On Mexico City Blues (9th Chorus)

Allen Ginsberg on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues  continues from here

AG: Then, the 9th Chorus.

“We’re all taking short cut/Through Death Valley” – (So from the geography to the geography, but now getting back to the Buddhist thing)

The Volcanic Mountains/And the Lizard Ice/ And the Lice of Sand/ – Lhasas of Weedblack/ Cock Rock Philtrite – / Redwoods so Huge/ They climb passes by God-/ The Giant Angels/ In the Washington D C Blue Sky/ – -The Heroines of Cathedral/ Feelaheen Mexico – ” – Commenting on the Great Cities – “of the World,/ The Blue Marvel of New Orleans” -/ (land a swamps)” – (That’s kind of nice for New Orleans –  “The Blue Marvel of New Orleans.”  It’s just funny little flashes or phrasings that are poetic.  It’s like making believe you’re writing poetry – not having anything to write about, just making believe you’re writing poetry and then writing pretties – writing little pretty thing, maybe connected some way or other).

“Ingers had done windows/ with penal Australia/too – pear Attantisatasa/ the Central Essential/ Indy Portuga/  c o I t” – (“Coit” ? I don’t know what?  Coitus, Coit Tower in San Francisco –  “the Central Essential/Indy Portuga”  – (Portuguese Indies).

“Attantisatasa”? – I don’t know what that is.  I have no idea what it is except Atlantis and Boddhisattva put together.

Ingers -(Jean) Ingres, the French painter, probably.  Ingers –  I-N-G-E-R-S  – “Ingers had done windows.”  Ingres, like (Jan) Vermeer,  painted great paintings with light and with light coming through windows.  “Ingers had done windows/with penal Australia” – “penal”, penis, of course.  But penal because Australia is where England sent all their criminals, to the penal camps in Australia:

“Ingers had done windows/ with penal Australia/too – pear Attantisatasa/ the Central Essential/Indy Portuga/  c o I t”

More geography.  So, I guess it must have come from reading The Outline of History  a lot of that, is where a lot of the imagery comes from.

Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirteen-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately fifteen-and-a-half minutes in

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