No Pictures and Stealing an Image of Kerouac's Trinkets
Amongst the raindrops and puddles wider than my height, I plunged for an afternoon engagement . . . oh, it was the sexiest kind . . . a hot, steamy, rekindle with the New York Public Library. So sexy indeed.
So, up I traipse getting there to realize I've lost my access card. But that's okay. I'm a bonafide city resident so I got a library card, after a gem of a librarian let me pull up an online bank statement for a current address. Seriously, do you see where this is going?
After climbing the stairs of ascension, to room 308, I requested my requested off-site material now on-site via an email request that I verified via a digital image on my phone. I then schlepped a shit load of American Legion magazines to a table for the latest book I'm muddling on. For the next two hours--since final grade insanity got me there late, and the rain played its too long game of showering me and the city--I plunged through 12 issues from 1960. Among other things, I've learned that to fix the teacher shortage grading machines should be used for multiple choice tests, television teachers will provide accurate and consistent material, and . . . "housewives and retired folk" should be employed to grade papers and shuttle young ones to buses. Oh, don't forget that this will also protect America's youth against those damned commies. Clearly, the crisis of 2011 has been a long-time brewin'.
What else did I learn? That the US could purge Cuba of Castro's commie menace by refusing to buy sugar, Yogi Berra got his start in American Legion baseball (yo, for realz people), and that everyone not born in the United States is most likely a commie. Turning the yellowed pages, of the hard bound magazines, struck me as so drastically different than flipping through the high gloss pages of my father's. Usually those are in the can, and a few times a year newer ones are moved from the living room table to the toilet. Most certainly after someone makes a remark about needing new bathroom reading material. Such a juxtaposition, but not one I am sure my academic readers want immersed into an argument on the image of the soldier verses the veteran. Oh . . . and . . . the NYPL doesn't allow taking pictures (not flash, via Crackberry camera) of book pages. Yea, seriously, half of us in there were taking pics of pages for reference, block quotes, and what not. Short, little security guard asked me if I had only taken the one pic. I lied and said yes. NYU grad student across from me snickered as she hid her iPhone.
So yea, it only took ten years . . . but I finally got in trouble at the NYPL. Shit, I got nailed at the MOMA my second year here . . . I still say it is NOT an issue for a patron to stare "too long" at a damned painting. For the record, I have since published a piece on Jasper Johns's 1954-55 Flag painting. Obviously, the painting in question . . . The El Paso Museum of Art may or may not have gotten pissed at me for being so overcome with the power of Louis Jimenez's Barfly that I touched it. Shush. That's some powerful shit . . . and yea, we already know I am a jackass. The Musuem of Antiquities in Ankara, Turkey . . . no, I did not pull a Griswald and knock anything over. But, my girl Tanfer and I may or may not have gotten shushed for being too loud. Comparing some misshapen bowl to other famous artworks is not a crime. For the record, it reminded us--or most likely me pointing it out--of a penis. So . . . I should shut up, eh?
Well, after schlepping those back to the desk (to go get, again, tomorrow after my Lupus Run in the morning) I headed down to the exhibits for the library's centennial. And this is where I should tell you that the geek in me was on the better side of orgasmic. The Declaration of Independence, in Jefferson's own script, Virginia's Wolf's walking stick (discovered in the river after her drowning), and T.S. Eliot's positively memorizing poem "The Waste Land" rested throughout the room in glass cages. But, then . . . then . . . E.E. Cummings typewriter made me stop in mid step and ponder what will we have of writer's now? Dead laptops are not kept for future glass cage displays of the current literary masterminds. Instead, we clear our hard drives and cash them in for faster, better models. We recycle our drafts, keeping them on digital backup instead of scores of paper copies. The material nature of the written word is evolving, or dissolving, as we merge to the world of digital . . . The New York Times web page was even on display, via a Mac (I think). Sigh . . . But, just as my mind folded and found a moment of sudden loss the holy light shined down and . . .
I stole myself a picture.
Yea, just after getting fussed at for taking pictures of a book, and right after being told no pictures in the exhibit . . . It's Jack Kerouac . . . come on.
Kerouac always brings me back to spring at Kentucky Wesleyan College, sitting under my favorite tree, and plotting our own version of "They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining." More so, we dreamed of "We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess–across the night…"* Last fall, in my tourism course, my class had a reading about Kerouac in Mexico. I was appalled and horrified that they did not bother to look him up, or read his book, since they were clueless!
Kerouac will always have a pull on me, the old American Lit major that I am. In that same note, the proverbial hippie in me will always love the pull of Kerouac's words and the dreams they sparked. Perhaps he is part of the reason my life has taken some of its course . . . New Mexico and New York, even the Long Island years. The love of Boston. The greater love of New York.
The only thing to have made this more sublime, for me at least, would have been a moleskin of Hemingway's on display. Perhaps that is good, or certainly someone would have had to pry my body from a glass case.
