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"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.

-Jack Kerouac

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"what Do You Want

Jack Kerouac

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"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.

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

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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.

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I Clearly Saw The Skeleton Underneath All This Show Of Personality What Is Left Of A Man And All His Pride But Bones?

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Yeah," I Said, "but You're An Artist. You Don't Believe In Decency And Honesty And Gratitude. Where Shall We Eat?

-no Girl Had Ever Moved Me With A Story Of Spiritual Suffering And So Beautifully Her Soul Showing Out Radiant As An Angel Wandering In Hell And The Hell The Selfsame Streets I'd Roamed In Watching, Watching For Someone Just Like Her And Never Dreaming The Darkness And The Mystery And Eventuality Of Our Meeting In Eternity.

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

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

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Mainly I've Been Back To My Books And Writings And Being Nice And Quiet And Lazy. As I'm Writing This, The Radio Says There's A Foot Of Snow Falling On Long Island. I Really Love Snow And Wish I Could Take A Long Walk In It Right Now.

So Therefore I Dedicate Myself, To My Art, My Sleep, My Dreams, My Labors, My Suffrances, My Loneliness, My Unique Madness, My Endless Absorption And Hunger Because I Cannot Dedicate Myself To Any Fellow Being.

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In My Madness I Was Actually In Love With Her For The Few Hours It All Lasted; It Was The Same Unmistakable Ache And Stab Across The Mind, The Same Sighs, The Same Pain, And Above All The Same Reluctance And Fear To Approach.

I Told Terry I Was Leaving. She Had Been Thinking About It All Night And Was Resigned To It. Emotionlessly She Kissed Me In The Vineyard And Walked Off Down The Row. We Turned At A Dozen Paces, For Love Is A Duel, And Looked At Each Other For The Last Time.

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.

I Petted The Dogs Who Didn't Argue With Me Ever. All Dogs Love God. They're Wiser Than Their Masters.

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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!

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I'm Going To Marry My Novels And Have Little Short Stories For Children.

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

One Day I Will Find The Right Words, And They Will Be Simple.

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.

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Details Are The Life Of Prose.

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I Looked Up At The Dark Sky And Prayed To God For A Better Break In Life And A Better Chance To Do Something For The Little People I Loved.

Cliches Are Truisms And All Truisms Are True

Some Of My Most Neurotically Fierce Bitterness Is The Result Of Realizing How Untrue People Have Become.

But Night Would Come And With It The Mountain Moon And The Lake Would Be Moon - Laned And I'd Go Out And Sit In The Grass And Meditate Facing West, Wishing There Were A Personal God In All This Impersonal Matter.

Are We Fallen Angels Who Didn't Want To Believe That Nothing Is Nothing And So Were Born To Lose Our Loved Ones And Dear Friends One By One And Finally Our Own Life, To See It Proved?

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

I Believed In A Good Home, In Sane And Sound Living, In Good Food, Good Times, Work, Faith And Hope. I Have Always Believed In These Things. It Was With Some Amazement That I Realized I Was One Of The Few People In The World Who Really Believed In These Things Without Going Around Making A Dull Middle Class Philosophy Out Of It. I Was Suddenly Left With Nothing In My Hands But A Handful Of Crazy Stars.

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

And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks!

Beat Generation

We Wandered In A Frenzy And A Dream (301).

Down In Denver, All I Did Was Die.

Things Are So Hard To Figure Out When You Live From Day To Day In This Feverish And Silly World.

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

Life Worth Living

And Silence Is The Golden Mountain

The Bus Roared Through Indiana Cornfields That Night; The Moon Illuminated The Ghostly Gathered Husks; It Was Almost Halloween. I Made The Acquaintance Of A Girl And We Necked All The Way To Indianapolis. She Was Nearsighted. When We Got Off To Eat I Had To Lead Her By The Hand To The Lunch Counter. She Bought My Meals; My Sandwiches Were All Gone. In Exchange I Told Her Long Stories.

I Like It Because Its Ugly

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.

I Suddenly Discovered The Delight Of Rebellion.

And The Story Of Love Is A Long Sad Tale Ending In Graves.

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

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

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.

