the signs that mock me as i go

[..] "Chelsea Hotel", I told the driver, fumbling through my pockets for change, not completely certain I could pay him. [..]

[..] I was wearing a long rayon navy dress with white polka dots and a straw hat, me East of Eden outfit. At the table to my left, Janis Joplin was holding court with her band. To my far right were Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane, along with members of Country Joe and the Fish. At the last table facing the door was Jimi Hendrix, his head lowered, eating with his hat on, across from a blonde. [..]

[..] I loved this place, its shabby elegance, and the history it held so possessively. There were rumors of Oscar Wilde's trunks languishing in the hull of the oft-flooded basement. Here Dylan Thomas, submerged in poetry and alcohol, spent his last hours. Thomas Wolfe plowed through hundreds of pages of manuscript that formed You Can't Go Home Again. Bob Dylan composed "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" on our floor, and a speeding Edie Sedwick was said to have set her room on fire while gluing her thick false eyelashes by candlelight. [..]

[..] It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical life breath. The artist animates his work as the child his toys. [..]

[..] One afternoon Gregory Corso came to visit. He called on Robert first and they had a smoke, so by the time he came to visit me the sun was going down. I was sitting on the floor typing on my Remington. Gregory came in and panned the room slowly. Piss cups and broken toys. "Yeah, this is my kind of place."I drugged over a an old armchair. Gregory lit a cigarette and read from my pile of abandoned poems, drifting off, making a little burn mark on the arm of the chair. I poured some of my Nescafe over it. He awoke and drank the rest. I staked him a few bucks for his most pressing needs. As he was leaving he looked at an old French crucifix hanging over my mat. Beneath the feet of Christ was a skyll embellished with the words memento mori. "It means 'Remember we are mortal,'" said Gregory, " but poetry is not." I just nodded.

When he left, I sat down on my chair and ran my fingers over the cigarette burn, a fresh scar left by one of our greater poets. He would always spell trouble and might even wreak havoc, yet he gave us a body of work pure as a newborn fawn. [..] 

[..] but then i remembered Lenny Kaye had said he played electric guitar. I went to see him.

"You play guitar, right?"

"Yeah, I like to play guitar."

"Well, could you a car crash with an electric guitar?"

"Yeah, I could do that," he said without hesitation [..]

[..] Allen introduced himself. He was talking about Walt Whitman and I mentioned I was raised near Camden, where Whitman was buried, when he leaned forward and looked at me intently. "Are you a girl?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Is that a problem?"

He just laughed. "I'm sorry. I took you for a very pretty boy."

I got the picture immediately.

"Well does this mean I return the sandwich?"

"No, enjoy it. It was my mistake."

Sometime later Allen became my good friend and teacher. We often reminisced about our first encounter

and he once asked how I would describe how we met. "I would say you fed me when I was hungry," I told him. And he did. [..]

Το Just Kids της Patti Smith δεν είναι ένα βιβλίο για τη μουσική, ούτε για την ποίηση, ούτε για το Ξενοδοχείο Τσέλσι. Είναι μια αγάπη, μια προσπάθεια, μια ζωή μέσα από μία άλλη, δύο υπέροχοι άνθρωποι, δάσκαλοι, χρώματα, ιδέες, μουσικές, έρωτες, ποιήματα, φαγητά, ναρκωτικά, θέατρα, θάλασσα, δυσκολίες, αγνότητα. Είναι η απάντηση στην ερώτηση "Και τι σε κρατάει να μην νιώσεις ελεύθερος?". Είναι η αφορμή για να κλάψεις κρυμμένος σε πλαστικές καρέκλες στο σκοτεινό κατάστρωμα ενός καραβιού που ταξιδεύει κάτω από το μπλέ άστρο δύο άνθρωπων που μπόρεσες να αγγίξεις έστω και για μια στιγμή τα μαλλιά τους. Είναι το δώρο που έπρεπε να κατέβεις από το τρένο και να τρέξεις να το παραδώσεις με τις τσαλακωμένες του σελίδες και τις σημειώσεις από διαφορετικά μολύβια.

ΠΣ{ιτ}: τα κομμάτια που διαβάζει κανείς παραπάνω δεν αναφέρονται στα παιδιά. Η ιστορία τους δεν διακόπτεται σε αναφορές για προφανής λόγους. Αντιγράφονται μονο εδάφια μουσικού και ποιητικού ενδιαφέροντος (μα πόσο ωραία τα λέω). Υπάρχει όμως μια πολύ ωραία ιστορία στο τέλος που επιζεί και μόνη της χωρίς να χαλάει τη μαγεία του βιβλίου, ειδικά για κάποιον που προσπάθησε κρυφά να χαϊδέψει ένα γλυπτό του Brancusi και βρέθηκε να παριστάνει τον ημι-λιπόθυμο όταν τον πλησιάσανε οι έφοροι του μουσείου (γκούχου γκούχου):
[..] just as we were about to say goodbye, Sam gave me the gift of one more of his infamous stories. Knowing my affection for the great sculptor, he said, "Peggy Guggenheim once told me that when you made love with Brancusi, you absolutely were not allowed to touch his beard."
"I'll remember that," I replied, "when I bump into him in heaven." [..]

ΠΣ{ιτ}2: Αντιγράφοντας έγραψα λανθασμένα: [..] Janis Joplin was holding out her hand [..]