Book of Sketches - Jack Kerouac [45]
& dry roots beneath
an open unwashed windowpane,
clutters of
wrinkled huskleaf that
suddenly jiggle in a
breeze —
The person who has it
is off to work, his
handiwork window in
the great symphony of
NY throws one mite
little note into the
general disharmonious
irrationality of the
world & its world city,
as pathetic as a
job, useless as tightlipped
mute unhappiness
of people rising on rainy
Sunday afternoons to
their further tasks of
carrying the burden of
time to a conclusion they
cannot know & would
not want to know
if they knew — the
junk in the window
is like a young woman’s
disappointed eyes on
a rainy Sunday, in the
draining dank gray room
of tenement life, her
sad feet shiftless, the
hang of her thoughts,
the angel of gray
brooding reality, the
Guardian Angel over
her sorrow, over
her little humilities
as humble as clay pots,
modest as dead
stalks & fallen vines,
— as strange & somehow
pathetically sweet as
those little frozen O J
cans painted black
by concerned hands
in a moment of
serious press-lip’d goof
in this Open Void
World forever so
nostalgic with the voices
of men
singing
for nothing & all lies —
idealistic lies of love —
“Men are tricky-tricksy”
— D. H. Lawrence, a
facetious Englishman who
stumbled on a serious truth
about love.
“Yr. mainspring is broken,
Walt Whitman.” —
Whitman should have lived
so long to hear an
irrelevant English tubercular
snarl thus at him as at
a cocktail party in
Manchester
“The Mystery of the Open Road”
or
“The Road Opens”
Great quote from D H
Lawrence whom I just
castigated & underestimated
“Stay in the flesh. Stay in the
limbs and lips and in the belly.
Stay in the breast and womb.
Stay there, O Soul, where you
belong — ” D. H. Lawrence
in “Studies in Classic
American Literature”
... on Whitman ...
The thing that eludes —
the working walls of
America, the dry yards,
the nameless meeoos
and micks you hear in
the night as if cats
were being bitten —
The endless decision of
streets.
like when he waded thru
that New Mexico flood &
lay down soaking in a
raw old gondola, trying
to light fires, & the
water all around the
boxcars of the
drag
Bring Visions of Cody
to Cowley
Sunday Night TV
Ed Sullivan looking at
audience with big dumb
nod as they applause
young girl singer with
sexy female laff —
audience applauds as
Ed inveigles them
further, says “Tremendous
job” — long-
faced serious facing
Sunday night millions
as my mother in
kitchen bends tongue on
lips tying her garbage
bags carefully from
roll of strong brown
twine, she pauses momentarily
to see TV
set from the side with
an expression of
skeptical peering curiosity
— “T’s a
Nigger?” when a
baritone comes on, with
huge voice, she
comes up winding string,
says, “S got a
good voice huh?”
as outside in America
cars gleam dully in
the August heatwave
Sunday night of
humidity no breeze,
the trees hanging leaves
still as stone, airplanes
passing in the overhead
Long Island softness &
the Negro is singing
“Because,” little mustache
touching almost his nose
as he says — “to
me” — clasping hands
to finish, little hanky
in suitcoat —
MY CAT
Kittigindoo sits
on his haunches on the
cement drive in the
shade turned half
around listening — he
now with pricking
ears is looking up at
house windows, eyes
green & dissatisfied
— when I call him
he is in a
trance looking strait
ahead & his ears
prick & he moves
his little mouth —
Sometimes he hangs
his head & sulks with
muscle neck, then
yawns, then moves
slowly tail a-
poppin — He loves
to eat & lick his
chops & paws — He
moves with the majesty
of a gigantic tiger
only to sit again,
lick at his paw &
look up — I wonder
how he makes the
afternoon, the day,
the time of life
& its whole long
burden there with his
tail & paw lickings
& chest nibblings &
cheek-diggings-with-
foot & neck-workings
with lowered tense
body right paw
supporting him — how
he overcomes boredom
& the burden