Late Spring minutiae

It's already late Spring, the schools let out soon and college was out last week, YAY! I love how it feels coming into work on cool mornings, feeling like the streets are empty. They aren't empty just feel a bit roomier.

The Kerouac Scroll will be taking off 6/1...I'll miss it. It's just been so awesome having it in town. If you haven't seen it, you must stop by the HRC.

I passed a building walking to work this morning that had the exact same bush or vine that the Val Verde County Library has and that scent had me remembering how I'd sit there reading with my newly acquired pile of books waiting to be picked up. The library was so quiet and always nice and cool and had the perfect balance of natural and fluorescent lighting. The furniture was a dark mahogany, the stacks all neatly lined up, there were nice paintings on the walls. If giggles or loud wispy talking began the librarian nipped it in the bud. There wasn't much loitering going on there in the late 70s, early 80s. This is the library that made me love all libraries. Now I always have at least one dream a week that takes place at the old library at night:

My friends who are teachers and school librarians are all excited about their upcoming summer break. I used to be jealous then I realized it wouldn't work for me. It would really mess me up, in fact, I have the hardest time getting back into the swing of things after only a full week off.

I loathed September until I graduated from high school. I went home for the summer only once after my first year of college and it wasn't any easier facing September. That was my last three months off for summer ever. My adult summer break, I feel, works better for me: Paramount movies with the Sweetie, having family on school schedules visit more often, being able to meet friends on school schedules for lunch and being able to hang with them at any time, less traffic,beach weekends and old AIP beach movies. Just added to this list is enjoying Saturday morning breakfast on the patio, watching 8mm films outdoors and cookouts with neighbors (soon).

Minutiae for those who love me

1. Bud Cort at the Alamo-Ritz was a tres, tres memorable experience. We had fun! The tiramisu there is great as well.


2. UGH! Tomato seedling failure!

3. My 91 year old Abuelita and I are now able to do video calls. Awesome! Got to show her the stuff I made and have been working on.

4. Green tea really does wonders for me.

5. Ann Charters at the Harry Ransom Center! She read a chapter from the new book she is working on. It is about the friendship between Kerouac and Clellon Holmes and it's impact on On the Road. Can't wait for a publication date.

It's here, it's here!

Kerouac's On the Road Scroll arrived yesterday and was rolled out. I saw it this morning at the HRC. Images of Kerouac splitting the teletype, taping it and rolling it up on the typewriter....his fingers tapping and ticking and racing with his thoughts..... What were the sounds when he typed , what did it sound like to hear him breathe between the typing? Who heard him, saw him, what did everything look like???? I'll never know but the sight of the scroll conjures up. It just conjures up.

Not many were there to view it when the museum opened so I was able to take it in slowly and walk alongside it. A few red marks, one or two green marks, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, lines crossing things out, off to the side notes in pencil. Time has stained the taped together parts, they are yellowed and browned. The edges look crispy and brown, familiar typewriter font that you rarely see anymore. My eyes went to certain sentences, went to the negative spaces between the words, went to the words Mexico, crazy, New York, Lucien and I thought of all the metaphorical aromas...

Egg salad sandwiches and other stuff

My friend Bonnie introduced me to the divine egg salad sandwich found at the Kosher HEB deli. It is so delish! Tell them to burn your bread (rye) and then ask for black olives, avocado, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber and sprouts to be added to the egg salad (prepared fresh). If you have room for dessert get Green's Kosher Cinnamon Babka. I had this on Sunday and had to return Tuesday for it again. It is so addictive.

Teaching my friends how to knit has been fun and I'm way more patient than I ever thought possible. I should be so patient with myself. It took two hours to teach them how to cast on the way my Abuelita taught me-using one needle- but once they got it I was proud of them. Looking forward to the next lesson which is actually knitting and hoping they are perfecting their casting on.

The Beat exhibit at HRC struck me as tiny at first but it's actually more extensive than it appears. Seeing the handwritten and typed letters from Ginsberg to Kerouac, Orvlosky's diary and Cassady's letter to his wife...wowsers, moving. There is so much more. If you want to see everything it takes more than an hour. They don't have enough photos but what they do have a lot of is the personal correspondence. The Kerouac scroll arrives on the 7th and 20 feet of it will be displayed.

