To Get Down from our Apartment
Dreamed mid-fall (around Halloween?) 1957 by Jack Kerouac
TO GET DOWN FROM OUR APARTMENT to the street you have to go down a ladder overhanging from the top of the Empire State Building---
I--sick of the whole fucking thing and refuse to do it again but Jesse does it---A man had just tried it before her (going to work with evening paper in his pocket) and he quietly dropped off and fell to his death silently and unobtrusively---
It happens all the time---
But I go down the safe way which is not indicated in the dream and I'm down on the dark street strolling wondering if Jesse made it---Turn around and see her a block up strolling slowly on the other side of the street---
It seems Ma didnt make it and is dead but I dont believe it---(The same day Ma was scared coming down the attic ladder, dreams prevision in a strange tender way)---
Jesse is strolling sadly in the dark not knowing where I am any more
--Jack Kerouac
EDITOR'S NOTES
I posted this short dream because it's one of several Kerouac casually noted as predictive or telepathic (such as Then I Revisit Selma, the electric shaver dream (p.55-6 of Book of Dreams, 2001 ed.) and possibly Irene's Dream. )
--Chris Wayan
Source: pages 315-16 of Book of Dreams by Jack Kerouac, expanded (2001) edition, City Lights Books.
Date: estimated from sequence. P.305 is August 24 1957; p.324 is still '57.
Title: Kerouac always capitalized a dream's first phrase as a working title, even if it didn't fit the dream as a whole. Paragraph breaks added.
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