we watched taking lives and i remember you said that she was me in that film and so i see now that you were right because her mannerisms and crazzy-ass intensity and long hair and swoop-bangs thing, yeh, definitely me, and she plays with her hands when she is thinking
i am happy it was filmed and took place in Quebec city and montreal
there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to count all the bruises on my legs from corners of futon and doorway frames
then we watched the butterfly effect and if i wasn’t so innebriated i would have cried
oh but i did cry but just not on the outside
i knew i would relate to that movie on too many levels
i told serah i am going to need botox injections in my forehead because i express all emotions with it even as i type this i am all smooshed and furrowed up in thayuh.
The moment that you begin resenting a person, you become his slave. He controls your dreams, absorbs digestion, robs you of your peace of mind and goodwill, and takes away the pleasure of your work.
He ruins your religion and nullifies your prayers. You cannot take a vacation without his going along. He destroys your freedom of mind and hounds you wherever you go.
There is no way to escape the person you resent. He is with you when you are awake; he invades your privacy when you sleep. He is close beside you when you eat, when you drive your car and when you are on the job.
You can never have efficiency nor happiness. He influences even the tone of your voice. He requires you to take medicine for indigestion, headaches and loss of energy.
He even steals your last moment of consciousness before you go to sleep.
So if you want to be a slave, harbor your resentments.
Along the way, any drifter is a ride the group takes on. Dean and Sal pick up anyone with a few bucks to spare and a story to tell. The road is long, dark and lonely and it appears the guys have their eyes peeled for all signs of action. We feel from On the Road how lonely and hard it is on the soul, to hitch. In Big Sur Kerouac takes onthe life of hitching. He is Jack Duluoz and thumbs a ride to California’s Pacific Ocean at Big Sur.
The only car that passes that might have given me a ride is going in the wrong direction, down to Sur, and it’s a rattly old car of some kind with a big bearded “South Coast Is the Lonely Coast” folksinger in it waving at me/ Big Sur, pg. 47
We feel defeat along with Jack, we want that car to pick him up, regardless of it being old and rattly. We know he is beat, tired. Imagine standing by the side of the road all day and your only chance speeds right on past. We easily envision it zooming by, a cloud of dust in its wake and still, Jack stands there with determination – he’s getting to where he’s going, no matter what.
Unlike On the Road, the vagabond in Big Sur tries to escape the road going ways to a cabin in Big Sur woods. In this novel, Kerouac writes of his inability to stray far from the vices he is trying to run from and the public which shaped him.
There’s all that, and all my fine thoughts, even unto my ditty written to the sea “I took a pee, into the sea, acid to acid, and me to ye” yet I went crazy inside three weeks. Big Sur, pg. 39
With this, Kerouac foreshadows the eventual dementia which overtakes him upon his three weeks of solitude. He attempts to lay low in Big Sur, mellow out and relax. The mixture of booze and solitude prove to be the deciding factors toward the path of self-destruction for the main character. Within a few days he hallucinates sounds of the Pacific Ocean and sits there babbling to himself, capturing it all in poetry and calls it Sea;
The sea is we-Parle, parle, boom the earth-Aree-shaw, Sho, Shoosh, flut, ravad, tapavada pow, coof, loof, roof,- Oh ya, ya, ya, yo, yair- Shhh-
Evidently through Kerouac’s twenty-three page long poem entitled Sea, he is fully immersed with the sounds of the ocean, this is how he interprets each crash, rise and fall of the waves. This poem can be interpreted in many a way, is he mad or is he simply fond of nature? It becomes obsessive, his mad scrawling and desperate attempt to get it all out. The initial vision of the retreat to Big Sur woods is tainted once Dulouz invites his group of poet friends to the cabin;
I’m sick and tired of all the endless enthusiasms of new young kids trying to know me and pour out all their lives into me so that I’ll jump up and down and say yes yes that’s right, which I can’t do anymore-My reason for coming to Big Sur for the summer being precisely to get away from that sort of thing- Big Sur, pg. 109
Kerouac confesses he realizes the fun ‘n games of the “beats” are over and now that he’s an icon, it’s lost its apeal. It is like he is coming to terms after the long roller-coaster ride of years on the road. There is a bite to these words, a bitterness. Kerouac once was a young kid with endless enthusiasm, eager for acceptance but now he scorns it. He’s been there, done that – he’s coined the “beat generation”. We capture his uncertainty up in the cabin, he hates the kids but can’t stand being alone with no one to drink with, to talk to. What does he want? Has he found “it” yet? Will he?
Using On the Road and Big Sur, Jack Kerouac explored the country from coast to coast many times in the company of friends, alcohol, and poetry. The imagery used in both novels is a showcase for the raw and sometimes emotional talent that was embodied in Kerouac and the Beatniks of the time. In On the Road, Kerouac described the insanities of his friend Dean using descriptive imagery and lively anecdotes; comprable is the way Kerouac uses imagery to describe his own budding insanity. These two classic American novels proves the effective use of imagery is only one hallmark of a great author.
Most famously known for the road-going journal On the Road, Jack Kerouac uses imagery as an effective way to describe and explain situations he experiences and people he encounters throughout his career. In several of his autobigraphical novels, Kerouac explores his “self” through the eyes of fictionalized protagonists; for example, in On the Road he is Sal Paradise. Jack Kerouac wrote about his life from an objective vantage point to utilize the imagery his stories are filled with, capturing the moments on ever page.
