Splice

I'm writing about a movie that came out a few years ago!  It was really, really cool.  From what it seemed to me, it got a bum rap and wasn't in theatres too long.  I can't seem to find the trailer that was originally on IMDB, the one they have when you click watch trailer plays it up more as a horror film.  That's too bad--but the trailer I saw split between--or spliced you may say--scenes of "Oh my God, what the hell is that?  It looks like it's about to kill somebody!" and the girl being clearly emotional distressed in an ET-ish fashion--like her holding Dren (the creature) while shouting something like "We need to protect her!" et cetera.  Our joke was wondering whether it was going to be a romantic film or horror movie.
It actually turned out really well.  And... not entirely wrong in either department.  (The creature ends up looking very humanoid, and the guy, Clive, has sex with it.  Clive, bro, if it's not human, don't have sex with it.  Rule of thumb, there.  It actually wasn't that weird because it was being shot from the solar plexuses up--until Dren bends her freaky legs and pulls his shirt off with her gecko-grippy feet.  Ewwweeeekkkk.)

If it started out looking like THAT, A) It's not human.  B) Don't have sex with it.

The film, like I said, doesn't really start becoming a horror movie till the last twenty minutes.  And the conclusion is actually the scariest moment of all.  Anyways, it starts off with your usual scientists trying to create a genetic anomaly blah blah blah.  It lives, of course, and starts as a very nonhuman icky little thing and grows eventually into this big (and apparently sexy) human creature.  It's incredibly intelligent, though.  I'm not the sort of person who looks for metaphors and social commentary or what have you in film.  But this movie is definitely meant to be attempting to raise a child.  That may seem obvious, but it's really, REALLY that.  Like all the little things you can do that will ruin or mess with a kid (like, Dren gets embarrassed when the girl finds her drawings, she has temper tantrums, and so on--) only it's ten times worse because no matter how human it looks at its most mature stage, it is not human. It's partially human, but it cannot be treated as human.  Plus, Dren is reaching sexual maturity.  Anyways, it's to the point where they'd yell at Dren or take something away from her and I'd be like OH GOD SHE IS GOING TO KILL YOU.  Did I mention that she has a freaky stinger tail and can apparently fly?  This is a bad combination.
Anyways, here spoilers appear: Dren starts becoming more and more unstable.  The girl takes a cat away from Dren because it might get Dren sick, but she feels guilty and gives it back.  When it is returned, Dren kills it.  The girl slaps Dren for it, and Dren almost kills her.  Later, again, she has sex with Clive, and as Clive is, uh, coming, you see Dren's tail rise behind him with the spike sticking out, implying that she was going to kill him and eat him afterwards?  Sure, why not.  She definitely would have killed him had they not been walked in on.  Yup, the girlfriend walks in on them!  Clive rushes after her, and the already unstable creature apparently can't handle it and dies.  When they come back they find her shell (apparently) left in a tub of water.
This is what I can't fathom.  Apparently her aggressive tendencies were roused by lifestyle changes and stress being placed on her life, which caused a hormonal change--which made her start changing into a male.  Now, I'm no zoologist.  I don't even know if that's the right term to use.  However, almost all creatures (like 99%) that can change sex do so because there are a lack of partners to mate with.  Clearly Dren is not lacking in sexual partners.  Stress wouldn't affect that, unless if it was stress over not being able to find a mate.  Also, she would have conceivably (ha ha) conceived--later (more spoilers, fun times) the girl is raped by the male Dren and the end of the film shows her with a very large, almost due-sized belly.  If the human body wouldn't eliminate the only partially-human sperm as a disease or what have you (as a human body is wont to) then it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't have any affect on Dren.  It also doesn't seem to make sense that the pregnancy wouldn't mess up her hormones or prevent it from happening or something.  I refuse to accept that she could just fully develop male genitalia and working mechanics in the five or so hours that they were gone. I know that she had started taking on male characteristics for a while and that she ages and changes much faster than a human (almost on a rodent or dog level) but that's a little much.
Anyway, it doesn't become a real horror movie till she has changed into a he.  I actually was a little distracted from the preceding part of the film where you get attached and start liking Dren and so on because I was scared it would change from an intelligent and novel to a cruddy, all-too-familiar horror plot.  I figured it had to happen, I saw absolutely no way Dren would get cutely inducted into society or that it would turn into some sort of ET plot (I would have made a personal pilgrimage to the director's house to punch him if that had been the case).  I was impressed though--although it's got an entirely different film, it was handled well.  It didn't quite fill my "raising a child metaphor", but most children aren't six foot tall human-animal hybrids that can fly and are homicidal maniacs and rapists (also, they can't change gender at will through completely biological means)... Most kids also don't have sex with what should be their father figures...?  Okay, maybe it doesn't quite hold up, but you watch it and get back to me on that.
Anyways, it's kind of hackneyed, but the beast goes on a rampage and then gets killed.  There's actually one trailer that's pretty much just clips from when Dren is first born and clips from those last twenty minutes when Dren is killing everybody.  The horror fans were probably really disappointed... (I'd mention that I'm a huge horror fan and I wasn't, but I watched it expecting it to be pretty much recorded vomit, not an Alien-ish movie.)  Then it ends with the most alarming idea of all: the girl pregnant--you see, when they started the experiment, the girl kind of shrugs off Clive's worries by asking "What's the worst thing that could happen?"  The movie ends with her in the office of their head.  The head tells her that no-one will blame her if she aborts the fetus, and then the camera goes over the girl so you can see her fully and she repeats that question.  Chills, man.  I got the worst chills.  The ending could not have been more perfect.

Oh, and the director has said that he will most likely not be making a sequel.  That's good because, again, I'd have to make a pilgrimage to rough up his face.

So... All in all.... It's the best sci-fi film I've seen--well, since... I don't know.  It seems so different from most other sci-fi movies I've seen.  It's done so well, and it has such a cool concept... It's like if you made a sequel to Michael Crichton's Next and had it star a less scary version of the Alien... No, but it's really, really good.  I wouldn't have written this post if it wasn't.  Seriously, go see it.  It's good, unsettling, and crazy.  Also it makes me feel intelligent for being incredible to recognize a scientific fallacy.  (One that I'd never know without Jurassic Park, speaking of Michael Crichton.)

Oh, and I just want to point out, one, the guy who plays Clive is cute, but not like cute-cute.  Like how Alexander Kapranos is good-looking, but... not really.  He is but he isn't.  I can't explain it.  The other thing I want to point out is what a good actor the girl who plays Dren is.  She is fantastic!  She got being an unhuman humanoid down pat.  Very animalistic.  Watch it and you'll understand.  She's crazy good.


Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: The World at Large by Modest Mouse
This post's cryptic song lyrics: Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail--upgrade it



EDIT: I forgot to mention that the girl has sex with Clive before she's raped by Dren, so there's extra ambiguity because there's a chance that it's Clive's.  They don't let you know how much time has passed between her rape and her at the very end of the movie, though, and there's no scene where she tells Clive that she's pregnant (only a few weeks pass from the point where they have sex to the point where she is raped, so she might not have even been sure), so it could be anything.  Soo... Yeah.  Awesome movie!  Watch it now!  If you like sci-fi.

