Original Passage
At dusk I walked. I felt like a speck on the surface of the sad red earth. I passed the Windsor Hotel, where Dean Moriarty had lived with his father in the depression thirties, and as of yore I looked everywhere for the sad and fabled tinsmith of my mind. Either you find someone who looks like your father in places like Montana or you look for a friend's father where he is no more.
At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night. I stopped at a little shack where a man sold hot red chili in paper containers; I bought some and ate it, strolling in the dark mysterious streets. I wished I were a Denver Mexican, or even a poor overworked Jap, anything but what I was so drearily, a "white man" disillusioned. All my life I'd had white ambitions; that was why I'd abandoned a good woman like Terry in the San Joaquin Valley I passed the dark porches of Mexican and Negro homes; soft voices were there, occasionally the dusky knee of some mysterious sensual gal; and dark faces of the men behind rose arbors. Little children sat like sages in ancient rocking chairs. A gang of colored women came by, and one of the young ones detached herself from motherlike elders and came to me fast-"Hello Joe!" -and suddenly saw it wasn't Joe, and ran back, blushing. I wished I were Joe. I was only myself, Sal Paradise, sad, strolling in this violet dark, this unbearably sweet night, wishing I could exchange worlds with the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic Negroes of America. The raggedy neighborhoods reminded me of Dean and Marylou, who knew these streets so well from childhood. How I wished I could find them.
My Garbage:
Concerning the Forest the Other Day When I Went There
At noon I walked through the woods, feeling like some animal in the shrouded trees. I passed a dead bird, where its kin had once stood at his side.
It was at the bright noon I walked, shoulders burnt by the yellow sun, wishing to be a badger or something, feeling that the human world had disappointed me, not enough foraging for berries, not enough simplicity, or nightfall. I pulled up a tuft of grass and chewed on it absentmindedly. I wished I were a dodo, or even a poor ostrich, anything but an uninspired human. All my life I'd had human ambitions, which is why I had stopped growing a tail long ago, in my momma's belly. (Read your science books, kids.) Little birds camped in their nests like birds do. A gang of spiders raced by, and one of them thought I was a cat, but it was only me. I was only myself, a human, strolling in the heat of day under the sparse trees.The raggedy trees reminded me of my pet chinchilla that ran away. Oh, how I wish I could find him.
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