behind Me, Everything Ahead Of Me, As Is Ever So On The Road.

Down In Denver, All I Did Was Die.

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers. What Rembrandt Or Van Gogh Saw In The Night Can Never Be Seen Again.

You Don't Realize What A Strain It Is On The Nerves To Write Or Think-of-writing All Day Long, And To Sleep Full Of Nervous Dreams, And To Wake Up Not Knowing Who One Is: This All Stems From Anxiety About Finishing The Book, About Time 'growing Short', Etc., And The Perpetual Strain Of Invention.

The Empty Blue Sky Of Space Says 'all This Comes Back To Me, Then Goes Again, And Comes Back Again, Then Goes Again, And I Don't Care, It Still Belongs To Me

Ray, What You Got To Do Is Go Climb A Mountain.

Everything I Wrote Was True Because I Believed What I Saw.

Our Radio Plays Rhythm And Blues As We Pass The Joint Back And Forth In Jutjawed Silence Both Looking Ahead With Big Private Thoughts Now So Vast We Can't Communicate Them Anymore And If We Tried It Would Take A Million Years And A Billion Books - Too Late, Too Late, The History Of Everything We've Seen Together And Separately Has Become A Library In Itself - The Shelves Pile Higher - They're Full Of Misty Documents Or Documents Of The Mist-.

Something That You Feel Will Find Its Own Form.

Whither Goest Thou, America, In Thy Shiny Car In The Night?

I Suddenly Began To Realize That Everybody In America Is A Natural-born Thief.

Great Things Are Not Accomplished By Those Who Yield To Trends And Fads And Popular Opinion.

Oftentimes An Originator Of New Language Forms Is Called 'pretentious' By Jealous Talents. But It Ain’t Whatcha Write, It’s The Way Atcha Write It.

I Nudged Myself Closer To The Ledge And Closed My Eyes And Thought 'oh What A Life This Is, Why Do We Have To Be Born In The First Place, And Only So We Can Have Our Poor Gentle Flesh Laid Out To Such Impossible Horrors As Huge Mountains And Rock And Empty Space,' And With Horror I Remembered The Famous Zen Saying, 'when You Get To The Top Of A Mountain, Keep Climbing.' The Saying Made My Hair Stand On End; It Had Been Such Cute Poetry Sitting On Alvah's Straw Mats.

So Long And Take It Easy, Because If You Start Taking Things Seriously, It Is The End Of You.

No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Your Experience, Language, And Knowledge.

Dharma Bums Refusing To Subscribe To The General Demand That They Consume Production And Therefore Have To Work For The Privilege Of Consuming, All That Cramp They Didn't Really Want Anyway Such As Refrigerators, Tv Sets, Cars, At Least New Fancy Cars, Certain Hair Oils And Deodorants And General Junk You Finally Always See A Week Later In The Garbage Anyway, All Of Them Imprisoned In A System Of Work, Produce, Consume, Work, Produce, Consume.

I Can't Think Of Anybody...who Knows The Sum And Substance Of What I Know And Feel And Cry About In My Secret Self All The Time When I Don't Feel Strong, The Sorrows Of Time And Personality, And Can Therefore On All Levels Make It All The Way With Me

It Was My Dream That Screwed Up, The Stupid Hearthside Idea That It Would Be Wonderful To Follow One Great Red Line Across America Instead Of Trying Various Roads And Routes.

I Hope It Is True That A Man Can Die And Yet Not Only Live In Others But Give Them Life, And Not Only Life, But That Great Consciousness Of Life.

Somewhere Along The Line, The Pearl Would Be Handed To Me.

I Suddenly Discovered The Delight Of Rebellion.

I Want To Marry A [guy], So I Can Rest My Soul With [him] Till We Both Get Old. This Can't Go On All The Time-- All This Franticness And Jumping Around. We've Got To Go Someplace, Find Something.

It Is Possible For The Human Spirit To Win After All.

I Loved The Way She Said 'la'; I Love The Way Everybody Says 'la' On The Coast; It's Their One And Only Golden Town When All Is Said And Done.

Bee, Why Are You Staring At Me? I Am Not A Flower??

But On Top Of All That, The Feelings About Princess, I'd Also Gone Through An Entire Year Of Celibacy Based On My Feeling That Lust Was The Direct Cause Of Birth Which Was The Direct Cause Of Suffering And Death And I Had Really No Lie Come To A Point Where I Regarded Lust As Offensive And Even Cruel. "pretty Girls Make Graves," Was My Saying, Whenever I'd Had To Turn My Head Around Involuntarily To Stare At The Incomparable Pretties Of Indian Mexico.

Because Anybody Can Write, But Not Everybody Invents New Forms Of Writing. Gertrude Stein Invented A New Form Of Writing And Her Imitators Are Just "talents."

And Nobody Knows What’s Going To Happen To Anybody Besides The Forlorn Rags Of Growing Old

My Karma Was To Be Born In America Where Nobody Has Any Fun Or Believes In Anything, Especially Freedom.

Ah, Life Is A Gate, A Way, A Path To Paradise Anyway, Why Not Live For Fun And Joy And Love Or Some Sort Of Girl By A Fireside, Why Not Go To Your Desire And Laugh.

As I Grew Older I Became A Drunk. Why? Because I Like Ecstasy Of The Mind.

The Beat Generation, That Was A Vision That We Had, John Clellon Holmes And I, And Allen Ginsberg In An Even Wilder Way, In The Late Forties, Of A Generation Of Crazy, Illuminated Hipsters Suddenly Rising And Roaming America, Serious, Bumming And Hitchhiking Everywhere, Ragged, Beatific, Beautiful In An Ugly Graceful New Way.

The Words Are Clear As In The Reflection Of The World On The Water. Therefore Write The Word At Once, Everywhere, From Now Till Your Hand Is Paralyzed, For There Will Be Your Work For God, Since You Can Not Work For God In Other Ways, And Would Not, & Don't Know How, Or Bend That Way, From Habit, & From Talent In The Use & Signification & Arrangement Of The Word.

Geniuses Can Be Scintillating And Geniuses Can Be Somber, But It's That Inescapable Sorrowful Depth That Shines Through-originality.

Don't Touch Me, I'm Full Of Snakes.

Man Lowers His Head And Lunges Into Civilization, Forgetting The Days Of His Infancy When He Sought Truth In A Snowflake Or A Stick. Man Forgets The Wisdom Of The Child.

His Friends Said, "why Do You Have That Ugly Thing Hanging There?" And Bull Said, "i Like It Because It's Ugly." All His Life Was In That Line.

We Lay On Our Backs Looking At The Ceiling And Wondering What God Had Wrought When He Made Life So Sad And Disinclined.

Struggle To Sketch The Flow That Already Exists Intact In Mind.

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift. . . . The Net Result Of Naked Lunch Will Be To Make People Shudder At Their Own Lies, Will Be To Make Them Open Up And Be Straight With One Another. Swift And Rabelais And Sterne Accomplished A Step In That Direction, And Burroughs Another.

Vanity Of Vanities… All Is Vanity.’ You Kill Yourself To Get To The Grave. Especially You Kill Yourself To Get To The Grave Before You Die; And The Name Of The Grave Is ‘success’, The Name Of That Grave Is Hullabullo Boom Boom Horseshit.

Who Knows, My God, But That The Universe Is Not One Vast Sea Of Compassion Actually, The Veritable Holy Honey, Beneath All This Show Of Personality And Cruelty?

It’s A Sort Of Furtiveness … Like We Were A Generation Of Furtive. You Know, With An Inner Knowledge There’s No Use Flaunting On That Level, The Level Of The ‘public’, A Kind Of Beatness – I Mean, Being Right Down To It, To Ourselves, Because We All Really Know Where We Are – And A Weariness With All The Forms, All The Conventions Of The World … It’s Something Like That. So I Guess You Might Say We’re A Beat Generation.

The Truth Of The Matter Is, You Die, All You Do Is Die, And Yet You Live, Yes You Live, And That's No Harvard Lie.

The Sun Goes Down Long And Red. All The Magic Names Of The Valley Unrolled - Manteca, Madera, All The Rest. Soon It Got Dusk, A Grapy Dusk, A Purple Dusk Over Tangerine Groves And Long Melon Field; The Sun The Color Of Pressed Grapes, Slashed With Burgundy Red, The Fields The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries. I Stuck My Head Out The Window And Took Deep Breaths Of The Fragant Air. It Was The Most Beautiful Of All Moments.

Offer Them What They Secretly Want And They Of Course Immediately Become Panic-stricken.

The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones, The Ones Who Are Mad To Live, Mad To Talk, Mad To Be Saved, Desirous Of Everything At The Same Time, The Ones Who Never Yawn Or Say A Commonplace Thing, But Burn, Burn, Burn Like Fabulous Yellow Roman Candles Exploding Like Spiders Across The Stars.

There's Wisdom In Wine.

Absolutely No Way To Escape Enigmans.

Lying Mouth To Mouth, Kiss To Kiss In The Pillow Dark, Loin To Loin In Unbelievable Surrendering Sweetness So Distant From All Our Mental Fearful Abstractions It Makes You Wonder Why Men Have Termed God Antisexual Somehow (p. 148)

My Life Is A Vast Inconsequential Epic.

Inconsequential

I Want A Blaze Of Light To Flame In Me Forever In A Timeless, Dear Love Of Everything. And Why Should I Pretend To Want Anything Else?

Life Must Be Rich And Full Of Loving--it's No Good Otherwise, No Good At All, For Anyone.

Something Good Will Come Out Of All Things Yet — And It Will Be Golden And Eternal Just Like That.

Sweet Life Continues In The Breeze, In The Golden Fields.

...most Of The Time We Were Alone And Mixing Up Our Souls Ever More And Ever More Till It Would Be Terribly Hard To Say Good-by.

Beautiful Insane In The Rain

A Sociable Smile Is Nothing But A Mouth Full Of Teeth.

The Yard Was Full Of Tomato Plants About To Ripen, And Mint, Mint, Everything Smelling Of Mint, And One Fine Old Tree That I Loved To Sit Under On Those Cool Perfect Starry California October Nights Unmatched Anywhere In The World.

Paris Is A Woman But London Is An Independent Man Puffing His Pipe In A Pub.

Contrary To The General Belief About Photography, You Don't Need Bright Sunlight: The Best Moodiest Pictures Are Taken In The Dim Light Of Almost Dusk, Or Of Rainy Days.

Life Was Dense, Dark, Ancient. They Watched Dean, Serious And Insane At His Raving Wheel, With Eyes Of Hawks. All Had Their Hands Outstretched. They Had Come Down From The Back Mountains And Higher Places To Hold Forth Their Hands For Something They Thought Civilization Could Offer, And They Never Dreamed The Sadness And The Poor Broken Delusion Of It.

I Was Having A Wonderful Time And The Whole World Opened Up Before Me Because I Had No Dreams.

All The Souls To Explore! - It's Not So Necessary To Love, Really, As It Is To Settle Something Deep With All Of Those Who Really Matter. Love And Hate Are The Same Things, Differently Sifted Through Personal... Pride, Or What Have You... Personal Pride Or Even Just Personal-ness.

The More Ups And Downs, The More Joy I Feel. The Greater The Fear, The Greater The Happiness I Feel.

I Realized Either I Was Crazy Or The World Was Crazy; And I Picked On The World. And Of Course I Was Right.

