by Jack Kerouac
An Organization and Measurement of
the World and the Soul
Sept. 7 ’49
The soul receiveth life, because the soul itself is dead, and what life the soul receiveth, and it does not every moment receive, is Grace. And the snowflakes fall like Grace, or Graces, upon our shoulder. Each snowflake and each petal substantial is thereby, through the Mystery of Grace, made spirit. But Beatitude is given only to those who give recognition to Grace and to the mysteries of God.
There are then souls which become so advantaged and arranged, and so subtle, that they receive all Grace and Graces through the agency of one gracious being, as light converges in the prism, and to them it is therefore given to know Beatitude in the form of the Burden of Grievous Love. This is the highest Beatitude when it is also recognized, and always is so, that the Grace of God is also shining in that beloved convergence.
But there are souls of saints so vastly desirous, and so disparate and warm, which receive the Graces everywhere in everything at every moment, as if they themselves were prisms and all light converged to meet there, and in them the recognition is a Beatitude as well, the Beatitude in the form of saintly Love.
For the self is dead, and it were not meet, nor avowable, to trace one’s gracious Graces themselves outward flowing, whereat Beatitude which is the knowledge of the receivership of Grace, cannot enter.
All souls are dead, but all souls receive, and all souls give.
And so the love of a being, as described, is Beatitude, but the love of the being’s substantial flesh is but a Grace, for the spirit cannot enter and be humbled. It is therefore so that the soul is dead without Beatitude.
God is the Master of Grace who does dispense his gifts to the senses of beast and plant, and he is the Keeper of Man dispensing the Beatific Light.
Bliss—[of Tony Smith in On the Road]
Bliss then follows, when the recognition of Beatitude becomes as the recognition of the Saint seeing all things proceeding from the Source, and without cavil enduring all things in this Light. To cavil is human, and to cavil is to bray and judge and divide matter, whereby Bliss is not possible, or that is to say, the Bliss of Saints is not possible.
Bliss is also the condition of the Imbecile and the child, particularly that of the Imbecile.
When shall the Imbecile show our faces?
The most evil of men is he who gloats among others when the Imbecile walks forth, moaning.
For the soul is dead.
And the serpent incheth . . .
: —Riddles— :
ONE has come among us that ate our blood last night as we slept and is now flying in the air like an airplane, and will die next week. But this is an easy riddle.
Out of Singapore, at Tanjong Katong, lives a mosquito in a tree.
The wood has numbers.
The transparence is dimmed by ashes.
My key has a sign.
[ANSWERS:—The mosquito ate our blood, and buzzes in the air, and will die in the first cold snap.
The wood that has numbers is my ruler.
The transparence dimmed by ashes is my ashtray.
My key which has a sign is my typewriter key.]
In these endeavors I seek to come close to the meaning and secret of ambiguity . . . which is “madness,” and also our sadness.
I have seen an entire land turn from green to red.
The words you addressed me reached me by means of violent fires and explosions.
I lie prone in the embrace of the Scriptures.
[ANSWERS:—The land that turned from green to red did so when I looked at another map of Arizona. The words reach me through the air mail, an airplane getting motion from the rapid combustion in the piston cylinders. In the Scriptures my poem lies between the pages, prone.]
Answer this:—
Who is it from whose source of life flows blood, yet lives and laughs?
What is the beautiful sound that emanates from the house of the angels?
How may I encompass a star?
ANSWERS NEXT PAGE.
1. A young child whose mother is menstruating.
2. Church music, as a rule.
3. By creating a puddle of my own in which I can catch the reflection of any planet.
— A Sonnet Now —
When Summer softly strays my love afar, as always,
And turns with hope of home of Autumn dark;
When yet even Autumn hints of homeless lays,
And sighs at me with leaves and groaning bark,
And signs that even home will poorly cling,
When I then foresee old elusive Winter
Shall my Christmas quite deceive, and sense Spring
Again revolving with pretty talk of lover,
Then I see me wandering among the mockeries
And wonder if seasons think me so foolish
That I would not love just as eye sees,
In lieu of wily winks in all these trees and swish.
Moans they merely are in this old groan
Of all my loves, the rose-tree that’s mine own.
A FURTHER RIDDLE:—
A river that disappears not in the sea but in the antique bottom of the sea.
[ANSWER:—The Humboldt disappears in Carson sink, and even the Western desert was once the bottom of the sea.]
ANOTHER ONE:—
What is the bridge that bridgeth Bridget’s mind?
[ANSWER:—Her nose—] That is, her nose begins at the brow and terminates [TERMINALATES?] just above her mouth.
The number 729 is one of the holiest of all the heavenly numbers.
[The ANSWER to this riddle is presented as a riddle also:—
Because . . . Trinity times Trinity to the Trinity power multiplied by Trinity.
All the preoccupations of man have their source in fact, just as all the crimes of man are committed from out of a source of good:—hate is the fear that love has flown.
Who will go mad by the moon who never thinks of the moon?
Our artistic fancies are but modern versions of old moon-madness.
“Who moans?”
“Not I,—I groan.”