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

So, for world religions we had to read a book related to religion and write an essay on it.  I wrote rather extensively about The Dharma Bums in the first essay we had to do for the class (a sort of pre-class assignment to describe our personal beliefs) and Mr Stoloff suggested I just straight-up do this essay on it.  So yeah, haven't written that essay yet.  But I figured this would help me sort my thoughts, or prolong my productivity.  Look, it's a little better than saying that I couldn't get my work done because I was playing Pokemon all day--well, that's not all I did.  I read Ray Bradbury stories and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and took like three naps.  So there!
Also, this book is awesome.  At first I was all, oh no, what if this ruins my taste for Jack Kerouac ahhh, maybe I should do The Screwtape Letters instead, eeeeek... But then I started rereading it and I was like THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD.  Seriously.  Fabrizzles always says that if he could pick any book/series to read all over again without prior knowledge so he could feel how it felt to read it all fresh and new like the first time, he'd pick Lord of the Rings.  This is the book I'd pick, without any shred of a doubt.  I didn't really even get the religious aspects and the full importance of it either back then, I probably didn't really get it until reading it this time, but I recognized that it was important and it still was gripping and revelation-causing regardless, which is pretty darned impressive.  But still.  Getting those things finally was probably the closest I'll get to reading it like new again.  But yeaaaah.  That was meant as a testament to how awesome this book is.

So first of all--what the book is about.  Well, the book is another pretty much autobiographical deal.  This is less of the partying or drinking or depression than it is hiking, and as one would expect from the title, it was written when Kerouac was most enthralled by Buddhism.  I say that because he was raised Christian, and in his later works he seems to go back to mainly being Christian with just wisps of Buddhism melded into his personal views.  Sooo yeah.  I guess I'll be just as plot-vague as usual.  AWESOME.
Also, this is the first time I ever read Anne Douglas's introduction to the book.  That... That was kind of a useful thing to do.  Some things made more sense, and some things were made a lot more confusing.

So my first note is on page two.  Kerouac touts some ideas regarding charity, "'Practice charity without holding mind any conceptions about charity, for charity after all is just a word'" (2), and goes on to say that he's become a little jaded and hypocritical, but then he was very devout.  I never noticed this retrospective bit before, and it's pretty important, especially when thinking of Big Sur... His retrospective is actually kind of sad, but the fact that he only gives a paragraph keeps it from being as crushing as Big Sur.  


On page nine Kerouac declares it would be impossible to compute all the grains of sand on the beach, even if IBM or Burroughs tried.  I always thought that this was kind of cute, you know, he thought so highly of Burroughs that he thought he was such magnitudes of genius--but Burroughs was heir to the Burroughs adding machine fortune.  So... probably just a reference to that.  Aw.

"I sat crosslegged on the sand and contemplated my life.  Well, there, and what difference did it make?" (4).

Oh, and Japhy--based on Gary Snyder, sort of the Neal Cassady of this book--is, according to Kerouac, from Oregon.  I only mention this because in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, we are informed that this is also true of Ken Kesey, with the note of "Who the hell is ever from Oregon?" (Or something like that.)  I don't know, it always makes me chuckle.  That and the fact that one of the first people I made friends with in college is actually from Oregon originally.

Thanks to reading Ann Douglas's introduction, I know that the poetry reading on page nine is actually the one that Ginsberg first read "Howl" at.  Also, at the very end of the book, when he kind of skims over his stay in the shack at Desolation peak--apparently that stay is the one described in Desolation Angels.  Apparently.  Anyways, he refers to "Howl" as "Wail" and refers to the night of the reading as "the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance" (9).

"'It's only through form that we can realize emptiness'" (17).  Though I may be taking the statement the wrong way, I imagine it's sort of a you can't understand something or something can't be until its opposite exists.  For example, you can't be happy--or at least understand being happy--without knowing what it's like to be sad.  Otherwise, you're just being, you're not being anything.  Or, you don't get light until you get dark.  Moreover, you can't have light without dark.  They are necessary--both of them--for either to exist.

Japhy tries to ask Ginsberg about his tastes in poetry, Kerouac gets agitated and butts in, saying he knows way more about poetry than anybody in the room (of course, Kerouac was also drinking at the time of this exchange...).  It's actually kind of funny, because Japhy proceeds to quote one of Kerouac's poems from Mexico City Blues to demonstrate Kerouac's talent and Kerouac gets even more agitated and claims that Japhy is quoting a poem that's not his.  (Because remember, Kerouac is never actually himself in his earlier books.  In this his alias is Ray Smith.) Also, if you have the really cool edition with the drawings by Jason (no last name?  If anybody has information on the fellow, let me know) on the covers, this scene is drawn on the inside page holder flap thing.  Yeeeeep. Eloquence is what I have.  I... I feel like I had another point here, but it's gone.  So... Let's... continue...
(Maybe it was for a confession time: I think Ginsberg is better poet hands down.)

"'Pretty girls make graves,' was my saying, whenever I'd had to turn my head around involuntarily to stare at the incomparable pretties of Indian Mexico" (21).

"'Smith, I distrust any kind of Buddhism or any kinda philosophy or social system that puts down sex'" (21).  Just kind of made me chuckle is all.  The context for this is that there's a young, pretty girl at the cabin and they're about to have an orgy and apparently Kerouac--yes, Kerouac--has been practicing celibacy and has been at it for almost a year.

"'Everybody's tearful and trying to live with what what they got'" (25).

There's a bit where they're buying food for the hiking trip up Matterhorn, and Jack insists on buying alcohol.  Japhy gets annoyed, he says he's just drinking down the money they worked so hard to save--think of Slim in Pic, using their last dollar to buy a record and not food.

"'Comparisons are odious, Smith,' he sent sailing back to me, quoting Cervantes and making a Zen Buddhist observation to boot.  'It doesn't make a damn frigging difference whether you're in The Place or hiking up Matterhorn, it's all the same old void, boy.'  And I mused about that and realized he was right, comparisons are odious, it's all the same, but it sure felt great and suddenly I realized this (in spite of my swollen foot veins) would do me a lot of good and get me away from drinking and maybe make me appreciate perhaps a whole new way of living" (41).  What he means by 'this' is not what Japhy said, but the climb up Matterhorn itself.

"...There was something in my heart as though I'd lived before and walked this trail, under similar circumstances with a fellow Bodhisattva, but maybe on a more important journey... The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling" (45-46).

So the best scene in the book is probably when Japhy and Kerouac come back down from the mountain--they go jumping and hopping down the side of the mountain because "it's impossible to fall of mountains you fool" (64).  It pretty much summarizes the feeling that Buddhism gives Kerouac, and instead of most books that only tell you how you should be acting if you're of this or that religion, it tells you how you should be feeling.  The impressive bit is that Kerouac actually does a good job of displaying the feeling.  If you're not planning on ever reading this book, at least read this page... Though if you weren't planning on reading it, I guess it wouldn't mean as much to you/you wouldn't have any interest in it anyways.

"In fact I realized I had no guts anyway, which I've long known.  But I have joy" (68).

"'You're just an old anarchist scared of society" (70).

"'You can't live in this world but there's nowhere else to go'" (76).

"Only one thing I'll say for the people watching television, the millions and millions of the One Eye: they're not hurting anyone while they're sitting in front of that Eye" (79).

Okay, so Japhy and Jack come across this woman just preaching about Jesus and Kerouac is amazed by her.  Japhy disagrees: "'...But boy have you ever heard a greater preacher?'  'Yeah,' says Japhy.  'But I don't like all that Jesus stuff she's talking about.'  'What's wrong with Jesus?  Didn't Jesus speak of Heaven?  Isn't Heaven Buddha's nirvana?'  'According to your own interpretation, Smith.'  'Japhy, there were things I wanted to tell Rosie and I felt suppressed by this schism we have about separating Buddhism from Christianity, Eas from West, what the hell difference does it make?  We're all in Heaven now, ain't we?'  'Who said so?'  'Is this nirvana and samsara we're in now.'  'Words, words, what's in a word?  Nirvana by any other name'" (86).  Maybe this only means something to me, but this produced a jaw-dropping revelation for me the first time I read it.  I remember reading it for the first time, and it's a big part of the reason why it's this book I wish I could reread for the very first time.  I mean--like any teenager I thought I knew what nobody else seemed to get--that if there was a god (if one didn't exist organically, yes, I thought that man would have made one) everybody was worshiping pretty much the same fellow, they just saw him in a different way and had different ways of honouring him.  But this--that was just what I thought--it wasn't an infallible truth!  Talk about rattling me out of foolishness!  Wow.  Uh... Yeah.  I guess you had to be there.

