by Jack Kerouac
A BLADE OF GRASS waves in the sunny Frisco afternoon, it grows out through the greasy rocks of the railroad track of Cody; tars smell, are warm, railroad executives who once were vain young clerks with slicked hair and pressed pants now roll themselves baggily along Track 66 ramps and wander in the drowsy nothing afternoon of motors, breathing engines, steams, rattles, hammer on a nail, flybuzz, truck-trailer rumble and a rattling power mixer somewhere—also hot, fragrant soot flows across the immortal unclouded afternoon with its Oakland mountains to the left and Mission hills to the right all drowsy dormant. Here comes the conductor with his red and white lamps and red flag—a fly—a piece of paper riding and tumbling along the tracks—an orange Ford truck sleepily backs out from the Special Agent’s scarred, brown, stained, antique W. C. Fields door (“Ain’t you an old Follies g-i-r-l?”)—dishes from the depot counter rattle in a dull lull, the Filipino scullion angles by with no expression—Someone yells and wakes me up from an afternoon dream…. Geometric visual perspective vanishments of double rails into crowded sooty distance with backs of boxcars reposant by vague “storage” signs on meaningful buildings—figures crossing the general raily layout in a flat void of activity-afternoons: unused cabooses waiting for the evening shapeup so they can go be backbroken and jawboned and rattleheaded in a mountain brake—rickety orange baggage carts sitting in sun-glints softened by smoke—those track-grasses waving like hair here, making green carpets there for the rails’ flow to points unseen—Smoke works up from over by the roundhouses and general Out Our Way toolshops where at evening overalls all greased are hung up on nails by lockers in brown sad light…the light of Cody, work, night, fatherhood, gloom. An empty wine bottle, (Guild), a board, a carton paper torn from limey interiors of boxcars that were probably loaded in similarly sleepy New Orleans yards way down and over the crazy old land of our dreams—nameless rusty metal and tin hunks—Old Cody Pomeray ain’t been here yet!—at these final rails that deadhead hump of greeneries, the holy Coast is done, the holy road is over.
Tonight the stars’ll be out.
* * *
YET, AND YES, THERE’S CODY POMERAY…cuttin to work. A new day is dawning in the blue lagoon east over Oakland there, a silent sad Coast Line truck trailer sits by a skeletal shed in the soft dawn of all America marching to this last land, this receiving California—the engine bell is tolling in the yards, the crew clerk’s office is a-still, the dew is on the road again and as forever, the sleepy rumbling truck goes by, the workman’s “liquid shuffle” boots and bigneck secrecy in the dark morn, it’s Cody going deadheading to Watsonville where he wanted Joanna to live and the other girl to live and me to live and’s going someday to his grave with Evelyn in his weep—The tree is still by the blue morning stars just like in Selma, Sabinal and Alabama—I’m a fool, the new day rises on the world and on my foolish life: I’m a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, the wetness on the wire fence bugled me to belief, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul, I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss—I am made of Cody, too—he who rode a boxcar from New Mexico to L. A. at the age of ten with a bread underarm, (hanging from the grab-iron) (over the couplings), he who lost his mother at nine, his father was a bum, a wino alcoholic, his brother ignored him or (as Jim for a few years) condescended to confide his cruelties to him (gruff partnerships and trainings)—Cody no soft Ben joyed in, he sat alone by the railroad track. All the thoughts Cody has while working, the things he jots in pencil (“enfolded in bleak Obispo with bleak Buckle and even bleaker Helen”)—the first day in these yards, when we walked almost arm-in-arm in a December spring and everything was alright—ah, all the mornings you suffer and all for nothing and forgetfulness and the necessary natural blankness of men—and Cody is blank at last. Tree, tree, in thy bushy stand make me a vow: promise my star of pity still burns for me. Now flights of doublecrossing black birds come winging across the paleness of the East, the morning-star lips in that pale woodshed sky, she shudders and shits sparks of light and waterfalls of droop and moistly hugens up a cunt for cocks of eyes crowing across the fences of Golden Southern America in her Dawn.
Goodbye Cody—your lips in your moments of self-possessed thought and new found responsible goodness are as silent, make as least a noise, and mystify with sense in nature, like the light of an automobile reflecting from the shiny silverpaint of a sidewalk tank this very instant, as silent and all this, as a bird crossing the dawn in search of the mountain cross and the sea beyond the city at the end of the land.
