howl

Nicole was doing her first year at the university at the same time with me. She was 16. Considered a genius and was accepted early to study biochemistry I think. My roomate said she had crashed the entrance interview when she had given an hour long, brilliant interpretation of what is considered to be one the greatest poems of America, "Howl", by Alen Ginsberg.

I went into Nicole's room once. Half a wall full of science books, the other half, poetry (including Elitis btw.). A copy of "Howl", easily reached, confirmed in a way what my roommate had mentioned. Yes, I knew the poem, it had electrified some of our nights during high school night pull-overs at my dorm. I couldn t read even one stance again; coming out of teenage-hood, I found it unbearable.

Starting a blog, I ran into an old friend from high school times. I never told him and I had never realised but all he said and the way he wrote and still writes is Allen Ginsberg-ian. http://www.telson.blogspot.com if you are interested. Unbearable and yet electrifiable, it sucks me in.

Having had a great fun weekend, I needed to catch up on sleep yesterday. Slept in the afternoon, woke up for about an hour at 7, slept again, woke up again and again at 11, at 2, at 4...(and of course at 9 to realize I am again late for work :) ). Unbearable way of sleeping. Full of haunting dreams.

Dream-heavy sleep is hallucinating, for me at least, and to be honest I hate it, since it is happening every now and then. I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling anxious and realizing I had the strangest dreams -Scandinavia reflected on the moon, PJ Harvey playing at a local bar and myself in Nicole's room. I am talking about hardcore hallucination, and very real dreams, one after the other. "What is haunting me?", was my first thought. I hadn t seen Nicole after my first year and damn that s 8 yrs by now. Where is she now?

Monday morning at work I had to conjure away all that, put the spell away... Quick google and the "Howl" world emerges from the past...

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats
floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz
...

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver
& brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul
illuminated its hair for a second,
....

jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking
with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,
....

I'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea- journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage