"...get a friendly smart sensitive human-being gal who don't give a shit for martinis every night and all that dumb white machinery in the kitchen." (pg 102)
"Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree." (pg 123)
" 'Where'd you learn to do all these funny things?' he laughed. 'And you know I say funny but there's sumpthin so durned sensible about 'em. Here I am killin myself driving this rig back and forth from Ohio to L.A. and I make more money than you ever had in your whole life as a hobo, but you're the one who enjoys life and not only that but you do it without workin or a whole lot of money. Now who's smart, you or me?' And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn't enjoy any of it because he really wasn't free." (pg 129)
" 'Yep,' I thought, ' you pay through the nose for shortlived shows...' " (pg 135)
"...nothing can be lost, on a well-worn path." (pg 141)
"The world as it is, is Heaven..." (pg 141)
"...the final sin, the worst, is righteousness." (pg 149)
"...I'd explain a little Buddhism to them, specifically karma, reincarnation... 'You mean other chances to come back and try again?' asked the poor little Mexican, who was all bandaged from a fight in Juarez the night before.
'That's what they say'
'Well goddammit next time I be born I hope I ain't who I am now' " (pg 159)
To sum up the two basic themes I see within Kerouac's quotable lines, they're either about his Dharma, religious views or having to do with critiques of capitalist lifestyle.
-Julian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIGZUjWzdR4&feature=channel_video_title
ReplyDeleteYou're truly on a Dharma bum mission of my own, -Julian
I just wanted my comment for this week to be on this post, especially because of Trey's guest lecture today (even though I'm a day late!). I read this when it was posted and it really resonated with me and with the things I've been picking up during my own independent reading of the text. It is so clear that to follow your Dharma you must ignore the rest and focus on your path. Granted, in this day and age that is no easy task but I feel with these little sayings that Kerouac created all throughout this entire book, much more is being said. I admire these maxims and aim to live by what they stand for--choosing not to be restrained by society and its restrictions, but rather to trust the Silent Hand.
ReplyDelete-Annabel Powell, B Group
Jules -
ReplyDeleteI love the vid clip. (Thoughts of incorporating this in your final project??) BUT . . . just to keep steering you a bit in more of the direction of my ideal blog posting, pick a smaller handful of those quotes (or even just one or two) and do a close reading of them in relation to the greater context of the text as a whole or in relation to the greater corpus of texts/media/etc. that we are coming in contact with in the course. Keep up the good work
Trey
Annabel -
Glad to know somebody got something constructive out of my ramblings. I like your notion of Dharma as a path, and how it relates to Kerouac's discovery that nothing can be lost on a well-worn path when he loses the prayer beads Snyder had given him only to find them the next day. It say alot about attachment to material things as well, although this was not something of monetary value, to someone like Kerouac, the sentimental value of the object must've been enormous, but the loss of it didn't evoke any sense of trauma, he remains, like a good aspiring Buddhist, spiritually detached from the world and the notion of possession/property (Essentially because we are all part of the same nothing/void/essence/etc).
Trey