Visions of Cody

by Jack Kerouac

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  I DON’T THINK I KNOW much about this here Ravenswood of the woman with the silk scarf…. You see, though you might have it in your mouth you can never save it there; so don’t hide your money in your mouth. Is that what I meant to say? It reminded me, excuse it please, of a movie I saw with Alan Ladd, “Blue Something Or Other,” flame, or fame, or scame, or shame, or Mame, (Mama), an old lawyer with his frazzled jowls fixed on his stick and spotted bear hands, cirrhotic, if I believe rightly, but in the Alan Ladd I had started to expo(und)(ose), the radio was blaring in the bright L.A. morning of the motel when the landlady cut up with her mop ’n’ skirts and saw the dead body of the night before on the floor—says I, “The dead body of the night before on the floor.” My father was Popeye, he smoked his pipe by the docks where the paper moon rose and “remember, please, hip, signals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, remember, if, pardon, if, if, you, will, or not, or whichever, simple enough, the good lawyer (you’ll improve boy, you’ll improve) (shouldn’t have played with that percocicle) ‘with the passing of parochial time’ ‘refuse the error’ ‘upturn the eras’ ‘call out the natural guard’ ‘hip hope hype mope’ ‘the nazi youth’ ‘the thing is’ ‘solved’ ‘you merely’ ‘give off’ ‘a little’ ‘british’ ‘snufff’ ‘at’ ‘SNUFFY SMITH! that’s his name!’”

  SR. Ahem (Coughing in the church)

  ALTAR BOY. Tedoom te dieum

  SR. Mono-lo-o-go-lo—(fading away like a song across the vasty pews)

  ALTAR BOY. Kiria (snaps the smokepot)

  SR. (himself coughing) (in a low tone)—eh weyondon, il faut saccotez

  dans un moment comme ca? Arrete…parlez…tu sais, bien tu sais, mon vieux, a tarra ecri un let si tu larra lasse faire la pauvetit maudite comme quelle eta belle et tabarnac shi shpa capable faire ca dans l’derriere et fre mon the priest talked to himself in a secret and inton-allish and intonatitativeyene monotonesky la music la musique la belle mais arrete donc il faut arretez un moment? and so on with himself

  ALTAR BOY. Ekara-doo-rioom?

  SR. (creaking in a joint) Paradoorium, etabooriumbum, bum boom-bum, etara, metaradelaramarea, cest impossible de setangler je veus dire se desetangletai ben mudout coung on thwiey skehe long ague she jeiipeout, echrie and, Francie pare idl thsomc e failt tna dh elEndlgn, but emeie the ejeu—

  (Speaking from the deck of a steamboat through a funnel, W. C. FIELDS, It seems to me…)

  Shifting locks, ADERIANDE. (cool on the purple iron butt of a Civil War Horse in the middle of Annapolis Navy) Cefrantus! By mires, and anon the, but you have to get real high before you can blow any kind of a program, man, so listen to me there’s nothin better in this big t—woops, now the typewriter’s gone, it’s thickening tremendously, Allen Swenson and Christopher and all that, well I swow I don’t understand this matter in the slightest least, although I just was about to say I must say this thing is going to get us down unless we do something about it immediately don’t you think, unless you’d rather I didn’t bother at all, or else, if you wish, and I won’t hold it against you the least minute, now really I won’t, I wouldn’t fan your father, would I now my dear old Sally would I fan your feather, now I don’t think it’s necessary to repeat fan your feather, again, that is, I can see from up here Olympianly that the jeiipeout is working again and so therefore you may resume your regular exlax. Not that I would object, (spoke up the big woodsman who now, with snouts of iron around his snot comes tripping gaily to kill us, ENVER by name) how now, yea, not that I would object.

  MAN ON SOAPBOX IN UNION SQUARE. Now wait a minute ladies and genmean today I went into a stoh on Union Square street over dere on Fourteenth Street and I bought a hotdog mit sauerkrauten and had some softies ice cream on a cone and drank a cococunt Coke all for a nickel and a kick me a dime, move back there buddy, keep the kids out of this, here’s what I’m gonna do, now wait a minute podnerrrrrrrr…

  GARY COOPER attendant to TOM MIX (the languid grape and I have kissed in the mix, the flaming grape), who sits shaving from a coffee cup): I say Tom, do you—not that I’d had mentioned it before if you hadn’t, ah, seen that from the very first, you, ah, ahem, of course, no, but, ah, as, or in case—you know, here’s what it is, now I—listen to me, I, listen to me, now listen to me, now listen to me, I can certainly damn fuckingwell tell you, I was there, was you there M-a-a-a?

