The Waste Land

Ah, but even I feel the chill of solitude at times.

Do I dare Disturb the universe?

Brother posted a quote from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and it intrigued me. Read it. It is my currently favourite poem. Thus end my obsession with Ginberg's Howl. 

Something more lucid and refined is desired after the crude pyrotechnics that is Ginsberg. I haven't touched my recent purchase of the collected poems and letters of John Keats. Been reading Rumi again. 

Anyway, here. Have a read of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Click me! 

while listening to this reading:

Kerouac, Jack.

I love Jack's voice. Thick, fluid, sticky. It's how I imagine honey would sound if it were a sound. Its golden luminosity sweetly mysterious in its tantalizing almost transparency. Just lovely.

Marcel Proust, John Keats, Thomas Wolfe, Andre Gide, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hart Crane, T.S. Elliot, Ben Whishaw, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Julian Green, Paul Cezanne, Arthur Rimbaud, Fitzgerald, Byron & Thomas Mann. I've only read 47 pages of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters (which I compulsively bought) and these are among the poets, writers and philosophers I extracted.

Not to mention the french they sprinkle all over the first few letters like confetti (i.e la belle dame sans mercip which is a poem by Keats that Ginsberg used in reference to Kerouac's girlfriend, at the time). I had a hard time translating them all. But only the first few, thank goodness. I'd go mad trying to translate them all.

I'm quite fixated on the idea of The Beat Generation , the 'new vision' as they call it in their letters that is their modus operandi, their weltanscahuung (Yes, this I picked up from the letters), their affairs, their art. Mainly because I know absolutely nothing about them really. I haven't even read Kerouac's On The Road. All I've read is Ginberg's poem, Howl.


They're all as mad as mad is mad. Crazy & in Love. In love with themselves, the world, everything.

nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky

Johnny Depp reading Kerouac's On The Road

The excerpt being read is here.

Whiter than light, darker than black.
In the Sun's eye I find my eternal happiness
floating like clouds in the sky that sails like ships.
Mastless, free, airborned by invisible winds
with the weight of the heavens upon it,
no anchor will hold my spirit.

I'm with you in Rockland:

I walk the streets
      of my old home and smile at the neighbours
      while their pets gambol on the golden grass
      their original owners dead
      their liquid whiteless eyes sad.
I walk the streets
     of Sydney, Melbourne, Beijing, Vietnam,
     where the ponies are fluffy, the pianos are phony,
     the pavement scarred with spit and
     the history scarred with irony.
I walk the streets
    of my life upon which I continually sigh
    as the tips of my fingers freeze
    and shuddering laughter echo
    in the plains of my love.
I walk the streets
    of ebony and ivory
    where music and lyrics bleed
    snaky tendrils of rapture
    ravage all that they capture.
I walk the streets
   of Silence that
   only the Moon could speak of
   only the deaf could mutter of
   only the dead could convey.
I walk the streets
   of all that is triumphant
   and gawk at the shining glory
   gossiping away with victory
   laughing, snickering, smirking.
I walk the streets
   of my father's dreams
   his countenance stern and loving
   in his hands, mine
   on his shoulders, the universe.
I walk the steets
   of God's lover
   but this is a lie
   one can only try
   kneeling, only to cry.
I walk the steets of my mind
    Within it, I sit and lurk.

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Yes. I ought to stop posting my mediocre attempts and keep my experiments to myself. If I let it ferment long enough, or possibly just rot away, maybe there'll be something somewhat sweet left. Residual, but...sweet.

I'm just going crazy a little because I no longer have the time to revise my lecture materials on a daily basis for all my units to keep up with classes. It annoys me. Just as it does when my hands do not distinctly smell of soap. Fingers in particular must be either odourless or soapy fresh.