“Who groans?”
“ ’Tis I,—I lied.”
“Who moans and groans?”
“I cannot lie—I moan, I groan.”
“Who is the liar who moans and groans?”
“ ’Tis I, ’tis I, the liar who moans and groans.”
: —— :
To ride a railroad in the Indian Summer!—
In Indian Summer, the leaves are sadly scattered on the ground, there is no wind, and a heavy-hanging, old, misty moon’s up there. The still, dolorous leaves on carpets of earth, all crinkled; the yellow moon; the warm night of ferns. The ghost of summer returns, and quietly lingers awhile; his moans are in the distant winds that have yet to come. Then the ghost departs.
And winter surges up with stark announcements of his purpose. Dead leaves wither and crack.
Riddlic Verses
Tied, to dark-trod earth,
The trembling veil, ascending,
Rent.
Torn, tangled shroud
That the bloody weeper wore,
Go up.
Weary of the valley
His groaning fades below.
Veil of wraiths, loonar sprig,
From gruesome fens arise,
From the common skeleton earth
Go, from the Valley of the Roars
To the Vale of Airs,
And airily hint in Heavens.
Since kindness be the Venus-star
of friendship,
And that bright star doth light
the lowest hill,
May praise be worthy of
the highest good.
Nor deeper peer, nor know more,
Ere mere seething grow roar.
Aumônes!
Allmen!
Almoner!
Alms!
; Arms!
me!
Ahm!
Ahm jest bone, Ah groan alone.
“When I hear mine I moan.”
Tied, to dark-trod earth, alary veil, vole!
Ow!
Poem
Why all is so
In the bleakness of this realm
I, mortal, as yet still,
Do not know.
(The key is “as yet still.”)
For I’m beginning to know again.
The mortal realm is only waiting for us to do it.
What is more suggestive than “do it”?
We can all do it in the parlor,
Or do it in the air, anything,
Or do it anywhere, everything.
: —Rough Work on the Poem with A. G.— :
Pull my daisy,
Tip my cup,
All my doors are open.
All my doors
Cannot open
Lest you open yours.
Hear my songs,
Oh my bongos,
All my gongs are going.
Tit my tat,
Toll my doom,
Tuck my luck away.
Your noodle’s toodled,
Your heart’s all doodled,
A dirty old soul you’ve got.
Yet all this,
As we know,
Is just a goofy sorrow.
Oh dear Allen
Why do you
Make such crazy music.
Ling my lang,
Bang my dong,
Ling my banging lang-dong.
Root tee toot,
Just a fruit,
Bloot bloot tee bloot.
Ope my rosebush,
Pluck my thorns,
All my loves are there.
What’s the hex?
Who’s the hoax?
Where’s the axe?
How’s the hicks?
Who’s so hincty?
Itch to inch?
Bees woo who?
How sweetly the mind shrinks it.
Such bleakness man in infancy hath seen
A nuder think will change thee.
Waste of time is waste of sand.
The bee woos who?
Roosters’ hullaballoos.
Who woos bees?
Void-noises and eye-roses.
Boohoo’s busy goofing.
. . . The romance of time . . .
The depths of life
The crash of guitars.
The Simpleton’s Christmas
: —A 3-Act Play— :
Unalterable lines like: “I say:—be reasonable. Kind is kind.”
Who would speak like that?
The Simpleton Tony, 29, a shoeshine boy, French Canuck
His Sister, Clara, 31, an office girl
His Kid Sister
His friends
His girlfriends
His Lost Father
Time: The Anniversary of the Birth of Our Lord
Place: New York
Theme: All overtones of our Bleak Realm.
ACT ONE, Scene One—A Streetcorner
Enter Tony the Imbecile and a fellow Shoeshine Boy
Tony:—Then, when the angels saw the shepherds, they began to sing—“Hosannahs upon the King of Kings born this day Anna Domini Oleomargarine Amen!” The shepherds they raised their eyes to the sky, full of frights and crying—“O Lord, watch my little lamb on the mountainside.”
Boy:—So this is your corner.
Tony:—(Unpacking box of shine.) Watch our sheep; our sheep, our sheep.
And so on so,
And so and so . . .
The Simpleton finds great joy in the fact that all kinds of people all over N.Y. City celebrate Xmas, and keeps pointing that out to his bored friends. This is thus like the idiocy of the artist. “The peoples with the fur collar on Park Avenue; the peoples in the beer room on Tent Avenue—see?”
Plays I’ve seen—
My Heart’s in the Highlands, Saroyan 1939, with Frank Leahy
The Beautiful People, Saroyan 1940, alone
Native Son, Wright (Canada Lee) 1941, with Pa
Flight to the West, Rice (Betty Fields) 1941 with Pa
Crime & Punishment, Dostoevsky (Gielgud) 1948, alone
Red Gloves, Sartre (Boyer) 1949, with Holmeses
Hamlet, Shakespeare (Evans) 1939, with H.M. class
Further Notes on “The Simpleton’s Christmas”
A Canuck, Tony speaks like old “Zouzou” Gene Paquette in Lowell.
