america the beautiful

November 11, 2004

i’ve seen some of robert frank’s stuff before and have always been intrigued because he not only collaborated with kerouac but also was a friend. interesting, because besides ginsberg’s interest in documenting the beat generation through photography, there weren’t many prominent photographers of the beat inclination.

robert frank definitely was. and it seems like photography was well-suited to the beat generation, though maybe kerouac’s refusal to accept the obvious, insistence on seeing and acknowledging and recording reality, made photography redundant.

there’s a new show of frank’s work in new york. wish i could go. here’s how jack introduced frank’s book the americans:

“Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.”
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we’ve got spirit, yes we do

November 11, 2004

okay, fuck the sundowner, i think we’re going with the wenonah spirit II

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self portrait

November 11, 2004

my previous two posts were narcissistic. certainly nothing new in blogville, but something i want to stay away from here. blogs are inherently self-centered, but i’d rather not blog about my blog. i will try to write something worth reading.

i tried to write something worth reading last night. i really want to record my honeymoon, and mostly i want to record meeting gary snyder. i thought it would just be a matter of sitting down and writing.

i didn’t take long to come up with my first sentence and paragraph: “on monday, october 25, i met gary snyder.”

but then i did this annoying thing where my next paragraph began, “we arrived in san francisco the previous evening about 7:00…” and i went on to recount all the events that transpired. i didn’t want to just leap into the few minutes i spent in the original dharma bum’s presence without laying the proper context. maybe it would be as simple as getting rid of that first sentence and just telling the story of our first 24 hours in san francisco, culminating with meeting gary.

it was a great day in san francisco, marked by comfort being with my new wife, the excitement of being far from home, the happiness of being in san francisco, the peace of just being.

i wanted to just tell about the day. i didn’t intend to write six or so paragraphs, all beginning with “we…” there’s something to be said for sticking to the facts, showing not telling, etc, but i was far from a hemingway opening:

The sun on the water is the toughest part of fishing the north coast of Cuba for marlin in July and August.”
-Ernest Hemingway, Esquire, 1934

so, the evening ended up frustrating. i ran out of energy, i ran out of time. i knew i didn’t like the way i was putting things together, but as always i try to not edit myself as i write. something natalie goldberg drilled into my head seven or eight years ago with her book wild mind. i’ve long since learned to shut up the “monkey mind.”

so what did i get out of last night? well, i didn’t even make it to city lights for the reading, that’s how waylaid i got recounting all the details of the day. i got a few decent pieces of languages, a few clear images, some memories i didn’t even know i still had, and a desire to write about the event much, much better before i post it here.

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dharma blog

November 11, 2004

i have met the enemy and they is us.

no really, i just discovered that there is a blog out there called simply “dharma blog.” i feel bad, because when you search for such a thing mine comes up first but probably only because i have updated mine more recently (although the good reverend heng sure, blogmaster over there, did post on oct 31).

anyway, i think we can live in peace. i even added dharma blog to my blogroll. you never know, though… this could degrade into one of those incidents where you see footage of buddhist monks with bandanas over their faces setting fire to rival sect’s monasteries…

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stoked

November 11, 2004

finally cycled out of those lame election-related google ads and got city lights bookstore. please click. all funds raised through that will be spent on fly fishing gear, books or beer.

i’m not sure what drove the placement for the anxiety web site, my best guess was this sentence from my rambling about neal cassady: “constant movement. never wasting a minute. always alive. always awake. always observant.” i’d be curious to know.

update: okay, now i’m pissed. not really. but, i just lost city lights and now have two anxiety-related web sites in my ads. how many times do i have to mention jack kerouac to get city lights? and what is it about web site that screams, well, i’m not going to say it because it’ll just reinforce the idea with google’s weird algorithms. whatever. we’re all a little edgy sometimes, go check out those sites. oh, and, i like jack kerouac.

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literary interrogation

November 10, 2004

i’m a firm believer in knowing your roots. as such, i am indescribably excited that the paris review is preparing to launch all of it’s “writers at work” interviews online in just a few short days.

The Paris Review has interviewed almost 300 authors whose work has defined the literary landscape of latter half of the twentieth century. From its first interview with E.M. Forster, the Writers at Work series has, in the words of The New York Times, “set the standard for literary interrogation.” Now the Paris Review Foundation proposes to make this vast archival resource–what has felicitously been referred to as the DNA of Literature–available online, for free, to anyone who visits the Paris Review website. In addition to the interview itself, the website will feature author photos, images of original manuscript pages, a special forum in which authors will be able to revise or expand their original interviews, and links to pages that provide up-to-date biographical information about the authors. A customized search engine will allow a reader not only to search by name and date, but also to search the full text of the interviews so that, for instance, a search for Gabriel García Márquez will turn up his interview along with every other interview in which his name is mentioned.

The project will launch in mid-November of 2005, beginning with the interviews from the 1950s. These will be followed by interviews from subsequent decades, until all the interviews are available.

they are fully justified calling this project the “dna of literature”… these people, these interviews, are simply the building blocks of contemporary literature.

i don’t recall when jack was interviewed, but i’m guessing it was the 50s. oh, for yay!

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