Your Mind Makes Out The Orange By Seeing It, Hearing It, Touching It, Smelling It, Tasting It And Thinking About It But Without This Mind, You Call It, The Orange Would Not Be Seen Or Heard Or Smelled Or Tasted Or Even Mentally Noticed, It's Actually, That Orange, Depending On Your Mind To Exist! Don't You See That? By Itself It's A No-thing, It's Really Mental, It's Seen Only Of Your Mind. In Other Words It's Empty And Awake.

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.

Believe In The Holy Contour Of Life.

In Those Days He Really Didn't Know What He Was Talking About; That Is To Say, He Was A Young Jailkid All Hung-up On The Wonderful Possibilities Of Becoming A Real Intellectual, And He Liked To Talk In The Tone And Using The Words, But In A Jumbled Way, That He Had Heard From 'real Intellectuals.

I'm Writing This Book Because We're All Going To Die.

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

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It Is Not My Fault That Certain So-called Bohemian Elements Have Found In My Writings Something To Hang Their Peculiar Beatnik Theories On.

...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.

I Am Writing This Book Because We're All Going To Die - In The Loneliness Of My Own Life, My Father Dead, My Brother Dead, My Mother Faraway, My Sister And My Wife Far Away, Nothing Here But My Own Tragic Hands That Once Were Guarded By A World, A Sweet Attention, That Now Are Left To Guide And Disappear Their Own Way Into The Common Dark Of All Our Deaths, Sleeping In Me Raw Bed, Alone And Stupid: With Just This One Pride And Consolation: My Broke Heart In The General Despair And Opened Up Inwards To The Lord, I Made A Supplication In This Dream

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 Truth Of The Matter Is We Don't Understand Our Women; We Blame On Them And It's All Our Fault.

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

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.

It Made Me Think That Everything Was About To Arrive - The Moment When You Know All And Everything Is Decided Forever.

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 -

That's The Story Of My Life Rich Or Poor And Mostly Poor And Truly Poor.

Story Of My Life

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 Yet, But Yet, Woe, Woe Unto Those Who Think That The Beat Generation Means Crime, Delinquency, Immorality, Amorality ... Woe Unto Those Who Attack It On The Grounds That They Simply Don't Understand History And The Yearning Of Human Souls ... Woe In Fact Unto Those Who Make Evil Movies About The Beat Generation Where Innocent Housewives Are Raped By Beatniks! ... Woe Unto Those Who Spit On The Beat Generation, The Wind'll Blow It Back.

They Spent All Week Saving Pennies And Went Out Saturdays To Spend Fifty Bucks In Three Hours.

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

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 Bus Roared On. I Was Going Home In October. Everybody Goes Home In October.

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

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

Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me

It'll Take You Eternities To Get Rid Of Me,' She Adds Sadly, Which Makes Me Jealous, I Want Her To Say I'll Never Get Rid Of Her - I Wanta Be Chased Till Eternity Till I Catch Her.

Sometimes I’d Get Mad Because Things Didn’t Work Out So Well, I’d Spoil A Flapjack, Or Slip In The Snowfield While Getting Water, Or One Time My Shovel Went Sailing Down Into The Gorge, And I’d Be So Mad I’d Want To Bite The Mountaintops And Would Come In The Shack And Kick The Cupboard And Hurt My Toe. But Let The Mind Beware, Though The Flesh Be Bugged, The Circumstances Of Existence Are Pretty Glorious.

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

There Was Nothing To Talk About Anymore. The Only Thing To Do Was Go.

Happy. Just In My Swim Shorts, Barefooted, Wild-haired, In The Red Fire Dark, Singing, Swigging Wine, Spitting, Jumping, Running - That's The Way To Live. All Alone And Free In The Soft Sands Of The Beach.

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)

Write In Recollection And Amazement For Yourself.

How Clear The Realization One Is Going Mad -- The Mind Has A Silence, Nothing Happens In The Physique, Urine Gathers In Your Loins, Your Ribs Contract.

Life Is Life, And Kind Is Kind

We Are Nothing. - Tomorrow We May Be Die. We Are Nothing. - You And Me.

