October 3, 1998

Journal of a Sabbatical

October 3, 1998

book of dreams
some impressions of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac

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Ann Douglas and David Amram

The Commemorative at the Commemorative

Steve Eddington, the master of ceremonies, reminds us that this is the first time in years that it hasn't rained for the commemorative at the commemorative.

Joyce Johnson and David Amram

Steve also points out that in addition to Jack Kerouac, we are also remembering William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke who have died within the last year and a half.

Joyce Johnson, Ann Douglas, Regina Weinreich, and David Amram read from Dr. Sax and Book of Dreams

Paul leaning against a verse from the Scripture of the Golden Eternity,

The bright, clear October day fills with the sound of David Amram's flute, floating over Kerouac's words. Impressions swirl around me: Paul leaning against a verse from the Scripture of the Golden Eternity, a little girl in a pink turtleneck playing with a pigeon feather, the dance troupe warming up with stretches and martial arts kicks, where's Tom & Julie?, the crowd filtering in after Roger Brunelle's bus tour of Kerouac sites, yellowjackets buzzing around me.

I haven't had any coffee this morning and the fall weather is making me restless so I wander off when the dance performance starts to fetch a cup of coffee to sip while I walk around Lowell. The Voters for Clean Elections are setting up for the Vote Yes on 2 rally at Boardinghouse Park. I watch them hang red,white and blue placards on the stage. The Vote Yes on 2 bus - a yellow school bus covered with placards - pulls up looking for a place to park. The trolley disgorges a tour group - they're photographing each other in front of Boott Mill where the clack of the looms is audible outside as I sit drinking Dunkin' Donuts coffee on a bench next to the canal - it must have been deafening to work those things day after day for 10 or 12 hours a day.

Ghosts of the Pawtucketville Night

Rather than staying in Lowell, I dashed home and dropped off the film at the lab before I head down to Boston to fetch Nancy at the bus station. Then it's back to North Andover to pick up the pictures I took this morning at the commemorative and back to Lowell for the end of the round table discussion at the Whistler House amidst Jack's paintings - can't really see the paintings very well for the crowds.

I give Paul the picture of him leaning against a verse from the Scripture of the Golden Eternity and he asks if I have a darkroom in my trunk. I imagine developing film in the Auntmobile's trunk with the brand new tire I don't need, the beach chair for plover warden duty, extra jackets for the beach, telescope, two sets of binoculars, the Rhode Island library, broken glass from Crescent Beach (someday to become the art work I started 3 years ago)...

Actually I don't imagine that at all. I imagine Paul has no idea who I am since I'm not here with Tom & Julie... where are they anyway? They weren't at the commemorative this morning and they are not here at the Whistler House for the discussion of the new biographies, something Julie specifically said she would go to. I imagine they have lit out for the territories or suddenly inexplicably without warning moved to California secretly in the middle of the night like nomads folding their tents.

I might as well imagine I am a poet and a photographer ... or imagine drinking imaginary coffee in an imaginary cup while Brian Foye is trying to get the audience's attention so the panel can start .They have microphones but he doesn't. This is a small space and people are milling about trying to see the paintings even though everyone is all crammed in and the seats are practically on top of the paintings.

The guy sitting in front of me has no hair. None at all. The back of his neck looks frighteningly bare. He wears an odd black hat pushed down tightly over his bald head. Next to him is a guy with a pockmarked face who looks familiar and acts like I know him. He's wearing a blue sweater. He compares his hand to Kerouac's hand print in one of the paintings and asks me if I can feel that it's Kerouac's hand. I can't feel that. I mumble something like, "well it surely isn't my hand". Mystical blue sweater guy sits next to John Sampas. He talks to John Sampas like he knows him. Maybe the guy just talks that way to everybody.

The discussion of the new Kerouac biographies is lively to say the least. Our heads are reeling with questions about history and identity and context and drunken conversations and how anybody remembered anything before Linda Tripp taped it all and ... well... just stuff...

Dinner at Southeast Asian Restaurant: wide noodles, Chinese broccoli, chili paste, tofu like I've never tasted it before.

Listening to the 8th inning on the car radio: unbelievably the Red Sox are leading 1 to nothing. Guess I was wrong about Pete Schourek - we listen in stunned fascination as Flash Gordon gives up the go-ahead run - it's 2 to 1, do we go into the high school to hear David Amram and friends or do we sit here in the car with Garciaparra and Vaughn and Valentin coming up? Amram's bass player parks next to me, crookedly, and leaves his parking lights on. We decide to go in. Surely if Armageddon happens they'll announce it from the stage. The auditorium is not nearly full, we didn't' need to worry about getting seats. What is that guy doing to the pumpkin on the stage? It looks like he's putting mascara on it. The crowd is small for about the first 45 minutes but people keep filtering in. I wonder if they watched or listened to the end of the ball game.

The guy putting mascara on the pumpkin looks like John Sampas. As the evening of music and readings finally starts, he rolls the massively huge pumpkin onto its side and I realize he has drawn the Dr. Sax logo they're using for the festival this year. The auditorium fills with jazz and Jack's rhythmic prose and everything else recedes. Take the A Train. Pull my Daisy. I think of my parents dancing to big band music at the Totem Pole. I think of Allen Ginsberg reading at the Smith-Baker Center on a night so rainy the streets flooded on my way home. I think of Ed Sanders videotaping the commemorative by candlelight in the rain. I think of reading On the Road for the first time. The show goes overtime but doesn't seem long enough.

Then it's over and it's hurry up and turn the car radio on. The first words we hear are "Calvin Schiraldi". Oh no, if they're invoking Calvin Schiraldi's name they must've lost, it must've been bad... finally hear final score 2 to 1 - first time Tom Gordon has blown a save since April.

Home to Wilbur, a glass of cranberry-mango juice and a tape of Kerouac reading ... and so to bed haunted by the ghosts of the Pawtucketville night and the ghosts of blown saves past....