by Jack Kerouac
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AND NOW LOOK, IN 1943 I dug the meaning of the sea when I called it my brother, the sea is my brother—Now it’s up to tomorrow if I go at once—on the great ship, Den’s round-the-world cargo ship, my destiny—I want to watch along the Nile and the Ganges—In any case now I am alone. Sin is sinking in my bones and making me older and wiser. But I’m only wiser to the wise men—my children grieve for me. Weep for me, weep for anybody, weep for the poor dumbfucks of this world—weep for the waves—weep, weep—now my eyes begin a voyage from which I am going to return resurrected and huge and silent. So I packed all night, just desk papers, and that’s the horrible sad thing—my dark glasses of the hospital, okay (given to me by jovial veterans’ committees); my reading glasses twelve dollars when I sold my book; my machine shrouded now for good, I can’t take it with me, I remember the day it came home on Sarah Avenue when Pop lost his business and I started right in with stories about Bob Chase owner of the New York Chevies and typed up the summer league (Gulf, Tydol, those namelessly sunlit names on purpose, Texaco, refinements of sunlight in each one, dissipating in the refinement of sunlight in the entire operation of the league); that machine, that the poor spastic flayed, and now everybody knows it from H from the C, that machine my father himself wrote on, editorials, letters (the trouble with life is that it has its own laws and controls the souls of men without regard for their least wish, and this is slavery); my Harcourt ad that Deni Bleu proudly wants and will see tomorrow (and how will Deni receive me now?); my little erasers, the round one which I’ll bring, the soft straight one which I’ll leave, all this matters to me like State, it’s vaster than Assemblies; the poor pipe (Pop’s) and pipe rack I can never use again, which is reminder of change (no more smokes) more than anything else in my tragic coffin of a desk tonight: O the child of the Phebe livingroom with his first vision of the marbles, did he come to live just to be buried? (this desk actually an old Faulknerian desk from a Southern mansion, Nin and Luke birthday gift 1950, when birthdays were birthdays and not anniversaries of guilt and culpritude); the sales slip, Ma had just bought me new crepesole shoes for home here and now I have to lay them down on foreign ground when she had intended them for Radio City or her first pitiful sight of U.N. building; Lord please protect your tender lambs! if you can’t do that then bless them, bless them—my blue Eversharp pencil also from hospital, with which I started that great diary that temporarily saved me and started the international spectral and now lost Duluoz of the Dolours; a bundle of recent letters, tied, with pathetic messages from the good hearts of the world including June and it’s as though I was battling black evil birds tonight and not anything human, something that the Devil sends, not the world, and the great black bird broods outside my window in the high dark night waiting to enfold me when I leave the house tomorrow only I’m going to dodge it successfully by sheer animalism and ability and even exhilaration, so goodnight—
And to go on and I meant to tell everything about my departure, only way to do it one by one the haunting things of this breathing life—Roy Redman of Clyde Lines, who is a curly colored guy working as attendant at Kingsbridge V.A. Hospital and reminds me not powerfully etc. but exactly of my sister in his every bemused method of, say, watching television, forgetting what you just said, the same lips too (nothing feminine ’bout him at all and especially nothing Uncle Tom Negro) and who was one of the hardtime organizers of the N.M.U. back in the Depression when seamen were bums to be attacked by cops on old inky waterfronts of early Pathé Newsreels and you saw clubs flying, well you saw this Roy Redman, he signs his name “Red” with quotes, and in parenthesis, like this, (Clyde Line)—he wrote me a letter of introduction to the VP-president of N.M.U., beginning “This will serve to introduce to you a very good friend of mine, Jack L. Duluoz. I will consider it a personal favor to me if you can see your way clear to extend any courtesy or consideration within your power to him. Please accept my good wishes and in memory of old times together, thank you, Yrs. very truly ‘Red’ Redman (Clyde Line)”—this courtly letter which is one of my greatest possessions may breeze me through the N.M.U. at a crucial moment tomorrow or Thursday—and it rings exactly the way he talks, slow, grave, certain, bemused, gum chewing. Everybody believed and trusted in Red at the