Book of Sketches Page 12
under conditions of debt.
In other words, Debt
(Neal’s big hassle) is the
form, financially, the Machine
creates to enslave the
individual to It — for
instance, Sinatra owes taxes,
back taxes, & is “forbidden”
to go to Europe, also
Dick Haymes — The
collusion of Debt, the
“Tax,” & “Insurance”
are tying people closer
& closer to the great
Wheel Rack —
Don’t accept “Loan”
or “Arm” of Machine —
it is a deceptive enslavement
— simple souls mistrust
offers of loan for no
idle reason —
The traffic problem is
merely that cars by the
millions enslave us to
new city systems requiring
hours of driving to & from
needs, on “congested” arteries,
naturally — where once
you’d-a walked — These
are all conditions pointing
to the imminent cancerous
death of America, the
Final Cog in the Western
Civ. Machine — the
supreme end-result of
early Gothic Phallic forms
is the skyscraper & the
oil drill & powered
compressor & pistons of
great engines — the Machine
copulates, men aren’t
allowed to any more —
The flesh gets numb,
but the soul doesn’t.
N’s feeling for “Marylou” in
that pix — her sexual
pinched pretty face — he
doesnt realize about flesh
is numb — till she’d die,
I say — Candlelight in
a beat room
The rat of hunger
eats at your belly,
then dies &’s left
to bloat there —
WATSONVILLE GRAYMORN,
a barbershop near park
is doing big business at 9:45
AM — gray overcast, raw,
cool — The park grass
clip’t to the sward — a
thin grayhaired fastwalking
lady in low heels hustling
towards Main St. of 5&10’s
(Woolworths), “City Drug
Store,” Ladies Shoes,
Stoesser 335 Building,
with Physician X Ray
Doctor windows above, &
“Roberts” Just Nice Things
(Store) — In the barber
shop a Brierly-like barber
in neat glasses & white frock
lowers little boy from
littleboy chair — Name
of shop is “Virg’s” —
with an Anson Weeks
band ad in glittering window
& a few bottles of
hair lotion — Little boy
was with mother who
trots him pushing him
along across park in her
big ass gray slacks, bandana
& crepesoles —
little boy has wool cap
over new hair cut —
Trucks of supermarkets
& Oakland Towel Co.
& just pickups without
lettering grumble around
park — The palms
hang dull in bleak
green bug-specked Void
— California on a
gray day is like being
in a disagreeable room —
Here is lineup around
barbershop: “Sodas
Shakes Sundaes” in old
fashioned Watsonville
sidewalk roof corner but
not Western; solid &
Victorian, once respectably
whitewashed, with bas
relief drape regalcords
& a “Surgeon” goldpaint
flecking off a round
baywindow — “Athletic
Supplies” — Sharp’s Sporting
Goods next in same bldg.
— fancy fishingpoles
in rich interior basketball
gloom — then “Ben’s
Shoe Service” not cluttered
but prosperous & shiny like
he sold shoes — then
the old arched wood
doorway of old bldg. with
bas relief sprigs — & a
doctor plate — Then
Steve’s Cocktail Bar,
shuttered with French
blinds, black tile base
of wall, cocktail glass
drawn under “Steve’s”
— Then City Club
restaurant, same shuttered,
but open door, red “Beer”
neon — (bells ring now)
— (for Ten) —
Then barbershop; then
“Smoke House,” an
ordinary cigar newspaper
store — “Pajaro Valley
Hardware” sandwiches
in old Colonial Hotel
bottom of 2 story of
which is Sporting Goods
— Then rich creamy
concrete streamlined
bank on corner, with
official Main St. globetype
(5 globes) streetlamp
announcing bleak official
clock district officer
corner of bus stops
traffic & stainglass
doors
In Pavia, 18 miles south
of Milan, the ashes of
St. Augustine, the great
monastery Certosa di
Pavia, junction of the
Ticino & the Po, fortifications
of Old Ticinum,
thousand yr. old university,
manufacture of pipe
organs, makers of wine,
silk, oil, and cheese.
Must go to Pavia
Taranto for oysters
San Remo for swimming
Padua for pictures
Stone Age village near Terni
It not to pay is not
a sin to Jesus
ON THE ROAD
BY
Jack Iroquois
Billy Caughnawaga
The “angelic” light
behind Joan in that
“radiant angel Mary”
dream — if so, Edison
is God because it’s the
electric light gives her
her glow — Only in America
a woman is condoned for
putting the man out of the house
Half of mankind is
Snakelike
Ah Duluoz, — when you
left home to go to
sea in 1942 — that
was the beginning — then
you’d sing Old Black Magic
in the night, & love
yr. thoughts, & Margaret,
& yr. good little friends of
Lowell — Sammy GJ
Salvey Scotty Daston
— what have you
gotten since? Edie in
the Fall led to Joan
Adams Summer 43,
which led to Carr,
Burroughs, Ginsberg, Chase,
which led to Neal —
& Tea — What would
you have if you hadnt
written Town & City? —
NOTHING — At least you
met Holmes, especially
Ed, & Tommy (they’ll always
be yr. friends) —
& now you know that you
must depend on yr. self,
& love the few who love
you, & try a disinterested
love of even yr. enemies,
but must work like
Joyce now, “silence,
exile, & cunning” —
All on your own
terms, in yr own intelligence
— Never mind what
Burroughs, or Ginsberg, have
to say about anything
— start by exposing them
all in your parable about
America: -
THE MILLENIUM
OF THE MEEK FELLAHEEN
Then work on “Vanity
of Duluoz” with
original ms. & all
new Duluoz memories —
in Mexico or in Spain —
in Paris or in Pavia —
Fish out that old
“Liverpool Testament” —
concerning Duluoz —
For now — we’ll start
(& remember yr FrenchCanadian
soul) — Compren tu?
Bon — commence —
Oct 28 ’52
The old cowboys of
1930’s pulp westerns were
always in river bottoms
eavesdropping on the rustlers
at late afternoon — the
Pajaro River in dry
California, brush, sand,
cow turds, trees —
ashes of old campfires —
Nowadays the wino
there realizes the old cowboy
must have had that
canteen of tequila forever
upended, the way things
are — Peeking thru
the brush at the doings
of other wino-rustlers
jacking off or cooking
pork & beans makes you
realize once & for all
the world is real &
pulp & pocketbook B
Movie magazines are
unreal — the late sun
on the cattle tracks, the
flies, the sad western
blue —
The flame of the
woodfire grows more profound
& mellow on the first
November nights, in
the caboose —
Remember that picture of
Edw. G. Robinson, a Bowery
bum drunk, visiting a
Class Reunion — saw it
with Pa — it’s as though
I, of the Pajaro Riverbottoms,
should attend the Columbia
Lou Little Reunion of
$6 a head & $4 for
game tickets — in
poor Halloween! —
Oh Soul —
“The trouble with me is that
outside my mind it seems
the world hasn’t got no
ass,” speech to Alumni,
Dostoeyevskyan, embarrassing,
significant
MANTELES PARA LA MESA
The poor little Mexican
gal in Calexico, writing
on Oct 1 1952 to Manuel
Perez in Watsonville whose
clothes & belongings I found
intact on the Pajaro levee
dump, wants money to
buy a tablecloth — can
you picture an American
woman asking money for
such a humble, useful
purpose — “unos manteles
para la mesa.” “Honey,”
she says, “dime porque no
me has escrito” — “tiene
tan . . . pensamientos para ti.”
She loves him — I am
wearing all his clothes not
knowing whether he’s alive or
dead - or in the Army?
I found several of her
sad letters on that dump,
in October, — in the dry
dust, just before the rainy
Season, —
Me: a man made to
stand before God —
Who is the Montgomery
Clift Stanford kid
reading Shakespeare in
the 12:30 local on
Oct 31 AM 1952
— what ignu? what
sonnets of his own?
does he realize Kerouac
is writing the Millenium
next to him, in workclothes?
OCT 31 1952
Evil dies, but good
lives forever —
The evil in you will die,
& your flesh with it, but
the good in yr heart &
soul will live forever —
Evil can’t live, good
can’t die —
Your angrinesses, impatience,
hassels, even that & your
shit, all — will die, cannot,
wills not to live; but the
flashes of sweet light will
never die, the love, the
kindness of hope, the
true work, joy of belief —
As for reforming others,
let them reform themselves,
if they can’t they were
meant to die; they
are barely alive now if they
can’t reform themselves tomorrow;
better a cleaner
of cesspools than a reformer.
Let every man
make himself pure as
I have done — that’s
the “reform” —
Work on your own soul —
experiment to see if one
man can be saved, as
the whole lot en masse
can apparently not —
on yr own soul first,
then the angels of
your soul, yr mother, your
wife (a new, good wife),
your children. If a son
or a daughter is bad,
throw it in the sea —
Your few good friends.
Cultivate yourself like a
flower; pull out weeds
like Cassady, Ginsberg,
Burroughs; accept the
nourishment of White,
Holmes: — water yrself
carefully — & keep your
flesh fit so as not to
burden the soul with
temporal strains & remove
that much energy
for its prime consideration
& meditation —
God, & Good — Direct
contact between you &
God means no church,
no society, no reform,
& almost no relationships,
& almost no hope in
relationships — but
kindness of hope inherent
in that what is good,
shall live, & what is
bad, dies — Your
flesh will be a husk,
but yr. soul a star —
The greatest & only
final form of “good”
is human —
Because intellectual
& intellectually willed
good & so conceptual
good is only a word —
“Almost” no hope in
relationships, means,
no foolish hope, but
true hope —
Everyone to his own
true work — There
is no good in work
which does no good.
Railroads, factories,
solve & give nobody
nothing, serve the
flesh only, at great
time & sacrifice, are
evil —
The true work is on
belief; true belief
in immortal good;
the continual human
struggle against
linguistic religious
abstraction; recognition
of the soul beneath
everything, & humor, —
Lights in the foggy
night are not necessarily
bleak & friendless, but
just lights (in fact to
light yr. way), & fog
from the necessary sea —
Stupid, fatuous men
are not necessarily
all stupid & fatuous,
nor all on the horizon,
nor completely devoid of
good, or hope — The evil
in them will die, the
good will live — Bleak
& friendless universe is
only one of several
illusions, the greatest &
only immortal one of
which is good —
Enough, the words to
this “idea,” or belief,
are limited, the combinations
to describe it
almost exhausted already
— Manifestations
of this in humanity, therefore
in your writing work,
are endless however —
This is the return of
the Will
Just the sight of the “snow”
under the locomotive, brings back
sweet light of the boy soul in
Lowell, the human earnest desire
to revisit Lowell this New Year’s
& soak up the sad hints of
the past in a grateful soul,
from just . . . “snow” — So
immortal love also hides
in things — talisman details
for the temple soul —
but soul, soul, soul, the
“details” is the life of
this thing —
GO NAKED TO THE WHITE
(End of SK 3)
EN ROUTE MONTREAL BUS Mar 20 ’53
I keep thinking of the
acorn trees outside Lowell
on that gray day Mike
& I hiked to the quarry —
Kirouac will be like
that, gray, fated —
MONTREAL (in “taverne”)
Montreal is my
Paradise — &
they almost didnt
let me in —
Railroad restaurant Frisco
combined with Mexico
Fellaheen girls taverns
& Lowell — O
thanks Lord
N.Y.State
Crows are insane in
the mist — America
is thrilling on a gray
day, Quebec non —
America has histories
of wood & Robert