amtrak joe

Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr.
47th US vice president
u.s. secret service codename: "celtic" (referencing his irish roots)

~
"Just talk to me as a father - not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?" -joe
~





born november 20, 1942 in scranton, pennsylvania
his family moved to delaware when he was ten years old.

from his childhood until his twenties, he spoke with a stutter.
to overcome it, he spent long hours reciting poetry in front of a mirror.

~
"The art of living is simply getting up after you've been knocked down." -joe
~






at the university of delaware, rather than studying,
he was more interested in sports and socializing
("although his classmates were impressed by his cramming abilities").
he dropped a junior year plan to play varsity football,
enabling him to spend more time with his out-of-state girlfriend.

having asthma as a teenager, he was not available for service in vietnam.
nor was he part of the anti-war movement.
occupied with marriage and law, he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed."

joe is a teetotaler (abstinent from alcohol)
due to negative impressions of drinking in his family.

~
"A lot's going to happen this summer. And even after the summer." -joe
[i took this out of context, and i like it that way]
~

---


* amtrak joe *



(joe's name on his senate desk, which was also the desk of jfk)


1969 he became an attorney.
1970 got elected to county council.
1972 was the 6th youngest senator in US history,
re-elected to senate six times,
was the 15th longest serving senator in history,
and the 4th most senior senator upon resignation.
he set the mark for youngest senator to cast 10,000 votes.

that year, joe's family went christmas shopping
(wife- Neilia, older son- Beau, younger son- Hunter, and one-year-old daughter).
their station wagon pulled out of an intersection, and was hit by a tractor-trailer.
the two sons were critically injured.
his wife and daughter were died.

~
"After my first wife and daughter were killed, my boys were banged up badly,
and I had those aneurysms that didn't give me a big chance of living,
my dad sent me a little three-paneled cartoon: Hägar the Horrible.
I still have it on my desk.
Hägar is in his Viking boat with his horn helmet,
rowing away when a bolt of lightning comes out of the sky. Hägar gets charred.
He looks up at heaven and says, 'Why me, God?'
And God comes back with 'Why not?' " -joe
~

the senate majority in washington, convinced him not to resign to care for his family,
so to be at home every day for his young sons in the Wilmington suburbs,
joe rode the amtrak train, 1.5hrs, each way, every day.
(this practice continued throughout his senate career.
earning the nickname "amtrak joe".
in '11, the wilmington station was renamed after him,
in honor of his 7k+ trips from there.)

the accident left joe confused, angry, and with trouble focusing.
"I liked to [walk around seedy neighborhoods] at night
when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight...
I had not known I was capable of such rage...
I felt God had played a horrible trick on me."
at work, he appeared to just go through the motions of being a senator.
staffers were taking bets on how long he would last.

~
"My mom would say, 'Joey, as long as a person's alive, they have the obligation to strive.
They're not dead until they've seen the face of God.'
So you just have to get your ass up — no matter what." -joe
~

he was a single father for five years.
joe left standing orders to be interrupted in the senate
at any time, if either of his sons called.
he does not work on december 18, the anniversary of the accident.

Beau became a Delaware Attorney General and an Army Judge Advocate serving in Iraq.
Hunter is a Washington attorney and lobbyist.

~
"My dad used to say,
'You know you're a success when you look at your kids
and realize they turned out better than you.'
I am a success.
But I should have had one Republican
who wanted to be an investment banker and make a lot of money
so that when they put me in a home, I get a window with a view." -joe
~
"Does it feel like home or a thirty-three-room mansion?
It feels like home for one reason:
Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night,
one of my granddaughters comes and hangs out." -joe
~
"My deceased wife used to say,
'Joe, the greatest gift God gave to mankind was the ability to forget.'
To which my mother would always add,
'If that weren't the case, women would only have one child.' " -joe
~

consistently ranked as one of the least wealthy members of the senate
his net worth is $59k - $366k (with almost none investment or outside income)

~
"There was an article in the newspaper. It said something like,
'It's probable no vice-president has ever assumed the office
with fewer assets than Vice-President Biden.'
I assume they were talking about financial assets." -joe
~
"I still have my 1967 Goodwood-green Corvette, 327, 350-horse,
with a rear-axle ratio that really gets up and goes.
The Secret Service won't let me drive it.
I'm not allowed to drive anything.
It's the one thing I hate about this job.
I'm serious." -joe
~