"All my tears weren't in vain.  It'll all work out finally" (95).

"People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums.  Compassion is the heart of Buddhism" (100).

"'All living and dying things like these dogs and me coming and going without any duration or self substance, O God, and therefore we can't possibly exist.  How strange, how worthy, how good for us!  What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was here, it would be immortal'" (102).

"'Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall bring to naught both it and them.'  'Yep,' I thought, 'you pay through the nose for shortlived shows...'" (103).

"I felt free and therefore I was free" (104).

"I was nutty as a fruitcake and happier" (108).  I just think that this is really, really cute.  Like this makes me want to just give him a huge hug.  So adorable!

Kerouac also attempts to explain Buddhism to his mother and his sister and brother-in-law: "'It's simple, let me lay it out as simple and concise as I can.  All things are empty, ain't they?'  'Whattayou mean, empty, I'm holdin' this orange in my hand, ain't I?'  'It's empty, everythin's empty, things come but to go, all things made have to be unmade, and they'll have to be unmade simply because they were made!'" (109).  His family doesn't understand and think it's downright ridiculous, his sister and mother tell him to stick with the religion he was raised with, Christianity.  Kerouac tries to explain some more: "'Everything's gone, already gone, already come and gone... And when things are empty because they appear, don't they, you see them, but they're made up of atoms that can't be measured or weighed or taken hold of... things are just empty arrangements of something that seems solid appearing in the space, they ain't either big or small, near or far, true or false, they're ghosts pure and simple'" (110).  This is pretty mind-blowing too, but it makes sense--I mean, things exist, but things disappear.  You know?  An orange you eat is absorbed by your body, its skin rots away to nothing, same is true for people and animals.  Plants die and are reabsorbed back into the earth.  Even solid inorganic things break down to nothing--rocks get pounded into sand, etc.  (This is going to sound stupid and random, but where do shells come from?  Like hermit crab shells and stuff.)

"All dogs love God.  They're wiser than their masters" (110).

""I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted" (112).

So he decides that because his rucksack is full and that is spring, he should go to Texas and then through to Mexico.  A couple picks him up and "I'd explained a little Buddhism to them, specifically karma, reincarnation, and they seemed pleased to hear the news.  'You mean other chance to come back and try again?' asked the poor little Mexican, who was all bandaged from a fight in Juarez the night before.  'That's what they say.'  'Well goddammit next time I be born I hope I ain't who I am now'" (120).  This is sweet in such a painful way.

"'This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie, made of the same stuff throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what everything is'" (138).  I only include this because it makes me think of Ken Kesey.  During the Merry Pranksters' escapades through America in Furthur they had several videocameras recording their 'movie'.  (I feel like there's a larger significance to that, but to be completely honest I can't remember.)  Anyways, I'm just going to pretend that this influenced Ken Kesey in some way to that end.  Ken Kesey definitely read Kerouac and was inspired by him... So yeah, let's say that's how the Pranksters' concept of the movie came to be.  Yaaaay.

"'We'll write poems, we'll get a printing press and print our own poems, the Dharma Press, we'll poetize the lot and make a fat book of icy bombs for the booby public.'  'Ah the public ain't so bad, they suffer too'" (153).

"'Japhy, do you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored?  Because if so he would have to be mean'" (153).

"'I appreciate your sadness about the world'" (154).  Japhy says this to Kerouac.  I think it's beautiful--and also very curious--a statement.

"'It'll all come out in the wash'" (154).

"'Bad karma automatically produces good karma,' said Japhy, 'Don't cuss so much and come on, we'll soon be sitting pretty on a flat hill'" (161).  This another bit of the book I remember reading for the first time with crystal clarity.  What originally amazed me was the first bit about just karma itself--I had never thought of it in such a manner, had never drawn the really very obvious connection, and the flash of illuminated (it may sound clichéd, but that's really what it felt like) was amazing.  When I first read it, I really only got the first bit, but after rereading it I realized that the second half of Japhy's words is just as applicable and important to the whole.  It also sort of reminds me of the headlights quote from Factotum by Charles Bukowski... "''Don't worry, baby,' I'd say, 'the next hard bump we hit will turn the lights on.' ... Jan would bounce up and down, trying to hold on to her bottle of port. I'd grip the wheel and look for a bit of light on the road ahead. Hitting those bumps would always turn the lights on. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but we'd always get the lights on" (96).  You know?  You hit a bump--it jostles you around and may even hurt you--but eventually something good would happen thanks to it.  Bad karma to good karma.  You see?    

Oh, and while Japhy and Kerouac are meditating under the stars they imagine cavemen from eons before huddled around their own campfire doing the same as "'enlightened monkey men'" (163), as Japhy puts it.  Kerouac is awed by this thought and says, "'The stars were the same then as they are tonight'" (163). The astronomer in me has to ruin this beautiful scene for everybody.  The stars weren't the same.  They're constantly moving in the sky, and in a thousand years constellations will be absolute gibberish.  Sorry to ruin that and depress everybody.  Moving right along-- 

"'It all ends in tears anyway'" (164).  Japhy leaves for Japan and Coughlin says that he'll be so enamoured with the place he'll never come back, and Kerouac says he won't, and that there was Ginsberg's response.

"But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious" (182).  This sounds like something Kurt Vonnegut would say--something with that exact wording, too.  

"Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so we were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?" (183). After reading that the time in the cabin that's sort of glossed over is apparently the same time that is described in much greater detail in Desolation Angels, this makes a lot more sense.  There are about a million passages of Desolation Angels I could connect this one to... If I had the book on me.  Just look at the title though!  If you're not seeing the obvious connection being drawn you're not even trying.

"Down on the lake, rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, 'God, I love you' and looked up to the sky and really meant it.  'I have fallen in love with you, God.  Take care of us all, one way or the other'" (186).

"To the children and innocent it's all the same" (186).  

Wow!  There we go.  I kind of wanted to add the very end of the book, but it didn't feel quite right to--though I really do love that conclusion.  Anyways.  Wow.  I can't believe it took me this long.  It took me like three weeks to finish this post, mein gott.  Hmm... I guess I don't have to describe my feelings about this book any more extensively, though.  I think you get the picture.  Oh!  But you know what happened that was really awesome?  The Thursday before spring break it was ridiculously nice out, so I went out on one of the benches outside of my dorm and laid out on it to read.  One guy (I think his name is Zack?) walked by me with his roommates and they walked right by me, and he stopped and ran back to me and was like "Jack Kerouac--that's that guy that went on that crazy road trip and did mad drugs, right!?"  And being that that's a pretty good summary of On the Road, I didn't even say that that doesn't really go down in this book, I was just like yeah, that's him.  We talked a little bit about the book and then he realized that his roommates were already at the door to Burr and he ended it with, "Well, I think this is awesome and it's awesome that you're reading this!"  It was a really cool moment.


Also, we were supposed to connect the book with class in our essay on it... I did, but what's weird is that I didn't seem to include what made me further connect Kerouac and people like him to religion in general.  Um... that doesn't make much sense.  Wait, keep on reading!  I'll make sense soon, I promise.  
So, our last World Religions class before break featured a presentation on Mormonism.  In the class we have set questions that we're supposed to ask the presenters or look up after class, and one of the questions is "What is the religion's view on the end of time?", which is meant to probe at when it is thought it will occur, and how it will occur.  I don't remember exactly what they said regarding how it will occur (though I picked up The Book of Mormon so maybe I'll be letting you know fairly soon) but they started describing the first signs that the end is coming, and in doing so he quoted Amos 8:11-12:  “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.”  I was kind of startled (hence why I don't remember what they said about the end of times itself, I guess.) by that.  I'm not saying I believe that Judgment day is nigh or anything like that--but you can understand why it caught my attention, right?  I mean--that was what Kerouac was doing.  That's what Christopher Johnston McCandless was doing, or at least it seems to have been.  That's what I'd even daresay the Merry Pranksters were doing.  They had different names for it--but it was still--'it'.  There were searching for meaning and something... But yeah.  My connection to class--the better connection to class.  


