a threadbare universe
those all-night drives
with dead sleep friends
winding through the adirondacks
like something about this mattered
just kids, no money, no concept
Jb wanted to be kerouac
that was simple enough
with dead sleep friends
winding through the adirondacks
like something about this mattered
just kids, no money, no concept
Jb wanted to be kerouac
that was simple enough
I wheeled around lake champlain
after six am, sun cleared horizon
blind from my rearview
breathless, I park middle
of sleepy sunday July street
bathed in sunrise
I walk to the water
dumb stare, completely alone
after six am, sun cleared horizon
blind from my rearview
breathless, I park middle
of sleepy sunday July street
bathed in sunrise
I walk to the water
dumb stare, completely alone
it’s the first moment the
universe
seems threadbare, no depth
no complex lives, just a moment
a breath drawn, held and exhaled
just a moment, overwhelming
where everything is
seems threadbare, no depth
no complex lives, just a moment
a breath drawn, held and exhaled
just a moment, overwhelming
where everything is
when this short life of
trouble
when this long walk through time ends
when the corporeal self is ash
my friends, please take the box
what’s left of me, back to that shore
on some july morning
do your best to celebrate
as the sun comes up
what we built
what we shared
those little moments
when our lives are not
a careening desperate shock
but instead the moments when there is little
close to nothing
only a series of atoms, particles
simple and alone
lost in a threadbare universe
when this long walk through time ends
when the corporeal self is ash
my friends, please take the box
what’s left of me, back to that shore
on some july morning
do your best to celebrate
as the sun comes up
what we built
what we shared
those little moments
when our lives are not
a careening desperate shock
but instead the moments when there is little
close to nothing
only a series of atoms, particles
simple and alone
lost in a threadbare universe
--Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac called his style of writing "sketching" -- an “undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words.” When Harcourt Brace published his 1st novel "The Town and the City" in 1950, 5 years after he had begun working on it. The jacket design by Leo Manso, who described his paintings as "abstract impressionism," failed to impress Kerouac, whose 2nd novel "On the Road" was based on his experiences while writing the 1st. He started writing it in 1948, and the 1st draft of the eventual novel was written in 3 weeks in April 1951; "the scroll" was typed single-spaced on a 120-ft continuous roll of tracing paper which he had cut to size and taped together, and had no margins or paragraph breaks. When he submitted it to A A Wyn he included his idea for a jacket with a typed note: “I submit this as my idea of an appealing commercial cover expressive of the book. The cover for The Town and the City was as dull as the title and the photo backflap.” After major changes Viking Press finally published it in 1957, but without his cover suggestion. In 1957 he drew up a Beat manifesto of painting:
ReplyDelete1) ONLY USE BRUSH, no knife to mash and spread and obliterate brush strokes, no fingers to press in lines that aren’t real
2) USE BRUSH SPONTANEOUSLY. i.e. Without drawing, without long pause or delay, without erasing ... pile it on
3) FIGURE MEETS BACKGROUND OR VICE VERSA BY THE BRUSH;
4) PAINT WHAT YOU SEE IN FRONT OF YOU. NO ‘FICTION’
5) STOP WHEN YOU WANT TO ‘IMPROVE’
– IT’S DONE