---


* support *






~
"My rights are not derived from any government.
My rights are not denied by any majority.
My rights are because I exist." -joe
~
"Nobody owes you a living. But everyone's entitled to dignity." -joe
~

in '94, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (aka the Biden Crime Law)
and the landmark Violence Against Women Act,
contain a broad array of measures to combat domestic violence,
and provides billions of dollars in federal funds to address gender-based crimes.
joe said, "I consider the Violence Against Women Act
the single most significant legislation that I’ve crafted
during my 35-year tenure in the senate."

~
"My definition of power is the ability to help people." -joe
~
"All our differences hardly measure up to the values we all hold in common." -joe
~
“There’s no political point worth anybody’s life out there. None.” -joe
~

biden believes that life begins at conception,
but he's not going to impose his personal religious views on others.
because of his support for abortion rights,
his own catholic church does not allow him to speak at catholic schools,
and was barred from receiving holy communion
by the bishop of his original hometown.
joe continues to receive communion at his local delaware parish.

he has collaborated effectively with important republicans
sometimes going went against elements of his own party.
(which i respect. neither party is all-wrong or all-right)
he has given speeches which simultaneously scold and encourage democrats.

"[he] occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party...
...he plans to stress the dangers to the security of the average american,
not just from the terrorist threat,
but from the lack of health assistance, crime,
and energy dependence on unstable parts of the world."
- harry f. themal (delaware newspaper columnist) in '06

~
"If they can’t identify the enemy or describe the war we’re fighting,
it’s difficult to see how we will win." -joe
~
"This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power." -joe
~
"Let's just be smart this time. I'm looking for smart." -joe
~





he says american businesses (and economic competitiveness) have two major threats:
high health care and energy costs
he opposes drilling for oil in the artic.

joe co-sponsored:
- the Sense of the Senate resolution,
which calls on the u.s. to be a part of the u.n. climate negotiations
- the Boxer-Sanders Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act,
the most stringent climate bill in senate

~
"It's hard to find a single project that everyone can see being created,
like the Hoover Dam or the interstate highway system.
The real answer is we need entire new industries." -joe
~
"the number-one job facing the middle class,
as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs." -joe
~
"For the world to follow, we must do more than rattle our sabers
and demand allegiance to our vision simply because we believe we are right.
We must provide a reason for others to aspire to that vision.
And that reason must come with more
than the repetition of a bumper-sticker phrase about freedom and democracy.
It must come with more than the restatement of failed policy.
It must come with the wisdom to admit when we are wrong
and resolve to change course and get it right." -joe
~
"After 9-11, the President had a historic opportunity to unite Americans
and the world in common cause.
Instead, by exploiting the politics of fear,
instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan
and instituting policies on torture, detainees
and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests,
President Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world." -joe
~

in '04, biden met with leader muammar gaddafi in tripoli,
and secured the brief release of libyan democracy activist and political prisoner; fathi eljahmi.

in a '08 speech to israel's knesset, president w. bush suggested that democrats were acting
in the same way some western leaders did when they appeased hitler in the run-up to ww2.
at this, biden stated: "this is bullsh*t. this is malarkey. this is outrageous.
outrageous for the president of the united states to go to a foreign country,
sit in the knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement....
...since when does this administration think that if you sit down,
you have to eliminate the word 'no' from your vocabulary?"

...which is a perfect segway to:


* joe bombs *





~
"America, whose greatest strengths are her ideas and ideals,
has become afraid to talk." -joe
~
"If I had to parse through every single thing I'm going to say, then I'm not me." -joe
~

joe is a strong speaker, debater,
and a frequent and effective guest on talk shows.
he is known to deviate from prepared remarks at will.
(though, his questions and remarks during senate hearings
were especially known for being long-winded)
though, he has plagiarized in speeches,
lied about his college grades,
and let slip a few comments. ...like:

"You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts
unless you have a slight Indian accent.... I'm not joking."

and especially in '07 when speaking about (then- fellow pres candidate) obama;
"I mean, you got the first mainstream african-american
who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,
I mean, that's a storybook, man."
this comment damaged his fund-raising capabilities, and undermined his campaign.

once under the obama campaign,
he was told to keep speeches succinct and avoid off-hand remarks.

according to wiki, obama was privately frustrated
("how many times is biden gonna say something stupid?")

obama campaign staffers referred to his blunders as "joe bombs"
and kept biden uninformed regarding strategies.

