Book of Sketches - Jack Kerouac [41]
papers — a sombrero, a
mujer, goats, weed & guitars
I blame God for
making life so
boring —
Drink is good for
love — good for
music — let it
be good for
writing —
This drinking is my
alternative to suicide,
& all that’s left
And marijuana
the holy weed
It isnt anybody’s fault
that I am bored —
it’s the condition of
time — the burden
of putting up & filling
in with tick tack
time in dull dull day
— How humorous it
is that I am bored,
that it’s no one’s
fault, that time
is a drag — that I
would rather commit
suicide than go on
being bored —
Men are new creatures
not built for this old
earth — the lizard yes
The lizard lost all
his children long before
men began being bored
in this Eden of Harshness
Alcohol, weed, peotl —
bring em on — &
bring on bodies —
Why does the Indian
drink?
Because he never knew
how to make himself
drunk with weeds &
brews — only stoned
The carefully exposed
sipper’s bottle is
suddenly rapidly sinking
Every year be writing 3
books simultaneously
— a morning sober book
— an afternoon high book
(the greatest)
— a night drunk book
hee hee hee!
& girl
& friends
& universal tippling
forgiveness
WRITE IN SMALL PRINT WHEN YR. DRUNK
The charm of the original drunk —
Vermont — the mtns. of Manchester
& we all got drunk — Kids — tore
up trees — the earth got drunk with
us as I remember — weaving, swaying —
THERE WERE OUTCRIES***NASCENCES
OF LOVE***I FELL HEADFIRST
out of the car to greet the
ladies — GJ protected me
& goofed with me in the romantic
American starlit nite of
youth — G.J. — still great
is G.J. — huge-in-eternity GJ —
Goodbye, San Luis Obispo
July 1953
One of those downtown
Manhattan cobble corners
on a gray afternoon
given so much more gloom
to its already gloomy
dimness — the big
busy trucks of commerce
& even occasional horse
teams clattering & booming
by — The corner where
the old 1860 redbrick
now weatherbrick bldg
sags, with Mexican like
sagging black sad broken
sidewalk roof suspended
by bars attached to the
wallfront — it’s like
a vision of the old Buenos
Aires waterfront & beater
still & like the bleak
merceds of So America
but the heart of modern
sophisticated Rome-New
York — A rain of
plips & day-mosquitos
falls across the black
dank gloom of the
corner — profoundly hidden
within is an almost
unnamable man on
a crate bent & thought-
ful in the day dark
over his order book &
by mountains of
cabbage crates — The
gray sky above has a
hurting luminosity to the
eye & also rains with
tiny nameless annoying
flips & orgones —
life dusts of Time —
beyond is the vast
arcadium green Erie
pier, a piece of it,
with you sense the
scummy river beyond —
The West Side hiway,
gray, riveted, steel,
with automobiles crisscrossing
in the narrow scene
to destinations like
bright silver ribbons
North & South in the
city & no regard, no
time for the dark sad
little corner with its white
oneway arrow, blue St.
Sign (Washington & Murray)
leany lamppost, litter
of gutter, curb as if
pressed down by years
of trucks backing up —
The lone blue pigeon
trucking along, the
squad copcar stopping
momentarily to think —
a scene wherein in
some darkfog midnight
2 seamen stagger, or
an anonymous clerk
in rumpled July summer-
shirt hurries meek
with Daily News —
or by gray hot noon
of dogday August some
small merchant in
brown coat, whitehaired,
clutching a box underarm
slowly walks — on
late October afternoon
a rusted & forgotten spot
in the great joysplash
of Manhattan with
its glittering band
of rivers, ships exuding
booms, shrouds —
smoke, of railroads,
trucks, boom of time
Closer up you see the
actual pockmarked grime
of this sad Manhattan
scene, an old hydrant
with 2 black iron stanchions
beside it as if
obsolete ruins of old
water or horsetrough
equipments of 1870
when where you now see
Erie Pier’s green parthenonish
front was the jibbooms
of great sailing vessels,
the boom of wagon wheels
& barrels — Overwritten