Background Image

...

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.

-Jack Kerouac

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

You Have Absolutely No

Jack Kerouac

...

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.

Views: 82816

Topic

More From Jack Kerouac

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

My Life Is A Vast Inconsequential Epic.

Inconsequential

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

Listen To The Silence Inside The Illusion Of The World, And You Will Remember The Lesson You Forgot

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

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.

And Silence Is The Golden Mountain

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

No Matter How You Travel, How 'successful' Your Tour, Or Foreshortened, You Always Learn Something And Learn To Change Your Thoughts.

-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.

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.

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

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

I Woke Up As The Sun Was Reddening; And That Was The One Distinct Time In My Life, The Strangest Moment Of All, When I Didn't Know Who I Was - I Was Far Away From Home, Haunted And Tired With Travel, In A Cheap Hotel Room I'd Never Seen, Hearing The Hiss Of Steam Outside, And The Creak Of The Old Wood Of The Hotel, And Footsteps Upstairs, And All The Sad Sounds, And I Looked At The Cracked High Ceiling And Really Didn't Know Who I Was For About Fifteen Strange Seconds. I Wasn't Scared; I Was Just Somebody Else, Some Stranger, And My Whole Life Was A Haunted Life, The Life Of A Ghost.

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.

Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me

I'd Rather Be Thin Than Famous But I'm Fat Paste That In Your Broadway Show

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.

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

In My Medicine Cabinet, The Winter Fly Has Died Of Old Age.

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

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

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.

My Fault, My Failure, Is Not In The Passions I Have, But In My Lack Of Control Of Them.

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!

Who Can Leap The World's Ties And Sit With Me Among White Clouds?

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

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

Don't Stop To Think Of The Words When You Do Stop, Just Stop To Think Of The Picture Better-and Let Your Mind Off Yourself In This Work.

Oh My God, Sociability Is Just A Big Smile And A Big Smile Is Nothing But Teeth, I Wish I Could Just Stay Up Here And Rest And Be Kind." But Somebody Brought Up Some Wine And That Started Me Off.

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

The Closer You Get To Real Matter, Rock Air Fire And Wood, Boy, The More Spiritual The World Is.

My Witness Is The Empty Sky.

I Don't Know, I Don't Care, And It Doesn't Make Any Difference.

I Promise I Shall Never Give Up, And That I'll Die Yelling And Laughing, And That Until Then I'll Rush Around This World I Insist Is Holy And Pull At Everyone's Lapel And Make Them Confess To Me And To All.

I Have The Right Ideas, But My Words Are Too... Complicated. I Need To Simplify Them, So That People Won't Get Lost In The Dark When They See And Hear Them. I Want Them To Shine Like Beacons Of Light In A World Of Overly Complicated Darkness. One Day I Will Find The Right Words, And They Will Be Simple.

And Don't You Know That God Is Pooh Bear?

The First Sip [of Tea] Is Joy, The Second Is Gladness, The Third Is Serenity, The Fourth Is Madness, The Fifth Is Ecstasy.

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.

All Is Well, Practice Kindness, Heaven Is Nigh.

Absolutely No Way To Escape Enigmans.

There's Wisdom In Wine.

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.

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

Don't Drink To Get Drunk. Drink To Enjoy Life.

I Wished I Could Explain It To Those I Loved, My Mother, To Japhy, But There Just Weren't Any Words To Describe The Nothingness And Purity Of It. "is There A Certain And Definite Teaching To Be Given To All Living Creatures?" Was The Question Probably Asked To Beetle Browed Snowy Dipankara, And His Answer Was The Roaring Silence Of The Diamond.

All Of Life Is A Foreign Country.

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

But Why Think About That When All The Golden Lands Ahead Of You And All Kinds Of Unforseen Events Wait Lurking To Surprise You And Make You Glad You're Alive To See?

We Were All Delighted, We All Realized We Were Leaving Confusion And Nonsense Behind And Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.

