figuratively they started firing live ammo at us.
A fun time was had by all.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
going down the road
The Dharma Bums
Chapter 1
Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara. It was a local and I intended to sleep on the beach at Santa Barbara that night and catch either another local to San Luis Obispo the next morning or the firstclass freight all the way to San Francisco at seven p.m. Somewhere near Camarillo where Charlie Parker'd been mad and relaxed back to normal health, a thin old little bum climbed into my gondola as we headed into a siding to give a train right of way and looked surprised to see me there. He established himself at the other end of the gondola and lay down, facing me, with his head on his own miserably small pack and said nothing. By and by they blew the highball whistle after the eastbound freight had smashed through on the main line and we pulled out as the air got colder and fog began to blow from the sea over the warm valleys of the coast. Both the little bum and I, after unsuccessful attempts to huddle on the cold steel in wraparounds, got up and paced back and forth and jumped and flapped arms at each our end of the gon. Pretty soon we headed into another siding at a small railroad town and I figured I needed a poor boy of Tokay wine to complete the cold dusk run to Santa Barbara. "Will you watch my pack while I run over there and get a bottle of wine?"
by Jack Kerouac
Chapter 1
Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara. It was a local and I intended to sleep on the beach at Santa Barbara that night and catch either another local to San Luis Obispo the next morning or the firstclass freight all the way to San Francisco at seven p.m. Somewhere near Camarillo where Charlie Parker'd been mad and relaxed back to normal health, a thin old little bum climbed into my gondola as we headed into a siding to give a train right of way and looked surprised to see me there. He established himself at the other end of the gondola and lay down, facing me, with his head on his own miserably small pack and said nothing. By and by they blew the highball whistle after the eastbound freight had smashed through on the main line and we pulled out as the air got colder and fog began to blow from the sea over the warm valleys of the coast. Both the little bum and I, after unsuccessful attempts to huddle on the cold steel in wraparounds, got up and paced back and forth and jumped and flapped arms at each our end of the gon. Pretty soon we headed into another siding at a small railroad town and I figured I needed a poor boy of Tokay wine to complete the cold dusk run to Santa Barbara. "Will you watch my pack while I run over there and get a bottle of wine?"
by Jack Kerouac
dream
"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great that I thought I was in a dream."
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
long time
There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, II.6
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, II.6
the price
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
"Obviously the 'purpose' of the trip is carefully selected to symbolize the basic fact of purposelessness. Neal is, of course, the very soul of the voyage into pure, abstract meaningless motion. He is The Mover, compulsive, dedicated, ready to sacrifice family, friends, even his very car itself to the necessity of moving from one place to another."
-William Burroughs to Allen Ginsberg on Neal and his skeptical views of the man and voyage which spurred On The Road
-William Burroughs to Allen Ginsberg on Neal and his skeptical views of the man and voyage which spurred On The Road
At seven-thirty my Zipper came in and was being made up by the switchmen and I hid in the weeds to catch it, hiding partly behind a telephone pole. It pulled out, surprisingly fast I thought, and with my heavy fifty-pound rucksack I ran out and trotted along till I saw an agreeable drawbar and took a hold of it and hauled on and climbed straight to the top of the box to have a good look at the whole train and see where my flatcar'd be. Holy smokes goddamn and all ye falling candles of heaven smash, but as the train picked up tremendous momentum and tore out of that yard I saw it was a bloody no-good eighteen-car sealed sonofabitch and at almost twenty miles an hour it was do or die, get off or hang on to my life at eighty miles per (impossible on a boxcar top) so I had to scramble down the rungs again but first I had to untangle my strap clip from where it had caught in the catwalk on top so by the time I was hanging from the lowest rung and ready to drop off we were going too fast now. Slinging the rucksack and holding it hard in one hand calmly and madly I stepped off hoping for the best and turned everything away and only staggered a few feet and I was safe on ground.
Dharma Bums-- Jack Kerouac
Dharma Bums-- Jack Kerouac
The only thing to do was to get out of L.A. According to my friend's instructions I stood on my head, using the wire fence to prevent me from falling over. It made my cold feel a little better. Then I walked to the bus station (through tracks and side streets) and caught a cheap bus twenty-five miles to Riverside. Cops kept looking at me suspiciously with that big bag on my back. Everything was far away from the easy purity of being with Japhy Ryder in that high rock camp under peaceful singing stars.
Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac
Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Treading Water
The training for the new job is kicking my ass.
The Christmas lights have been hung up on the front of the house.
Maybe I am not sinking all that fast.
The Christmas lights have been hung up on the front of the house.
Maybe I am not sinking all that fast.
Bacchus
Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.
Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together,
winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of
liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
James Joyce Ulysses
Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The
bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together,
winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of
liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
James Joyce Ulysses
Territory of deeds
Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
George Eliot
George Eliot
"I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you."