MLA citation information: Bukowski, Charles.  Factotum.  Black Sparrow Press: Los Angeles, 1975.  
Kerouac, Jack.  The Dharma Bums.  Penguin Classics: New York, 2006.  




Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: We Intertwined by The Hush Sound
This post's cryptic song lyrics: I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast, it might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most.  The days get longer and the nights smell green, I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave

Panthea by Oscar Wilde

Hey, I know you know I normally avoid playing with poems on here.  However, after writing this essay on "Panthea", I pretty much decided I have to.  I had to compare it to Romanticism styles, and unfortunately, there was a lot more I wanted to say about the poem itself than what those boundaries would let me.  So I'm going to be going through it line by line--well, maybe not line for line, but... Well, I'm going to stumble through it anyways.  First of all, here is "Panthea" and second of all, here is my dissection of it:

"Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire/From passionate pain to deadlier delight,--/I am too young to live without desire/Too young art thou to waste this summer night/Asking those idle questions which of old/Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told" (83).  First of all, wow!  Way to start the poem off with a bang.  So awesome.  (Maybe I should mention that this is if not my favourite poem of Wilde's, it's definitely in the top three?)

"To feel is better than to know/And wisdom is a childless heritage" (83).  1.  Oscar Wilde is awesome.  2. Romantics placed emotion above knowledge.  Clearly Oscar is echoing this.  He's also clearly being the best. It's just what he does.
By the way, when he says "hoarded proverbs of the sage" (83), he's most likely referring to the book of Proverbs from the Bible.
"Vex not the soul with dead philosophy/Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!" (83).

The bit about the envious moon being pale--I believe that's a reference to Romeo and Juliet.  Doesn't Romeo refer to the moon as a pale, envious thing?  Kill the envious moon?

Oh, and "boyish limbs in water", the reference to Ganymede, the "little men" (84) kissing to pass the effects of opium onto one another--later in the poem Oscar refers to his lover as a fond maid, but there's some pretty strong homosexual imagery here.  (Just as a note, Ganymede was Zeus's eromenos.)  And don't give me that, oh, oops, just an accident, with Wilde I don't accept a slip of the tongue.  Though this is kind of curious because Wilde wouldn't have any (recorded) homosexual affairs for another five or six years after this was published... Well, I guess there must have been some interest existent in the first place.

"But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will" (83).  This is a reference to Matthew 5:45.

"They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease/Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine/They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees/Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine/Mourning the old glad days before they knew/What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do" (84).  I really love the repetition in the first line, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that that's due to a "oh snap, I need something to fill this line out" than an actual artistic point.

Oh, and the "poppy-seeded draught" (84) and "balm for us in a bruised poppy seed" (85)--those are references to opium.  Basically, I think Oscar is admitting that an opium, uh, trip caused his whole fantasy of seeing all these Grecian legend-figures come to life.  Oh you!

Oh, and I should mention that Wilde talks about Venus being in the nude once.

"But we oppress our natures, God or Fate/Is our enemy, we starve and feed/On vain repentance--O we are born too late!" (85).  That is, to indulge in the pleasures of Greeks or Romans that are more... eh... Observant to the needs of the id.  God--Fate--conscience (a society-instilled conscience, "What we call conscience, in many instances,is only a wholesome fear of the constable"--Christian Nestell Bovee) keep us from what we truly should be, or what our true natures are.  Hence, born too late, because Wilde and other Victorians must be stifled. (Also, in case if you didn't get it from the first stanza, this poem is basically about a random night of sex in some pretty portion of countryside.)  


"O we are wearied of this sense of guilt/Wearied of pleasure's paramour despair/Wearied of every temple we have built/Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer/For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:/One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo!  we die" (85).  This is another Romantic belief, rejecting social institutions, especially that of religion.  God doesn't seem to be doing anything for man, so why should man listen to anything God supposedly asks of man?  I think that last line is particularly powerful too.  This is a very well-sculpted stanza.


Wilde goes on to discuss death--"no coin of bronze can bring back the soul" (85), that is, you can't pay to escape death (I don't know if he's referring to a specific myth, but the Greeks had a tradition of putting a coin under the tongues of the dead so they would be able to pay Charon to ferry them across the river Styx).  Once you die, every pleasure you've partaken in or stiff laws you abided to are all essentially for naught, because "the tomb is sealed... the dead rise not again" (85).  
However, he puts forth the idea that death isn't the end.  He never goes so far to say that death should be welcomed but he certainly implies it, because death of the body only frees the soul from its jail and limiter.  In fact, Wilde takes almost a Hinduistic


"This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn/Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil/Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn/To water-lilies; the brown fields men till/Will be more fruitful for our love tonight/Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death's despite" (86).  That is, the intensity of man's passion creates the energy which powers nature, and like the Romanticist, believed in the inverse as well.  Wilde sees man and nature as the two seemingly separate sides of a Mobius strip.  (Yes, I used this line in my essay and I was really proud of it.  I just had to use it here.)  Of course, the use of the word fruitful is important to note too.  And I guess I should mention that this poem was written the year he met his wife.  So... So yeah, it's problem a love poem meant for her.  (Ooh possible pre-marital sex.  Oscarrrr.)  
Oh, by the way, "All things live in Death's despite" is an awesome line as all, even if it seems like a sort of random tacking-on.


"The asphodel/Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear/Of too much beauty, and the timid shame/Of the young bridegroom at his lover's eyes" (86).  This is both really, really cute, and a teensy bit funny.  Juuust being honest.


"One sacrament are consecrate" (86).  OSCAR DAMMIT.  THE GRAMMAR NAZI IN ME HATES YOU BUT OH I SO SO LOVE YOU.  I'll just quietly bear a grudge I guess.  
"We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good" (86).  Love.


"So when men bury us beneath the yew/Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be/And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew/And when the white narcissus wantonly/Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy/Will thrill our dust, and we will again be found maid and boy" (87).  I think there's definitely some significance in the fact that Wilde chose the Narcissus... But let's continue before I halt to digress: "And thus without life's conscious torturing pain/In some sweet flower we will feel the sun/And from the linnet's throat will sing again" (87).  Wilde is essentially pushing rebirth--and not just rebirth.  You remember that bit about one life, a few stanzas up?  He's promoting that, but instead of a nirvana-esque thing, being absorbed into one great consciousness or what have you, but that they will remain separate and it appears that they will get to choose where and what they will live as--mated tigers, flowers, "beast and bird" (87), satyrs--or even a more ethereal form if they so choose, so that "the joyous sea shall be our raiment" (88).  What gives them the right to be inheritor of this is that thanks to their passion and love their spirits will grow and grow to burst and overflow.  They have to live on because there's still oodles of life to be spent!  


"Ay!  If we had never loved at all, who knows/If yonder daffodil had the bee/Into its guilded womb, or any rose/Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!/Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring/But for the lover's lips that kiss, the poet's lips that sing" (87).


"And we two lovers shall not sit afar/Critics of nature, but the joyous sea/Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star/Shoot arrows at our pleasure!  We shall be/Part of the mighty universal whole/And through all aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic soul!/We shall be notes in that great Symphony/Whose cadence circles though the rhythmic spheres/And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be/One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years/Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die/The Universe itself shall be our immortality" (88).  PS. Oscar, you're the best and I love you.  




