Beatniks & Bubble tea

BUBBLE TEA. You either hate it, or adore it because you're a weirdo like me.

Spring means bubble tea. Actually winter means bubble tea too. All times of the year call for some delicious, obligatory bubble tea. Normally when it's super cold I get strawberry black tea, but today I went for a coffee blend. It's the perfect lovechild of coffee and tea.



Now today I want to introduce you to my new found friend I picked up back in Texas the other week
The book is The Beat Collection, which I got at Half Price books for just five bucks. Perfect condition, huge and hardcover too, normally $25, so it was a really good deal.

The thing about the beatniks is that I never really knew much about them until I started my class this semester about Buddhism and its influence on the beat generation's writing style. My biffle Lauren has a blog entitled "Radiant Cool Eyes," with the subtitle "starving hysterical naked." I never considered this heavily, just figured she was just being emo or something, but then we had to read Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" for class. Ohhhhh, so that's where it came from. Turns out Lauren's been quoting Howl this whole time and I never knew it. Yes, mock me however you wish, all your he's been around so long and how could you not know about Allen Ginsberg you trashy hobag or possibly why do you like his work so much it's so gritty and foul. Which is true. But I like some of his stuff, especially "Sunflower Sutra" and "America."

"Sunflower Sutra" is actually my favorite of his. Here's my favorite excerpt:

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!


That last sentence is just plain cute. Then there's also "America"... I'll only give you two lines that were really cool

America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?

Yes, these bits are very eloquent... however, much of the beat poetry is obscene for the sake of obscenity. Often those poems get SO foul and filthy that they become funny.

:edit: I had a list of the common occurrence of dirty words in one Michael McClure poem, but I took it down so that maybe people won't get offended at my dirty dirty mouth.

Obligatory cutesy photowhoring!! Since my blog seems to have a sort of eastern feel to it anyway, with all the Zen style and my gigantic eyeballs anyway...
OH MY GOD THIS GIRL HAS FUCKING GIGANTIC EYEBALLS.

My friend Chris today, on the subject of me being cartoonlike: "You're such a cartoon, I wouldn't even have to draw you. I could just put you on paper."