hospital, just to see him sometimes you’d shiver joyfully in your chest especially if it was night and the fights were coming on in Television and everybody sat around, with Red, only for a moment off work, saying, “Who’s oan tab to-night?” with that very nameless drawl that he developed and took with him probably round the world ten times in the great night of ships and men that I will love if it’s full of Reds—and one dewy morning I observed him in a new light from the window of my ward by watching not him but other colored men coming in to work where they lost their Negro street personalities and became attendants, trying to imagine Red on the street in Harlem or wherever or even in Ralph Cooper’s hip nightclub, how he would carry himself in that great challenging parade which is the American Negro Sidewalk of the World. So there’s that letter of intro—and I’m taking with me the little tiny hand-sized Bible I stole from that Fourth Avenue bookstore in the used religious book section at the back because I thought the guy was a cheat in his bargainings with me over the exchange of new textbooks for used books, the Bible that I read only once or twice the print is so small and the big occasion was in Mexico City when in the incredibly warm glow of my lovely checker-cloth beside the soft goof lovely bed, well fed with midnight cheeseburgers from the Insurgentes lunchroom or just newly high, sitting on the edge of the bed for a moment before the sleeps that in Mex-City on T were never equaled in sheer sweetness and LOVE except on sleeping pills recently at Kingsbridge (in fact I dug Red Redman on goofballs, that is, just watched his face, many anight before I fell asleep in fleece), I was on that bed-edge maybe with a smidgin of sweet vermouth, maybe Sherman was high in his room or gone, but I happened to pick up this midget New Testament Bible and in my huge-hearted state of high love I saw the great words (at eight thousand feet above sea level!) and was so amazed with almost every sentence or that is line I saw that I felt attacked by words, overtaken by great blows of consciousness I should have absorbed a long time ago, realizations of Jesus I’d never dared before, Jesus as a prophet and his political necessities and positions as a prophet, including charmed and awed interpenetrations of the mystery of the Bible and especially of ancient Jewish need in rote, till I fell asleep, in balms, as I can no longer do for I’m now a man of the wide wide water and of strife, but then I thought about the fleecy lulls of the Eternal Lamb and so perhaps one stormy night in the Indian Ocean that I read about in old Argosy magazines of 1933 when I thought the sea had shrouds and heroes only, I’ll look at my little hand Bible, holding it over my face on the bunk, and a newer further diving into the awfulness and beauty of the Great Bible will happen to me—(Behold, your house is left unto you desolate)—Oh so!—I’m taking that with me, and the little tattered red French dictionary sitting under it in my poor rolltop cubbyholes, I’ll need it in Marseilles and Le Havre and Algiers and to read Genêt—What kind of journey is the life of a human being that it has a beginning but not an end?—and that it gets worse and worse and darker all the time till time disappears?
And for Den I have a surprise, his white silk scarf that he forgot at Lionel’s that night last Spring when Lionel and I imitated Alistair Sims for the girls from the office, Janie, Alice, Lola, and the great young kid Sid, and Den showed up with that sour seaman whom I am going to see tomorrow and in fact called three times in the past two days always fearful of what he really thinks of me and actually what I’ve got to do is not care what he thinks and indicate that to him somehow or he will undoubtedly try to hip Deni wrong to me, though because my lot is now Deni’s if we sail together or even later the seaman his friend is a friend of mine, “any friend” etc. I’m going to present Den his scarf. O reader just follow me blindly into the hell and gone! And for blazing sea days I’m bringing my new dark gla
sses in their white plastic case, the glasses I won at the hospital in the carnival where you couldn’t lose and I haven’t used them much yet and still feel almost guilty (everything belongs to me because I am poor) when I consider that I flubbed off since the hospital when I didn’t have to as the calm immortal presence of those glasses indicate, glasses put together by careful workmen using parts gravely manufactured, and why does it reach my destructive hands?, I’m not taking my brown writing board that I found in a waste can here in Richmond last year on a walk—nor my briefcase, what do I need now with a briefcase!!!
