Allen Ginsberg’s commentary on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues from here
AG: But okay, let’s go back. That’s like – “Little cottages of hills receive/the Constellation of/ the Southern Hemisphere” – Which will be a funny image repeated later on when he says, “America is a permissable dream/ providing you remember that ants have Americas… And little Americas are had/ By baby mules on misty fields.” [Editorial note 51st Chorus]– So the egotism of America is “a permissable dream”, provided you remember that even the ants have their giant new worlds and Americas and little Americas, “are had by baby mules on misty fields”, meaning, that they have their own universe. And they’re not concerned with ours. So America – it’s permissable to dream about the giant Whitmanic ego, Wolfean ego of America, as long as you remember that microbes have their new worlds and vast discovered continents and presumably their huge invasions.
“Little cottages of hills receive/the Constellation of/ the Southern Hemisphere/Where rosy doves’re seen flyin/ Past Pis Cacuaqaheuro/Monte Visto de Santo/De Gassa..” – (Now, “Santo/De Gassa” (I don’t know what all that is. “Pis Cacuaqaheuro” is … Pisca..pulque is a cactus drink. An alcoholic cactus drink that Kerouac had liked drinking in Mexico. And, (if) you drink a lot of it, it makes you piss a lot).
“Where rosy doves’re seen flyin/ Past Pis Cacuaqaheuro/ Monte Visto de Santo/ De Gassa..” – (Vision Mountain of Holy Gas. So it’s all back to balloons again – that is the universe as a big empty balloon – empty gas – that could explode also and disappear. “Where rosy doves’re” – (where pleasure of happiness and youthful tender lyrical hopes – rosy hopes – (“BALLOONS of Rose Hope” we had before).
“Where rosy doves’re seen flyin/Past Pis Cacuaqaheuro – (Vision Mountain of Saint Gas) – “healing helium/gas -/ from the substance on the sun star -/ gas discovered on the sun by spectral gazing” – (Just a bunch of nerds just kept hanging around looking at the sun and they discovered it was made out of helium gas and then announced it with great pride – and got the Nobel Prize for it, just by looking at the sun! So he’s comparing them to some kind of modern sorcerers, sorcerers – or he’s comparing them to the devils and rakshas of the Buddhist worlds, which are about the same unscientific imaginary make-up mythology).
“Sorcerers hoppity skop/with the same familiarity/In my Buddhaland dreams -“ – (as spectral gazers at the sun discovering helium gas and Pluto the latest star)
So the whole business is the “Monotonous monotony/of endless grape dirigible stars.” Endless balloons. The stars are endless balloons. Well, put it all together: “Monotonous monotony” – well, human existence is “Monotonous monotony/of endless(ness) … stars,” human dirigibles, grapes – “grape dirigible stars.” I don’t know why “grape dirigible” – I don’t know what that means still after all these years. But it’s a line that I dig.
Yeah. He has another line that he liked that also buzzed my head – “Mosquitoes of straw.” You know, giant mosquitos. Mexico, giant mosquitoes of straw. Well, that’s more understandable because it’s great straw-like legs on big huge mosquitos and their great straw-like proboscises that bite you. “Mosquitoes of straw,” “grape dirigible stars.”
[Editorial note – “”Mosquitoes of straw,” appears in Scripture of The Golden Eternity – “On the moon big mosquitos of straw know this in the kindness of their hearts”]
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy minutes in and concluding at approximately seventy-four minute in