Yea, who says my mid 30s are drastically different than the moments of juvenile bliss of my 20s when I would climb the sides of bridges and tell ensuing poe poe men that I was "allergic to the ground?"
*Jack Kerouac, On The Road
So, up I traipse getting there to realize I've lost my access card. But that's okay. I'm a bonafide city resident so I got a library card, after a gem of a librarian let me pull up an online bank statement for a current address. Seriously, do you see where this is going?
After climbing the stairs of ascension, to room 308, I requested my requested off-site material now on-site via an email request that I verified via a digital image on my phone. I then schlepped a shit load of American Legion magazines to a table for the latest book I'm muddling on. For the next two hours--since final grade insanity got me there late, and the rain played its too long game of showering me and the city--I plunged through 12 issues from 1960. Among other things, I've learned that to fix the teacher shortage grading machines should be used for multiple choice tests, television teachers will provide accurate and consistent material, and . . . "housewives and retired folk" should be employed to grade papers and shuttle young ones to buses. Oh, don't forget that this will also protect America's youth against those damned commies. Clearly, the crisis of 2011 has been a long-time brewin'.
What else did I learn? That the US could purge Cuba of Castro's commie menace by refusing to buy sugar, Yogi Berra got his start in American Legion baseball (yo, for realz people), and that everyone not born in the United States is most likely a commie. Turning the yellowed pages, of the hard bound magazines, struck me as so drastically different than flipping through the high gloss pages of my father's. Usually those are in the can, and a few times a year newer ones are moved from the living room table to the toilet. Most certainly after someone makes a remark about needing new bathroom reading material. Such a juxtaposition, but not one I am sure my academic readers want immersed into an argument on the image of the soldier verses the veteran. Oh . . . and . . . the NYPL doesn't allow taking pictures (not flash, via Crackberry camera) of book pages. Yea, seriously, half of us in there were taking pics of pages for reference, block quotes, and what not. Short, little security guard asked me if I had only taken the one pic. I lied and said yes. NYU grad student across from me snickered as she hid her iPhone.
So yea, it only took ten years . . . but I finally got in trouble at the NYPL. Shit, I got nailed at the MOMA my second year here . . . I still say it is NOT an issue for a patron to stare "too long" at a damned painting. For the record, I have since published a piece on Jasper Johns's 1954-55 Flag painting. Obviously, the painting in question . . . The El Paso Museum of Art may or may not have gotten pissed at me for being so overcome with the power of Louis Jimenez's Barfly that I touched it. Shush. That's some powerful shit . . . and yea, we already know I am a jackass. The Musuem of Antiquities in Ankara, Turkey . . . no, I did not pull a Griswald and knock anything over. But, my girl Tanfer and I may or may not have gotten shushed for being too loud. Comparing some misshapen bowl to other famous artworks is not a crime. For the record, it reminded us--or most likely me pointing it out--of a penis. So . . . I should shut up, eh?
Well, after schlepping those back to the desk (to go get, again, tomorrow after my Lupus Run in the morning) I headed down to the exhibits for the library's centennial. And this is where I should tell you that the geek in me was on the better side of orgasmic. The Declaration of Independence, in Jefferson's own script, Virginia's Wolf's walking stick (discovered in the river after her drowning), and T.S. Eliot's positively memorizing poem "The Waste Land" rested throughout the room in glass cages. But, then . . . then . . . E.E. Cummings typewriter made me stop in mid step and ponder what will we have of writer's now? Dead laptops are not kept for future glass cage displays of the current literary masterminds. Instead, we clear our hard drives and cash them in for faster, better models. We recycle our drafts, keeping them on digital backup instead of scores of paper copies. The material nature of the written word is evolving, or dissolving, as we merge to the world of digital . . . The New York Times web page was even on display, via a Mac (I think). Sigh . . . But, just as my mind folded and found a moment of sudden loss the holy light shined down and . . .
I stole myself a picture.
Yea, just after getting fussed at for taking pictures of a book, and right after being told no pictures in the exhibit . . . It's Jack Kerouac . . . come on.
Kerouac always brings me back to spring at Kentucky Wesleyan College, sitting under my favorite tree, and plotting our own version of "They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining." More so, we dreamed of "We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess–across the night…"* Last fall, in my tourism course, my class had a reading about Kerouac in Mexico. I was appalled and horrified that they did not bother to look him up, or read his book, since they were clueless!
Kerouac will always have a pull on me, the old American Lit major that I am. In that same note, the proverbial hippie in me will always love the pull of Kerouac's words and the dreams they sparked. Perhaps he is part of the reason my life has taken some of its course . . . New Mexico and New York, even the Long Island years. The love of Boston. The greater love of New York.
The only thing to have made this more sublime, for me at least, would have been a moleskin of Hemingway's on display. Perhaps that is good, or certainly someone would have had to pry my body from a glass case.
Yea, who says my mid 30s are drastically different than the moments of juvenile bliss of my 20s when I would climb the sides of bridges and tell ensuing poe poe men that I was "allergic to the ground?"
*Jack Kerouac, On The Road
Comments