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EN ROUTE TO STATEN ISLAND in the rainy dawn I walk rapidly on balls of my feet like a Cody heading for work and remembering Washington 1942 and other dawns when workmen stand in doorways, nothing else could have reminded me of a special series of going to work hot-eyes dawn and general strange manly sensation—passed Crossbay Boulevard a rainy green alley towards the sea, only saw it last minute looking up from Daily News, Ah me—Oh Lord—Now the gray rooftops of Brooklyn as I head for the ship that has been flying towards me in the night all night—Dawn lights in the kitchens of raw rickety outer Brooklyn—We make the same big famous curve (on El) that I first made June 1943 at a time when, twenty-one, I should have kept on going to sea, at a time when I thought I was old and had syphilis (warts)—When Pop was alive and would have been proud of my manly seagoing which only now almost nine terrible years later I acknowledge to his grave which is also under this great rain that extends in mist to the tragic rainfields of Nashua where my brother’s lost wails sleep and new autos roll in the slick road that I saw the day of his funeral 1926, year of Cody’s birth—The big ship at eight is due to be warped in at Pier 12 Army Base, the Pres. Adams—Tall, French, sad, whooping Deni Bleu will be standing among tangles of wires in the engine room when they inform him that chagrined J. D. waits outside four years too late after our agreements of 1947 in the fog and dark of Marin County that I’ll never forget and haven’t even begun to penetrate—(that’s for memory)—Brooklyn—a few scuddy clouds from the sea, a whip of rain, a smoke and all the beauteous, bottom-of-the-tank feeling of real life to which I now return amen.
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STATEN ISLAND, six million things inundating my brain—Sitting in the little diner outside Army Base, watching sharp Negro cats with suitcases, and Puerto Ricans with coats, taking quick shot drinks at bar, who’re cutting off the ship for kicks, maybe the Adams—a gray exciting Atlantic day again but now a wild one connecting me namelessly with Oakland and the time I went thereon Bay Bridge train for a reason I can’t remember—also when I was with Den, at Golden Gate track, back across the land to here, Staten Island, to which I just arrived in the wild ferry where I chatted with a tanker seaman and dug planks and flotsam in water remembering the danger I faced foolishly in summer 1943 when I dove off the stern of the George S. Weems to keep cool—the same waters where corpses floated—a ferry in the grayness making you realize what a mad mind Jack London had (strictly as a guy)—sitting in the window of diner across gate to make sure Den doesn’t slip into New York—the Puerto Rican left, headed for two days of kicks in East Harlem fucking gone girls on Oriental bedcovers and eating yellow rice and beans con polio, the colored guy he’ll whoop at the Palm Café, these guys the sharpest workers in the world, more, say, than Cody, because traveling, and I am here in same moodway as Cody, fast, talk to everybody, no “dignity,” speed, kicks (I only know, that is, I strictly know what I know and that’s why sketching is not for my secret thoughts—my own complete life, an endless contemplation, is so interesting, I love it so, it is vast, goes everywhere—) And this gray day as I wait and pray for that world ship is the same that gloomily unfolded in Ozone Park and Brooklyn as I came over—but now it has gulls, wild hungers, voices of workers, figures crossing rainy supply dumps with umbrellas, black wires, poles, masts of ships, black forms of all kinds, a call from across the world and from the great gray mist of America and American things and wild smoke of boy headed for prepschool but so much more.
