I returned to college in the Fall, but my mind wasn’t at rest. My family was not any too well fixed; I felt out of place, the coaches were insulting, I was lonely; I left and went down to the South to think things over. Since then, on my own, I have been learning fast, writing a lot, reading good men, and have been slowly making up my mind, seriously & quietly. Either I am loathsome to others, I have decided, or else I shall be a beacon of rich warm light, spreading good and plenty, making things prosper, being a cosmic architect, conquering the world and being respected, myself grinning surreptitiously. Either that, Sirs, or I shall be the most loathsome, useless, and parasitical (on myself) creature in the world. I shall be a denizen of the Underground, or a successful man of the world. There shall be no compromise!!! I mean it. —  

A 19-year-old Jack Kerouac writing in his diary in 1941, at once a living testament to the richness of life as a college-dropout-turned-lifelong-learner and a poignant meditation on the most fundamental tension of the human condition.

From the superb New York Diaries.

(via explore-blog)

(Source: fuckingthedog)

explore-blog:

How Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road, part of designer Johnson Banks’ fantastic poster titled The Power of Creativity

(↬ Quipsologies)

(Source: )

(Source: d0od0or4ke)

lookingfromsolitude:

Jack Kerouac reading at the Seven Arts Cafe in New York, 1959.
Photograph by Burt Glinn / Magnum Photos

The story of man

Makes me sick

Inside, outside,

I don’t know why

Something so conditional

And all talk

Should hurt me so.

I am hurt

I am scared

I want to live

I want to die

I don’t know

Where to turn

In the Void

And when

To cut

Out

For no Church told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York…

—  Jack Kerouac, Bowery Blues (via oh-so-elizabeth)

abstiegundzerfall:

BLUES AND HAIKUS (1959)
Jack Kerouac w/ Zoot Sims & Al Cohn

Jack and Al Cohn listening to the first playback

(via duluoz-legend)

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 the 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. —  Jack Kerouac “On the Road” (via good-morning-scarecrow)

(via insanelullaby)

paranoos:

AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS

(Source: newteenanthem)

Al Cohn, Jack Kerouac and Zoot Simms, during the 1959 Hanover “Blues and Haikus” recording session