Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the loss and memory of a loved one amidst the vibrancy of life.
In this poignant reflection by Allen Ginsberg, the speaker contemplates the absence of a significant person in his life, contrasting their memory with the lively backdrop of Greenwich Village. The imagery of a sunny winter day and the act of listening to music underscores the beauty of life, even in the face of loss, suggesting that love and memory endure even when the person is no longer present.
In practice
During a memorial service, this quote could be used to evoke the memories of the deceased.
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 the night.
Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness.
Many seek and never see, anyone can tell them why. O they weep and O they cry and never take until they try unless they try it in their sleep and never some until they die. I ask many, they ask me. This is a great mystery.
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath, As I lay my body down Between the ache of breath and breath, Golden slumber in the bone.
We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.
Holiness has nothing to do with what we know and everything to do with Who we know.
I am not unaware of the saying that more tears have been shed over wishes granted than wishes denied.
Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
...I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.
If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."
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