Jack Kerouac Reading For Lois Sorrells – 2

Transcript of Jack Kerouac ‘s 1961 reading for Lois Sorrells continues from here

Kerouac is reading from Old Angel Midnight (which is then followed by a further section from Doctor Sax)

JK: “…this is no time to listen to just but puff – ssh sez my Jetsun Yidam (Jetsun Yidam) – Buddyo – Ava Loki T – in Ole Oaxaca we’ll find the magic boatyard knife flame.O wick, burn, or fall – The gothic…um..the gothic..  the gossip among the stars is that farledee who lit the moon end of dog turn Turk Town Tenneduck was Kansased halfway to tripe because the long thin Stick Men & the Fat Slobs who ate too much have their mouth sewed up, writers their tongues yanked by hot irons, the Wolledockers of Old Gallows England buried with the dust of ancient decapitated horses of old dust Japan in bowed head oblivion that was meant for all things crumble & disappear including (did you hear?) Lury Marsh, Goniff Tward, Mic, Tokli Twa, Stabtalita Borotani, Parsh Tilyur, Cock, Brrrocky…& Tot.

The tape concludes with Kerouac reading more from Dr Sax

After supper – After supper I wandered up the sandbank to sit on top till dark –  looked at the coal shack below, the sand, Riverside Street where the sand road crossed the rickety. Voyer grocery store, the old cemetary on the hill  (homerun centerfields old games against Rosemont Tigers on their own grounds), the backyard viney and autumn-like of the Greek brothers Arastropoulos (faintly related to G.J thru relatives working a lunchcart on Eighth Avenue New York) – Autumn in New York – The vast fields towards Dracut tigers, distant pines, stone walls – The trees of Rosemont, the geat river beyond – far off across Rosemont and over the river, Centralville and its darkening Snake Hill. I stood on sandbank top like a meditative king.  The lights turned on.

Suddenly I turned. Doctor Sax was standing there. “What do you want Doctor Sax?” I said immediately – didn’t want to hide, didn’t want the shade to overcome me and I pass out. The tall and high and dark in the bushes of the night. The feeble Lowell night lights, and the early stars of 8 o’clock evening, sent up and down a gray luminescent aura to illuminate the long green face beneath the shroud slouch down hat – Said he: “Staring with mute sun eyes were you at the drop of day in your billygoat town – think old men ain’t traveled and seen other shepherds and other gray goat pies in the meadow by the wall– You didn’t read a book today, did you, about the power of drawing a circle in the earth at night – you stood here at nightfall with your mouth hanging open and fisting your entrail piece, didn’t ya” “Not all the time!”, I said. “Ah,” said Doctor Sax rubbing his cane against his jowl, his shroudy cane popped up from black pedestal bases in his stomach dark– he leered — ”now you’re pro-testing – turning away to do a sudden smirking grin with himself in the palm of his black glove) — ”Look, I know you also saw the little children of that distant family running up and down the log at the river’s flooded edge and complimented yourself for the keenness of your eyes and thought of mowing them down with a distance scythe didn’t you!” “Yes sir!”, I snapped. “That’s better – ” And he pulled out a mask of W.C. Fields with David Copperfield Mr.Swiggins hat and put it over the black part where his face was under the slouch hat. Like Mr Pickwick on a rampage. I gaped – When I’d first heard the rustle of the bush I thought it was The Shadow.  Testify. At that moment I knew that Doctor Sax was my friend.. When I first..  da-da-doo-doo-da… [tape cuts out and resumes]..

Neither one of us at that time knew Amadeus Baroque or that he had found that ghostly manuscript. “The Flood”, said Doctor Sax, has brought the thing to a head.” When I heard him say that, even though occasionally through my being struggled the wonder of his holding the W.C. Fields mask to his face and it makes not my mind whirl but settle in obvious understanding – I knew what he meant about the flood, but by the same laws I couldn’t piece it. “The understanding of the mysteries,” he said, “will bring forth your understanding in the maples” – pointing at the air. He started out of the bushes with a mighty shudder but suddenly stopped and stood silent beside me, so high, thin and tall that I couldn’t see his face unless I looked all up – From way up there came his famous sepulchral laugh, I tingled in my toes.
Doctor Sax: “Stately Queens of evil rock caves come slomming in the slush of the underground, dripping … all the swimmers of hell are poking and sticking skinny arms thru the iron grates of the River Jaw, the underground river beneath Snake Hill –
ME: “Snake Hill? You don’t mean where I was this afternoon—”
Doctor Sax:”The Hill of The Blue Balloons”, Same“  And with these words he started off and pointed, turning. “Say goodbye to your view of the sand hills of where you call your home –we’re going through these bushes and down to Phebe Avenue.” And tragically he led me through the bushes. On the other end, where Joe and I and Snorro had spent a whole afternoon running and sailing thru the air till we got dizzy and faint landing in the hot sand like parachutists, jumping off sand banks (like the kids in Northport don’t even jump off the sand banks anymore) – here Doctor Sax looked up and a great dark eagle of the night swooped low to salute us with Uncle Sam fierce eyes leadening at us in the silver darkness. “That was Tantalus Bird”, says he, “flew in from the higher-than-Andean heights of the Tierra del Fuegan Princess – she sent a packet of herbs in his horn claw leg, I unwrap’t it – it has brought a blue tinge to the state of my current powder—”
ME: “Where are all these tinges and powders sir?”  Doctor Sax: “In my ammenyuosis shack, madame” (he chewed viciously on a cud of tobacco and sunk the chaw-cake in his inner back pockets till later). I realized that we were both crazy and had lost all contact with irresponsibility.