"[biden's loose talk is] part of what makes the vice president so endearing ...
we wouldn't change him one bit."
- valerie jarrett (senior obama advisor)


a self-proclaimed "genuine lover of ice cream,"
he stopped for a cone in a wisconsin,
the shop's manager casually asked him to "lower our taxes."
joe responded; "why don't you say something nice instead of being a smart-ass all the time?"
the manager later said the run-in with biden was "very nice"
and that joe had whispered he was just kidding.







"if there were no gaffes, there'd be no joe.
he's someone you can't help but like."
- lindsey graham (former senate colleague)

~
"Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified
than I am to be vice president of the United States of America.
Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me." -joe
~

---

* joe & barry: a love story *





relations between the two campaigns were strained,
until biden apologized on a call to obama and the two built a stronger partnership.

once they discovered barry's daughter and joe's granddaughter attend the same school,
they formed something of a friendship, despite their different personalities.

when obama and biden met in secret to discuss a possible vice-presidential relationship,
and the two hit it off well personally.

he brought to the obama ticket:
- aggressive challenge to republican candidate mccain
(which barack seemed uncomfortable doing),
- appeal to middle class and blue-collar voters,
- foreign policy and national security experience





~
"The first discussion, as we sat around this big table
on the eightieth floor of some building in Chicago during the interregnum period,
was with a group of about thirty economists.
We weren't talking about reorganizing banks during that meeting.
We were talking about banks going out of business.
We were talking about doors being shuttered.
The action that the president took — and some of the antecedent actions on TARP —
literally saved the economy from going off a cliff and the world going into a depression.
Everyone forgets that now, especially our banker friends." -joe
~
"What I'm amazed about is the guy's courage.
The decisions the president makes day in and day out
are decisions that nobody sees.
Trust me, if you had to make only one of those decisions,
you'd be telling your grandchildren about it." -joe
~
"Barack Obama has a vision of American greatness
based not just on our unmatched military might,
but on our economic, intellectual, and moral strengths.
They were once the envy of the world.
They can be again." -joe
~
"[david] axelrod really wanted me to do this on teleprompter,
but I told him I'm much better when I wing it.
I know these evenings run long, so I'm going to be brief.
Talk about the audacity of hope.
President Obama does send his greetings, though.
He can't be here tonight, because he's busy getting ready for Easter.
He thinks it's about him." -joe (at the 2009 gridiron dinner)
~







---
bits/photos from:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/joebiden/a/biden-quotes.htm
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/joebiden/a/bidenisms.htm
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joe_biden.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225378/just-words-joe-biden-would-forget/jim-geraghty
http://www.notable-quotes.com/b/biden_joe.html
http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/meaning-of-life-2012/joe-biden-quotes-0112
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/28/joe-bidens-smartass-quip_n_627715.html
http://thegloss.com/beauty/retro-snap-who-is-this-hansome-young-man-and-what-does-he-have-to-do-with-marriage-352/

pure imagination

in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
composed by leslie bricusse and anthony newley
as sung by Gene Wilder



hold your breath
make a wish
count to three

come with me, and you'll be
in a world of pure imagination
take a look, and you'll see
into your imagination

we'll begin, with a spin
traveling in the world of my creation
what we'll see will defy explanation

If you want to view paradise
simply look around and view it
anything you want to, do it
wanna change the world?
there's nothing to it

there is no life I know
to compare with pure imagination
living there, you'll be free
if you truly wish to be




this song always makes me cry.
(especially the part when he's so touched,
that he removes his hat, and sits to marvel)
he just seems so goshdarn happy and hopeful,
knowing heaven is wherever you make it.

a film that needs to be visited at least yearly
[i recommend autumn (halloween. costumes. candy. insanity.)]