  OWLHORN MOUNTAIN SKI INSTRUCTOR. (in multilapeled multilateral coloured mooseskin harveststacksack, with pendant boins, or boigns, as properly spelled, and moody rubies in his hyar): By sooth and foreskin.

  REEL TWO. Charlie Chaplin twinkling in an early morning dew, by a garden wall, just as big Two-Time Butch is about to heave a pail of cold water over the wall.

  MOLDY MARIE. She was an usherette at the Rialto Theater, Lowell, Mass., she used to mop up the ladies’ room after we gangbanged her daughter Filthy Mary in there all night, why you could go to the theater any afternoon and get a handjob just by asking the usher at the door “Where’s Filthy Mary?” and he’d say “Oh she’s sittin in the backseat with Gartside there getting a blow job up or something—”

  “You mean handjob? You don’t think Filthy Mary would try a blow-job in the afternoon?”

  “Sure, why in the hell not, what’s wrong with a blowjob in the afternoon—you think I got seven jaws for nothin?”

  That’s what I heard him say, and I went down to the front row to see the movie a minute before checking back on the activities of our one and only, our perfect girl, Filthy Mary; and from the front row I of course (and now when I was a very little boy I think my first picture, in other words the first movie I ever saw, I think was a Tom Mix movie with him, white hatted and in fact so snowy in it that in the general rain of that muddy movie screen California he glowed like a glowworm, and synonymous to all that seeing him all leaping across rainy shacks on a robe and landing on maniacs in the dark…I was afraid to stick my hand out in the dark until I was twenty-nine years old, oh I’d say twenty-nine years and such, not thirty, if not thirty, or lotsa thirty, well that’s a lotsa lots, but I’d venture to guess, at the most, or least, twenty-nine years and ten months and twenty-nine days, that’s how old I am today, or maybe just a day or more later than that, but later gater, I’m cuttin a caper, and hear me daddy, waitin for you all day long while I slave over my hot stove till you get home from work, fum work you motherfucker and give me a great big fuck against the stove and I throw up my old dress for you anywhere daddy over in back of the barn ennytime you say daddy, or you come in back behind the haystack tonight at eleven or seben o’clock and I fix you up fine, daddy, I pump you dry and fuck the ass off you, what’s the matter with you, I fuck you all the time, daddy, whyfor you don’t come and fuck lil old me, I ain’t afraid of the dark, I teach you how t’fear the dark, down here in New Orleans we got all kinds voodoos, and hoodoos, and hoodsoodoodoos, too, but we ain’tsa worried about that ’cause my daddy tell my daddy what the Lord said last night, and the ladies convene and forfirm it, and we all go and make it across the young blue light of the fine dimensions aof the ehekdie kdhdke ashout, thbut and eyou kdht thekkk, there was no real interruption there or anything but the pour pour pure mechanical faculties and fear, natural, of making noise, amen.

  * * *

  “WHEN I WAS IN THE DARK that roach pipe was stolen from my hand.” “Then why did you ask the question to yourself? What are you up to, Charley?”

  “I can’t do anything till I figure out how I could have lost that thing in the dark, I distinctly remember leaving this chair with it in my hand, but now I see by lamplight that it’s not on the couch, nor in the vicinity of the chair, so where, whyar, wheair, wheayerheheheoeoeoeo can it be? (Imitating Milton Berle.) On the vaudeville stage stood two little comedians; in the front row sat a blond; look at ’er, said the first comic; I’m ‘avin her now, I’m ‘aivin no I’m ‘avin ’er now, that is it, with the britishaccent, I have it, yes, that’s right, go ahead and forget what you were saying, if you can’t remember, crack, go ahea
d, head, creak, crack, crack your head, head; go crack your head in a crack; go crack your head in a craggy rack; go crack your head in the bone yard rack; go crack your head in the wild blue rack; ah ha, go and crack in your heed; go keed, find your head, crack it, it is found, now listen, kiddies, go crack your head I say in the mailhouse rack, oh yes, zoom, go crack your head in the hailstorm black, the maelstrom sack; go crack, go crack, the shroudy stranger is my brother, he’s the one who reached out his black hand in the dark and stole my roach pipe.