Been thinking of kite flying. One Sunday afternoon my grandfather and us kids flew kites in his front yard. It is a huge front yard (he actually made us a putt-putt golf course there once) and perfect for kite flying. The kites were homemade using paper bags from the grocery store and some thin sticks possibly from a store bought kite that had died. He made us sorts of toys, kites, toy guns that shot rubber bands, sling shots... All afternoon we were outside flying kites and I remember how very happy he seemed and how very happy we felt. It was a really windy day and I remember how the string tugged and how it was surprisingly strong to the point that he had to help me keep my arm from flying off. It was the sort of wind that whipped through your ears and made it hard to hear anything. The sun was shining in my eyes and I looked at my grandfather and he was looking up with his hair flying and he had the biggest smile. He was running around and seemed so young to me that afternoon. He was young. He was only 56, but being my grandad, that was old to me at the time. My mother took a photo of us all that day and it really captured more than the day, it captured my whole childhood with my grandad.

PS: It is amazing how much attention my previous entry got. I received emails from friends and strangers inquiring on the mysterious guy I was flirting with. Mr C. refers to my awesome husband. So yeah, you weren't the only one wondering, teehee.

Mon Jul 2 2007
BOULDER, Colo. - Admirers of author Jack Kerouac celebrated the 50th anniversary of "On the Road" with a marathon reading of the novel. Fans and some close friends of the late author took turns reading his most famous novel aloud at Naropa University in Boulder on Saturday.
About 150 people listened to the cover-to-cover reading, which took 12 hours and kicked off the university's inaugural Kerouac Festival.
One of the most popular books ever written by an American, "On the Road" tells the story of Kerouac and a friend he calls Dean Moriarity as they travel the country, including a visit to Denver that the city celebrates with a tour that traces his steps.
The stream-of-consciousness novel helped generate the Beat Generation.

If I don't blog it...what?

I spent some time with a friend of mine recently who asked why I didn't blog about it a few days later if I had such a good time. The truth is, I blog minutiae, stuff that I wouldn't mind telling a group of strangers at a cocktail party while sober. I also blog stuff I wouldn't mind a bunch of strangers knowing about me. In other words, hanging out with X friend was tres personal and I don't have much to share. I am not a fastidious, want to reach out to you, know me, know me, sort of blogger. Just because you don't read it here doesn't mean it didn't happen, or I didn't have fun doing it or I didn't find it interesting.

I also keep this blog primarily for friends and family. They all know what I am up too through this blog and it probably makes more sense to those who know me and can read between the lines.

I blog writing ideas I may or may not expand on later for mags, I blog things that will remind me of design ideas later, clips and URLs I want to keep but not have attached to a bookmark list ... see, simply, minutiae. Sometimes reading lists are too telling so I don't do the reading list (but I'm reading) or what I've been listening too sort of thing (though I've been pining for Townes Van Zandt and Tim Buckley's tunes). I will post announcements like:
This weekend I am purging of just about all my comics somehow. Claude? I kept a few like the Ivan Brunetti's and Twists but the rest...eh.

This blog began as a place where I could gather all things Kerouac and Beat to inform and entertain myself, but ended up as a place to store all those little mental notes, opinions and anecdotes that are insignificant in the bigger scheme of things. If you love me or know me this blog is nothing but a vital news source for all things Tera. If you don't know me I hope some of what I type out gives one a sense of solidarity (used as noun). Knowing that there is someone out there who may think along your lines in your world may be pleasing.

Disclaimer: There is so much to what goes on in a day and what makes impressions and what I find interesting and love and detest that this blog doesn't even really scratch the surface.

Kerouac Scroll Tour

I'm patiently waiting for the On the Road scroll to come by the Harry Ransom Center. I have one year....UGH!

