gold, glass and hair
“His face was hidden behind gold, glass and hair; his very teeth were invisible behind the bushy drooping of his mustache. The maiden looked straight into the emptiness of the lenses of his prince-nez. . . .”
—Alfred Jarry, The Supermale, translated by Ralph Gladstone & Barbara Wright, New Directions 18, 1964.
the light from another world
“Dawn was breaking, like the light from another world.”
—Alfred Jarry, The Supermale, translated by Ralph Gladstone & Barbara Wright, New Directions 18, 1964.
looking at a peach for 20 minutes
“I didn’t keep a peyote diary & am writing from memory
there were times when I felt little—i’ll describe the high spots
colors were much brighter & richer when I was high
bright color was the main effect on my senses
everything looked exciting and beautiful, & that made me happy
looking at a peach for 20 minutes I was most fascinated, not by the brightred part of the skin but by the subtle changes of tint in the paleyellowgreen part
objects, for example a garbagecan, had an intrinsic visual significance that had nothing to do with words, attractive
the more i looked at one thing the more it interested me
a friend, high, didn’t recognize a familiar street because there was so much she hadnt seen before
it was not like “normal” seeing, where you dully register only what has a, usually false, relation to “practical” purposes
i saw the bright colors reflected from the oil in flying pigeon feathers
the colors must have been there before but i didnt notice them
on peyote you notice everything that can be sensed, without effort
sitting in my store, i saw there is no color white
my white walls were yelloworange from lightbulbs & there was a strong green from the old coat of paint
an eyechart had an unusual quality like old chinese manuscripts because the paper had yellow-browned a bit from age”
—Jack Green, peyote, newspaper #8, 1959; The Beats, edited by Seymour Krim, 1960.
I love Mickey Mouse
“Girls bored me—they still do. I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I’ve ever known.”
—Walt Disney.
Advertising is dead
“Advertising is dead, design is the new advertising.”
—Marc Gob’ of marketing expert Desgrippes Gob’, New York, on the “Jesus machine,” the new iPhone, at Timesonline, July 1, 2007.
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.