Great
News from a Kerouac Project Alumni
October 30, 2002
Hi everyone -- Great news.
The VOA (Voice of America) is coming to New York next week to film
a 1/2 hour TV profile on me and my life as a writer for broadcast in
China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. That's the good news.
BUT -- and this is truly the height
of cool -- I'm doing a reading while the VOA's here at the Cornelia
Street Cafe in the Village
and David Amram agreed to come along with his drummer and back me up. So
I'll be reading from my Kerouac journals which are on the website and
my jazz fiction piece titled JAZZ WIFE. The VOA are going to
film the whole thing and we will of course tell the story of the Kerouac
House and all that. That will be on Nov 7. I'm thinking
of calling our performance a tribute to the Kerouac House.
Anyway, we'll try to get some pictures
or something you can use for the site. I was at David's book party a couple of
nights ago and it was fantastic. He is truly a wonderful supporter
of everything Kerouac was and represents.
Thought you'd like to know. Cheers.
XU XI
LISTENING TO JACK (4)
by Xu Xi
February 19, 2001 1013 Hrs
home stretch. almost time to hit the road. in the cold
light of day, the hours, weeks and months vanish with the frightening
rapidity of death and existence.
believing is seeing.
sights from the kerouac space. for web world eternity.
(click on these thumbnails to view full size images)
LISTENING TO JACK (3)
by Xu Xi
January 4, 2001 0524 Hrs
beat, beaten, arise with dazzled eyes on the wings of
phoenix. beat, beaten by a man, men, this gender battle because no
man would be beaten by a woman, not even you. but beat is not beaten
IS movement forward hear your house that roars in minnie's kingdom.
beat generation. the only war that matters is the
war against the imagination. diane di prima, woman of the.
beat is time, time, time, and there WILL be time - grandfather's
clock / too big for the shelf / stood ninety years / on the floor.
only clocks stop, not time.
beat, beats go on. rhythms in brains - dude that
kicks ass - IF you listen. parker-c, carter-b. coltrane-j, lady-day. quiet
now for monk. qi gong(1) brain fire duchess
joanne brackeen. LISTEN.
BE AT - be attitude - in my solitude / you haunt
me.
sing to me jack, jacky-kung-fu-kicking, jackie-pink-suit-picking,
A-JAX! shouts the loneliest duck, privately unbeaten in remaindered
re-runs into monday - around midnight - mornings in the dark.
comedy channel, orlando's route 66.
millennium joy. beatitude.
(1) Chinese breathing exercises, linked to marital arts.
Not unlike exercises practiced by the Falun Gong and other spiritual
groups.
ps: my short story 'until the
next century' is in the current (january) issue of a webzine at www.carvezine.com -- it is a zine
dedicated to the writer raymond carver
LISTENING TO JACK (2)
by Xu Xi
December 17,2000 1834 Hr
so it's that time when evening breezes caress, and whip,
trees on a Sunday that has gotten progressively chillier as the hours
pass as I'm cruising on this road with you, J.K., saying, is this why
I'm here, for the SANITY OF SURRENDER?
the work flows, with a manic energy that doesn't stop,
in the morning in the afternoon in the evening all night long until
day breaks and the moment begins anew. surrendering to the process
has been easy, TO WRITE (the reason for my being here), to be, for
real, what I claim I am (I'm a writer- are you how wonderful -
well yes I suppose it's a kind of life- oh it's a wonderful life -
perhaps, since it's christmas in america where wonderful lives are
everything are all).
if only it were as easy to surrender the soul.
J.K. you were a victim of wine & roses, the movie
that made me weep, alone in an inhospitable flat where the water was
warm but the love was cold & for sale & unable to sustain me,
or anyone, for long. in your house J.K. I discover Important Things
(capitalized à la Pooh, the taoist bear) . . . like: wine & roses
are words that belong to a poet, one Ernest Dowson, an english decadent
born in 1867, thanks to the new york times that the Kerouac House supplies
me every sunday. to think I never knew, me, the lover of words & images & roses & wine & days
without nights. you learn your ignorance every hour, every millisecond,
as long as you breathe, IF you choose.
today a teenage boy scout asked, "want some mistletoe?" and
he was innocent & charming, a dear angel boy, so I said, no, rather
than saying, "and will you kiss me if I do?"
there was one christmas, years ago now when I ascended
to the top of a mountain in KOTA KINABALU (formerly Jesselton, in East
Malaysia), by climbing over fourteen thousand feet, because it seemed
imperative, the thing to do, to be completely alone on christmas
day at an altitude for private amens and amends to gaze on the face
of.
hearing you, J.K., as I turn up the
volume to "whisper." sweet.
LISTENING TO JACK (1)
by Xu Xi
December 10, 2000
hey Jack Kerouac, what AM I doing
here? I've hunted in the corners of this house, seeking your ghost
amid the dust mopped
and the food prepared. you told "Jerce" (1) you
found peace in Orlando, and after my first week here - where the temperature
plummeted to an all-time low, and life was about scrambling to get
settled in so that the WRITING would not be suspended for too long
-- you, my man, are already getting under my skin.
you're teaching me how to write all over again.
there's a raison d'etre to every movement in
life, every place you go, every person you meet, every space you occupy.
if I were Jack Kerouac, I would capture all those movements AS THEY
OCCUR, because they are precious, god-given, the gem in the
ointment. but that would take the unique genius that is yours alone.
we who walk in your steps find our own paths. we DO WHAT (we) LIKE,
as you once told a budding young novelist to do when she, in amour with
you, sought insights into the writing life, into Life.
so this is the beginning of my jazz-like "improv," to
be propelled by our shared love of words and that crazy, zany desire
-- compulsion -- energy-sustaining NEED to write, of which
you daily remind me.
it is my exceptional privilege to be here (although through
that first, long, and shivery, night with you, I wondered, aloud, what
the HELL am I doing here????). perhaps after my three months are up
(gaol term or respite - are both but two faces of the same eve, or
adam?), I will know, a tiny bit more, about the meaning of this existence.
on the road, here. xx
(1) Joyce Johnson,
Kerouac's lover with whom he corresponded while living in Orlando. "Jerce" was
his pet name for her in the letters.
XU XI (Background)
Xu Xi is a writer living between New York and Hong Kong. While at the
Kerouac House, she hopes to complete (or substantially improve) a
novel-in-progress, The Habit of a Foreign Sky.
She is the author of two novels, Hong Kong Rose and Chinese
Walls and a fiction collection Daughters of Hui, which
was named a 1996 "best book" by Asiaweek magazine.
Her stories, essays and book reviews have been published and broadcast
internationally.
The Unwalled City, her most recently completed
novel, will be published in 2001 by Chameleon Press, to be followed
by a fiction collection History's Fiction (Stories from the City
of Hong Kong).
Born in a snake year, she is a native of Hong Kong from
a Chinese-Indonesian family and has been a resident of that city, intermittently,
for some thirty years. She holds a MFA in fiction from the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst and a BA in English from the State University
of New York at Plattsburgh.
At the end of 1997, after some 18 years as a marketing
professional, she quit the corporate world to write, and live, full
time.