2007

January 1 to March 31, 2007: Denver Public Library, Denver, CO

April 6 to May 31, 2007: Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, New Mexico

June 7 to September 14, 2007: Lowell, MA National Historical Park

September 28, 2007 to February 15, 2008: New York Public Library, New York City



2008

September 28, 2007 to February 15, 2008: New York Public Library, New York City

March 7 to May 30, 2008: UT, Austin TX

July 3 to September 28, 2008: Indianapolis Museum of Art

October 3 to November 30, 2008: Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois

December 3, 2008 to March 6, 2009: Fitton Center , Cincinnati, OH

2009

December 3, 2008 to March 6, 2009: Fitton Center , Cincinnati, OH

Minutiae

1. Hawaii Five-O Has the best edited montage to music EVER!
1a.Hearing the Ventures do it is pretty awesome! Mel Taylor's drums....dreamy. It's the best version of the theme. Well, that's instrumental version, Sammy Davis Jr rocks it.

1b.Don't buy Swamp Rock

2.Q.If you could sit down to the dinner table with any three people, past or present, who would you invite?
A.Sinatra, Cassavetes and Kerouac. It seems like it could get uncomfortable.

3. Donuts

4.

5. AWESOME! Vintage Toasters Yet another site to use for my 1949 ktchen reassembly. Just to review:
Toasters
Neo Vintage Don't forget SMEG
Refurbished Vintage Appliances

Ahem, sorry about that.....

It has been brought to my attention that I haven't said a word about crafty,d.i.y., fashion,Sinatra (not true) or crochet, Kerouac (not true), music, nostalgia (c'mon that's all this is), thrift or vintage. I write what comes to my mind. It's all over the place:

Crafty Well I have just about sold out of most of my stock and have started re-stocking but those photos won't be uploaded until this weekend along with work by other artist. Busy weekend ahead. As for crafty, I have a few ideas but NO TIME! I wish I could quit my day job but the insurance is a pretty good perk, so is the pension plan. I have been quite busy with paperwork (car wreck 11/28)and insurance companies, settlements etc.....Then I am getting married in April, just around the corner. I'll be moving just before I get married, UGH! Collecting boxes at the moment and will start boxing soon which means some of my tools will be boxed up as well. I'll be taking a sabatical (short one) from my site I'll say from April-June. During that time, other artist will be posting their stuff.

On Fashion Lucky magazine this month listed a few ensembles I've been talking about and wishing would become more available: cigarette pants and cute 60's tops with flats. I have been wearing more striped tees (think four year old boy looking ones) to cover my chest from the sun. I don't want a camisole tan before my wedding since I'll be wearing a strapless dress. The sun doesn't seem to have moved far from the earth from my location. Yes I know it's winter, somewheres else it's winter, not down here Bub.
Oh yeah, I can show you my wedding dress:

It's an ivory on ivory, that is: ivory organza over ivory satin and trim. Simple and floaty for Spring. Just what I wanted. The veil is ivory with a 1/4 inch ivory ribbon all around and really makes the dress. Will wear with Liz Tayloresque, ivory, 2 inch slides.

Music It's been schizo: Bowie and Webb Pierce only. I play Life on Mars over and over and over, Starman too, okay everything he did, I can never tire of LOM or Starman. Webb Pierce and Bowie keep me euphoric for right now.

Thrift and Vintage Well, I did find a cute, 100% wool, grey , pleated skirt in excellent shape for $2. It is the perfect length and shade of grey. Also scored a vintage Pendelton robe in excellent shape for under $15! Man, it is perfect as can be and like wearing a snuggly throw or blanket everywhere I go. It isn't scrtachy and it's a cranberry and blue plaid and tres cool for mornings in a wood frame house.

So that's it. Last night I went on a long drive after 12am. Drove down Burnet 25 mph and sometimes it turned into Tropicana Rd and Paradise Rd in Vegas,
other times it was just like Ave F in Del Rio, other times it was the same old Austin and other times Route 66.

It gets weird when it's empty and just the neon is out. I turned on the radio and Roger Miller was singing about the little green apples. I happened to flip it on just as it started. That was a perfect moment and I won't find it again the right soundtrack with the right visuals and the right thoughts and that was just the trip I needed.