when i was younger, i loved how willy didn't fit into one box.
he was a candy man, but at the same time, he couldn't stand children.
he could be mean to the bad eggs, and then kind to the poor.
i completely appreciated that he did not hold back.

his morals appealed to me as well:
honesty- the most coveted virtue.
betrayal- chosen as the only unforgivable act.
and no fear- except that his life not be a waste.

mostly, my favorite quality was how he poked fun at everyone,
and saw the humor midst difficult situations.

now, i'm delighted by his great balance of life:
joy. anger. love. insanity. wit. loneliness. love. tradition.
his coin is variety. ...and a canyon-sized appreciation for irony.

wilder is the perfect actor for this cagey character written by roald dahl.
gene wins us over with quick wit and incredible timing.
his easy-going delivery allows willy to be natural and free,
so we believe our tour guide to be level-headed.
but as we join him, it becomes unclear whether he's laughing with you, or at you.
since people disappoint him, it seems he's mostly amusing himself.

above all, i believe this legend was sealed to gene,
because he equally beheld juxtaposing qualities,
which kept us guessing and contradicted our expectations,
ultimately creating a memorably complex character:
his versatile voice can screech loudly, then sing gently just a moment later.
his giant eyes twinkle light blue, and kindly urge you to trust,
but, right below, a wide cheshire-cat mad grin makes you unsure of his sanity.
and the cherry on top: an elegant top hat, which insinuates refinement,
yet it sits coyly atop his untamed hair.

it's unclear whether he's going to be sweet, or flip out. to include you, or mock you.
it all makes you wonder what's going on in that crazy brain.

peter's good bye

excerpt from Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie:

"I shall have such fun," said Peter, with eye on Wendy.

"It will be rather lonely in the evening," she said, "sitting by the fire."

"I shall have Tink."

"Tink can't go a twentieth part of the way round [the world]," she reminded him a little tartly.

"Sneaky tell-tale!" Tink called out from somewhere round the corner.

"It doesn't matter," Peter said.

"O Peter, you know it matters."

"Well, then, come with me to the little house."

"May I, mummy?"

"Certainly not. I have got you home again, and I mean to keep you."

"But he does so need a mother."

"So do you, my love."

"Oh, all right," Peter said, as if he had asked her from politeness merely;
but Mrs. Darling saw his mouth twitch, and she made this handsome offer:
to let Wendy go to him for a week every year to do his spring cleaning.
Wendy would have preferred a more permanent arrangement;
and it seemed to her that spring would be long in coming;
but this promise sent Peter away quite gay again.
He had no sense of time, and was so full of adventures
that all I have told you about him is only a halfpenny-worth of them.
I suppose it was because Wendy knew this
that her last words to him were these rather plaintive ones:

"You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring cleaning time comes?"

Of course Peter promised; and then he flew away.
He took Mrs. Darling's kiss with him.
The kiss that had been for no one else,
Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemed satisfied.




---
drawing by Mary Blair
text from http://www.enotes.com/peter-pan-text/chapter-17---when-wendy-grew-up

lush life

ol jazz standard written by billy strayhorn in '49



the lyrics below are as sung by dianne reeves
(i heard this on the radio and loved her version.
by coincidence; she sings it in george's film Good Night and Good Luck)



i used to visit all the very gay places -
those come-what-may places
where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
to get the feel of life...
from jazz and cocktails.

the girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces -
with distant gay traces
that used to be there you could see where
they'd been washed away
by too many through the day...
twelve o'clock-tails

then you came along with your siren's song
to tempt me to madness
I thought for a while that your poignant smile
was tinged with the sadness
of a great love for me.
I was wrong.
ah yes, I was wrong...
again,

and only last year everything seemed so sure.
now life is awful again
life is lonely again.
and the thoughtful of heart
could only be a bore.

a week in paris will ease the bite of it.
all I care is to smile in spite of it.
I'll forget you, I will
and yet, you are still
burning inside my brain.

romance is mush
stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
and there I'll be
while I rot with the rest
of those whose lives are lonely, too..

ankle sprain

i sprained my ankle in san francisco...
(hey! that might make a good song!)