Woody Guthrie quotes
Woody Guthrie quotes
The little bum in the gondola solidified all my beliefs by warming up to the wine and talking and finally whipping out a tiny slip of paper which contained a prayer by Saint Teresa announcing that after her death she will return to the earth by showering it with roses from heaven, forever, for all living creatures.
"Where did you get this?" I asked.
"Oh, I cut it out of a reading-room magazine in Los Angeles couple of years ago. I always carry it, with me."
"And you squat in boxcars and read it?"
Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
"Where did you get this?" I asked.
"Oh, I cut it out of a reading-room magazine in Los Angeles couple of years ago. I always carry it, with me."
"And you squat in boxcars and read it?"
Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
immortality
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
gangs of washington
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
mail room
He liked to watch his fellow-clerks at work. The man was the work and the work was the man, one thing, for the time being. It was different with the girls. The real woman never seemed to be there at the task, but as if left out, waiting.
D. H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers
D. H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers
word
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Monday, November 28, 2005
So it's peaceful Sunday morning in California and off we go, tack-a-tick, lao-tichi-couch, out of the Bay Shore yards, pause momentarily at the main line for the green, ole 71 or ole whatever been by and now we get out and go swamming up the tree valleys and town vale hollows and main street crossing parking-lot last-night attendant plots and Stanford lots of the world-to our destination in the Poo which I can see, and, so to while the time I'm up in the cupolo and with my newspaper dig the latest news on the front page and also consider and make notations of the money I spent already for this day Sunday absolutely not jot spent a nothing--California rushes by and with sad eyes we watch it reel the whole bay and the discourse falling off to gradual gils that ease and graduate to Santa Clara Valley then and the fig and behind is the fog immemoriates while the mist closes and we come running out to the bright sun of the Sabbath Californiay-
October in the Railroad Earth
Kerouac
October in the Railroad Earth
Kerouac
Road life
"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."
- Jack Kerouac
- Jack Kerouac
"Most every day." He talked not much more than this, didn't amplify on the subject of Saint Teresa, and was very modest about his religion and told me little about his personal life. He is the kind of thin quiet little bum nobody pays much attention to even in Skid Row, let alone Main Street. If a cop hustled him off, he hustled, and disappeared, and if yard dicks were around in bigcity yards when a freight was pulling out, chances are they never got a sight of the little man hiding in the weeds and hopping on in the shadows. When I told him I was planning to hop the Zipper firstclass freight train the next night he said, "Ah you mean the Midnight Ghost."
"Is that what you call the Zipper?"
"You musta been a railroad man on that railroad."
"I was, I was a brakeman on the S.P."
"Well, we bums call it the Midnight Ghost cause you get on it at L.A. and nobody sees you till you get to San Francisco in the morning the thing flies so fast."
"Eighty miles an hour on the straightaways, pap."
"That's right but it gits mighty cold at night when you're flyin up that coast north of Gavioty and up around Surf."
"Surf that's right, then the mountains down south of Margarita."
"Margarity, that's right, but I've rid that Midnight Ghost more times'n I can count I guess."
"How many years been since you've been home?"
"More years than I care to count I guess. Ohio was where I was from."
Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
"Is that what you call the Zipper?"
"You musta been a railroad man on that railroad."
"I was, I was a brakeman on the S.P."
"Well, we bums call it the Midnight Ghost cause you get on it at L.A. and nobody sees you till you get to San Francisco in the morning the thing flies so fast."
"Eighty miles an hour on the straightaways, pap."
"That's right but it gits mighty cold at night when you're flyin up that coast north of Gavioty and up around Surf."
"Surf that's right, then the mountains down south of Margarita."
"Margarity, that's right, but I've rid that Midnight Ghost more times'n I can count I guess."
"How many years been since you've been home?"
"More years than I care to count I guess. Ohio was where I was from."
Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
Derailing switch
While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learning to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Danger and doubt
Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
foul
"We had gone beyond a point of no return- and we were ready for it, for a point of no return...We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure
-Michael McClure
talk read repeat
In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
leave
"Neal will leave you in the cold anytime it's in his interest."
-LuAnne Cassady (the 15 year old bride of Neal Cassady)
-LuAnne Cassady (the 15 year old bride of Neal Cassady)
Yellow
"Only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair."
William Butler Yeats
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair."
William Butler Yeats
"RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition. "
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), "The Devil's Dictionary", 1911
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), "The Devil's Dictionary", 1911
a reason
"One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it... and the journey is always towards the other soul."
D.H. Lawrence quotes
D.H. Lawrence quotes
ground zero
"GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth's crust --to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools."
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Walking-
On thanksgiving morning a took a long walk. The battery had recently fallen out of the crappy pedometer and I never got around to resetting the stride. I can only guess that I walked about 5 miles or whatever almost 10,000 steps equals to. The trail I decided to hike was supposed to be a quick half mile hike. I must of made a wrong turn somewhere near the start of the hike.
The hike was well worth the effort.
The hike was well worth the effort.
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