But That's Alright Because Now Everything'll Be Alright & We'll Soothe The Forever Boys & Girls & Before We're Thru We'll Find A Name For This Goddam Golden Eternity & Tell A Story Too

Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me

Better To Sleep In An Uncomfortable Bed Free, Than Sleep In A Comfortable Bed Unfree.

The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones, The Ones Who Are Mad To Live, Mad To Talk, Mad To Be Saved.

Rocks Are Space, And Space Is Illusion.

Remove Literary, Grammatical And Syntactical Inhibition.

Parade My Trouble In Front Of You Guys? Make You Realize That My Heart Is Broken . . . That As Long As I Live I'll Have Chains Dragging Me Down To The Oceans Of Sad Tears That My Feet Are Wet In Already.

I'd Sleep And Forget It; I Had My Own Life, My Own Sad And Ragged Life Forever.

Return Those Shoes To The Shoemaker Return This Hand To My Father This Pillow To The Pillowmaker Those Slippers To The Shop. That Wainscot To The Carpenter, But My Mind My Tranquil And Eternal Mind Return It To Whom?

Let Nature Do The Freezing And Frightening And Isolating In This World. Let Men Work And Love And Fight It Off.

And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks!

Beat Generation

Because In The End, You Won't Remember The Time You Spent Working In The Office Or Mowing Your Lawn. Climb That Goddamn Mountain

I Felt Like Lying Down By The Side Of The Trail And Remembering It All

Night Is Longer Than Day For Those Who Dream & Day Is Longer Than Night For Those Who Make Their Dreams Comes True.

The Fact Was I Had The Vision... I Think Everyone Has... What We Lack Is The Method.

Once There Was Louis Armstrong Blowing His Beautiful Top In The Muds Of New Orleans; Before Him The Mad Musicians Who Had Paraded On Official Days And Broke Up Their Sousa Marches Into Ragtime. Then There Was Swing, And Roy Eldridge, Vigorous And Virile, Blasting The Horn For Everything It Had In Waves Of Power And Logic And Subtlety - Leaning Into It With Glittering Eyes And A Lovely Smile And Sending It Out Broadcast To Rock The Jazz World.

Pretty Girls Make Graves

I Have All The Time In The World From Life To Life To Do What Is To Do, To Do What Is Done, To Do The Timeless Doing.

...do You Think God Made The World To Amuse Himself Because He Was Bored? Because If So He Would Have To Be Mean.

I Wasn't Scared; I Was Just Somebody Else, Some Stranger, And My Whole Life Was A Haunted Life, The Life Of A Ghost.

And Then We’ll All Go Off To Sweet Life, ‘cause Now Is The Time And We All Know Time!

If You Tell A True Story, You Can't Be Wrong.

Galatea Was A Serious Girl. She Was Pale And Looked Like Tears All Over. Big Ed Passed His Hand Through His Hair And Said Hello. She Looked At Him Steadily. "where Have You Been? Why Did You Do This To Me?" And She Gave Dean A Dirty Look; She Knew The Score. Dean Paid Absolutely No Attention; What He Wanted Now Was Food; He Asked Jane If There Was Anything. The Confusion Began Right There.

What Is He Aching To Do? What Are We All Aching To Do? What Do We Want?” She Didn’t Know. She Yawned. She Was Sleepy. It Was Too Much. Nobody Could Tell. Nobody Would Ever Tell. It Was All Over. She Was Eighteen And Most Lovely, And Lost.

It's Pretty Amazing To See A Guy, While Steering At The Wheel, Suddenly Raise His Little 300 Dollar German Camera With One Hand And Snap Something That's On The Move In Front Of Him, And Through An Unwashed Windshield At That. (on The Road With Robert Frank, 1958)

The Human Bones Are But Vain Lines Dawdling, The Whole Universe A Blank Mold Of Stars.

Goddamn It, Feeling Is What I Like In Art, Not Craftiness And The Hiding Of Feelings.