3 weeks. still recovering...



the ligament is stretched beyond normal range,
resulting in a tear, spraining the ankle.



grades of sprain

grade 1 - minor swelling/pain for 1-2 weeks
grade 2 - more swelling/pain for 4-6 weeks
grade 3 - worse swelling/pain for 8-12 weeks

correct healing techniques are required for full recovery



RICE right away is an important part
and obtain advice from a doctor



physical therapy and exercise
will reduce swelling/pain, and strengthen ankle muscles



incorrect treatment is case for future issues
and increased chance of re-injury



tips from: http://www.sprainedankle.me/recovery-time-sprained-ankle
photos from goodle images

alan turing

born june 23rd 1912 in london, died june 7th 1954 in cheshire, england, age 41
mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, computer scientist
widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence



early in life, he showed signs of genius.

in 1926, at 14, he was enrolled in the famous independent Sherborne School.
His first day coincided with the General Strike in britain,
but he was so determined to attend, that bicycled alone 60+miles to the school,
stopping overnight at an inn.


alan was a talented long-distance runner, capable of world-class marathon standards.
if he was needed for high-level meetings in london, he occasionally ran the 40miles.

he was stocky, talkative, witty, scholarly,
and showed characteristics of Asperger syndrome
(an autism spectrum disorder
characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction,
alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests)

"his high-pitched voice already stood out
above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives
grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation.
then he was suddenly heard to say:
'no, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain.
all I'm after is just a mediocre brain,
something like the president of the american telephone and telegraph company."
-andrew hodges
describing an incident which occurred in the ny at&t lab cafeteria in 1943


some of his eccentricities included;

-in the first week of june each year he would get a bad attack of hay fever,
and he would cycle to the office wearing a service gas mask to keep the pollen off.

-his bicycle had a fault: the chain would come off at regular intervals.
instead of having it mended he would count the number of times the pedals went round
and would get off the bicycle in time to adjust the chain by hand.

-he chained his mug to the radiator pipes to prevent it being stolen.



alan's first love interest was christopher morcom.
only a few weeks into their last term at Sherborne,
christopher died suddenly from complications of bovine tuberculosis
(contracted after drinking infected cow's milk as a boy).

this shattered alan's religious faith, and he became an atheist.
he adopted the conviction that all phenomena, including the workings of the human brain,
must be materialistic, but he still believed in the survival of the spirit after death.


---

at King's College in Cambridgem, he graduated with first-class honors in mathematics.

in WW2, he worked in britain's code-breaking center.
within weeks of arriving, he devised a number of techniques for breaking german ciphers,
including the method of the bombe,
an electromechanical machine that could decode the Enigma machine
(more effectively than the Polish bomba kryptologiczna, from which its name was derived)



"turing's most important contribution, I think,
was of part of the design of the bombe, the cryptanalytic machine.
he had the idea that you could use, in effect, a theorem in logic
which sounds to the untrained ear rather absurd;
namely that from a contradiction, you can deduce everything."
-jack good


for a time he was head of Hut 8,
the section responsible for german naval cryptanalysis.
towards the end of the war,
he developed a portable secure voice scrambler codenamed Delilah.



"the pioneer's work always tends to be forgotten
when experience and routine later make everything seem easy
and many of us in Hut 8 felt that the magnitude of turing's contribution
was never fully realized by the outside world."
-hugh alexander

in 1942, he devised a technique termed Turingery (or jokingly Turingismus)
for use against the Lorenz cipher messages
produced by the germans' new Geheimschreiber (secret writer) machine.

"he was particularly fond of little programming tricks
and would chuckle with boyish good humor at any little tricks I may have used.
-james h. wilkinson

though, alan was not directly involved in the Colossus
(the world's first programmable digital electronic computer)
he introduced the Tunny team to Tommy Flowers who (with Max Newman)
went on to build the Colossus.

alan's two papers discussing mathematical approaches to code-breaking
were of such value that they were not released to the UK National Archives until April 2012.

addressing the problem of artificial intelligence,
alan proposed an experiment which became known as the Turing test,
an attempt to define a standard for a machine to be called "intelligent".
the idea was that a computer could be said to "think"
if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human.

he suggested that rather than building a program to simulate the adult mind,
it would be better rather to produce a simpler one to simulate a child's mind
and then to subject it to a course of education.
a reversed form of the Turing test is widely used on the Internet;
the CAPTCHA test is intended to determine whether the user is a human or a computer.