Adios, you who watched the sun go down, at the rail, by my side, smiling—
Adios, King.
The Visions of the Great Remember
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
17 May, 1972. Drove all afternoon with Bob Burford thru Denver, saw Ed White’s Botanical Plastic Concrete Gazebo hothouse—Justin Brierley’s old family house now tattered, Hal Chase’s demolished homesite, the Grant Street Block where I lived in basement & fucked Neal in the mouth (“I feel like an old whore”), Sherman St. where the Gillion sisters, nurses lovers of Jack, Neal, Bob, Ed?—lived in apartment on whose floor I slept, the Apartment backporch where Ed White & Alan Temko lived, East High where Justin took Neal, the Capitol Lawn where Bob and I this day wrote Peace Vigil appeal to Gov. Love, and with Ed later, Larimer Street’s ruins, piles of wood & brick cornices, doors & windows splintered in massy pile of garbage behind storm fences—blocks & blocks of Charm’d history destroyed, Neal’s old Barbershop wino hotels obliterated from space—and a flash earlier in the day remembering the steps of the Colonnade near the library where Neal told me he read all Immanuel Kant age 13 in Denver, all this Quarter Century ago loved and experienced—now with giant buildings standing guard, & National Anthem echoing from Television set on 21st floor Hotel Hilton—even May Co. where I vacuumed 3d floor transformed shifted rearchitected on another downtown block—all I forgot to see’s the old pool-hall. Maybe tomorrow.
So I survived Neal and Jack—what for, all my temerity? This empty paradise? Nostalgia world? A great mirror in plastic Hilton? An ache in the left side of the breast, sweet love buried that might be tears? When’ll I realize Neal’s dearness again? Jack’s prophetic tender eyelashes viewing mortal Colfax? Even fulfill the noble role of scribe and detail the memories? ah, but Jack did that decades ago, forever.
Two noble men, Americans, perished younger than old whitebeard prophets’ wrinkled gay eye Archetypes as might’ve been imagined by Whitman.
The death of America in their early stop—untimely tears—for loves glimpsed and not fulfilled—not completely fulfilled, some kind of withdrawal from the promised tender nation—Larimer Street down, green lights glimmering, Denver surrounded by Honeywell warplants, IBM death war calculators, Air Bases, Botanical Mortal Brain Factories—Robot buildings downtown lifted under Crescent moon—the small hands & gestures of belly and titty, under backstairs decades ago, seeking release to each other, trembling sexual tenderness discovered first times…before the wars began…1939 Far Rockaway-Belmar-Denver’s mysterious glimpses of earth life unfolding on side streets in United States—perfectly captured nostalgia by Jack Visions of Cody Neal—later strained efforts by Neal with Pranksters to fulfill that early trembling Prophecy of Open Heart Nation—frustrated by businessmen seeking money. Couldn’t ever hold on to that early Love, all bodies change & die, fall from life to life, but the sad heart now comes still expecting there was something more Neal & Jack could fulfill, or there was more love I wanted to give them than they would let me, and imagined delights in their presence they felt toward me, loves & kisses they never laid on my timid body—except the sweet care they both offered me their little melancholy tender Allen—brooding eyes as Jack saw mine—brooding over how to cry tears in time to express heart ache of love for Jack those days & Neal’s heart adoration those years 1947 Denver—now silver years’ve sl
ipped past the same sweet heart ache alone as I felt first nite in Denver off the bus when Neal put me to bed on couch and climbed with Carolyn into her double bed and kissed and sucked and cocked and sweated and came to her sighing and crying all night—as I lay there jealous heart sick & crying trembling alone listening to loves’ noises—he promised me love & left me alone that first night—and tried so hard to make up and give me time weeks & weeks later all that beautiful summer when I walked from Grant Street basement to my job at May Company every day, & met him & watched him driving shoppers shuttle station wagon from May Company Door to Cherry Creek Parking lot—and middle aged Professor Chiappe who loved us all’s dead—Justin still sits in a school office nervous & clear headed, Ed White in his apartment tower watches his beautiful 14 year son in dungarees snap our picture—peace protester adolescents with neck kiss bruises (hickies) sit & weep on Capitol Hill Lawn, hundreds of Aliens & Neals & Jack Souls mortal lamblike sighing over the nation now.
