Quietly Howling
“The Universe is a new flower.” – Allen Ginsberg
What he wrote, the Universe being a new flower, in response to a severe criticism in the press regarding one thing or another he’d published, or something he and Jack Kerouac wrote, or something they said, or maybe it was just about who they were. Living their beat lives and sort of sticking out like sore thumbs back there in the post-war, Cold War, Eisenhower and Madison Ave super straightness, slurp goldfish, cram-into-phone-booths, falling-in-line 50’s America. So Ginsberg and Kerouac took a bunch of mainstream heat and Jack mostly drank at it. Allen – well, he evolved around it, like a freshly-blooming bud. Iris? Bougainvillea? Snapdragon?Early on flower power. One answer to where all the flowers went.
Reminding me….
My wife is currently reading “Pollyanna” – the original. She felt the need, she told me, to gather optimism. Head right to the source, Ms. Optimism herself. Me, I’m reading Hunter S. Thompson’s “Kingdom of Fear”. No special reason. One journalist connecting with another I guess. I’m also reading the “Letters of Jack Kerouac”, two volumes, years 1940 through 1969, 1100 plus pages, reminded daily the positive power of writing/receiving a letter. Nothing like it really — emails, messages, texts, blah de blah – they pale in compare. Too quick. Too easy. Intangible. Nah, there in the mailbox, a creation, an actual thing, hold that little cutie in your hands, and – best of all – someone made it just for you. You alone, no other human (unless it’s a letter addressed to more than one, and actually I dropped a couple of those in the mailbox Monday — Like minds to be (hopefully) stimulated, engaged, and amazed by all kinds of cool info and way out there proclamations which only this writer could write. Again, a one-time special event. One writer – one reader – one ring to bind them al…no, wait, that’s another long book.
“I want to go on being a bum: that’s the secret of my joy, and without my joy there’s nothing to write about.” – Jack Kerouac. Yeah, I came across that in this morning’s reading, I seriously resonated, Brah, the ”to thine own self true’ idea and ‘letting it all hang out’, ‘different strokes for different folks’, the’joy in the journey’, the magical/mystical alchemy of ‘what you see is what you get’. And I say that as honor and respecting and celebrating of self, which takes me back to the opening Ginsberg quote and offering up flowers to and at wrongs and evils and hopelessness and the general shitstorm of this about-to-go-away-don’t-let-the-door-whack-your-butt-year. Meaning, I got nothing left in the arguing and reasoning and moaning/groaning/telephoning departments, they’ve sent in the Clowns (in abundo), now it’s only me and Julio and a big bunch of daisies down in the schoolyard. If you can dig that.
All of which – this verbiage – being my attempt to post a final entry in this annual’s Blog’d tidings real up to speed with where I am and what I am (these days) and who I am, and including joyously blessed, and on my knees every single morning wishing for a grateful heart and for a chance or maybe a couple in the day to shine my little light. This little light of (only) mine.
The wife was a while ago down here in the basement where it is I do some creating and she said there was a vision (she’d had) and it was that we are all interconnected, and when one of us connects up with another of us the web of life – which is good and always abundant with flowering wonder – yeah, when humans connect the web of life thickens and strengthens, and I cannot speak for you (or even the wife) but being a bum is just alright with me and chasing joy my intent when blessed with another any old day and this cat goes about striking blows against The Empire here at the tail end of 2020 with fun writings – maybe just like this one – and the eternal partnering up with joy, cause, dig it, what else is worth writing about.
Like when I open my eyes and the Universe is a new flower.