2006

Who would of though that Indianapolis Colts owner, Jim Irsay, would have been interested in the Kerouac scroll? I have been looking forward to the scroll tour to hit my town. Back in 2002 it was set to arrive at the HRC in 2005 but has been pushed back to 2008! Geeeeeez Grrrrrrr I thought 3 years was long. UGH!
Note to C.B. please go see it more than once 4me. I feel I could just loook at it forever and over and over.

I got a Rusty Warren record for Christmas. That's right-Knockers Up! LOVE her!

I've been on a crochet hiatus due to weather. It's January and in the 80s! UGH! BLEHK! I do not like summer entering the week after Christmas. It sort of zaps the enthusiasm to create scarves and hats from me. What I didn't count on was how is zaps the ideas for other projects as well. A nice, decent winter is only norma, seasons change. So are these the kind of California dreams Phillips-Phillips were having on such a winter day in NYC? I think it was NYC where she was at a bus stop in the cold wishing she was in California. Nope, nuh-uh, not for me. I want the winter's day. I need four seasons not summer 365 days out of the year. What's that? You would enjoy that?! You are nuts! It isn't natural, not to mention bad for business. If it weren't for my East Coast and Mid-West customers, Canadian friends and Portland fans I'd be out of business. Thanks guys!

For some reason I am thinking of Barry McGuire now-ewwwwwwww. I mean I totally loved Eve of Destruction as a kid and his voice painted a picture of someone quite ideal (I'm sharing something quite personal here :> btw so shut up). BUT I saw a few episodes of Hullabaloo! hosted by Barry and gag me. He was pretty full of himself, all teeth, uncool- like squaresville and L7 and all that and hard on the eyes.

Hickory Farms RULZ

Flyers are being circulated around town that say Come Home Patrick and then a photo and number. Poor Patrick, poor parents. Patrick is an Austin teen.

What's up

Scott Walker sort of morning. Sunny, cold, clean morning. Of course had it been cloudy it would have been a great Scott Walker morning.

I have been slowly collecting Blue Heaven dishes by Royal China. I find the teapot, coffeepot and water pitcher tres gorgeous. I was always into dishes as a kid, very girly little girl in that way. This is Blue Heaven by Royal China.
I wanted to collect Temporama by Canonsburg after we found two plates thrifting. This design seems more difficult to acquire but it's atomic tiki design is tres cool:
I use what I collect and have to store it so I'm limiting myself to 2 four place settings complete with salt and pepper shakers, teapots, cream and sugar bowls and serving pieces. This is only one so I have given myself room to grow. The everyday stuff is my ongoing Fiestaware collection, all new not vintage.

Next to my bed are three new books: Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton (I love how Alain so eloquantly applies philosophy to everyday issues/problems. That's what philosophy is for but he makes it so portable, Long Ago in France by my favorite MFK Fisher and Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination = La Combinacion Perfecta

We watched Dick Cavette interview Janis Joplin, Raquel Welch, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and the charming Chet Huntley last night on television. Joplin was very articulate, Fairbanks tres old Hollywood royalty but poor Welch, not one of her better moments. She came of as passionate and brainless. Passionately brainless? Also caught the first installment of the Brady's Hawaiian Tiki adventure, the three parter that kicked off their fourth season. Greg looks like he's almost 30 and Marcia, a sunny 22 or so, but they were like 15 and 17 or something like that.

Wishing I could watch Pull My Daisy on film at a theatre but oh well. The Jack Kerouac Scroll tour was supposed to stop at the HRC in January-originally- then March 2007 but now it has been pushed to 2008!!!!!!!!!!!! What the hell UT? UGH! maybe we'll make a trip to San Francisco, Chicago or Sant Fe before that. I really can't wait until 2008!

