Ingredients:
nice dinner
few cigarettes (preferably hand-rolled)
Directions:
Big Sur (pp. 152)
As we eat Dave announces that he and I are sick from too much drinking and by God we're going to reform and see to it that we shape up, then he launches into stories as usual, ending in a talkative ordinary supper that I think will sorta straighten me out at first but after supper I feel even worse, "That fish has all the death of otters and mouses and snakes right in it or something" I'm thinking -- Billie is quietly washing the dishes without complaint, Dave is gladly smoking after-dinner cigarettes on the porch, but here I am again mooning by the creek hiding from all of them each five minutes tho I cant understand what makes me do it... I HAVE to get out of there... But I have no right to STAY AWAY -- So I keep coming back but it's all an insane revolving automatic directionless circle of anxiety, back and forth, around and around, till they're really by now so perturbed by my increasing silent departures and creepy returns they're all sitting without a word by the stove but now their heads are together and they're whispering -- From the woods I see those three shadowy heads whispering me by the stove -- What's Dave saying
Monday, March 20, 2017
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Dinner for one at the beach that will get you thinking
Ingredients
a can of beans
a can of cheese macaroni
bottle of wine (preferably Tokay)
hot-dogs
Directions
(The Dharma Bums, pp. 9 - 10)
I bade farewell to the little bum of Saint Teresa at the crossing, where we jumped off, and went to sleep the night in the sand in my blankets, far down the beach at the foot of a cliff where cops wouldn't see me and drive me away. I cooked hot-dogs on freshly cut and sharpened sticks over the coals of a big wood fire, and heated a can of beans and a can of cheese macaroni in the redhot hollows, and drank my newly bought wine, and exulted in one of the most pleasant nights of my life. I waded in the water and dunked a little and stood looking up at the splendorous night sky Avalokitesvara's ten wondered universe of dark and diamonds. "Well, Ray," sez I, glad, "only a few miles to go. You've done it again." Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running - that's the way to live. All sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all . I let the food cool a little to enjoy more wine and my thoughts. I sat cross-legged in the sand and contemplated my life. Well, there, and what difference did it make? "What's going to happen to me up ahead?" Then the wine got to work on my taste buds and before long I had to pitch into those hotdogs, biting them right off the end of the stick spit, and chomp chomp, and dig down into the two tasty cans with the old pack spoon, spooning up rich bites of hot beans and pork, or of macaroni with sizzling hot sauce, and maybe a little sand thrown in. "And how many grains of sand as there are stars in that sky!"
a can of beans
a can of cheese macaroni
bottle of wine (preferably Tokay)
hot-dogs
Directions
(The Dharma Bums, pp. 9 - 10)
I bade farewell to the little bum of Saint Teresa at the crossing, where we jumped off, and went to sleep the night in the sand in my blankets, far down the beach at the foot of a cliff where cops wouldn't see me and drive me away. I cooked hot-dogs on freshly cut and sharpened sticks over the coals of a big wood fire, and heated a can of beans and a can of cheese macaroni in the redhot hollows, and drank my newly bought wine, and exulted in one of the most pleasant nights of my life. I waded in the water and dunked a little and stood looking up at the splendorous night sky Avalokitesvara's ten wondered universe of dark and diamonds. "Well, Ray," sez I, glad, "only a few miles to go. You've done it again." Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running - that's the way to live. All sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all . I let the food cool a little to enjoy more wine and my thoughts. I sat cross-legged in the sand and contemplated my life. Well, there, and what difference did it make? "What's going to happen to me up ahead?" Then the wine got to work on my taste buds and before long I had to pitch into those hotdogs, biting them right off the end of the stick spit, and chomp chomp, and dig down into the two tasty cans with the old pack spoon, spooning up rich bites of hot beans and pork, or of macaroni with sizzling hot sauce, and maybe a little sand thrown in. "And how many grains of sand as there are stars in that sky!"
Friday, April 29, 2016
Nutritious snack for the way across the country
Ingredients
a country to cross
apple pie
ice cream
Directions
On the Road (1991, Penguin Books)
My first ride was a dynamite truck with a red flag, about thirty miles into great green Illinois, the truckdriver pointed out the place where Route 6, which we were on, intersects Route 66 before they both shoot west for incredible distances. Along about three in the afternoon, after an apple pie and ice cream in a roadside stand, a woman stopped for me in a little coupe. I had a twinge of hard joy as I ran after the car. (15)
...
I went to sit in the bus station and think this over. I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that's practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course. (15-16)
...
I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange afternoon.
But I had to get going and stop moaning, so I picked up my bag, said so long to the old hotelkeeper sitting by his spittoon, and went to eat. I ate apple pie and ice cream - it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. (17)
OPTIONAL
(Dean speaking)
O man, I have to tell you, NOW, I have IT - I have to tell you the time and my father and I and a poor pisspoor bum from Larimer Street took a trip to Nebraska in the middle of the depression to sell flyswatters. And how we made them, we bought pieces of ordinary regular old screen and pieces of wire that we twisted double and little pieces of blue and red cloth to sew around the edges and all of it for matter of cents in a five-and-ten and made thousands of flyswatters and got in the old bum's jalopy and went clear around Nebraska to every farmhouse and sold them for a nickel apiece - mostly for charity the nickels were given us, two bums and a boy, apple pies in the sky, and my old man in those days was always singing ’Hallelujah, I'm a bum, bum again.’ (207)
a country to cross
apple pie
ice cream
Directions
On the Road (1991, Penguin Books)
My first ride was a dynamite truck with a red flag, about thirty miles into great green Illinois, the truckdriver pointed out the place where Route 6, which we were on, intersects Route 66 before they both shoot west for incredible distances. Along about three in the afternoon, after an apple pie and ice cream in a roadside stand, a woman stopped for me in a little coupe. I had a twinge of hard joy as I ran after the car. (15)
...