MLA citation information: Wilde, Oscar.  Collected Poems of Oscar Wilde.  Wordsworth Editions: London, 1994.




Oh and by the way--information regarding Wilde and--uh--Mrs Wilde!  When I brought the rough draft to my teacher, we started talking about Wilde and his wife and his affair and all.  I'm not the only one who gets super-agitated over Lord Alfred Douglas, at least--first of all, if it wasn't for him, there's a chance that Wilde might not have been put on trial, secondly, after Wilde was released from prison, he went back to Douglas for a short time!  I--what!?  Oscar, WHAT?  You need a sassy gay friend!  Actually, that might get you into more trouble.  
...But the scenario in my head is hilarious.  Speaking of the sassy gay friend, there are two new videos--one for Black Swan and one for Great Expectations.  I suggest you watch Black Swan before watching that video though, because I feel like a lot of the reasons why I didn't like Black Swan was because I just wanted the sassy gay friend to come in and whip everybody into shape. ("Kill yourself?  It's ballet!  BALLET!  I'm gay and I don't even care!" ...I want him to be MY sassy gay friend, true story.)  
Oh, and by the way, it turns out Wilde was married till 1898.  Wow!  I mean, she got out of there with the kids during the scandal, so I figured she got divorced, but I guess not... And Mrs Clermont-Ferrand said that Wilde liked his wife, or at least seemed to be rather fond of her... Which at first I thought was odd (he's very critical of marriage, but that could just be his little Romantic-poet deal coming through), but it can easily make sense.  Just because he refused to have sex with her after kid number two (her second pregnancy apparently really grossed him out) doesn't mean he didn't love her.... I mean, to be honest, I really know nothing of their relationship other than that he seemed to enjoy men more, so I kind of always assumed it was unhappy (like I said, very critical or marriage--he's got some biting witticisms on the subject).  I really need to read up on his life, even though it kills me.  Then again, the conclusion to every single book about the Romanovs kills me too, yet I don't stop reading about them.  ...To be honest, though, the only reason why I haven't read a real biography on him is because I haven't found one.  I'd snap it up in a second regardless of the fact that the end kills me.  


Another note on Wilde's life: Apparently his mother was alive at the time of the charge.  She told her son that he should fight it, or deny it--which made me wonder if she knew about Oscar's affairs.  One minute later, I realized that was a stupid thought and that she most likely did not, because in general, you do not tell your mother you are having homosexual affairs.  At least... I would imagine so.  




Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: All Around the World by Oasis 
This post's cryptic song lyrics: In a field outside of town, we could always be alone, carry a blanket, maybe a basket--and that's it... Innocence was the key, I was locked up never free, till you turned me

Pic by Jack Kerouac

Last post I felt like I wasn't mentioning something.  That thing?  The Oscars!  Colin Firth won best actor and King's Speech won best picture!  I was actually so excited about Colin winning, when they did their stay tuned bit I was kind of like, "Oh yeah... There's more, huh?"  It's not like I watched that far last year.  My disappointment in the fact that Colin didn't get best actor and the lack of blood in my system sent me to bed during the commercial break.  (This year I didn't suffer a mortal wound during the Oscars, believe it or not.)  But yeah, King's Speech deserved its award, Colin Firth deserved his award, let's all hang out sometime?  Yes?  Please?


Let's see, what else is up?  Speaking of Colin Firth, my research paper in College Writing is on A Single Man, it's comparing the film to the book.  My paper for Intro to Lit is on Oscar Wilde, specifically his poem Panthea. And speaking of Intro to Lit, I've been joking about it for a while I know, but it is official--Mrs Clermont-Ferrand is me in the future.  I don't know why I would have decided to go back in time to this point in my life (after a while the opium dens of the Victorian era must get boring, I guess), but at least I know that I will have succeeded in becoming as cool as Fabrizzles.  Anyways, what was the straw that finally made me sure that this is the case?  I asked her if doing my paper on that poem was okay, even if it meant that I was bending the rules a little.  She said it was fine, and I told her that Wilde was my favourite author.  She responded with "I know--we love him!  He's great!"  I know?  We?  Oh snap.




So, Pic: the back of this volume refers to Pic as "unusual"--I don't think it's that odd at all.  Sure, maybe the persona Jack chose to adopt is odd (a ten-year-old black boy) but I actually think it's more like his original works than... Well, that sentence actually doesn't make much sense.  But it is so ridiculously reminiscent of On the Road.  It's the ten-year-old back version of On the Road!  Is that... is that politically correct?  Whatever. I'm not here to be politically correct, I'm here to kick ass!  And I guess obsess about Oscar Wilde and Colin Firth and stuff.  Yay.  But--uh--the book.  It starts out with Pic (short for Pictorial Review, nope, that they do not explain, and I can't imagine the significance of it or why Kerouac would have chosen that of all things--it was the title of a woman's magazine in the Depression...) living with his grandfather.  His grandfather dies, and he moves in with his aunt (it's hard for me to even really judge if Pic really gets if his grandfather has deceased) who is one of those women who just keep on breeding.  So he's feeling all stifled in her home when all out of the blue Pic's brother who just up and left several years ago comes back and takes Pic with him to his home (and wife) in New York City.
Oh, and I should also note that it's written in dialect.  This sort of thing usually makes a work absolutely impenetrable for me (unless if it's written in a New England-y dialect a la Stephen King, but of course I'd understand that with no problem), and at first I did have a lot of trouble with it, but I pressed on--more inclined to because I like the author, you understand--and I'm glad I did.  It's actually pretty enjoyable once you get used to the infuriating Southern dialect auuuuuuuugh.  Note number two is that this is in a two-book, eh, book, so keep in mind the page numbers are going to be very skewed.


First of all, I think even Pic himself is pretty darned important.  Kerouac--a lot of white people in this circle--thought black folks were the coolest of cool.  Everybody wanted to be black.  (In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, I believe, Tom Wolfe illustrates how much times have changed by saying black people aren't 'cool' anymore.)  Kerouac definitely had that seemingly odd desire, so I'd imagine that making his persona Pic he's kind of acting out a wistful desire.  You know?  As for making Pic a ten-year-old, I'd imagine it would be a want to have childlike innocence again, or something like that.


"Ain't nobody never loved me like I love myself, cept my mother and she's dead" (125).  Pretty strong opening lines, no?


"'While's all this the Gospel word and true, little Pictorial Review Jackson... must go to school to learn and read and write,' and grandpa looked at [my aunt] plum in the eye like if'n to spit tobacco juice in it, and answered, 'Thass awright wif me,' jess like that, 'but that ain't the Lawd's school he's goin' to and he shall never mend his fences'" (126).


So--there's a big break for about thirty pages, nothing over the part where Pic's grandfather dies.  Actually, I don't have another note till the beginning of chapter seven, at this point Pic is with his brother Slim--but they've only just snuck out of the aunt's house.  (Is snuck not a word?  Really?  Wait--for real!?)
"'Po little boy,' [Slim] say, and give a sigh, and hitch me up higher on his back.  'I guess you're as much scared of ever'thing like a grown man is'" (158).  Just a little statement that seems like a paradox but is actually a truism.


On the Road, too, which definitely did more to get me into it than anything else.
"And I look over to brother, and he's still sleepin and's got the whole back sofa to hisself and's all stretched out loose and peaceful, and I'se pleased to see him sleep so 'case I know he must be tired.  And I look out the window.  And you know, I never seed anything so pow'ful grand and big, and I seed pow'fuller and grander things since then, all the way to Californy.  What I seed then was jess like when the first time I see the world I tell you" (167-168).  / "'Do you know there's a road that goest down Mexico and all the way to Panama?--and maybe all the way to the bottom of South America... Yes!  You and I, Jack, we'd dig the whole world with a car like this because man the road must eventually lead to the whole world"--Jack Kerouac, On the Road (The original scroll.) /  "He and I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open, and the pearl was there, the pearl was there"--Jack Kerouac, On the Road (The original scroll.)


