kohl from the market place
“She was now in Morocco visiting the baths with the native women, sharing their pumice stone, and learning from the prostitutes how to paint her eyes with kohl from the market place. ‘It’s coal dust, and you place it right inside the eyes. It smarts at first, and you want to cry; but that spreads it out on the eyelids, and that is how they get that shiny, coal black rim around the eyes.’”
—Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love, 1959.
his red lollipop
“[T]he director . . . seems pleased; he sucks on his red lollipop.
I begin to wonder or that is realize about his red lollipop; at first I thought it was a whistle; and then a gadget; and then an eccentricity; and then a gag; and then a plain lollipop that happens to be on location; the Director with the Lollipop, he gets his ideas better by suddenly lifting it to his lips, in the glare of kleigs, at a moment when the crowd expects him to do something else, so that they’re all arrested and bemused and made to comment about the lollipop.”
—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.
Looking at a man in the eye
“What is it now, that a well-dressed man who is a plumber in the Plumber’s Union by day, and a beat-dressed man who is a retired barber meet on the street and think of each other wrong, as the law, or panhandler, or some such cubbyhole identification, worse than that, things like homosexual, or dopefiend, or dope pusher, or mugger, or even Communist and look away from each other’s eyes with great tense movements of thier neck muscles at the moment when their eyes are about to meet in the normal way that eyes meet on the street. . . . Looking at a man in the eye is now queer. Why else should you be looking a m. in the e.”
—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.
the brown sluggish old Neuse River
“I want to stretch a pretty girl with soft lips who maybe usherettes on Sundays at a B-movie on Main Street, or whichever street that is, over a sandy old lousy bed in a fishing shack along the brown sluggish old Neuse River, and lay her.”
—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.
the redbrick wall behind the red neons
“With the coming of the suit and this adult gesture, Cody’s life in Denver entered a second phase, and this one had for its background, its prime focal goal, the place to which he was forever rushing, . . . nothing less and nothing more than the redbrick wall behind the red neons: it was everywhere in Denver where he went and everywhere in America all his life . . .”
—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.
a brown businessman’s bar
“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 feathers 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 . . .”
—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.
the great black bird
“. . . 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”
—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.
dream golden
“This movie house of mine in the dream has got a golden light to it though it is deeply shaded brown, or misty gray too inside, with thousands not hundreds but all squeezed together children in there diggin the perfect cowboy B-movie which is not shown in Technicolor but dream golden . . .”
—Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.
a silver light far up in the sky
“I think it must have been just after ten in the morning when I saw a silver light far up in the sky. A brilliant flash of silver. That’s right, it was definitely light reflecting off something metal. That light moved very slowly in the sky from east to west. We all thought it had to be a B-29. It was directly above us, so to see it we had to look straight up. It was a clear blue sky, and the light was so bright all we could see was that silver, duralumin-like object.
But we couldn’t make out the shape, since it was too far up. I assumed that they couldn’t see us either, so we weren’t afraid of being attacked or having bombs suddenly rain down on us. Dropping bombs in the mountains here would be pretty pointless anyway. I figured the plane was on its way to bomb some large city somewhere, or maybe on its way back from a raid. So we kept on walking. All I thought was how that light had a strange beauty to it.”
—Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore, translated by Philip Gabriel, 2005.
A deaf composer
“‘A deaf composer’s like a cook who’s lost his sense of taste. A frog that’s lost its webbed feet. A truck driver with his license revoked. That would throw anybody for a loop, don’t you think? But Beethoven didn’t let it get to him. Sure he must have been a little depressed at first, but he didn’t let misfortune get him down. It was like, Problem? What problem? He composed more than ever and came up with better music than anything he’d ever written. I really admire the guy. . . .’”
—Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore, translated by Philip Gabriel, 2005.