[Kerouac had a throat infection. Fever dreams of Brooklyn slums, hostile cops, Eisenhower, farm fields, broom sellers, falling, dying. Woke, took an antihistamine, back to bed...]

...choking on life I see that the stuff of Karma is in Chinese called GHAT---it makes upon itself multiplying, in pain & sorrow...

Finally, as the pills work, round 2 PM, I with the window open and fresh air in dream of the 'Gabor Sisters'---one invites the other to join her in Australia while she gets her divorce---I see they'Il refuse to recognize decay let alone awful GHAT and be 2 blondes smiling and yakking and being busy and active till they get oldish and fattish and still they'll pretend it's not happening and go smiling and clacking on busy lady heels to stores and finally they will be old and still wont believe that such a thing as sorrow has et them up, living continual self-deceptions with a smile and cosmetics to hide their horror---marrying, divorcing, remarrying---being the famous gay sisters to the world---ZaZa and Eva---never admitting their pain, horror, suffering, despair, evil old age, disease & death... the fruits of Karma, the rot of GHAT---pretending everyrhing is the same,---being Rumanian Slavic types a la Chekhov, that is,"weeping" instead of understanding. . .that life is not worth living and they should never have been born will be their final secret thought in the moment of the only deliverance possible to people like that, death---poor fat shams with grown-old gams and gumming yams---blamming around in this World of Clams

--Jack Kerouac

EDITOR'S NOTES

The earlier nightmares were intense but conventional. This one, though, is subtler. Existential horror.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Book of Dreams by Jack Kerouac, expanded (2001) edition, City Lights Books, p.222. Date estimated from sequence.

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