Del Rio and Robert Frank

The new blog header is a photo of Mary Frank and the children, with their daughter turned away. The title is "US 90, en route to Del Rio, Texas". WOW! Robert Frank actually went through Del Rio? That is exciting. Just as exciting as when I read in Kerouac's Lonesome Blues Traveler that he had picked up El Debate to read. That was and is the newspaper in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico. My great uncle founded and ran that paper until the early 90s. He was printing it at the time Kerouac picked it up. When I read that I got chills. That's the closest I'll get to Kerouac somehow and thought it was cool.

Kerouac Good Eats

Recipes:
Big Sur Roast Potatoes and Spam
Potatoes wrapped in foil and thrown on the fire, and coffee, and hunks of Spam roasted on a spit, and applesauce and cheese, from Big Sur

Burroughs' Rhubarb Pie
Filling: two cups of rhubarb, 3/4 cup of sugar, 4 tbls of flour, one egg yolk, from Patricia Elliot.

Desolation Angels Breakfast Special
Cold roast beef with Dutch sugar powdered raisin bread, followed by the usual bacon and eggs and pot of coffee, from Desolation Angels.

Desolation Peak Casserole
Marvelous pot of turnip greens, carrots, roast beef, noodles, and spices, from Desolation Angels.

Desolation Peak Spaghetti
Sauce: 3 cans tomato paste
12 garlic cloves
half teaspoon oregano
basil
onions (from Desolation Angels).

Henri Cru's Scrambled Eggs
Mix six scrambled eggs with a quarterpound of butter and cheese and spices, from Desolation Angeles.

Kerouac's Green Pea Soup
Two packages of Lipton Green Pea Soup
Bacon
Onions
Salt & pepper
Couple of envelopes of dried pea soup into a pot of water with fried bacon, fat and all, and stirred till boiling, from Dharma Bums.

Kerouac's Rice with Sweet and Sour Sauce
I make a crazy Chinese sweet and sour sauce on the hot stove, compounded of turnip greens, sauerkraut, honey, molasses, red wine vinegar, pickled beet juice, sauce concentrate (very dark and bitter), from Desolation Angels.

Kerouac's Yellow Cornmeal Johnny Cakes
Yellow corn meal, chopped onions, salt & pepper, and tablespooning out into sizzling corn oil, turning over to brown both sides of each cake, from Dharma Bums.

Lonesome Traveller Breakfast
Best prepared for 6:45 a.m. Coffee - '[B]oil water... throw some coffee in, stir it, French style, slowly... ...make my raisin toast by sitting it on a little wire I'd especially bent to place over the hotplate... ...the toast crackled up... I spread the margarine on the still red hot toast and it would crackle and sink in golden, among burnt raisins and this was my toast.- Then two eggs gently fried in soft margarine in my.... frying pan - the eggs slowly fluffed in there and swelled from butter steams and I threw garlic salt on top... when they were ready... I spread them out on top of my already prepared potatoes... boiled in small pieces and then mixed with the bacon I'd already fried in small pieces, kind of raggely mashed bacon potatoes, with eggs on top steaming, and on the side lettuce, with peanut butter dab nearby on side.' Eat. '...hustle out into the fog of the flow... to work ...the train is leaving.' From 'The Railroad Earth' in Lonesome Traveller. Thanks to Nelson Liddle, High School English Teacher, Denny High School in Scotland, for submitting this fine recipe.

Pate de Porc Gras
2 pounds of ground Boston pork butt (with all the fat)
2 onions
2 garlics
teaspoon dry mustard
Simply immerse the ground pork butt till water just covers it, in pot, with onions & garlic chopped in, and salt and pepper, and dry mustard. Let simmer slowly (say, 5 hours). Spoon & level into bowls; chill bowls in ice box. Next day, use as sandwich spread on crackers (preferably good French Bread)--from letter to Jacqueline Stephens, late December 1961, Selected Letters: Jack Kerouac, 1957-1969.

Note: All the menu items come directly from passages found in Kerouac books. You guess which ones if you like! I didn't mark them all, and could go back and find them, but if you're curious, here's a hint: most of these came from On the Road, Dharma Bums, Visions of Cody, Big Sur, and Desolation Angels. I began this project with the best of intentions (thinking I could get every single reference of food listed in all my books, but that's an ongoing project). I realized just how often Kerouac mentioned food in his books, and why not? He loved to eat. However, if you see that I've missed something important, and would like to send me another menu suggestion or recipe, just send it in, along with the source, and I'd be glad to add to the diner's menu, crediting you.