I Ate Apple Pie And Ice Cream—it Was Getting Better As I Got Deeper Into Iowa, The Pie Bigger, The Ice Cream Richer. There Were The Most Beautiful Bevies Of Girls Everywhere I Looked In Des Moines That Afternoon—they Were Coming Home From High School—but I Had No Time For Thoughts Like That…so I Rushed Past The Pretty Girls, And The Prettiest Girls In The World Live In Des Moines.

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.

Mind Is The Maker, For No Reason At All, For All This Creation, Created To Fall.

Let The Mind Beware, That Though The Flesh Be Bugged, The Circumstances Of Existence Are Pretty Glorious.

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

A Man Who Allows Wild Passion To Arise Within, Himself Burns His Heart, Then After Burning Adds The Wind That Thereto Which Ignites The Fire Again, Or Not, As The Case May Be.

The Beauty Of Things Must Be That They End.

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.

And This Is The Way A Novel Gets Written, In Ignorance, Fear, Sorrow, Madness, And A Kind Of Psychotic Happiness As An Incubator For The Wonders Being Born.

It No Longer Makes Me Cry And Die And Tear Myself To See Her Go Because Everything Goes Away From Me Like That Now — Girls, Visions, Anything, Just In The Same Way And Forever And I Accept Lostness Forever.

Eager For Bread And Love.

I Felt Like Lying Down By The Side Of The Trail And Remembering It All. The Woods Do That To You, They Always Look Familiar, Long Lost, Like The Face Of A Long-dead Relative, Like An Old Dream, Like A Piece Of Forgotten Song Drifting Across The Water, Most Of All Like Golden Eternities Of Past Childhood Or Past Manhood And All The Living And The Dying And The Heartbreak That Went On A Million Years Ago And The Clouds As They Pass Overhead Seem To Testify (by Their Own Lonesome Familiarity) To This Feeling.

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

I Was Suddenly Left With Nothing In My Hands But A Handful Of Crazy Stars.

Life Is Life, And Kind Is Kind

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.

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.

Suffering And Death

I Was Halfway Across America, At The Dividing Line Between The East Of My Youth And The West Of My Future.

Between Incomprehensible And Incoherent Sits The Madhouse. I Am Not In The Madhouse.

If Moderation Is A Fault, Then Indifference Is A Crime.

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.

Forgive Everyone For Your Own Sins And Be Sure To Tell Them You Love Them Which You Do.

The Dream Is Already Ended And We're Already Awake In The Golden Eternity.

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

Story Of My Life

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.

Soon It Got Dusk, A Grapy Dusk, A Purple Dusk Over Tangerine Groves And Long Melon Fields; The Sun The Color Of Pressed Grapes, Slashed With Burgandy Red, The Fields The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries.

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

You Are The Equal Of The Idol Who Has Given You Your Inspiration

Down On The Lake Rosy Reflections Of Celestial Vapor Appeared, And I Said, "god, I Love You" And Looked To The Sky And Really Meant It. "i Have Fallen In Love With You, God. Take Care Of Us All, One Way Or The Other." To The Children And The Innocent It's All The Same.

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

The Details Are The Life Of It, I Insist, Say Everything On Your Mind, Don’t Hold Back, Don’t Analyze Or Anything As You Go Along, Say It Out.

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

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift.

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

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.

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.

The Happiness Consists In Realizing That It Is All A Great Strange Dream.

I Took A Straight Picture That Made Me Look Like A Thirty-year-old Italian Who'd Kill Anybody Who Said Something Against His Mother.

I Like Too Many Things And Get All Confused And Hung-up Running From One Falling Star To Another Till I Drop. This Is The Night, What It Does To You. I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.

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.

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

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.

For The First Time In My Life The Weather Was Not Something That Touched Me, That Caressed Me, Froze Or Sweated Me, But Became Me.

Whenever Spring Comes To New York I Can't Stand The Suggestion Of The Land That Come Blowing Over The River From New Jersey And I've Got To Go. So I Went.

