In this world of sin and sorrow,
there is always something
to be thankful for.
As for me, I rejoice
that I am not a Republican.
--H.L. Mencken
William S. Burroughs: A Thanksgiving Prayer
I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone
in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast,
and then I killed them and took their land.
--Jon Stewart
In the beginning of time, the skies were filled with flying elephants.
Too heavy for their wings, they sometimes crashed through the trees
and frightened other animals.
All the flying grey elephants migrated to the source of the Ganges.
They agreed to renounce their wings and settle on the earth.
When they molted millions of wings fell to the earth,
the snow covered them, and the Himalayas were born.
Grant Green: Idle Moments
The blue elephants landed in the sea and their wings became fins.
They are the whales, the trunkless elephants of the oceans.
Their cousins are the manatees, the trunkless elephants of the rivers.
The chameleon elephants kept their wings
but agreed never to land on earth.
They change colors of their feathers every day. Today they are azure,
and when it rains they are the color of pearls.
When they go to sleep, the chameleon elephants always lie down
in the same place in the sky and dream with one eye open.
The stars you see at night are the unblinking eyes of sleeping elephants,
who sleep with one eye open to best keep watch over us.
I to my perils
Of cheat and charmer
Came clad in armor
By stars benign.
Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man's deceiver
Was never mine.
The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.
Jack Kerouac: The Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception
And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach and which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the Angels dove off and flew into infinity.
--Jack Kerouac On the Road
I've been reading Whitman,
you know what he says, cheer up slaves, and horrify foreign despots, he means that's the attitude for the bard, the zen lunacy bard of old desert paths, see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, dharma bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and then have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, tv sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up into the mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em zen lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.
--Jack Kerouac The Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac: Chorus 113 (read by Johnny Depp)
NOMAD CAMP ON HORSESHOE MESA / OUTSIDE TRAVERTINE CANYON
While riding on a train going west
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
concerning myself and the first few friends I had.
With half-damp eyes I stared into the room
where my friends and I spent many an afternoon,
where we together weathered many a storm,
laughing and singing until the early hours of the morn.
Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan's Dream
By the old wooden stove our hats were hung,
ours tales were told, our songs were sung.
We longed for nothing and were quite satisfied,
laughing and joking about the wicked world outside.
With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
we never much thought we could get very old.
We thought we could sit forever and fun,
but our chances really were a million to one.
Judy Collins: Bob Dylan's Dream
As easy as it was to tell black from white,
it was all that easy to tell wrong from right.
And our choices they were few, and the thought never hit
that the one road we travelled would ever shatter or split.
Now many a year has passed and gone,
and many a gamble has been lost and won.
And many a road taken by many a friend,
and each one I've never seen again.
Peter, Paul and Mary: Bob Dylan's Dream
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
that we could sit simply in that room again.
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
I'd give it all gladly
if our lives could be like that.
me and my good partners
we were riding
back to our camp
we were feeling very fine
the air was clear
and slightly damp
we were riding back
to have ourselves a party
to celebrate the
robbing of the train
we were talking
kind of low and lazy
about not having
to go out soon again
you know we hadn't been
back at home two hours
we heard a hawk cry
out in the night
you know that's a signal
from young Billy
who's our sentry
he's saying something here
ain't exactly right
so we quick grabbed
some of our hardware
stumbled out of our home
in two minutes flat
we had found her
an indian girl all alone
and Eli said
"let's take her
back to the cabin"
i said, "you don't know
she might be the law, yeah"
he said, smiling kind of nasty
"it ain't too damn likely
she'll beat me to the draw"
as we were walking
back through the darkness,
i heard the Duke
he's our dynamiter, say
he said, "what's your name,
sweet little indian girl?"
she said, "Raven"
and she looked away
right then i didn't trust her
and i said so, oh no
now, Eli, he's our fastest gunner
he's kind of mean
and young from the South
he said, "Fat Albert,
you're getting kind of
old and weird now"
"you'd better get your
twelve gauge shotgun out"
now Eli and the Duke
they got down to it
they each wanted
that indian girl for their own
but when they finally
got around to asking her
you know she said she'd
come to take young Billy home
Eli said he'd kill young Billy
he'd kill the Duke
and probably me too, yeah
the indian girl said
"go ahead now do it"
i said "stop it"
and she bit my thumb
nearly clean through
and when they finally
started to break down the door
i smeared my face up
with blood from my thumb
i laid down on the floor
and played real good possum
you know i'm crazy
but i ain't real dumb
now i'm dying
here in Albuquerque
i must be the sorriest
sight you ever saw
you know the reason
i'm the only man
here to tell it
you know that indian girl
she wasn't an indian
she was the law
i've been down by the riverside tearing up the photos today little scraps of paper like fallen leaves floating away now the leaves are falling but when the leaves are gone just like the river i'll be rolling on
Control in modern times
requires more than force,
more than law.
It requires that
a population
dangerously concentrated
in cities and factories,
whose lives are filled
with cause for rebellion,
be taught that
all is right as it is.
--Howard Zinn A People's History
of the United States
TAPEATS SANDSTONE, HANCE CANYON
ANASAZI RUIN, UPPER NINETY-ONE MILE CANYON
PALISADES OF THE DESERT
CLEAR CREEK CANYON
HOLY GRAIL TEMPLE (BASS TOMB)
A well-known scientist once gave
a public lecture on astronomy.
He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun,
in turn, orbits around the center
of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, What is the tortoise standing on? You’re very clever, young man,
very clever, said the old lady. But it’s turtles all the way down!
--Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time