The Only Alternative To Sleeping Out, Hopping Freights, And Doing What I Wanted, I Saw In A Vision Would Be To Just Sit With A Hundred Other Patients In Front Of A Nice Television Set In A Madhouse, Where We Could Be "supervised."

All Day Long Wearing A Hat That Wasn't On My Head

When The Railroad Trains Moaned, And River-winds Blew, Bringing Echoes Through The Vale, It Was As If A Wild Hum Of Voices, The Dear Voices Of Everybody He Had Known, Were Crying: "peter, Peter! Where Are You Going, Peter?" And A Big Soft Gust Of Rain Came Down. He Put Up The Collar Of His Jacket, And Bowed His Head, And Hurried Along.

...we All Must Admit That Everything Is Fine And There's No Need In The World To Worry, And In Fact We Should Realize What It Would Mean To Us To Understand That We're Not Really Worried About Anything.

And With Joy You Realize For The First Time "thinking's Just Like Not Thinking — So I Don't Have To Think Any More".

Never Dreaming, Was I, Poor Jack Duluoz, That The Soul Is Dead. That From Heaven Grace Descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail To Tell Me; No Example Inside My First And Only Skin. That Love Is The Heritage, And Cousin To Death. That The Only Love Can Only Be The First Love, The Only Death The Last, The Only Life Within, And The Only Word . . . Choked Forever.

Be In Love With Your Life, Every Detail Of It.

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.

God Was Gone; It Was The Silence Of His Departure. It Was A Rainy Night. It Was The Myth Of The Rainy Night. Dean Was Popeyed With Awe. This Madness Would Lead Nowhere. I Didn't Know What Was Happening To Me, And I Suddenly Realized It Was Only The Tea That We Were Smoking; Dean Had Bought Some In New York. It Made Me Think That Everything Was About To Arrive - The Moment When You Know All And Everything Is Decided Forever.

Boys And Girls In America Have Such A Sad Time Together; Sophistication Demands That They Submit To Sex Immediately Without Proper Preliminary Talk. Not Courting Talk - Real Straight Talk About Souls, For Life Is Holy And Every Moment Is Precious.

An Awful Realization That I Have Been Fooling Myself All My Life Thinking There Was A Next Thing To Do To Keep The Show Going And Actually I'm Just A Sick Clown And So Is Everybody Else

My Whole Wretched Life Swam Before My Weary Eyes, And I Realized No Matter What You Do It's Bound To Be A Waste Of Time In The End So You Might As Well Go Mad.

We Turned At A Dozen Paces, For Love Is A Duel, And Looked At Each Other For The Last Time.

Keep It Kickwriting At All Costs Too, That Is, Write Only What Kicks You And Keeps You Overtime Awake From Sheer Mad Joy.

We Fumed And Screamed In Our Mountain Nook, Mad Drunken Americans In The Mighty Land. We Were On The Roof Of America And All We Could Do Was Yell, I Guess - Across The Night.

The Air Was So Sweet In New Orleans It Seemed To Come In Soft Bandannas; And You Could Smell The River And Really Smell The People, And Mud, And Molasses, And Every Kind Of Tropical Exhalation, With Your Nose Suddenly Removed From The Dry Ices Of A Northern Winter.

She Spoke Of Evenings In The Country Making Popcorn On The Porch. Once This Would Have Gladdened My Heart But Because Her Heart Was Not Glad When She Said It I Knew There Was Nothing In It But The Idea Of What One Should Do.

Sure Baby, Mañana. It Was Always Mañana. For The Next Few Weeks That Was All I Heard––mañana A Lovely Word And One That Probably Means Heaven.

Writing At Least Is A Silent Meditation Even Though You’re Going A Hundred Miles An Hour.

There Is Universal Substance Which Is Divine Substance Because Where Else Can It Be?

The Air Was Soft, The Stars So Fine, The Promise Of Every Cobbled Alley So Great, That I Thought I Was In A Dream.