I went to sit in the bus station and think this over. I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that's practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course. (15-16)
...
I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange afternoon.
But I had to get going and stop moaning, so I picked up my bag, said so long to the old hotelkeeper sitting by his spittoon, and went to eat. I ate apple pie and ice cream - it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. (17)
OPTIONAL
(Dean speaking)
O man, I have to tell you, NOW, I have IT - I have to tell you the time and my father and I and a poor pisspoor bum from Larimer Street took a trip to Nebraska in the middle of the depression to sell flyswatters. And how we made them, we bought pieces of ordinary regular old screen and pieces of wire that we twisted double and little pieces of blue and red cloth to sew around the edges and all of it for matter of cents in a five-and-ten and made thousands of flyswatters and got in the old bum's jalopy and went clear around Nebraska to every farmhouse and sold them for a nickel apiece - mostly for charity the nickels were given us, two bums and a boy, apple pies in the sky, and my old man in those days was always singing ’Hallelujah, I'm a bum, bum again.’ (207)
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Dinner with the little bum of Saint Teresa
Ingredients:
1 bottle of Tokay wine
1 can of sardines
1 cold boxcar
a little bread
candy
cheese
Directions:
The Dharma Bums (pp. 7-8)
I jumped over the side and ran across Highway 101 to the store, and bought, besides wine, a little bread and candy. I ran back to my freight train which had another fifteen minutes to wait in the now warm sunny scene. But it was late afternoon and bound to get cold soon. The little bum was sitting cross-legged at his end before a pitiful repast of one can of sardines. I took a pity on him and went over and said, ’How about a little wine to warm you up? Maybe you'd like some bread and cheese with your sardines.’
’Sure thing.’ He spoke from far inside a little meek voice-box afraid or unwilling to assert himself. I'd bought the cheese three days ago in Mexico City before the long cheap bus trip across Zacatecas and Durango and Chihuahua two thousand long miles to the border at El Paso. He ate the cheese and bread and drank the wine with gusto and gratitude. I was pleased. I reminded myself of the line in the Diamond Sutra that says, ’Practice charity without holding in mind any conceptions about charity , for charity after all is just a word.’
...
The little bum in the gondola solidified all my beliefs by warming up to the wine and talking and finally whipping out a tiny slip of paper which contained a prayer by Saint Teresa announcing that after her death she will return to the earth by showering it with roses from heaven, forever, for all living creatures.
’Where did you get this?’ I asked.
’Oh, I cut it out of a reading-room magazine in Los Angeles couple of years ago. I always carry it with me.’
’And you squat in boxcars and read it?’
’Most every day.’ He talked not much more than this, didn't amplify on the subject of Saint Teresa, and was very modest about his religion and told me little about his personal life. He is the kind of thin quiet little bum nobody pays much attention to even in Skid Row, let alone Main Street.
1 bottle of Tokay wine
1 can of sardines
1 cold boxcar
a little bread
candy
cheese
Directions:
The Dharma Bums (pp. 7-8)
I jumped over the side and ran across Highway 101 to the store, and bought, besides wine, a little bread and candy. I ran back to my freight train which had another fifteen minutes to wait in the now warm sunny scene. But it was late afternoon and bound to get cold soon. The little bum was sitting cross-legged at his end before a pitiful repast of one can of sardines. I took a pity on him and went over and said, ’How about a little wine to warm you up? Maybe you'd like some bread and cheese with your sardines.’
’Sure thing.’ He spoke from far inside a little meek voice-box afraid or unwilling to assert himself. I'd bought the cheese three days ago in Mexico City before the long cheap bus trip across Zacatecas and Durango and Chihuahua two thousand long miles to the border at El Paso. He ate the cheese and bread and drank the wine with gusto and gratitude. I was pleased. I reminded myself of the line in the Diamond Sutra that says, ’Practice charity without holding in mind any conceptions about charity , for charity after all is just a word.’
...
The little bum in the gondola solidified all my beliefs by warming up to the wine and talking and finally whipping out a tiny slip of paper which contained a prayer by Saint Teresa announcing that after her death she will return to the earth by showering it with roses from heaven, forever, for all living creatures.
’Where did you get this?’ I asked.
’Oh, I cut it out of a reading-room magazine in Los Angeles couple of years ago. I always carry it with me.’
’And you squat in boxcars and read it?’
’Most every day.’ He talked not much more than this, didn't amplify on the subject of Saint Teresa, and was very modest about his religion and told me little about his personal life. He is the kind of thin quiet little bum nobody pays much attention to even in Skid Row, let alone Main Street.
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