in 1948, alan and D. G. Champernowne,
began writing a chess program for a computer that did not yet exist.



in 1941, he proposed marriage to Joan Clarke (Hut 8 co-worker /mathematician /cryptanalyst),
but their engagement was short-lived when he admitted his homosexuality
(Joan was reportedly "unfazed" by the revelation)
in 1952, Arnold Murray, a former lover, broke into alan's house.
he reported the crime to the police.
during the investigation, he acknowledged a sexual relationship.
homosexuality was illegal in the uk, at the time.
as an alternative to prison, alan accepted treatment of female hormones.
this conviction led to the removal of his security clearance,
and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy

---

june 8th 1954, alan died from cyanide poisoning.
it is speculated that the fatal dose was delivered by an apple
that lay half-eaten beside his bed (though it was not tested).
his mother argued it an accident caused by her son's careless storage of lab chemicals.
(it's been speculated that alan may have killed himself in a deliberate ambiguous way
to give his mother some plausible deniability)
david leavitt has suggested alan was re-enacting a scene
from the 1937 film Snow White, his favorite fairy tale.
pointing out that he took "an especially keen pleasure
in the scene where the Wicked Witch immerses her apple in the poisonous brew."



the apple.
forbidden love,
newton's theory of gravitation,
and the means of alan's own death.

apple computer's logo is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to alan
the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide.
the designer of the logo and the company deny this.
Steve Jobs' response was, "It isn't true, but God, we wish it were."



in his memory, there are statues, plagues, a postage stamp, a play, a BBC show, books,
university tributes, a bridge and road named after him,
and since 1966, the annual Turing Award has been the computing world's highest honor.


(statue of alan holding an apple)

quotes -

"a computer would deserve to be called intelligent
if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."

"science is a differential equation.
religion is a boundary condition."

"a man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber,
and subject to strict discipline,
is in effect a universal machine."

“machines take me by surprise with great frequency."


---

tidbits from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/alan_turing.html
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

kerouac

“Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind.
Now that we know this, throw the raft away.”
(-The Scripture of the Golden Eternity)



"Don't use the phone.
People are never ready to answer it.
Use poetry."



“the only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk,
mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn
or say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn
like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
(from On the Road )



“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
(from Dharma Bums)



"The only truth is music.”



“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up
running from one falling star to another till i drop.
This is the night, what it does to you."



“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”



"Great things are not accomplished by those
who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."



"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people
and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?
- it's the too-huge world vaulting us,
and it's good-bye."

“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars -
Something good will come out of all things yet -
And it will be golden and eternal just like that -
There's no need to say another word.”
(-Big Sur)



"The best teacher is experience
and not through someone's distorted point of view."

“Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged,
the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”

"I believe in order, tenderness, and piety."



"Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared,
and I said, 'God, I love you' and looked to the sky and really meant it.
'I have fallen in love with you, God.'"

“It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate's so easy compared.”
(-Big Sur)

“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness
is worth all the temples this world pulls.”
(-Dharma Bums)



"I woke up as the sun was reddening;
and that was the one distinct time in my life,
the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was
- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel,
in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen,
hearing the hiss of steam outside,
and the creak of the old wood of the hotel,
and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds,
and I looked at the cracked high ceiling
and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.
I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger,
and my whole life was a haunted life,
the life of a ghost."



“I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet,
concerning the message that was transmitted to me
under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night.
It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream.
Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds.
But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright
forever and forever and forever.
Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds,
listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world,
and you will remember the lesson you forgot,
which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.
It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.
We were never really born, we will never really die.
It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere:
Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing.
It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about.
I know this from staring at mountains months on end.
They never show any expression, they are like empty space.
Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away?
Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space,
which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake,
will never crumble away because it was never born."
- a letter he wrote to his first wife, Edie in '57 (The Portable Jack Kerouac)



“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all.
The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost,
like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream,
like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water,
most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood
and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago."
(-Dharma Bums)



---

Belief & Technique For Modern Prose
by Jack Kerouac

List of Essentials

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven


---

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1742.Jack_Kerouac