Book of Sketches - Jack Kerouac [57]
green Sabbath fez caps, like papercup cakes
good nuf to eat — I think I’m sposed to be
alive — I dont see anything around — Drops
of whitewash on this red concrete plaza with
the whitewashed tower by the sea for
Muezzins of the Sherifian Star — The
other night, here, Arab bagpipes —
Spring is coming —
Yep, all that equipment
For sighs
ZOCO CHICO — TANGIERS —
a weird Sunday in Fellaheen
Arabland with you’d expect
mystery white windows &
do see but b God the broad
up there in whiten
my-veil is sitting & peering
by a Red Cross, above a lil
sign says PRACTICANTES
Servicio Permanente
TF NO.9766
the cross being red — this
is over a tobacco shop
with luggage & pictures,
a little barelegged boy
leaning on counter with a
family of wristwatched
Spaniards — Limey sailors
from the submarines pass
trying to get drunker & drunker
yet quiet & lost in home
regret & two little Arab
hepcats have a brief musical
confab (boys of 10) & they
part with a push of arms
& wheeling of arms, the cat
has a yellow skullcap &
a blue zoot suit
I am now hi on
MAHOUN
MAHOUN
Cakes of kief boiled with
spices & candies —
eaten with hot tea —
the black & white tiles
of the outdoor cafe
are soiled by lonely
Tangiers time — A
little bald cropped
boy walks by, goes
to men at table,
says “Yo!” then
the waiter throws
him out, “Yig” —
A brown ragged robe
priest sits with me at
table, but looks
off with hands
on lap at brilliant
red fez & red girl
sweater & red boy
shirt green scene
RAILROAD BUFFET IN AVIGNON
A priest who looks exactly
like Bing Crosby but with a long gray beard,
chewing bread, then rushes out, with beret and
briefcase. . . . .
PARIS SIDEWALK CAFE
Now, on sidewalk in
sun, the racket of going-to-work same as
in Houston or in Boston and no better —
But it is a vast promise I feel here, endless
streets, stores, girls, places, meanings, I can
see why Americans stay here — First
man in Paris I looked at was a dignified
Negro gentleman in a homburg — The human
types are endless, old French ladies, Malayan
girls, schoolboys, blond student boys, tall
young brunettes, hippy pimply secretaries,
beret’d goggled clerks, beret’d scarved
earners of milk bottles, dikes in long blue
laboratory coats, frowning older students striding
in trench coats like Boston, seedy little
rummy cops fishing thru their pockets (in
blue caps), cute pony tailed blondes in high
heels with zip notebooks, goggled bicyclists
with motors attached, bespectacled homburgs
walking reading Le Parisien, bushy headed
mulattos with long cigarettes in mouth,
old ladies carrying milkcans & shopping bags,
rummy WCFieldses spitting in the gutter hands
a pockets going to their printing shop for
another day, a young Chinese looking French
girl of 12 with separated teeth looking
Like she’s in tears (frowning, & with a bruise
on her shin, schoolbooks in hand, cute and
serious like Mardou), porkpie executive
running and catching bus sensationally
vanishing with it, mustached long haired
Italian youths, regular types coming in
the bar for their morning shot of wine,
huge bumbling bankers in expensive suits
fishing for newspaper pennies in their
palms (bumping into women at the bus
stop), piped jews with packages, a
lovely redhead with dark glasses pip pip
pip on her heels trots to work bus, a
waitress slopping mop water in the old old
gutter, ravishing brunettes with tightfitting
skirts succeeding in making you want to
grab their rounded ass (tho they dont deign
to look), goofely plup plup schoolgirlies
with long boyish bobs plirping lips over
books & memorizing lessons fidgetly, lovely
young girls of 17 on corners who walk
off with low-heeled sure-strides in long
red coats to downtown Paris smokepot
Old Napoleon wonders — leading a dog,
an apparent East Indian, whistling, with
books — bearded bus riders riding to
accounting school — dark similar-lipped
serious young lovers, boy arming girlshoulders
— statue of Danton pointing nowhere