Holy Flowers Floating In The Air, Were All These Tired Faces In The Dawn Of Jazz America.

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-.

And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks!

Beat Generation

I Went One Afternoon To The Church Of My Childhood And Had A Vision Of What I Must Have Really Meant With "beat"... The Vision Of The Word Beat As Being To Mean Beatific... People Began To Call Themselves Beatniks, Beats, Jazzniks, Bopniks, Bugniks And Finally I Was Called The "avatar" Of All This.

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.

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

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.

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

The Silence Was An Intense Roar.

I Could Hear Dean, Blissful And Blabbering And Frantically Rocking. Only A Guy Who's Spent Five Years In Jail Can Go To Such Maniacal Helpless Extremes; Beseeching At The Portals Of The Soft Source, Mad With A Completely Phsycial Realization Of The Origins Of Life-bliss; Blindly Seeking To Return The Way He Came

Hell Man, I Know Very Well You Didn't Come To Me Only To Want To Become A Writer, And After All What Do I Really Know About It Except That You've Got To Stick To It With The Energy Of A Benny Addict.

Cats Yawn Because They Realize That There's Nothing To Do.

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

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

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

You Were My Last Chance' She's Said But Don't All Women Say That? - But Can It Be By 'last Chance' She Doesn't Mean Mere Marriage But Some Profoundly Sad Realization Of Something In Me She Really Needs To Go On Living, At Least That Impression Coming Across Anyway On The Force Of All The Gloom We've Shared -

The Silence Is So Intense That You Can Hear Your Own Blood Roar In Your Ears But Louder Than That By Far Is The Mysterious Roar Which I Alwas Identify With The Roaring Of The Diamond Wisdom, The Mysterious Roar Of Silence Itself, Which Is A Great Shhhh Reminding You Of Something You've Seemed To Have Forgotten In The Stress Of Your Days Since Birth.

All Our Best Men Are Laughed At In This Nightmare Land.

Cliches Are Truisms And All Truisms Are True

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

So I Rushed Past The Pretty Girls, And The Prettiest Girls In The World Live In Des Moines.

And Never Really Thought I'd Amount To Anything. It Was Precisely What I Wanted The Whole World To Think; Then I Could Sneak In, If That's What They Wanted, And Sneak Out Again, Which I Did.

I Felt Free And Therefore I Was Free.

She Talks With A Broken Heart - Her Voice Lutes Brokenly Like A Heart Lost, Musically Too, Like In A Lost Grove, It's Almost Too Much To Bear Sometimes Like Some Fantastic Futuristic Jerry Southern Singer In A Nightclub Who Steps Up To The Mike In The Spotlight In Las Vegas But Doesn't Even Have To Sing, Just Talk, To Make Men Sigh And Women Wonder I Guess.

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

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.

Everything Is Perfect On The Street Again, The World Is Permeated With Roses Of Happiness All The Time, But None Of Us Know It. The Happiness Consists In Realizing That It Is All A Great Strange Dream.

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

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

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.

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

Details Are The Life Of Prose.

Man, Wow, There's So Many Things To Do, So Many Things To Write! How To Even Begin To Get It All Down And Without Modified Restraints And All Hung-up On Like Literary Inhibitions And Grammatical Fears.

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

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.

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

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.

Swinging On Delicate Hinges The Autumn Leaf Almost Off The Stem.

Then It's Goodbye, Sangsara For Me Besides, Girls Aren't As Good As They Look And Samadhi Is Better Than You Think When It Starts In Hitting Your Head In With Buzz Of Glittergold Heaven's Angels, Wailing, Saying We've Been Waiting For You Since Morning, Jack Why Were You So Long Dallying In The Sooty Room? This Transcendental Brilliance Is The Better Part (of Nothingness I Sing) Okay. Quit. Mad. Stop.

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

The One Thing That We Yearn For In Our Living Days, That Makes Us Sigh And Groan And Undergo Sweet Nauseas Of All Kinds, Is The Remembrance Of Some Lost Bliss That Was Probably Experienced In The Womb And Can Only Be Reproduced (though We Hate To Admit It) In Death. But Who Wants To Die?

