Allen Ginsberg on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues from here
AG: Ah, then he explains – 16th Chorus:
“Santayana meaning,/holy vehicle” – (George Santayana is a philosopher – “Santa“, holy, “yana“, means a vehicle in Sanskrit)
“Santayana meaning,/holy vehicle,/Uno -/One Cross/One Way/One Cave inward/ down/ to/moon/ Shining essences/of universes of stars/disseminated into powers/and dust-/blazing/in the dynamo/of our thoughts/in the forge/of the moon/In the June/of black bugs/ in your bed/of hair earth”
Actually by this time the book has come together very coherently and he’s making a big statement about what he believes about life and what he feels like inside and what does he think it’s all about.
“Santayana meaning,/holy vehicle,/Uno -/One Cross/One Way/One Cave” – Mind.
“… inward/down/to/moon” – Imagination.
Then he has a little vision of the entire universe will turn into dust and powder.
“Shining essences/of universes of stars/disseminated into powers/and dust-”
And where is that happening?
“blazing/ in the dynamo/of our thoughts/in the forge/of the moon”
He uses the moon like that all the time for some new moon of crazy … I mean, in the forge of crazy, “in the forge/of the moon,” in the forge of imagination.
Then all of a sudden he gets back down to earth:
“In the June/ In Mexico./of black bugs/in your bed/ of hair earth” –
(That’s pretty. It gets better and better, I think).
Does that make sense to you, this kind of reference, or this kind of composite fast reference? Or is it beginning to make more (sense)?
Student: Yeah.
AG: “In the June/of black bugs/in your bed/of hair earth” –
(What a horrible image! Hot June in Mexico City with black bugs in his sleeping bag! – “in your bed/of hair earth” – as compared to the interior magnificence of imagination and the Sacred Heart).
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-six-and-a-quarter minutes and continuing until approximately thirty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in