* * *
Dream: “Awakening in the wilderness alone, not knowing what to do”—Opening eyes (same as in forest Camp Nichtgedeiget to Glacier Peak Cherry Valley) to 21st floor of Hilton overlooking twinkling bulbed Denver—alone in wilderness, ignorant its ways, dependent as a baby, on others for food & mattress. Sang Mantra in front of Capitol: “Awakening in Wilderness alone, Not knowing what to do”—for peace Vigil boys.
* * *
19 May, 1972 Hilton Denver re Cody Visions. Mortal America’s here…disappearing Elevateds, diners, iceboxes, dusty hat racks preserved from oblivion…Larimer Street itself this year in ruins resurrected spectral in Cody Visions—And the poolhall itself gone to parking lot & Fun Adult Movies the heritage of Neal’s sex fantasies on the bench watching Watson shoot snooker—
(By this prose) Preserved for a younger generation appreciative of the Bowery Camp & thirties hair-Consciousness destroyed by real estate speculators on Growth Economy.
Don’t think it is possible to proceed further in America without first understanding Kerouac’s tender brooding compassion for bygone scene & Personal Individuality oddity’d therein. Bypassing K. one bypasses the mortal heart, sung in prose vowels: the book a giant mantra of Appreciation & Adoration of an American Man, one striving heroic soul. Kerouac’s judgment on Neal confirmed by later Kesey history.
And Poetry: the N.Y. Elevated Station men’s room “…coathook decked with soot”—and on the bums at lunch “I saw the flash of their mouths, like the mouths of minstrels, as they ate…”
High generous prose moments, rereading 19 years later—the Shabdah (sound waves) passage, “ants in orchestras.” Hector’s Cafeteria food description a Homeric poem…“All you do is head straight for the grave…”
Robt Duncan was impressed by the section of reflections in plateglass shining auto fenders, circa 1954.
For K’s Melvillian prose background see the reference to “thick Afric lip.” Jack was reading Pierre, & M.’s poetry.
“The Memory of Love, which is secret of America.”
Whitmanic Description of City Types, so noticeably human you’d think the detail telepathic—description of passersby including what they’re thinking about in glum planetary gloom.
Visions of Neal Continued. Denver 21 May, 1972. “…afternoon in 1933 when probably you, at seven or six, were doing any one of the innumerable visions I have of you in Denver at all ages…” addressed the Prose to your Self, dear ghost—and private references to Finistra, names dropped into oblivion.
* * *
“Lord, I scribbled hymns to you”—nobody else says anything like that, not Mailer Genet Celine…“hundreds of little death-conscious boys…”
A long sketch of St. Patrick’s filled with irritable gloom & priests’ cocks & unbearably stylish girl worshipers that drives him out on the road—his horror of the queer priestly Catholic death churches…“no place to go but find my road.”
Jack’s candid observation of inner consciousness manifested in solitude, the girl eating in cafeteria, is a complete world satori. Here as distinct from his critic Podhoretz Kerouac is present in the world solitary musing and observing actual event in cafeteria “mind clamped down on objects” completely anonymous, in a single universe of perception with no mental maneuvers or selfconscious manipulation of any reader’s mind (he’s writing for no reader but his own intelligent self)—completely here, watching the world—not generalizing in a study, but sketching solitude in Manhattan cafeteria—“She first blew her nose daintily with a napkin; has private personal sad manners, at least externally, by which she makes her own formal existence known to herself…”
* * *
Great ringing historic lines: “…I accept lostness forever. Everything belongs to me because I am poor.”—including his dreams…“— This is going to be the complete Cody.”
Complete prophecy-Dream of 1951–72: “A Ritz Yale Club party…hundeds of kids in leather jackets instead of big tuxedo…everybody was smoking marijuana, wailing a new decade in one wild crowd”—Nobody else so early dreamt such strange truth of future as now, AD ’72. How could he know yet he knew? In a single parenthesis, a whole American future’s prophesied.
And Jack’s “blond amant at Josephine’s”—I was there too—Later the boy was a movie star!—Jack was struck by his beauty.
Jack to Neal, the Americans—“I’m completely your friend, your ‘lover,’ he who loves you and digs your greatness completely—haunted in the mind by you.”
And then a great definition of love: “Think what that means, try it reverse, say, supposing you referred all your sensations to somebody and wondered what they thought about it.”
