the blue fences of the quilt night

“. . . the inconceivable joy that creams up in my soul at the thought of the little kid in the funnies under his blanket quilt at midnight New Year’s when thru the blue sweetness of his window in comes the bells and horn cries and honks and stars and slams of Time and Noises, and the blue fences of the quilt night are dewy in the moon . . .”

—Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax, 1959.

the jars of eternity

“Poor Doctor Sax stood drooped and sad at his forge works. The fire was blue, the blue cave roof was blue, everything, shadow was blue, my shoes were blue— . . .

I uprolled my sleeves to help Doctor Sax with the jars of eternity. They were labeled one after another with bright blue and obviously other colors and had Hebraic writing on them—his secrets were Jewish, mixed with some Arabic.”

—Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax, 1959.

HAL Sings “Daisy”

HAL Sings “Daisy”, digital photo by Paul Dean. Earlier this evening I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen at the Colony Theater, right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was well-attended but not too crowded, and excitement was in the air. I felt a tiny but definite chill as it ended, and contributed to the light applause. Afterwards, people hung around outside the theater as if we had experienced an event.

The Space Odyssey

The Space Odyssey, digital photo by Paul Dean. The “descent to Jupiter” was fantastic, of course. The movie went by much faster than I had expected. There was so much to be seen.

Diamonds

Diamonds, digital photo by Paul Dean. Stanley Kubrick was a frickin’ genius, and 2001 on the wide screen is proof.

Serenity

Serenity, digital photo by Paul Dean. An accident; I was testing the camera’s settings while watching the evening news with my dad.

the color of life

“I’m sitting in my mother’s arms in a brown aura of gloom sent up by her bathrobe—it has cords hanging, like the cords in movies, bellrope for Catherine Empress, but brown, hanging around the bathrobe belt— . . . old Chrismas morning bathrobe with conventional diamonds or squares design, but the brown of the color of life, the color of the brain, the gray brown brain, and the first color I noticed after the rainy grays of my first views of the world in the spectrum from the crib so dumb.”

—Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax, 1959.

brown mud water

“There were Saturday mornings when a muddy brown pool was joyous to the test of squatting kids . . . as dewy and mornlike as brown mud water can get,‘with its reflected brown taffy clouds’”

—Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax, 1959.

a red neoned candy store

“There was an alley downtown among the soft redbrick of Keith’s Theater and the Bridge Street Warehouse, with a red neoned candy store of antique Saturday nights of funnies still smeling of ink and strawberry ice cream sodas all pink and frothy with a dew on top . . .”

—Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax, 1959.

the rattling red livingroom

“. . . not long after that I dreamed the horrible dream of the rattling red livingroom, newly painted a strange 1929 varnish red and I saw it in the dream all dancing and rattling like skeletons because my brother Gerard haunted them and dreamed I woke up screaming by the phonograph machine in the adjoining room with its Masters Voice curves in the brown wood— Memory and dream are intermixed in this mad universe.”

—Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax, 1959.