The opposite page, there's a scene where the two brothers switch buses and the new bus is stuffed, and they're all sweating like pigs.  So Slim can't open the window, and neither can another man on the bus, until finally the busdriver notices what's going on, and he stops the bus and goes back there: "'Please leave the windows alone, this happens to be an air-conditioned bus' and he turn on a button up front when he start the bus, and I tell you the finest cool air began to blow all over that bus, only thing is, ever'body got cold in a minute and the sweat turns on me like ice water.  So Slim, he tugged at that window again to get some hot air back in, but couldn't do it, and we look thu the window at them beautiful green fields, and Slim said they was MARYLAND, and wished he was settin in the sunny grass.  I reckon ever'body felt the same way too" (170).  First of all, it reminds me of this section of On the Road: "How could I ever sleep? Thousands of mosquitoes had already bitten all of us on chest and arms and ankles. Then a bright idea came to me: I jumped up on the steel roof of the car and stretched out flat on my back. Still there was no breeze, but the steel had an element of coolness in it and dried my back of sweat, clotting up thousands of dead bugs into cakes on my skin, and I realized the jungle takes you over and you become it. Lying on the top of the car with my face to the black sky was like lying in a closed trunk on a summer night."  (This version is from the... not original scroll.)  Secondly, I think to some extent Kerouac made it a point to trap Pic in the bus. I always feel mildly uncomfortable attaching metaphorical or symbolic meanings to Kerouac's books since they're autobiographical (well, to some extent) but since this isn't--well, isn't exactly--written about him, I'm a little more okay with it.  He was staring at beauty, but he couldn't quite get there (at least not at the time that he wrote this) or he felt like he was watching everything beautiful happen while he was trapped to freeze--and again, that would go with a not-so-unusual portrayal of himself.  In On the Road, before his famous "Roman Candles" quote, he says he followed Neal and everybody, he shambled after them.  He was watching but he didn't feel quite a part of it.  Saying he wished he could be out on the grass could also just be a desire to be able to bum around again, you know, just kind of loll around and enjoy himself.  Just literally be out in a nice warm field. Which makes it superfluous to go on in an explanation, as who wouldn't want to loll around in a nice big warm field somewhere?


So while they're driving, Slim and Pic get to move up front because they pass the Mason Dixie line.  Pic is unaware of Jim Crow laws or anything of the sort, and his brother attempts to explain it to him, but at the time he didn't quite get it: "'I ain't seed no such a line.'  'What?' he say.  'Why, we just crossed it back there in Maryland.  Didn't you see Mason and Dixie holdin that line across the road?'  'Well,' I says, 'did we run over it or underneath it?' and I'se tryin to recollect such a thing but jess cain't.  'Well,' I say, 'I guess I musta been sleepin then.'  And Slim laugh, and push my hair, and slap his knee.  'Jim, you kill me!'  'What did that line look like?' I axed him, 'case I wasn't old enough to know it was a joke yet, you see.  Well, Slim said he didn't know what such a line looked like neither on account he never seed it any more than I did.  'But there is such a line, only thing is, it ain't on the ground, and it ain't in the air neither, it's jess in the head of Mason and Dixie, jess like all other lines, border lines, state lines, parallel thirty-eight lines and iron Europe curtain lines is all jess 'maginary lines in people's heads and don't have nothin to do with the ground.'  Granpa, Slim said that jess as quiet, and didn't call me Jim no more, and said to hisself, 'Yes sir, that's all it is'" (172).  


So they get to New York City, and they go to see Slim's wife, Sheila.  They desperately need money, but Slim just goes ahead and puts on a jazz record and dances along: "Seem like the folk up in the city wants to have fun and ain't got no time for worry exceptin when worry catches up with them, that's when they ain't busy about worryin'" (181).


So Slim, lamenting their situation, asks if they're going to "'be beat all the time or ever make a livin around here?'" (182).  I think the wording should be paid attention to--One hand, be beat down, beat as in defeated.  On the other hand, be beat--living without money, bumming.  As in, the beats.  Are we going to be Beat, or are we going to actually do something?  I read it as a sort of frustration against what he was--eh--let me just continue it: "'When will our troubles end?  I'm tired of bein poor.  My wife's tired of bein poor.  I guess the world is tired of bein poor, because I'm tired of bein poor.  Lord a mercy who's got some money?  I know I ain't got some money and that's for sure, now look' and showed his empty pocket.  'You shouldn't of bought that record,' Sheila said.  'Well,' he said, 'I didn't know then.  Now so where'd this money go that folks is supposed to live on? I'd jess be satisfied if I had a field of my own I could jess grow things in and wouldn't need no money, and wouldn't worry what folks had it.  not records neither.  But I ain't got a field and I need money to eat.  Well where am I goin to get this money?  I gotsa get a job.  Yes, a job, gotsa get, I-got-a-git-a-job'" (183).  
First of all, that uncapitalized (making up words, like a boss) 'not' is supposed to be there. It drives me nuts too.  But!  The point--I feel like this monologue is coming straight from Kerouac.  He's sick of being poor... Was sick of it, but perhaps he's making an admission that it could have been avoided?  (It drives me nuts that he bought that record and used the last of their cash.  Dammit, Slim!  You spent the last of the food money AND you're making me make a Star Trek reference!)  Then again, the bit about the fields throws me off a little.  He seemed to prefer seclusion, especially after his sudden burst of popularity.  Depending on the time, it might even be a comment on the hippie movement.  Kerouac hated hippies.  Repeating it over and over, and drawing it out the way you'd draw out your speech if trying to explain something to a child--trying to drill it into their heads?  (Or that could be incorrect, maybe he's trying to drill it into his own head.)  But if you were successful and living in your own communes out of the public eye and in your own self-contained system--okay.  But hippies of the time really weren't doing that.  And they didn't even deserve to lament because they had put themselves right in that situation.  Does that... Could that make sense?  I just kind of kept on writing without checking myself.  Ohhhh well.  


"Granpa, ain't nothin better in the world like eggs and breakfast in the mornin because your taster ain't worked all night and ever'thing comes so chawy and smells so fryin good it makes a body wish he could eat ever'body's breakfast all up and down the street seven times, ain't it the truth?  When we come down on the street and I seed all them men eatin more eggs and breakfast in the corner store I wished I could eat all the breakfasts in New York City" (187).  I just thought this was really, really cute.  It kind of makes me wish I ate eggs, too...


Slim loves playing jazz himself, and he gets offered a job as a trumpet player for the night.  (Maybe I should mention that the man who offers Slim the job is named Charley?  More wish fulfillment?) "'Yes, thass right, a job, and not only that I got a horn for you.'  'A horn?  A horn?  My kingdom for a horn!'" (194).  Of course, that's a parody of "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" from William Shankspeare's Richard III.  Honestly, I haven't read the play myself--so I couldn't tell you if he's saying he lost his kingdom because of a horse (there is a nursery rhyme of that flavour, and Wikipedia seems to agree with me in that respect), or if he's asking for a horse so that he may go into battle himself (Richard III was apparently the last king to die in battle).  Most everything that comes up aside from that Wikipedia page when I search the quote seems to favour the latter... Well... My point was, if it was like the nursery rhyme, then it could be that the horn--the love of jazz--was his downfall.  If it's not like the nursery rhyme, then he's saying that the horn will save them all (although he loses the job that very night, he was only filling in for somebody).  