It is only the simpleton who lives as though an angel had just appeared announcing he has but one hour to live—and embraces life: yet, by that very token, sees little difference between good and evil (?)—at least, Tony. Life as the last hour.
Notes of 1950 February
[Richmond Hill]
On the Road is my vehicle with which as a lyric poet, as lay prophet, and as the possessor of a responsibility to my own personality (whatever it rages to do) I wish to evoke that indescribable sad music of the night in America—for reasons which are never deeper than the music. Bop only begins to express that American music. It is the actual inner sound of a country.
There are saints, and there are scholars; and the difference is always there. Absorbing and/or avoiding.
In Denver last summer all I did was stare at the plains for three months, for reasons, reasons.
There’s a noise in the void I hear; there’s a vision of the void; there’s a complaint in the abyss—there’s a cry in the bleak air; the realm is haunted. Man haunts the earth. Man is on a ledge noising his life. The pit of night receiveth. God hovers over in his shrouds. Look out!
More than a rock in my belly, I have a waterfall in my brain; a rose in my eye, a beautiful eye; and what’s in my heart but a mountainside, and what’s in my skull; a light. And in my throat a bird. And I have in my soul, in my arm, in my mind, in my blood, in my bean a grindstone of plaints which grinds rock into water, and the water is warmed by fires, and sweetened by elixirs, and becomes the pool of contemplation of the dearness of life. In my mind I cry. In my heart I think. In my eye I love. In my breast I see. In my soul I become. In my shroud I will die. In my grave I will change.
But enough poetry. Art is secondary.
Plaintiveness is all.
(In my sleep I referred to myself, in French, not as a “writer” but as arrangeur—he who arranges matters; at the same time, I associated this function with eating supper (manger). I woke up to remember this.)
FEB. 1—A night at the opera with Bob & Kelly. A banquet for 300 millionaires. Gene Tunney was there. Afterwards Birdland with Neal; champagne in the lounge of the Yale Club. The past month of January has been crazy . . . beginning New Year’s Eve with that fantastic party that ended for me in Princeton, N.J. and the Lyndons. A thousand swirling things all untold.
FEB. 7—Tonight I mused & worked simultaneously on four major projects . . . Road, Sax, Simpleton and a juvenile football novel (the latter may be major only in terms of $). (Altho kids in Lowell read it avidly when I wrote it at 17.) Busy day & night. I realize now that if I feel like it, any moment I may start camping and decide to be bored & depressed, just for a change. And that’s what that is, or anything. Tonight I wrote the “serpent of evil” poem . . . “all three sighed the sigh of life, and the serpent inched.” Needless to say, I also cramm’d my “Rain & Rivers” travelbook further. That makes five projects in all . . . in today’s fine range. One of those far-seeing days, when you’re your own great-statesman of personal history, and see it all like a prophetic protocol . . . within the dreamlike bleakness.
FEB. 10—Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger is an undiscussed masterpiece, in some ways more profoundly all-inclusive than Melville’s last-work masterpiece (as The Stranger is Twain’s)—Billy Budd. “Life is a dream,” says Twain’s beautiful Satan, but it is said in a context more terrible than anyone’s befo
re. “You are but a vagrant thought wandering forlornly in shoreless eternities.”—and—“All the dream-marks are there.”
Last night—party at Varda’s, to which I took Adele; later, party at Holmeses, which I left and won’t return. Adele and I had wonderful warm hours together. The other night, at Neal’s birthday party, I also felt like not returning. Next month I’m off with my new map; don’t know where.
FEB. 13—Still yet further expansions of On the Road occurred tonight as I walked home from a Times Square movie in a sleet-storm. All along I’ve felt Road was not enough for a full-scale effort of my feelings in prose: too thin, too hung up on unimportant characters, too unfeeling. I have the feelings but not the proper vehicle as yet . . . unless this “works,” as I imagine it might if I develop things properly.* Consider: a man wandering on the road in search of his lost daughter, for the wife of his youth is dead and he has lost his kingdom moreover. Just archetypical, in essence, as that. The man has just come from a 3-year stretch connected with narcotics and an unpleasant homicide—“innocent in his complicity.” This is no Red Moultrie kid, but a real man of feelings & tragedy. The prison term has ruined his former high position in the world. His wife has died. The daughter has run away wild at fifteen and is somewhere in America. He wants to find her because he loves her, and because he is certain through apprehension and experience that she needs his help. Like an Angel Detective he follows her clues through city after city, beat & destitute, till he finds her. He wants to recall the “Love of God” to her heart, and is intelligent enough to know he himself is not far from that “God.” But he is also intelligent to her true benefit, and offers to marry to give her a home (he has chosen a woman en route) after finding her desolate in the sordid hipster nights. This is like my own present mission . . . strangely . . . and not so strangely.
I wish to call him by another, new name I never thought of to date.
He is no old man, properly—and perhaps was even a ballplayer recently, and once a jazz musician. How should I know? What does it matter? The MAN will stand without accoutrements. I will re-read Carlyle—am now reading Tolstoy & Dostoevsky.