With On the Road, Kerouac introduces a new stylistic manner of creation: spontaneous prose. With previous works, Kerouac mirrors the style of Thomas Wolfe’s writing; however he progressed, from that, into the style of spontaneous prose with On the Road and continued in the same with Big Sur. The reader may find the progression interesting, because Kerouac writes Big Sur after the onslaught of success and popularity he received after the publication of On the Road. Big Sur is the recounting of a man in the midst of becoming a reluctant cultural icon and a drunken slob. Kerouac struggles with his fame and money by using it to purchase large quantities of alcohol and turn what once planned to be a quiet “writing retreat” into a gathering of wild beatniks. Kerouac as Sal Paradise, we follow him through the motions of idealistic writer, eager to dig life and experience the world, scribbling it all down and offering true-grit tales – his way of life.
We sit with Sal Paradise during On the Road, analyzing and nodding our heads “yes” in agreement with the brilliant observations he makes. His use of imagery is profound and crystal clear – we are right there, digging life with Sal and his partner-in-crime, Dean Moriarty;
“Now we must all get out and dig the river and the people and smell the world,” said Dean, bustling with his sunglasses and cigarettes and leaping out of the car like a jack-in-the-box. On the Road, pg. 140
The imagery in this quote is used mainly to describe Dean Moriarty, a fast-paced guy with his own agenda and also lends the reader a view of how these “beatniks” stopped, quite literally, to smell the roses. This is all that matters in their lives, they have close to no money and they don’t care one bit. They dig.
In On the Road, Kerouac describes his adventures with Neal Cassady, otherwise coined as Dean Moriarty as the two venture from coast-to-coast and everywhere in between. They stop for life and take it without regret,
Where go? what do? what for? -sleep. But this foolish gang was bending onward. On the Road, pg. 167
Thus, summing up the pace of the crew, Sal shows there is never a set reason why they flit from place-to-place, because reason, to them, is not significant to their big picture. They push forward, ready to buy more and live more. We feel Sal’s mood an almost need to know what is to come and then a quiet acceptance to “sleep” – the two of both extremes, panic to surrender. We feel the atmosphere that Sal, as narrator, creates from the description ofthe group. As we read, we are enticed and want the inside story, wanting to stand beside Sal, thumbs in the air and waiting for the eventual ride;
Outside Tucson we saw another hitchhiker in the dark road. This was an Oakie from Bakersfield, California, who put down his story. “Hot damn, I left Bakersfield with the travel-bureau car and left my gui-tar in the trunk of another one…” On the Road, pg. 167
Here is the ISU Essay I wrote comparing Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to Big Sur for my grade 12 advanced english class just before i graduated from charm school and fucked off to nyc. Feel free to email and totally ‘dis the shit out of it because i left it to the very, very last minute and i didn’t even read Big Sur, i read the first 1/4 of it and i was like SHUT UP and then that fucking poem at the end about the waves, i think you have to be on speed to get that sort of thing. anyway, also feel free to plagiarise it yourself, steal the words, make it better.
i found this kid in a beatnik messageboard and got him to help me word it all the nite before i handed it in, go internet! i was like durr yeh i am related to this dude and he was all impressed and younger. pfft. oh and if you go to the charm school i graduated from you can get the copy of On the Road that i read, dog-eared, underlined, and was this close to stealing but didn’t because i didn’t ever wanna have to go back to that school again and go to library jail and not get my yearbook, which i didn’t purchase anyway and i didn’t have my photo taken for it either but there is some “poetry” they published, i have no idea why ‘cos it was all about being a vixen and sexing people and depression, and so on.
i got 33 out of 40 on it.
8/10 for style
9/10 for unity and coherence
9/10 for evidence
7/10 for technical precision
and my teacher even wrote “Well done, Lauren.”
focker.
for research i got 8/10
process 7/10
organization 7/10
ME!
the red loser-idiot markings say }awk. which means this sentence you just wrote is awkward you are a fucking moron but if you tried a bit harder this might even be japanese. All the other mistakes are places where i was too jewish to make the title italics and some other crap about open paragraphs i don’t even know. essays are for people who write books and people who write books with essays in them are the same people who want to be friends with rush limbaugh and ps i got his book for a dollar from the library i can’t wait to critique the hell out of it.
i will transcribe the essay a little bit later because i am gay, right now.
my lower lip is all dried-up and out and i am too much of a faggot to put lip balm on it so i am sucking at it and biting it and making it look all fat lower lipesque because i get punched in the lip because i am fantastic.
anyhow.
i have a new counsellor and he reminds me of curb your enthusiasm dude and he talks with his hands and he makes great analogies and i tell him i don’t wanna work for the man and he is like, awesome.
i took a picture of the schizophrenia digest that i know you will all appreciate.
doctor dude says i have to make a 5 year plan and i said i can’t even make a five second plan and i told aimee this and she laughed in that way she laughed because she is aimee and fil says, hmmph, “doctor” he is a counsellor I am a doctor and then we talked about the movie we are going to make, and then play it at my art show, one day this century.
and that is my five year plan.
i have a friggin’ earache, i think i am getting sick again AND i hate smoking cigarettes AND i got the lay-away shoes courtesy of GK.