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.

La Is The Loneliest And Most Brutal Of American Cities.

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

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

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.

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.

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

A Fine Thing To Be Talking About Angels In This Day When Common Thieves Smash The Holy Rosaries Of Their Victims In The Street.

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

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.

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

Bein Crazy Is The Least Of My Worries.

It Was The Work Of The Quiet Mountains, This Torrent Of Purity At My Feet.

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

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

...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.

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)

Live, Travel, Adventure, Bless, And Don't Be Sorry.

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

But, Outside Of Being A Sweet Little Girl, She Was Awfully Dumb And Capable Of Doing Horrible Things.

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.

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.

And I Said, 'that Last Thing Is What You Can't Get, Carlo. Nobody Can Get To That Last Thing. We Keep On Living In Hopes Of Catching It Once And For All.

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

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.

We Agreed To Love Each Other Madly.

Love Each Other

You Can't Live In This World But There's Nowhere Else To Go.

Books, Shmooks, This Sickness Has Got Me Wishing If I Can Ever Get Out Of This I'll Gladly Become A Millworker And Shut My Big Mouth.

I Am Young Now And Can Look Upon My Body And Soul With Pride. But It Will Be Mangled Soon, And Later It Will Begin To Disintegrate, And Then I Shall Die, And Die Conclusively. How Can We Face Such A Fact, And Not Live In Fear?

At Night In This Part Of The West The Stars, As I Had Seen Them In Wyoming, Were As Big As Roman Candles And As Lonely As The Prince Who's Lost His Ancestral Home And Journeys Across The Spaces Trying To Find It Again, And Knows He Never Will.

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.

Finding Nirvana Is Like Locating Silence.

Suppose We Suddenly Wake Up And See That What We Thought To Be This And That, Ain't This And That At All?

Beat Generation

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.

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.

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.

You Aren't Ever Going To Be Anything In This World Unless You Do What You Want To Do, When You Want To Do It--don't Plan Anything, Just Go Out And Do It.

Be Crazy Dumbsaint Of The Mind.

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

Ah, If I Could Realize, If I Could Forget Myself And Devote My Meditations To The Freeing, The Awakening And The Blessedness Of All Living Creatures Everywhere I'd Realize What There Is, Is Ecstasy.

Fear Life But Don't Die, Your Alone, Everybody's Alone, Oh Cody Pomeray You Can't Win You Can't Lose All Is Ephemeral All Is Hurt

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 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.

If You Dont [sic] Say What You Want, What's The Sense Of Writing?

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.

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.

I Didn't Know What To Say. I Felt Like Crying, Goddammit Everybody In The World Wants An Explanation For Your Acts And For Your Very Being.

I Came To A Point Where I Needed Solitude And Just Stop The Machine Of ‘thinking’ And ‘enjoying’ What They Call ‘living’, I Just Wanted To Lie In The Grass And Look At The Clouds.

What Does It Mean That I Am In This Endless Universe, Thinking That I'm A Man Sitting Under The Stars On The Terrace Of The Earth, But Actually Empty And Awake Throughout The Emptiness And Awakedness Of Everything? It Means That I'm Empty And Awake, That I Know I'm Empty And Awake, And That There's No Difference Between Me And Anything Else.

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.

We All Agree It's Too Big To Keep Up With, That We're Surrounded By Life, That We'll Never Understand It, So We Center It All In By Swigging Scotch From The Bottle And When It's Empty I Run Out Of The Car And Buy Another One, Period.

But I Remember Seeing A Mess Of Leaves Suddenly Go Skittering In The Wind And Into The Creek, Then Floating Rapidly Down The Creek Towards The Sea, Making Me Feel A Nameless Horror Even Then Of 'oh My God, We're All Being Swept Away To Sea No Matter What We Know Or Say Or Do

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.

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

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

Trending Author

Ralph Abernathy

Wangari Maathai

Category