So the eagle flamed in heaven, I saw that his claws were made of water, his eyes were burning sand-storms of gold, his sides were solid shiny silver bars luminescent in flame, blue shadows at his rear, guards–seeing the eagle was like suddenly realizing that the world was upside down and the bottom of the world was gold. I knew that Doctor Sax was on the right track. I followed him as we pitched down through the soft sand of the bank and came stomping softly in the thinner sand at the edge of the halo-lamp light foot of Phebe- ”Hup,” said Doctor Sax handing out his arms from which a great drape fell shrouding me to my feet, as we stood there melted in a black statue of ecstasy. “No Nadeaus in the Road? — forgot about them didn’t ye – no Ninips, poor little boy– no little frantic Drouins – pigglywigging in the dust before bedtime there where the brown supperlights stretch on sidewalk. “No sir” “Nevertheless one of the Code laws of the dark, is, never let yourself be seen by shroud or self, sands have messengers in that starlight ink.” And off he glided, shroud and soft, I right beside him, bent, head down, zooming to the next shadow, I’m a great veteran at it as Sax well knows already – we hit the darkness of the last-house yard. “We’re paying a call on Gene Plouffe,” he said in a low sepulchral whisper. We leapt over the first fence, over violet bushes, and came to the Nadeau backyard crawling low – Not a sound, jthe Saturday night Hit Parade on the radio, you hear the clash of cymbals, and the announcer, and the fanfare of the orchestra, and the crash of thunderous triumphant music, No, No, They Can’t Take that Away from Me song, song-hit of the week, and it makes me sad remembering my little dead Bouncer that got lost and then recovered and then died when they put flea-powder on it and I buried it in right field in my backyard near the cellardoor – buried her six inches deep, she was just a little kitty, little dead kitties are poor.

The music is coming out of the Nadeau radio raspy and distant– Doctor Sax and I glide thru the backyard shadows silently – At the next jumping, he puts a shroudal hand on my shoulder and says “No need to worry – mix your mud with elephant flowers, adamantine boy– the hook and curl in the crook of eternity is a living thing.” All his statements knock me on the head  Come In even though I don’t understand them. I know that Doctor Sax is speaking to the bottom of my boy problems and they could all be solved if I could fathom his speech He says, .“Grawfaced travelers have been this way, came waiting grayly and meekly at doors to the committee room and consulting booth at the Castle – they were all turned away.” “When are you gonna go there?” “Now – tonight,” said Doctor Sax— “you might as well be with me tonight as with anyone anywhere – for your own safety—” A fiery eye suddenly contemplated us in the dark, on the rail of the fence. Doctor Sax brushed it aside with his shady whip-cane-shroud. I couldn’t see when the Eye had vanished – for a moment I thought I saw it flying thru the sky, and the next thing I knew I saw a flashing speck in my eye and it closed-up again.

Far ahead of me, low along the fence, Doctor Sax glided and led the way. We came to the Hampshire’s backyard – (the guy in this book called Dicky Hampshire, his real name was Billy Chandler – ha! ha!  ha! – he was lost in Bataan , he was tortured to death by the Japanese of Batan – and that’s what I remember about that) –  I can see the light in Dicky’s room where he’s drawing cartoons that he’ll be showing me Sunday at the house when my mother makes caramel pudding – I know Dicky will never see Sax or me with his weak eyes. “Punk,” I say, cursing up at his house – we’d had a fight after the raft episode – we’d made up in three days meeting gloomy and unwilling eyes on the irrevocable path in the park, and exchange Shadows. The Hampshire – (or Chandler barn) – was dark and huge –Sax was interested in it, glided to the door edge, we looked in at the groomus ceiling and suddenly a bat startled from its revery and flapped away, dropping little red fire balls that Sax blew away with his breath, laughing like a young girl.