  Go crack your head in the heady dark; go find yourself another Monroe Starr to sit by swimmingpools with, ten years after he’s dead; go crack your head on a mountain top, go find the blonds with the smelly old cunts just like Cody always says gar bless his old little ole hide that rin the thar rhide whoops whelap crack dhkeyr whoops aht the maggie and jiggs are running third and fourth but there are indications that other things will soon aoccur by whih lookout she’s coming back again where all liable to get killed around dhere and di fyou don’t wash out an dkwhekek dhowowh but now I lost it again who wdra ahlow hdjo w drat it that I should have lost out again like happy old Yeaths now I saw one thing about yea y old Yeats and I say that he is a great man because he learned how to write oatutomatically at the behest of little (gragahest?) ghosts just like james mason wants it but I say and the only thing is you’ve got to explain yourself clearly or not at all.

  So they sell corn in dusty side streets; the paisans sink in the purple ground, the sun is the color of wine, the goats whine, the bellies fatten, the kern and the herd and the isle in the reeds and the paddies of day, all recline, in kind; and eventide is come upon old Mexico. Far across the valley they’re blowin up the last of the hell’s volcanoes through a hole in the ground so big I ain’t never even had the nerve to go and look, but I will soon as I round up a return safari; but I’m saying (move back, it’s not rainin under the marquee here, damn, Curtis Street is cold and and gray in the winter!) boom O crash, (inside throughts, then, I mean thoughts, boom O and all that, those were but by God I had a voice then, I won’t hang up you, go on, well, he said, I just thought, like the little blubbery gubbery guy in the movies with the goopy lip and bald head and wet eyes know him? now think hard Americans of my generation! ahem, eek! Danny Kaye winds up in the—dash it all, I made a dash, I wanted to surprise the—booopy, goopym ain thksheye ehere eyd but I had nothing to do with it, so they sell corn in dusty side streets, sure that was a legitimate kick, why dint you guys let me go on talking then we wouldna got all hungup like this fornothin, crise, you guys think theres nothin to do a-round here but get yourself cunted left and right by wise guys. Listen, I’m no shittin—I know what you’re thinkin, in fact, thought about it a whole lots of times but I know it’ll only bore you—before we harken back—that you guys can do this, or harken by the laws of Macbeth, he with faded insubstanced gory form found ladies screeching in the ante ways, the chambers, in empurpled gowns they serried the dark clots of night with their musical…breasts. But he writhes, O how he writhes, the serpent writhes. Better than Eddy Arcaro, sports fans. Ted Williams batted .345 last year, thereabouts, didn’t do too badly, trouble with Williams is, he aint battin over .400 like he used to and seems to me he still could if it hadn’t been for that Williams shift which has ruined forever the real great day of the great great hitter, that’s what socked Williams down, he was disappointed because of that Boudreau shift that forever thereafter made it impossible for him to lambast that old pill with the same extraspecial gusto he used to so ably display in the old days of the bean and the cod, when Major Henry J. Funderhucks, Esq. but not a subscriber, ahem, (although it is reliable to say, that is, reliably brought to us and therefore feasible (feasament) to say, that, in sooth and par force, in English perforce, ahem, that, ah, we should indeed have found it so expedient upon ourselves at this happy moment of junctures and correct spellings but would also appeal to our other sensers of the grander day, when it was a well known fact that ballyhood old men living in blue barndoors with cuds of black wax in their fettered frowns and froward tits, would in some sooth, though not to exaggerate, as with the red nose of the bumkin lay, the day of the nay, when all the judgment did in Nile spring a deadly trap for the feze and zuwwing of the day, the Wuzzy, the Fearsome and vastest of its kingdom’s last thrall. At, and, ah, but, wait, that fosooth, and in fine, for why stop, and indeed it would be a most and infractuously ensipening pace to maintain as their are now off!—the motorgraws are off across the lake, growling in the pale, in the vale, a child’s melted ice cream, extreme, lies flogibating in the wet hot pavement of the afternoon upon which housewives angularly stalk with knockkneed dispairs; and so then, by the sands of the Cousiltalf, which was dutch before it became cleanser, there’s nothing easier than scholarship, all you have the damn wellard due you dull bottard you might get in dutch with the fore of the caster and easier? easier? did you say easier? I can see you, I can saw you out, Benvenuto Cellini (did I pronounce your name right?) in the middle of a real great floorshow out at Dagotown, where all us Wops con-gre-gate, gate, and pack our rods and teapots down there with which to make the soil grow, and so, and so, and so, and so, a rose is a rose is a rose, (I was tempted to add jess’ one’ more ‘but’ didn’t by gare.) I walked one time ankledeep in sea swamps and felt my toes nudge up against all kinds of crabs buried in the muck real deep, the deeper my foot sank the more I could feel all kinds of little sharp crabs gettin smaller and smaller as the mud is deeper and they don’t have to fight.

