kathy in the sky with diamonds

Picture yourself in a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Michigan seems like a dream on a river:
A boat and a girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
She calls you, and you answer quite slowly,
“The man in the gabardine suit is a spy.”
She says, "Be careful, his bow tie is really a camera."
There are cellophane flowers of yellow and green,
Towering over your head.
But when you look for the girl with the sun in her eyes, she's gone.
So you buy a pack of cigarettes,
And one of Mrs. Wagner's pies,
Then walk off to look for America.

You follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
where the moon rises over an open field
In which rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies.
So you look at the scenery, as she reads her magazine;
Everyone smiles as they drift past the flowers,
That grow so incredibly high.
"Kathy, I'm lost", you say, though you know she is sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."
Then a Newspaper taxi appears on the shore,
Waiting to take you away.
You climb in the back with your head in the clouds, and you're gone.
On the New Jersey Turnpike, you count all the cars
Thinking they've all come to look for America.

You find yourself on a train in a station,
Playing games with the faces of plasticine porters,
Laughing at their looking glass ties.
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile,
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
"Toss me a cigarette," she say as boards the train.
"I think there's one in my raincoat."
"No, you smoked smoked the last one an hour ago."
"Kathy," I say, "It took me four days
To hitch-hike from Saginaw.
I've come to look for America."
"We've all come to look for America," she says, before she's gone,
"With Lucy in the sky with diamonds."

Kathy in the sky with diamonds.
Let us be lovers,
We'll marry our fortunes together.
Kathy in the sky with diamonds.
I've got some real estate
Here in my bag.
Kathy in the sky with diamonds.

---

mashed sauces

As I sat listening to Lucy on the Beatles mashed Love album, a line out of Simon and Garfunkel's America hit me. This is the story of the sixties mashed: wandering pilgrimages across geographical and psychedelic landscapes.