Something Great Is About To Happen To Me: I'm About To Love Somebody Very Much.

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

Now The Mountains Were Getting That Pink Tinge, I Mean The Rocks, They Were Just Solid Rock Covered With The Atoms Of Dust Accumulated There Since Beginningless Time. In Fact I Was Afraid Of Those Jagged Monstrosities All Around And Over Our Heads. "they're So Silent!" I Said. "yeah Man, You Know To Me A Mountain Is A Buddha. Think Of The Patience, Hundreds Of Thousands Of Years Just Sitting There Bein Perfectly Perfectly Silent And Like Praying For All Living Creatures In That Silence And Just Waitin For Us To Stop All Our Frettin And Foolin.

To The Children And The Innocent It's All The Same.

And Just For A Moment I Had Reached The Point Of Ecstasy That I Always Wanted To Reach, Which Was The Complete Step Across Chronological Time Into Timeless Shadows, And Wonderment In The Bleakness Of The Mortal Realm, And The Sensation Of Death Kicking At My Heels To Move On, Wiht A Phantom Dogging Its Own Heels, And Myself Hurrying To A Plank Where All The Angels Dove Off And Flew Into The Holy Void Of Uncreated Emptiness, The Potent And Inconceivable Radiancies Shining In Bright Mind Essence, Innumerable Lotus-lands Falling Open In The Magic Mothswarm Of Heaven. - Sal Paradise

The Whole Mad Swirl Of Everything That Was To Come Began Then.

Your Buddhism Has Made You Mean Ray And Makes You Even Afraid To Take Your Clothes Off For A Simple Healthy Orgy

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.

The Only Truth Is Music.

Inspirational Music

I Think It's All Lovely Hallucination But I Love It Sorta.

He Had Never Felt Anything Like That Before - Yet Somehow He Knew That From Now On He Would Always Feel Like That, Always, And Something Caught At His Throat As He Realized What A Strange Sad Adventure Life Might Get To Be, Strange And Sad And Still Much More Beautiful And Amazing Than He Could Ever Have Imagined Because It Was So Really, Strangely Sad.

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

Don't Think Of Words When You Stop But To See Picture Better.

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.'

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

The Cowboy Music Twanged In The Roadhouse And Carried Across The Fields, All Sadness. It Was All Right With Me. I Kissed My Baby And We Put Out The Lights.

If Critics Say Your Work Stinks It's Because They Want It To Stink And They Can Make It Stink By Scaring You Into Conformity With Their Comfortable Little Standards. Standards So Low That They Can No Longer Be Considered "dangerous" But Set In Place In Their Compartmental Understandings.

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

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

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

What's Your Road, Man? - Holyboy Road, Madman Road, Rainbow Road, Guppy Road, Any Road. It's An Anywhere Road For Anybody Anyhow. Where Body How?

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.

John Clellon Holmes... And I Were Sitting Around Trying To Think Up The Meaning Of The Lost Generation And The Subsequent Existentialism And I Said 'you Know John, This Is Really A Beat Generation'; And He Leapt Up And Said, 'that's It, That's Right!'

I Have Fallen In Love With You, God. Take Care Of Us All, One Way Or The Other.

Jumping From Boulder To Boulder And Never Falling, With A Heavy Pack, Is Easier Than It Sounds; You Just Can't Fall When You Get Into The Rhythm Of The Dance.

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 Realized These Were All The Snapshots Which Our Children Would Look At Someday With Wonder, Thinking Their Parents Had Lived Smooth, Well-ordered 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 Emptiness.

We Tiptoed Around Each Other Like Heartbreaking New Friends.

Holding Up My Purring Cat To The Moon. I Sighed.

At Night I Closed My Eyes And Saw My Bones Threading The Mud Of My Grave.

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.

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

Everything Is Ecstasy Inside. We Just Don't Know It Because Of Our Thinking-minds. But In Our True Blissful Essence Of Mind [it] Is Known That Everything Is Alright Forever And Forever And Forever.

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

It's All Too Much And Not Enough At The Same Time.

I'd Better Be A Poet Or Lay Down Dead.

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

Some's Bastards, Some's Ain't. That's The Score.

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