Thanks to:http://www.jackmagazine.com/issue7/menu.html

I am hungry

I am very hungry right now. My mistake was chomping on an Altoid because it made me even more hungry and now my tummy is growling. Right now a batch of cupcakes sounds good. Canned meat even sounds good. Those frozen bags of chipped beef in a cream sauce that you would plop into hot boiling water in the 70s and serve over rice...sounds great cause it would be warm. Wonder if they still make those things. I hated them as a kid.

My tummy is remembering a trip to Philadelphia when I ordered a salad before my main course of some sort of fish. I was there for the music at Zanzibars and though I was in the culinary capital, didn't really think much about what I was ordering. The salad was a warm spinach and had berries and goat cheese. I didn't finish my main course what with the bread and butter and rice. I'm dying to know what I had now and wish I could eat what I couldn't eat then. The Sinatra hoagie at Sarcone's and the bakery down the street from that in Bella Vista! YUMMY! I loved Bella Vista, loved, loved, loved it. Also so close to 1st Street.

In Vegas I hardly ate unless it was at the Peppermill. I would clean my plate then. Breakfast and brunch were the best! I had a fruit salad and got loads of fruit served in a half a pineapple. Very pretty and tres yummy. Their pancakes and waffles and club sandwiches were so yummy. Again, another culinary capital and nothing. I'm not a food connoisseur though I do recognize a good dish when I taste it. Trying to think... but I don't believe I ever went to any fancy schmancy place in Vegas. Carmelo's is a personal fave though, more for their muzak and customers than anything. All locals, all older, older locals who dressed tres cool and spoke Italian with raspy, smoke damaged voices. They did a fried zuchini thing I loved and have the best sauce.

Elsi's I love ELSI's with my man on a Sunday or Saturday 11ish. I could eat there every day.
Fonda San Miguel! Where we got engaged and it is a very important place because of that. Their mole is divine as are those chile rellenos! I wish I could dine at Fonda right at this very second but no dice, it's 9am and I'm at work. But I love that my guy loves Mexican food so much. Makes things copesetic. I do wish there was a good Greek food restaurant cause i do miss the Greek food.

La Victoria Bakery, Mrs Johnson's Donuts, kolaches. So hungry. My fiancee and I have built up quite the repertoire of yummy meals. Tilapia Tacos with Guacamole and sausage with fresh cabbage I think are the faves. Come fall...I make great cornish game hens in an orange sauce served with asparagus and rice/walnut/mushroom pilaf or sorts. Kerouac ate pea soup. I have that same pea soup back in 1994 and that would even hit the spot right now.

Vienna sausages...that's what I meant when I wrote canned meat but couldn't think of the specific product. Oh, acreamy smoothie would hit the spot right now. Denny's would hit the spot right now. You have to tell them to make your bacon crispy though or they won't. Ramada Inn in Del Rio did serve the best waffle last time I was there. The bestest breakfast tacos are in Del Rio off North main. They are huge, fresh, generous and $1.60 each. IHOP, haven't been there in ages but that would hit the spot. Jester across the street would not hit the spot so I'll remain hungry until I can think of some place around here to go.

Anais Nin claims she did her best work starving. MFK Fisher I am sure would not, could not. Artichokes come to mind when I think of MFK Fisher. Love her writing. Then there are the tummy memories of The Peachtree in Fredericksburg. So delicious and with the best teas and company is the only way I have known it. I am hungry and it makes for nice thoughts even if I lack the epicurean slant in life. One day I'll turn into a food snob but I'm not at all near that now. Audrey Hepburn would only eat the tiniest one serving of anything. I felt like that when I bought a brie wheel recently and would slice lunch, dinner and a snack from it for a few days. Took one modest slice to do me too. Well towards the end I got crazy and took a huge chunk but it served me well as a light dinner.