"Well now Slim was starting to sweat because nobody wanted to stop, and he didn't wantsa stop neither and blew right on till the sweat began pourin down his face jess like it did over the shovel in the mornin.  Oh, he jess watered that bandstand from sweat.  He didn't ever run out of anything to play ever'time he crossed from one end of the song to th'other, and had a hunnerd years in him of it.  Oh, he was grand.  That song lasted twenty minutes and the folks at that bar got out in front of the bandstand and clapped in time for Slim... with his face all black and wet and like he was cryin and laughin all at the same time, only his eyes was closed and he didn't see them but jess plain knew they was there.  He was holdin, and pushin that horn in front of him like it was his life he was rasslin with... Oh, he talked and talked with that thing and told his story all over again, to me, to Sheila and ever'body.  He jess had it in his heart what ever'body wanted in their hearts and they listened to him... That crowd rocked under him, it was like the waves and he looked like a man makin a storm in that ocean with his horn" (199-200).  / "[Rollo Greb] played Verdi operas and pantomimed them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn’t give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life.  Dean stood before him with his head bowed, repeating over and over again, 'Yes... Yes... Yes.'  He took me into a corner.  'That Rollo Greb is the greatest, most wonderful of all.  That's what I was trying to tell you--that's what I want to be.  I want to be like him.  He's never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth.  Man, he's the end!  You see, if you go like him all time you'll finally get it.'  'Get what?'  'IT!  IT!  I'll tell you--now no time, we have no more time now.'  Dean rushed back to watch Rollo Greb some more'"--Jack Kerouac, On the Road (the... not-original scroll), page 127.  He's describing how Rollo Greb is playing, just an FYI.  


So, after losing this job, Slim decides to just take Pic and Sheila and head out to California, convinced that their problems will disappear--and even if they don't exactly, that things will get better: "'All that sun, and all that land, and all that fruit, and cheap wine, and crazy people, it don't scare you so much when you can't get a job because then you can always live some way if you even just eat the grapes that fall off the wine trucks on the road.  You can't pick no grapes off the ground in New York, nor walnuts either.'  'Now who's talkin about eatin grapes and walnuts?' yelled Sheila's mother.  'I'm talkin about a roof over your head.'  She was a woman of some level sense" (204-205).  1.  The grass is always greener on the other side.  2.  I can't remember Kerouac's feelings about going to California in On the Road, other than that he was probably pretty excited about it.    3.  This is pretty much what Kerouac did in California when he was having a tryst with a young Mexican girl--well, I say young but she was probably in her early twenties.  I think she had a two- or three-year-old son.  I don't think that tryst is in... I keep on wanting to say the version we read in Rebels, but the likeliness of a random googler coming across this site and being an alumni of that class is probably something like 1 in a bunnerjillion.  It's the not-original scroll version.  I think maybe he mentions her, but she gets pages and pages in the original scroll and I feel like she only gets a few paragraphs worth in the other version.  4.  I can't help but notice that Pic refers to Sheila's mother as someone of "some level sense".  What is Kerouac trying to say here?  (This isn't rhetorical.  Help, please.)  


"The last night ever'thing was packed and ready to go in the mornin and we had coffee in the kitchen and house looked so bare Slim seemed most gloomy about it.  'Look at this place we've been livin in.  We leave it, someone else comes in, and life is jess a dream.  Don't it remind you of old cold cruel world to look at it?  Those floors and bare walls.  Seemed we never lived here, and I never loved you inside of it'" (207).  So, I was going to compare this to a quote about someone dying is really like someone just moving out of a tenement house or an apartment building, with someone there who will take their place and eventually overtake their memory, but I don't remember the exact quote, and I don't remember where it comes from.  I thought it was from A Single Man, but I guess not...?  Maybe Burroughs...?


The end of this book is really, really beautiful.  It also is hard to appreciate if you're not reading it yourself (and not listening to Peter Gabriel while doing so).  But guess what?  It's happening right here and now.  So they're hitching to California, and they stop in a church... 
""So Father McGillicuddy took me up to the attic LOFT, and sat me by the man with his hands on the keys of the ORGAN.  Grandpa, I even whistled and I wished I had my harmonica, and the priest man sang up and said I sung like an angel.  By the by, Slim was present down at the cellar moppin up the floor, he said he sure wisht he had his horn, but said he found a horn in his little brother's voice.  So we told Father McGillicuddy soon's we pick up one hunnerd dollars pay we would fetch for Oakland on the Greyhound Bus, but Father McGillucuddy said it was comin up close to Sunday mornin, as it was Adventist or adventurous night now, and Saturday too, and wanted me to song before the intire congregation the Lord's prayer, which I done, up in the LOFT, like best I could.  Father McGillicuddy was s'tickled he was sunrise all over.  Then Irish mans is so tickled they's pink as a shoat all over, but I feasable say they got troubles of their own, so we had our hunnerd dollars and took the road bus with the picture of the blue hound dog on the side of it, Greyhound it's called, and we peewetted across Ohio and clear inta Nebraskar, Slim was asleep in the back seat all alone stretched out legs all over, and I was sittin in a reg'lar seat near-up with a ninety-year-old white man, and when we come to a stop just before Kearney, Nebraskar, the old man said to me: 'I gotta go to the toilet.'  So I led him out of the bus holdin his hand, 'case he was about to fall in the snow, and ask the gas man where was the men's room.  Finished, I took the old man back in the bus, and the bus driver yelled out: 'Somebody's drinkin around here!'  And the bus driver was wearin black gloves.  Two men was in the front seat next to him holdin hands together.  Slim was still snorin on the back-seat bed.  Then he got up said to me: 'Hi, baby.'  First thing you know, no more snow.  Heard another old man behind me say 'I'm goin back to Oroville and bank my dust,'  We then was now in the Sacramenty Valley, granpa, and quick we saw Sheila's ropelines with wash on hooks of wood hung dryin, flappety-flap.  Slim, he put his two hands on his back, limpied around the yard, and said, 'I got Arthur-itis, Bus-itis, Road-itis, Pic-itis, and ever' other It-is in the world.'  And Sheila run up, kissed him hungarianly, and we went in eat the steak she saved up for us, with mashy potatoes, pole beans, and cheery banana spoon ice cream split" (235-236).  
See?  Beautiful.  
Also, I have to say, I am completely of the mind that there's specific importance of the two men holding hands (Ginsberg and his partner, whose name I can never remember?) and the man in the black gloves (otherwise why bother mentioning that he's wearing them?) and maybe even the old man.  According to IMDB (apparently Jack Kerouac was in a film, because he's got an IMDB profile), Kerouac originally intended for Pic to meet other Beats and travel with them... His mother, however, suggested that Pic just settle down.  So I guess Sheila's mother is just reflecting his mother, maybe he's not necessarily regretting things he did, just admitting that maybe they weren't the best choices he could have made.  But still, I wonder about who those four men could be.  Of course, there's practically nothing available on it, so there's nothing to do but settle for speculations.  




So--I warmed up to this book.  It's pretty good, more like his earlier works.  It's gotten criticism for being written in a "stereotypical" way, what with the dialect and all, but in Jack's defense, the kid comes from the South.  I think it's more of a Southern thing than anything else.  The only issue I really see is the usual "black people are cool" thing.  Wait--keep on reading!--it's not what it sounds like.  Kerouac always talks about how cool they are, but he doesn't really see black people as individuals.  Like--he doesn't get that they're people, maybe.  (I wish I had my response to this question from Rebels.  I thought I did a pretty good job on that one, and now I can't seem to articulate a damned thing.)  He likes them for what they seem to be, not what they actually are--he's still stereotyping, just... not as negatively as he could be.  Does that make sense?  


MLA Citation Information: Kerouac, Jack.  Pic.  Grove Press: New York, 1985.




I just made some intense life decisions that I'll probably forget in a few hours, too.  After getting my teaching certificate here, I'm heading over to England for grad school, getting a certificate or doing whatever needs to be done there to make me able to teach, and then staying there except maybe on Christmas holidays.  I should probably discuss this with someone, like my mom... Sometime.  (She said I should go to grad school in England.  I'm only taking her up on this.)


