Some random books (and some of their bits) that took my fancy for your delectation....
will remove alien letters when time stops unravelling at unfair rate of exchange...

BitsnPeaces
And all this time Dean was incredibly excited about everything he saw, everything he talked about, every moment of every detail that passed. He was out of his mind with real belief. "And of course now no one can tell us that there is no God. We've passed through all forms. Everything is fine, God exists, we know time. Everything since the Greeks has been predicted wrong. You can't make it with this geometry and geometrical systems of thinking. It's all this!" He wrapped his finger in his fist; the car hugged the line straight and true. "And not only that but we both understand that I couldn't have time to explain why I know and you know God exists."
At one point I moaned about life's troubles -how poor my family was, how much I wanted to help Lucille, who was also poor and had a daughter. "Troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung-up. My head rings!" he cried, clasping his head. He rushed out of the car like Groucho Marx to get cigarettes -that curious ground-hugging walk with the coattails flying, except that he had no coattails. "Since Denver, Sal, a lot of things -Oh, the things- I've thought and thought - We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every side." There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear. He used the word "pure" a great deal. I had never dreamed Dean would become a mystic.





When he gets warmed up he takes off his shirt and undershirt and really goes. He does and says anything that comes into his head. He'll sing "Cement mixer, Put-ti Put-ti" and suddenly slow down the beat and brood over his bongos with fingertips barely tapping the skin as everyone leans forward breathlessly to hear; you think he'll do this for a minute or so, but he goes right on, for as long as an hour, making an imperceptible little noise with the tips of his fingernails, smaller and smaller all the time until you can't hear it anymore and sounds of traffic come in the open door. Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, "Great-orooni...fine-ovauti...hello-orooni...bourbon-orooni...all-orooni...how are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni...orooni...vauti...oroonirooni" He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can't hear. His great sad eyes scan the audience.

Dean stands in the back saying "God! Yes!" -and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. "Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time". Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two C's, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing C-Jam Blues and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Eygptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages. Finally the set is over; each set takes two hours. Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody's head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. "Bourbon-orooni -thank-you-ovauti" Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is. Dean once had a dream that he was having a baby and his belly was all bloated up blue as he lay on the grass of a California hospital. Under a tree, with a group of colored men, sat Slim Gaillard. Dean turned despairing eyes of a mother to him. Slim said, "There you go-orooni." Now Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim was God; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us. "Right-orooni" says Slim; he'll join anybody but he won't guarantee to be with you in spirit. Dean got a table, bought drinks, and sat stiffly in front of Slim. Every time Slim said, "Orooni," Dean said, "Yes!" I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni.

That same night I dug Lampshade on Fillmore and Geary. Lampshade is a big colored guy who comes into musical Frisco saloons with coat, hat and scarf and jumps on the bandstand and starts singing; the veins pop in his forehead; he heaves back and blows a big forghorn blues out of every muscle in his soul. He yells at people while he's singing "Don't die and go to heaven, start in on Doctor Pepper and end up on whiskey!" His voice booms over everything. He grimaces, he writhes, he does everything. He came over to our table and leaned over to us and said, "Yes!". And then he staggered out to the street to hit another saloon. Then there's Connie Jordan, a madman who sings and flips his arms and ends up splashing sweat on everybody and kicking over the mike and screaming like a woman; and you see him late at night, exhausted, listening to wild jazz sessions at Jameson's Nook with big round eyes and limp shoulders, a big gooky stare into space, and a drink in front of him. I never saw such crazy musicians. Everybody in Frisco blew. It was the end of the continent; they didn't give a damn.






"Now man, that alto man last night had IT-held it once he found it; I've never seen a guy who could hold so long." I wanted to know what "IT" meant. "Ah well"-Dean laughed- "now you're asking me impon-de-rables - ahem! Here's a guy and everybody's there right? Up to him to put down what's on everybody's mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow to equal it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it - everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He's filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling that everybody knows it's not the tune that counts but IT-" Dean could go no further; he was sweating telling about it.




We were on a hill overlooking Salt Lake City's neat patterns of light and he opened his eyes to the place in this spectral world where he was born, unnamed and bedraggled, years ago.
"Sal, Sal, look, this is where I was born, think of it! People change, they eat meals year after year and change with every meal. EE! Look!" He was so excited it made me cry.