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  YOU THINK I WAS AFRAID OF THEM THERE MAWRDEGROOS in the muckeroo? (Whisper in the audience: Now he’s being gay. Answer: Oh, I see, I was wondering what it was all about but from the other side of your thought, my dear) (she gently squeezes his hand in the warm piffultarm of the pruf) wuw, I mean wuf, wuf wuf, or should I say, whoo whoo, or rather, say, woo-woo, go ahead, say woo-woo, woo woo! (this is a borrow parenthesitis) ungently unscrew the she from the hand that squeezes and let’s move on, piffultuffle, wuf, orshould I say, type, and let’s play basketball, because you must remember that you are fatteneeing on a sufsialcge of the kind, no not a fusilacge, but a real one, now listen all you nekdhd eto fearm she is the foun(dloli) (Obscure in meaning), but nevertheless as a printer’s son I feel obliged to say that this twaddle—shee—this twaddle—Sheee, plea, sir, plea, chiny towh, town, tow, how, ow, ow, wo, ow, now you done come up and madeitsuch a larger pefortating word that intha dorignal because by gare there my father he was drunk all the time jess like that I can’t understood and eand the feasome and coustiltalk and all those things you was atalking about before I came back from antientam, mm, taint, and found you (why are you hiding vremedeer?)—(they told me, they used to tell me, I was the cream of the coffee), leave me alone don’t spank me, out of the void, the unknown void, from the vulcan’s mouth, from the forge of earths, out of the black interior, the worlds well bottom, out of the deep dark mut, plut, fut and gut of sut and muck in the futted depths and peops and plops and peps of the juicy bottomed dryin briny wild ape dream deep of the formless days when of old the link and the koko made a ringing bellsound in the bottom of the pail and all the rooftapos male and femalo made noises of the slide and wide and however anybody ever tried to get around by ther eiwht al their broken endiements that well, and seeing it’s so, you would have said, or thought, well, I know, man, but you, see, when it comes time to do things you immediately pop up with some other damn some udder dam suggestion, damn your hide baby im gonna throu your ass outahere, right now, down the slide and in the sea and don’t break your tootsies in the broken glass, I lived in this seaside apartment before and I knew very well everything I damn well about it care to shittin ass know, yeah. It may occur to you and those who are not interested that I don’t care a damn what you’re doing because I’ll tell you why—I should like to make it plain to everyone that I am speaking from a pulpit, not bumming frojlike from a smockbox; asmock box, a smock box, that’s a box where the smocks is at, where the smock
s are hid, where you dig the smock, the smock is like a rock, the smock is great shit, smock it man, I’m smock pops, o smock you you smock, oh you mother smocker! Oh you tawdle socker! Oh you big Darine! Oh you mad baleen! Oh you craven tool! Oh you assturdal farting, or fartening; you, Oh you! Oh you mad bejawber, with your long tellover turning like in a—but now, cut it out, everybody breakit up, step back, we’re about to mod-die your coddles real well, move back little ones, big ones bend, ladies first, ass up, head head down, one, two, ready, whamp, give ’em a big kick in the ass I say, I used to work up at Weed, I wore a long black hat over my rocky jowl and jaw and facebone, I used to spit in the spittoons of Michigan Lake, up in the undiscovered north country of the Yuknon, tucson, the Yukon, Tucson, I won’t tolerate another m—but…in the mawrdegra of that year (unless you want to suck my big bad dick, jack) we had learned to farm without proper imm-plements due to difficulties arising from the fact that nobody ever did get to find out who was the big feller from Weed not afraid to kickpeople in the ass? Never did ask, did ya…ya damn fool, didn’t know you could get all oovered and sore from the scourge and sore of the great Natal Sore, the score is down, the moon doth rise, the frost is in the handkerchief, fufnik, and I’m ovff the of fht to verht eraces mayeslef kedkdi tin the same time that rintintin stole that wonder horse superchief the mighty oneclad pine tree with doublewords ringing in my head nowlike i was going to burst my oldtop well wheredo we return to the trick of the d no we missed again and but now, ah, ahem, cunt, hm, look, ah, country, Joanna.