"If I had a soul I sold it for pretty words"

That statement is Allen Ginsberg's, not mine, but I can certainly empathize with his sentiment. When people ask me why I study Ginsberg, it's for statements like these, the unflinching honesty. The Gita warns us to be wary of pretty words for the same reason Ginsberg does in his 1992 poem "After Lalon." We can easily become, and I myself to become, bogged down by the pretty little things that really don't amount to much. In the same poem, Ginsberg asks "... what good was all that come?/Will it come true? Will/it really come true." He's using the term "come" as in arrive here, but it isn't too much of a stretch, especially if you know Ginsberg to apply the sexual connotation here. He really wants to know if all of his sexual pursuits in the name of ecstasy will "arrive" at anything as he nears the grave. But what is the antecedent of the word "it"? It may well be the indeterminate, elusive It sought after in On the Road in countless jazz clubs -- a sacred experience out of time. Brilliant!

When I think of my own relationship to words, there's a lot of sadness and regret -- the ever present unfinished dissertation, poems lost, forgotten, or never completed, etc. but the greatest successes of this journey called life [yes I know its cheesy; I'm paraphrasing "Let's Go Crazy," but this is a blog. What do you want?] have also began with words. My greatest success and my greatest blessing is without a doubt my marriage, which began with innumerable hours of exchanging words in the energy clipped to those sounds. Tonight my wife is in San Francisco celebrating her career success. I'm here in our apartment with our guinea pigs in numerous distractions, but I was inspired to turn on Charlie Parker and pick up my big book of Ginsberg because I felt the weight of the San Francisco wind just below my solar plexus. That's love.