...and Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.

The Smog Was Heavy, My Eyes Were Weeping From It, The Sun Was Hot, The Air Stank, A Regular Hell Is L.a.

La Is The Loneliest And Most Brutal Of American Cities; Ny Gets God-awful Cold In The Winter But There's A Feeling Of Wacky Comradeship Somewhere In Some Streets. La Is A Jungle.

All He Needed Was A Wheel In His Hand And Four On The Road.

There Is A Blessedness Surely To Be Believed, And That Is That Everything Abides In Eternal Ecstasy, Now And Forever.

"what Do You Want Out Of Life?" I Asked, And I Used To Ask That All The Time Of Girls. "i Don't Know," She Said. "just Wait On Tables And Try To Get Along." She Yawned. I Put My Hand Over Her Mouth And Told Her Not To Yawn. I Tried To Tell Her How Excited I Was About Life And The Things We Could Do Together; Saying That, And Planning To Leave Denver In Two Days. She Turned Away Wearily. We Lay On Our Backs, Looking At The Ceiling And Wondering What God Had Wrought When He Made Life So Sad.

Work From Pithy Middle Eye Out, Swimming In Language Sea.

She Brooded And Bit Her Rich Lips: My Soul Began Its First Sink Into Her, Deep, Heady, Lost; Like Drowning In A Witches' Brew, Keltic, Sorcerous, Starlike.

No Man Should Go Through Life Without Once Experiencing Healthy, Even Bored Solitude In The Wilderness, Finding Himself Depending Solely On Himself And Thereby Learning His True And Hidden Strength

There Are Worse Things Than Being Mad.

You Can't Teach The Old Maestro A New Tune.

My Aunt Once Said That The World Would Never Find Peace Until Men Fell At Their Women's Feet And Asked For Forgiveness.

It's Okay, Girl, We'll Make It Till The Sun Goes Down Forever. And Until Then What You Got To Lose But The Losing? We're Fallen Angels Who Didn't Believe That Nothing Means Nothing.

I Saw That My Life Was A Vast Glowing Empty Page And I Could Do Anything I Wanted.

I Spent My Entire Youth Writing Slowly With Revisions And Endless Rehashing Speculation And Deleting And Got So I Was Writing One Sentence A Day And The Sentence Had No Feeling. Goddamn It, Feeling Is What I Like In Art, Not Craftiness And The Hiding Of Feelings.

And He Had A Nice Home In Ohio With Wife, Daughter, Christmas Tree, Two Cars, Garage, Lawn, Lawnmower, But He Couldn't Enjoy Any Of It Because He Really Wasn't Free. It Was Sadly True.

And I Will Die, And You Will Die, And We All Will Die, And Even The Stars Will Fade Out One After Another In Time.

Go Moan For Man. It's The Pathos Of People That Gets Us Down, All The Lovers In This Dream.

I'm Stuck Struggling In The Cold Water, And All I Can Do Is Grieve, Grieve, In The Hoar Necessitous Horror Of The Morning, Bitterly I Hate Myself, Bitterly It's Too Late Yet While I Feel Better I Still Feel Ephemeral And Unreal And Unable To Straighten My Thoughts Or Even Really Grieve, In Fact I Feel Too Stupid To Be Really Bitter, In Short I Don't Know What I'm Doing And I'm Being Told What To Do.

...the Tale That's Told For No Other Reason But Companionship, Which Is Another (and My Favorite) Definition Of Literature, The Tale That's Told For Companionship And To Teach Something Religious, Of Religious Reverence, About Real Life, In This Real World Which Literature Should (and Here Does) Reflect.

Put Down The Pen Someone Else Gave You. No One Ever Drafted A Life Worth Living On Borrowed Ink.

Life Worth Living

You Seek Identity In The Midst Of Indistinguishab Le Chaos, In Sprawling Nameless Reality.