“Our good friend Condu,” he said in a burbling aristocratic voice, as though pleased with the recollection of his chi-chi..casual friends.. castle friends and enemies. In back of the Delorge house, where the old man had died and the night G.J. and I were wrestling along in the rain suddenly six men in black carrying a shrouded black box came out and deposited it, with poor Mrs. Delorge in it who’d screamed at us one sunset of puddles over some ball, into the hearse, and with black feet stood in the rain – ha ha ha – as Doctor Sax and I hurried under the vines, lattices and darkeries of the yards a car passed on Phebe casting brown thirties headlights towards my house and Sarah Avenue, crunching over the sand road (avenue) with tufts of sandbank pines leaning within the up-lights dismal and strange inthe Saturday Night – Doctor Sax coughs, spits, glides on – I see that he’s right in the world, things happen around him, he responds only to his own life in the world – just like an auto mechanic. I’m gliding behind him slanted and leering, and romantic, at one point,tripping over a rock garden, slanted and leering like vaudeville comedians shooting drunk into the wings from a matinee performance for forty-seven bums half sleeping in seats— “Moo-hoo-hoo- he-he -haha-ha-ha” (“Moo-hoo-hoo- he-he-haha-ha-ha”) came the long, hollow, sepulchral sound of triumphant Doctor Sax’s profound and hidden laughter. I made my own cackle-laugh, with hands cupped, in the excruciatingly exciting in dark shadows of Saturday Night – women were ironing the snow ghost wash in shroudy kitchens.The children screamed a race on the cobblestones of Gershom. A raucous woman who just heard a dirty joke lofts a shrieking big laugh in the humming neighborhood night, a door slams in a shed. Tall weepy Bert Desjardins’ brother is coming up Phebe Avenue from work, his footsteps are crunching in the pebbles, he spits, the starlight shines in his spit – they think he’s been to work but he’s been to screw his girl in a dirty barn in the Dracut Woods, they stood against the raw drippy wood of the wall, near some piles of kidshit, and kicked some rocks aside, and he lifted her dress over the goose pimples of her thighs, and they leered together in the dark pant barn – he’s coming from her, where he kissed her goodbye on a windy hill, and came homewards, stopping over only at church where his shoes crunched on grit of basement church floor and he did a couple of Notre pères (Our fathers) and looked at backs on sudden devout kneelers preeing in their dark shave, among sad fluttering naves, silence except for echo pew-coughs and distant frabbles of wood benches dragging on stone, frrrrowp, and God broods in the upper hum-air – (and God has nothing against that) – Gliding together in the dark shadows of the night Doctor Sax and I knew this and everything about Lowell.

So we cross the backyard in the dark shade of Mrs. Duffy’s cherry tree–in two months, when they run the Kentucky Derby, the cherry blossoms will be in bloom – She wanted to have it cut down, she said, because she didn’t want nobody to hide behind it in the dark. Lounging, hand in pocket, in the day time, as everybody laughed at her, I nodded and agreed she was silly to want that tree cut down. The Doctor flattened into its shadow like a passing thing; I brought up the rear, shh. We crossed on tiptoe to the fence and leapt cleanly into the yard of my old Phebe Avenue house – Another family lives there, man and eight kids (Pearsall), I look swiftly as I pass under green porch at haunteds in the brown gloom of rakes, old balls, old papers. Up, I look at my ancient bedroom window where once, within, in light, I had begun my gray and hoary turf (1934) (Westrope the first Jockey) — the rattling doom glooms of other deaths we’ve died. Triumphant laughter snickered from the immense nasalities of Doctor Sax as he led striding low thru the grass and weeds of the yard – and we vaulted Marquand’s, tiptoed in gardens, came to the gloomy brown side of the Plouffe house and looked in at Gene Plouffe’s window. I saw the shadow of Sax far ahead, I hurried to fallow..or follow – he was looking for the wrong room, it turned out, he hurried swiftly to rectify mistakes. “Ah!” I heard him say (as I fumbled and turned around in circles and he bumped into me coming around the other way and the force of his bump carried us in one shroud to the window). There we were, chins on the windowsill, looking in under a foot of no-shade at Gene Plouffe reading Shadow Magazine in bed. Poor Gene Plouffe – looking at the dark window to make a speech to an enemy cowboy but realizes void, nobody there – Sax and I were well concealed by his shroudy cape. It hung in great black velvet folds in the cubular shadows of the high wall yard. Mr. Plouffe’s house had brown shingle-planks and strange tar alleys he made himself you’d think. He was asleep in his own part of the house that night– It was probably the one or two nights out of the week Gene slept there – A lot of Lowell families had several houses, several bedrooms, and wandered sullenly from one to another under great swishing trees of Eternity’s summer. Gene had the quilt up to his chin, only his wrists stuck out to hold the Star Western magazine in his hand – on the cover you can see reddish brown riders shooting bluegray Colt.45’s in a milky snow background sky, with the words Street & Smith that always took your mind away from red-brown buttes of stark West and made you realize a redbrick building, somehow sooty, with big sign STREET & SMITH on it, in white, dirty white, near Street & Smith Street in the downtown section of Pittsburgh New York. Sax chuckled, poked me in the ribs. Gene was engrossedly eyeing a beautiful sentence which said  “Pete Vaquero Kid riding up a dry arroyo in the mesquite desolations of a flat table near Needles, the road to Needles angling off like a wriggly snake thru the brush humps of the desert below, suddenly ‘Crack-Ow’ a bullet pinged in the rock and Pete leveled with the dust in a flap of brushbeaten chaps and spurjingles, lay still as a lizard in the sun.”

“How eagerly the youth doth pursue his legends, with a hungry eye,” whispered Doctor Sax much amused. “Would now the Ko-rrans of the grown up gulpitude make keen misery of that hitch. A hitch will disgust your mind in time. A hitch is called time in prison. You’ll come to rages you never dreamed….”