I am hungry.

Pull My Daisy

"The charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power."
-Jack Kerouac's favorite line from On The Road

"Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires."
-Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac

"If you have a choice of two things and can't decide, take both." -Gregory Corso "The stone world came to me, and said Flesh gives you an hour's life."
-Gregory Corso

"In such places as Greenwich Village, a menage-a-trois was completed- the bohemian and the juvenile delinquent came face-to-face with the Negro, and the hipster was a fact in American life."
-Norman Mailer

"Love is all.'
-Jack Kerouac

"What's your road, man? -holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow."
-Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty in On The Road

"We are all trying to get the exact style of ourselves."
-Michael McClure on the San Francisco Renaissance

"I'm beat to the square, and square to the beat, and that's my vocation."
-William Everson aka Brother Antoninus

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."
William Burroughs

"An army is an army against love."
-Peter Orlovsky

Jack Kerouac's Translations of Buddhist Terms
Dharma: "truth law"
Nirvana: "blown-out-ness"
Tathata: "that which everything is"
Tathagata: "attainer to that which everything is"
Bodhisattva-Manasattvas: "beings of great wisdom"

"Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end."
-Jack Kerouac

"Wherever I go I see myself in a mirror- it used to be my own selfblood, now it is god's."
-Allen Ginsberg

"Art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life."
-Nietzsche

"I am going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children."
-Jack Kerouac

'Lost' Kerouac play resurfaces after 50 years

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Friday May 20, 2005
The Guardian


Beat Generation 'conveys the mood of the time extraordinarily well'

It is the sort of irony that would not have been lost on the notoriously hard-living writer. Excerpts from an unpublished play by Jack Kerouac are to be published in the July edition of a men's lifestyle magazine.
Beat Generation, written in the autumn of 1957, the same year as the publication of Kerouac's breakthrough work On the Road, was unearthed in a New Jersey warehouse six months ago. An excerpt will appear in the July issue of Best Life magazine.

The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fuelled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac's alter-ego.

"Kerouac wrote the play in one night when he returned to his home in Florida after the publication of On The Road," said Kerouac's biographer and family friend Gerald Nicosia. "He was getting a lot of attention, being put on TV talk shows after On the Road, and an off-Broadway theatre producer named Leo Gavin said he wanted a play from him."

Although the play was never published or performed, the third act became the basis for a film, Pull My Daisy, starring Allen Ginsberg.

Kerouac's agent, Sterling Lord, said Kerouac had sent it to several producers but it was turned down.

"It conveys the mood of the time extraordinarily well, and also the characters are authentically drawn," Mr Lord told the Press Association.

Kerouac even sent the play to Marlon Brando, Mr Lord said. Kerouac was desperate to collaborate with the actor, and wrote a letter to him in 1957 urging Brando to appear in a play adaptation of On the Road.

Brando never responded, and the two only met once, in 1960, when Kerouac enrolled in the Actor's Studio. But his foray into acting was shortlived. After 15 minutes he asked, "Don't they give you any drinks in this place?" Spotting Brando he invited him for a drink. Brando refused.

After the rejections for Beat Generation, said Mr Lord, Kerouac asked him to shelve the play. It stayed in a warehouse for almost 50 years, he added.

"It's Kerouac, so it's off-beat," said Betsy Steve from Thunders Mouth Press, which will publish the full play in October. "It reads like a jazz song, with switching rhythms. It might not be Jack's best but it definitely highlights something of his work, it's part of the canon."

Although there are no firm plans to produce the play, a staged reading is scheduled for New York in January.

Mr Nicosia said that it was not unusual for a work by Kerouac to remain unpublished. "A lot of Jack's greatest works were never published in his lifetime," he said. "The Kerouac estate has been releasing stuff from the archives over the last 10 years. We all knew there was a ton of stuff.

Despite the success of On the Road, Kerouac died with just $91 (£49.60) in his pocket.

"He had a brief moment in the sun," said Mr Nicosia, "but the right wing launched a major attack on him. They saw him as a major threat to society. They really succeeded in knocking him down."