Visions of Gerard

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Book: Read Visions of Gerard for Free Online
Authors: Jack Kerouac
Tags: Fiction, Literary
silence, and seeing swarms of little lights thru objects and rooms and walls of rooms.
    None of the elements of this dream can be separated from any other part, it is all one pure suchness.

Would I were divinest punner and tell how the cold winds blow with one stroke of my quick head in this harsh unhospitable hospital called the earth, where “thou owest God a death”—Time for me to get on my own horse—
    The Kat is up on the sink actually fascinated by the drip drip of the faucet, there he is with his paws under him and his tail curling down and his ruminative quickglancing face bending and earpricking to the phenomena, as tho he was trying to figure out, or pass the time, or make fun of us—But Mama has a headache, it’s a cold windy night in Old February and Pa is out late at work (playing poker backstage B.F.Keiths maybe with W.C.Fields for all I know with my drawn yawp masque)—The winds belabor at the windows of the kitchen, Ma is on the couch on the newspapers where she’s flopped in despair, it’s about 9:30, supper dishes have been put away (tenderly by her own hands) and now she lies there head back on a kewpie cushion with an ice pack on her head—The woodstove roars—Gerard and I are at the stove rocker, warming our feet, Nin is at the table doing her “ devoir ” (homework)—
    â€œMama you’re sick,” demurs Gerard with the gods, with his piteous voice, “what are we going to do.”
    â€œAw it’ll go away.”
    He goes over and lays his head against hers and waits to hear her cure—
    â€œIf I had some aspirins.”
    â€œI’ll go get you some—at drugstore!”
    â€œIt’s too late.”
    â€œIt’s only 9:30—I’m not afraid.”
    â€œPoor Lil Gerard it’s too cold tonight and it’s too late.”
    â€œNo mama! I’ll dress up good! My hat my rubbers!”
    â€œRun. Go to Old Man Bruneau, ask him for a bottle of aspirin—the money is in my pocketbook.”
    Together Gerard and I peer and probe into the mysterious pocketbook for the mysterious nickles and dimes that are always there intermingled with rosaries and gum and powder puffs—
    Little Gerard runs and puts his muffcap and draws it over his ears and draws on his rubbers with that tragic bent over motion no angels who never lived on earth could know—A cold key in a tight lock, our situation, the skin so warm, thin, the night of Winter so broad and cool—So Saskatchewan’d with advantage—
    â€œHurry up my golden, Mama’ll be afraid—”
    â€œI’ll go get your medicine and you’ll be all right, just watch!
    Gleefully he goes off, the door admits Spectre into the kitchen an instant and he slams it–I watch him tumble off.
    Beaulieu Street going down towards West Sixth, 4 houses, to the Fire House, is swept by dusts—The lamp on the corner only serves to accentuate by contrast the lightlessness in the general air—The stars above are no help, they twinkle in a vain freeze—The cold sweeps down Gerard’s neck, he tries to bundle in—He hurries around the corner and down West Sixth, towards the lights of the big corner at Aiken and Lilley and West Sixth where bleak graypaint tenements stand with dull brown kitchen lights under the hard stars—Not a soul in sight, a few cruds of old snow stuck in the gutters—A fine world for icebergs and stones—A world not made for men—A world, if made for anything, made for something dead to sympathy—Since sympathizing there’ll not be in it ever—He runs to warm up—
    Down at Aiken the wind from the river hits him full-blast with a roar, around the corner, bringing with it the odor of cold rocks in the river’s ice, and the savor of rust—
    â€œGod doesnt look like he made the world for people” he guesses all by himself as it occurs in his chilled bones the hopeless

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