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BROWN HALLS OF MEN—now by God many hours and events later I am finally entrenched in the vision that I re-discovered my soul with, the “crowded events of men” only now it’s me, myself smack in it—at the moment, flush because I’m going to start earning within a matter of hours I’m having a huge fifteen cent beer in a bar off the waterfront but a brown businessman’s bar and at the hem of the financial district with Emil-like fathers and men drinking at long bar—I say “brown” bar not in jest, red neons or pink ones too shine in the smoke and reflect off dark browned panels, the beer is brown, tabletops, the lights are white but embrowned, the tile floor too (same mosaics as the barbershop in which I had visions of Cody staring). Now what I’m going to do is this—think things over one by one, blowing on the visions of them and also excitedly discussing them as if with friends as I did last night joyously drunk in the West End (see actually I’m not old and sick at all but the maddest liver in the world right now as well as the best watcher and that’s no sneezing thing)—signs for Guinness Stout are namelessly brown—I’m sitting in the backroom so as to think but I’m in the whole brown bar and one of the men—All day I’ve been amazed by the fact that I’m a man and have the right to work for a living and spend my money as I see fit—I guess I’m finally growing up—amazed with for instance the union meeting in the brown hall of Marine Cooks and Stewards especially the big mad colored cat cook who got up and blew a crazy speech that was like a tenor horn in its wild jump and pitches but of course compared to other speeches infinitely more real and joyous especially when he kept saying “Frisco, Frisco” and that is my mad dream, I want (I’ll do anything) to be on a ship that sails out of Frisco that supra-marvelous city of brown bars and smoke and men and S.I.U. white-capped seamen’s halls and Cody and Buckle, the principals of the Denver poolhall, and Frisco pool-halls themselves, the whole wild world of men in crazy smoky places including the M.C.S. Puerto Ricans who take us back past Adam and Eve to meetingplaces of the great Latin night that I dug in MexCity—Now, I’m going to be interested in these things all my life but in order to really involve myself as a man on the other level of man-to-man communication I’m also going to talk about these things with people if I can, like for instance Deni’s beautiful story last night about the assistant electrician who got off the Adams and is now replaced by wonderful goodnatured simple Joe-like guy (a few beers gives a man the power to think like I’m doing but too many robs you of the rest)—I’m going to talk about these things with guys but the main thing I suppose will be this lifelong monologue which is begun in my mind—lifelong complete contemplation—what else on earth do I really know unless I’m depriving myself of kinds of knowledge that would bring out those qualities in me which are most valuable to others; not me, although I keep thinking what’s good for me is equally good for any of my intelligent friends—Last night in the West End Bar was mad, (I can’t think fast enough) (do need a recorder, will buy one at once when the Adams hits New York next March then I could keep the most complete record in the world which in itself could be divided into twenty massive and pretty interesting volumes of tapes describing activities everywhere and excitements and thoughts of mad valuable me and it would really have a shape but a crazy big shape yet just as logical as a novel by Proust because I do keep harkening back though I might be nervous on the mike and even tell too much). These two days—well first, Deni did come out to meet me (after those last thoughts in the lunchcart across the wire fence, recall?) (now hear this Jack: the S.S. Pres. Adams has red lifesavers on a white rail, at night the water is dark behind them as you look from an eventful cabin of smoke, drink and talk through the porthole, and the lifesavers say San Francisco against these dark piers of the world, for Frisco and as I say about that Negro cook, is really the port of ports and for this therefore I’m almost ready to decide to sail at least one four-month run on deck, as ordinary seaman, though I have a job waiting for me in the morning as bedro
om steward on another ship, West Coast company but bound for France)—Now events of this moment are so mad that of course I can’t keep up but worse they’re as though they were fond memories that from my peaceful hacienda or Proust-bed I was trying to recall in toto but couldn’t because like the real world so vast, so delugingly vast, I wish God had made me vaster myself—I wish I had ten personalities, one hundred golden brains, far more ports than are ports, more energy than the river, but I must struggle to live it all, and on foot, and in these little crepesole shoes, ALL of it, or give up completely. Now, outside this bar is a little park, I shall sit there, high (on myself) watching the last of the Wall Street blue lights in high windows, remembering the dream of me as a seaman walking right by these nameless lights where a man bends over a blueprint to visit a girl that I fuck, and actually I did that exact thing in 1944 when getting my Coast Guard pass for the run to Italy on the Holt Johnson and was embedding my beautiful prick in the beautiful soft, wet between-legs slam of Cecily Wayne and coming with a bulging head. Now life is great and tremendous and beautiful; here at twenty-nine I feel like an old sick man; but time has come for me to build myself up again; and I will; and I am happy for the first time in a long time. Picked up my last sixteen dollars at work today, phooey. I can make one run round the world on the Adams as O.S. deck (the same dark ship that to me came flying in the night like Blake’s worm) and then somehow, in Frisco port, switch to messman if I can, if not, switch to mess on another ship. The true story of merchant seamen is not only their drunks in ports, and adventures, and their work, but the huge universe of their complicated conversations in Union Halls about ships in, ships out, papers, ferries, validations, dues, wives, beefs, passes, tricks, being late, being early, you know. (more later on that)—