They Have Worries, They're Counting The Miles, They're Thinking About Where To Sleep Tonight, How Much Money For Gas, The Weather, How They'll Get There - And All The Time They'll Get There Anyway, You See.

And When The Fog's Over And The Stars And The Moon Come Out At Night It'll Be A Beautiful Sight.

The Bartenders Are The Regular Band Of Jack, And The Heavenly Drummer Who Looks Up To The Sky With Blue Eyes, With A Beard, Is Wailing Beer-caps Of Bottles And Jamming On The Cash Register And Everything Is Going To The Beat - It's The Beat Generation, Its Béat, It's The Beat To Keep, It's The Beat Of The Heart, It's Being Beat And Down In The World And Like Oldtime Lowdown.

Somebody Had Tipped The American Continent Like A Pinball Machine And All The Goofballs Had Come Rolling To La In The Southwest Corner. I Cried For All Of Us. There Was No End To The American Sadness And The American Madness. Someday We'll All Start Laughing And Roll On The Ground When We Realize How Funny It's Been.

What Is That Feeling When You're Driving Away From People And They Recede On The Plain Till You See Their Specks Dispersing? - It's The Too-huge World Vaulting Us, And It's Good-by. But We Lean Forward To The Next Crazy Venture Beneath The Skies.

The Silence Was An Intense Roar.

February Dawn -- Frost On The Path Where I Paced All Winter.

..and That Was The One Distinct Time In My Life, The Strangest Moment Of All, When I Didnt Know Who I Was

As We Crossed The Colorado-utah Border I Saw God In The Sky In The Form Of Huge Gold Sunburning Clouds Above The Desert That Seemed To Point A Finger At Me And Say, "pass Here And Go On, You're On The Road To Heaven.

He Had No Place He Could Stay In Without Getting Tired Of It And Because There Was Nowhere To Go But Everywhere, Keep Rolling Under The Stars.

Pain Or Love Or Danger Makes You Real Again.

I Promise I Shall Never Give Up, And That I'll Die Yelling & Laughing.

My Witness Is The Empty Sky.

I Don't Wanta Hear All Your Word Descriptions Of Words Words Words You Made Up All Winter, Man I Wanta Be Enlightened By Actions.

We Tiptoed Around Each Other Like Heartbreaking New Friends.

Will You Love Me In December As You Do In May?

I See As Much As Doors'll Allow, Open Or Shut.

All I Wanted To Do Was Sneak Out Into The Night And Disappear Somewhere, And Go And Find Out What Everybody Was Doing All Over The Country.

Thinking Of The Stars Night After Night I Begin To Realize 'the Stars Are Words' And All The Innumerable Worlds In The Milky Way Are Words, And So Is This World Too. And I Realize That No Matter Where I Am, Whether In A Little Room Full Of Thought, Or In This Endless Universe Of Stars And Mountains, It’s All In My Mind.

At Lilac Evening I Walked With Every Muscle Aching Among The Lights Of 27th And Welton In The Denver Colored Section, Wishing I Were A Negro, Feeling That The Best The White World Had Offered Was Not Enough Ecstasy For Me, Not Enough Life, Joy, Kicks, Darkness, Music, Not Enough Night.

But They Need To Worry And Betray Time With Urgencies False And Otherwise, Purely Anxious And Whiny, Their Souls Really Won't Be At Peace Unless They Can Latch To An Established And Proven Worry And Having Once Found It They Assume Facial Expressions To Fit And Go With It, Which Is, You See, Unhappiness, And All The Time It All Flies By Them And They Know It And That Too Worries Them No End.

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers. What Rembrandt Or Van Gogh Saw In The Night Can Never Be Seen Again. Born Writers Of The Future Are Amazed Already At What They're Seeing Now, What We'll All See In Time For The First Time, And Then See Imitated Many Times By Made Writers.