Also, my Stumbleupon took me to this site: http://www.librarything.com/topic/61828 I've read thirty-six of them! (Somewhere in the forties or early fifties if you count Harry Potter and Narnia by series volumes, not just as one number.  Also, The Chronicles of Narnia is separate from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe...?) Anyways.  Guess which ones they are!  Hoo-ray? 


Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: Hangin' Around by The Edgar Winter Group 
This post's cryptic song lyrics: All around the world, you've got to spread the world, tell them what you've heard, we're gonna make a better day--All around the world, you've got to spread the word, tell them what you've heard, you know it's gonna be okay

Satori in Paris by Jack Kerouac

What's up?  Nothing much, writing a blog response instead of writing my Intro to Lit essay... Actually, it's sort of weird that I'd be doing this instead of that, because I played with the essay topic so that I'd be able to write about Oscar Wilde, and you know how I feel about Oscar Wilde.  And if you're just joining us and you don't... Well.  There are some strong feelings about Oscar Wilde coming from my person.  Like, Angela, the guy is dead, seriously you're weirding me out strong.

Satori in Paris is usually referred to as Jack Kerouac's last book, but apparently Vanity of Duluoz was written after.  (Maybe it was second to last to be published before his death?) Pic was also written after, in fact, according to this edition (it contains both Satori in Paris and Pic, though I'm doing them one by one) it is his final novel.  Well, either way.  Satori in Paris is about a trip Kerouac took to France in an attempt to find his heritage.  The back of the book describes it as "rollicking", but I don't think that's at all what I'd call it.  It's not nearly as depressing as Big Sur, but it has the same underlying feeling to it... I mean, he makes no attempt to hide his dangerous drinking, and his poor attitudes and actions--it's the same way he's always spoken, but without the romanticism, and that's like a slow death.  It feels like when you're tired as hell but you know you need to keep on going and at least you'll be able to collapse into bed at the end of the day, and hopefully you'll be able to rest then.

"As in an earlier autobiographical book I'll use my real name here, full name in this case, Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, because this story is about my search for this name in France, and I'm not afraid of giving the real name of Raymond Baillet to public scrutiny because all I have to say about him, in connection with the fact he may be the cause of my satori in Paris, is that he was polite, kind, efficient, hip, aloof and many other things and mainly just a cabdriver who happened to drive me to Orly airfield on my way back home from France: and sure he wont be in trouble because of that--And besides probably will never see his name in print because there are so many books being published these days in America and in France nobody has time to keep up with all of them, and if told by someone that his name appears in an American 'novel' he'll probably never find out where to buy it in Paris, if it's ever translated at all, and if he does find it, it wont hurt him to read that he, Raymond Baillet, is a great gentleman and cabdriver who happened to impress an American during a fare ride to the airport.  Compris?" (8-9).

"In other words, and after this I'll shut up, made-up stories and romances about what would happen IF are for children and adult cretins who are afraid to read themselves in a book just as they might be afraid to look in the mirror when they're sick or injured or hungover or insane" (10).  Though I don't necessarily agree with the quote (though it may explain my aversion to this and Big Sur), I like the "[those] who are afraid to read themselves in a book just as they might be afraid to look in the mirror" bit.

"This book'll say, in effect, have pity on us all, and dont get mad at me for writing at all" (11).

"For I was the loneliest man in Paris if that's possible" (12).  Those first two chapters, from which those first two quotes come from, are sort of prologues to the book.  So... Yeah, his first day in Paris.  He talks about Sainte Chapelle and how much he wanted to visit it (though he also talks about how he never got around to it)... I think it was one of the churches I visited in Paris, though to be honest I couldn't tell you because I was so sick of seeing churches... Also, there was a fee to get inside and a gift shop was installed.  That kind of turned me off altogether.  Whether I personally believe in the religion or not, it seems wrong to do that.  Remember the cleansing of the temple?  Apparently not.

On a woman he hooked up with: "She took me over.  She also wants to marry me, naturally, as I am a great natural bed mate and nice guy" (16).  Woah, a little ego showing up there, huh, Jack?

"It isnt a question of money but of souls having a good time" (16).  No, she wasn't a prostitute.  He just means in general.

"It's hard to decide what to tell in a story, and I always seem to try to prove something, comma, about my sex.  Let's just forget it" (19).  First of all, no, I can't fathom why he wrote the comma in.  Secondly, he goes on to talk about how lonely he can get for a woman... But I originally read this as, oh, perhaps proving that he actually is straight, despite, uh, encounters with Allen Ginsberg and a lot of other unknown men.  (Would overcompensation be the right word?)
Also, after that he goes into talking to a girl at a bar and makes himself look like a huge jerk: "I gaze into her eyes--I give her the double whammy blue eyes compassion shot--She falls for it" (19).  Actually, I'm just going to say it straight-up: this makes him look like a huge douchebag.

distingue gathering in Paris that night, and as I say it's misting outside, and her soft little hook nose has under it rose lips.  I teach her Christianity" (24).  He doesn't quite use that as a euphemism, but I'm going to pretend he does because that would be awesome phrasing.

"My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.  As I grew older I became a drunk.  Why?  Because I like ecstasy of the mind.  I'm a Wretch.  But I love love" (28).

On his attempts find various authors' people's monuments/tombs (and his failed attempt to get to Pere Lachaise): "And how could I find my way to Port Royal if I could hardly find my way back to my hotel?  And besides they're not there at all, only their bodies" (36).

And apparently while in France he writes a second 'SEA' poem, the first one being that which is in the back of Big Sur.  Just a random note, I know, but still...

"I was already homesick.  Yet this book is to prove that no matter how you travel, how 'successful' your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts" (43).

"What a miracle are different languages and what an amazing Tower of Babel this world is" (47).

"I know there a lot of beautiful churches and chapels out there that I should go look at, and then England, but since England's in my heart why go there? and 'sides, it doesn't matter how charming cultures and art are, they're useless without sympathy--All the prettiness of tapestries, lands, people:--worthless if there is no sympathy" (88).

I just want to mention that Jack meets a French man named Ulysse.  That seems almost suspiciously perfect.  Life imitating art?  Actually... I guess that would be more life imitating life.  Still.  Crazy coincidence, no?

So here our cabdriver Raymond appears.  They discuss their differing backgrounds, heritage, family life, et cetera.  Raymond says that he's got three kids, and when Raymond asks Kerouac how many kids he's got, Kerouac answers with seven.  What I'm curious about is if Kerouac was just pulling a number out of the air, or if he actually had seven kids (that he knew of).  I know he has one 'official' daughter, but really, there have got to be some wild oats.  In fact... Seven seems like it's too small a number.  Hmm...

The book ends as follows: "'Adieu, Monsieur Raymond Baillet,' I say.  The Satori taxidriver of page one.  When God says, 'I Am Lived,' we'll have forgotten what all the parting was about" (118).  That's beautiful.


The book was okay.  It was sort of just there, not particularly bad or good.  It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't awe-inducing either.  You can definitely tell that it's one his later works, it... Well, it moves around quickly, but... at a more leisurely pace, if that makes sense.  Like he's still doing what he likes, but it's more like he's going back to a modified version because, well, he was older.  The book was there.
I've started Pic.  It's... I don't even know.  I'm having a lot of trouble getting into it because it's written in a Southern dialect.  Please speak the king's English or I won't understand what's going on.  (Just don't take a look at my Stephen King books, though, please.  Especially not Dolores Claiborne!)

MLA citation information: Kerouac, Jack.  Satori in Paris.  Grove Press: New York, 1985.


Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: Lady Stardust by David Bowie
This post's cryptic song lyrics: And I don't see the world going by, and I don't even have to try, I'm just hangin' around