That Lyricism! All American man boy Whitman reality between us all.
The book, then, an education…on perceptions of the mind Person…“and I dig you as we together dig the lostness and the fact that of course nothing’s ever to be gained but death…”
But separated from the comrade Person lone Jack complains—“and have to batter my head against the general emptiness when I want to explain something to somebody.”
“Around the poolhalls of Denver during World War II, a strange energetic young man began to be noticeable”—was the original mss, not “strange looking boy”—and a key phrase “there was no one there to keep a love-check on the majority of the boys as they swarmed…” Thenceforward Prose of an extraordinary lyricism leading to the bums with “such vast lugubrious personalities—”
Panoramic consciousness: “the wide surroundment brooding over him…”
Mind-tricks/preadolescent fantasy (See Dr. Sax), his archetypal example—everybody rushing forward to nape of neck paranoiacally & rushing back into place as he turns his head:
“…perfect strangers sometimes, they immediately gathered with the speed of light at the nape of his neck to discuss him voicelessly, dancing, pointing, until, jerking his head around for a quick look or just slowly to check, it turned out they’d always twanged back in place with all-to-be-expected fiendish perfect hypocrisy and in exactly the same bland position as before.”
Further incredible (exquisite) mindfulness: read Cody’s panoramic perceptions sitting on poolhall bench, meditation centered on gleam of spit—Saturday Night in the Poolhall.
There’s an elegant Proustian assemblage of characters around the photograph-eternal-eye moment of Cody’s supernatural football pass & tackle on the East High field—“Long ago in the red sun.”
Above writ at yellow sunset Hilton Hotel 22 May 72, 7:10 PM.
* * *
Spent all afternoon on 18th & Washington Denver area (as last night stopped on Grant & 17th and prayed every prayer I knew over the spot on parkinglot beneath which 25 years ago in basement apartment I lay in bed with Neal & we consummated our loves of that week) today wandering by bookshop, folklore center, Joe’s Mexican Restaurant, this decade’s excitement spots in Denver now cosmic-conscious (in fact fane, exhaustedly so perhaps), talking with 16 year old Paul W. & hearing his family woes, blond
bombshell kid writing poetry about the grape integument of society, giving people lonely grapes in 1972 East High School—no end to nostalgia today in the yellow sun or long ago in the red sun—
All as described in October, in sunset, the month of Jack’s death—“The unspeakable visions of the individual”—(this year there’s a little magazine named that) (taken from 1950’s New Directions 100 page limited 1000 copy edition of Visions). “…the joy of downtown city night…“the redbrick wall behind red neons.” An eternal presence, the suchness of the American night’s empty facade whose lonely solidity Kerouac had noticed in the corner of his eye, and later centered his gaze upon, unknowing sagacity which centered my own attention to soul and eyeball kicks on eternal American detail, once I noticed and accepted Kerouac’s consciousness “…the poor hidden brick of America…the center of the grief…America’s a lonely crockashit”—Here a long paean to the hopelessness of America begins and ends “no hope.”
The plot of these Visions? K.’s mind shuttling back & forth N.Y. to Denver to San Francisco weaving the elements of tragedy & history & memory & prophecy together, elements of America and Person.
“…and So While I Struggle in the Dark With the Enormity of My Soul, Trying Desperately to Be a Great Rememberer Redeeming Life from Darkness…This Record Is My Joy.”
The Great Rememberer
Jack always accused me of stealing from him, & rereading 20 years later I see now how much it was true, my Greyhound poem taken from his description of dock-loading ship President Adams for instance, the very syntax & phrasing is similar, ‘cept his is half decade earlier: “There’s ammo in the hold and a special locker full of some priceless cargo bound for Penang, probably champagne…Valentine’s Meat Juice from richmond…—barrels for L.A.” Later see “whole families eating in Clifton’s” similar to my Supermarket’s “whole families shopping at night.”—His phrasing was archetypal for this moment of consciousness enlarging in wonderment to notice Americanist minute particulars aside from the centers of Attention-Power, like the red-brick walls’ neon lonesomeness at midnight behind a movie theater (even the habitually unremarked gargantuan-pillard smalltown bank facade). Unless our minds think alike, same vowels, excited awed attention, probably an echo of perceptions first gained from these pages.