You Have Absolutely No Regard But Yourself And Your Damned Kicks. All You Think About Is What's Hanging Between Your Legs And How Much Money Or Fun You Can Get Out Of People And Then You Just Throw Them Aside. Not Only That But You're Silly About It. It Never Occurs To You That Life Is Serious And That There Are People Trying To Make Something Decent Out Of It Instead Of Just Goofing All The Time.

Mankind Is Like Dogs, Not Gods - As Long As You Don't Get Mad They'll Bite You - But Stay Mad And You'll Never Be Bitten. Dogs Don't Respect Humility And Sorrow.

You Can't Fight City Hall. It Keeps Changing Its Name.

Anybody Doesn't Like These Pitchers Don't Like Potry, See? Anybody Don't Like Potry Go Home See Television Shots Of Big Hatted Cowboys Being Tolerated By Kind Horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, Unobtrusive, Nice, With That Little Camera That He Raises And Snaps With One Hand He Sucked A Sad Poem Right Out Of America Onto Film, Taking Rank Among The Poets Of The World. To Robert Frank I Now Give This Message: You Got Eyes.

Aw I Don't Wanta Go To No Such Thing, I Just Wanta Drink In Alleys.'... But You'll Miss All That, Just For Some Old Wine.' There's Wisdom In Wine, Goddam It!' I Yelled. 'have A Shot!

I Was Amazed By The Fact That I Was Not The Only Writer Living, Not The Only Young Man "with A Locomotive In His Chest, And That's A Fact," Not The Only Youth With A Million Hungers And Not One Of Them Appeasable, Not The Only One Who Is Lonely Among Multitudes, And Does Not Know Why.

He Seems To Me To Be Headed For His Ideal Fate, Which Is Compulsive Psychosis Dashed With A Jigger Of Psychopathic Irresponsibility And Violence

But There's No Joy At All, People Say "oh Well He's Drunk And Happy Let Him Sleep It Off"--the Poor Drunkard Is *crying*--he's Crying For His Mother And Father And Great Brother And Great Friend, He's Crying For Help. (p.111)

After All, A Homeless Man Has Reason To Cry, Everything In The World Is Pointed Against Him.

I Rather Like The Idea Of Having All My Hours To Myself: Eating A Fudge Sundae, Watching A Movie, Sleeping On My Couch, Singing In The Bathroom, Studying The Woods, Kidding Around With A Girl, Playing Cards Lazily - All Kinds Of Stuff That American Brands 'shiftless.'

No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Yr Experience, Language & Knowledge

It Seemed Like A Matter Of Minutes When We Began Rolling In The Foothills Before Oakland And Suddenly Reached A Height And Saw Stretched Out Ahead Of Us The Fabulous White City Of San Francisco On Her Eleven Mystic Hills With The Blue Pacific And Its Advancing Wall Of Potato-patch Fog Beyond, And Smoke And Goldenness In The Late Afternoon Of Time.

And You Have Been Forever, And Will Be Forever, And All The Worrisome Smashings Of Your Foot On Innocent Cupboard Doors It Was Only The Void Pretending To Be A Man Pretending Not To Know The Void.

It Was All Completely Serious, All Completely Hallucinated, All Completely Happy.

It All Ends In Tears Anyway.

In Our True Blissful Essence Of Mind Is Known That Everything Is Alright Forever And Forever And Forever...listen To The Silence Inside The Illusion Of The World, And You Will Remember The Lesson You Forgot, It Is All One Vast Awakened Thing. We Were Never Really Born, We Will Never Really Die. It Has Nothing To Do With The Imaginary Idea Of A Personal Self, Other Selves, Many Selves Everywhere: Self Is Only An Idea, A Mortal Idea. That Which Passes Into Everything Is One Thing. It's A Dream Already Ended.

How I Wished I'd Have Had A Camera Of My Own, A Mad Mental Camera That Could Register Pictorial Shots, Of The Photographic Artist Himself Prowling About For His Ultimate Shot - An Epic In Itself. (on The Road With Robert Frank, 1958)

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