Thursday, April 17, 2008

"Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations..."

...Lawrence Ferlinghetti

All night long I kept having this image pop into my head: a foggy late night in San Francisco (think Dashiell Hammett and The Maltese Falcon, trench coats and Bogart's accent), walking down Kerouac Alley and reading that quote over and over again. Except that I couldn't quite get the entire quote. When I awoke this morning, there it was, first thing in my head, exactly as written in the pavement next to City Lights. What does it all mean? I must be uncannily prescient. When the mail came today, I opened up a package containing a copy of "Seven Days In Nicaragua Libre," which was one of the few books by Mr. Ferlinghetti that I did not have in my possession. But that book has nothing to do with the quote from the sidewalk. I will have to leave that thought and return there later.

Ah, Mr. Ferlinghetti, you haunt me night and day....

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