This book store is that I passed without any informations about this store, I was interested in its appearance and entered. It continued on the back to the back. I remember it is very cultural but fresh, freedom, and radical,  therefore the atmosphere impressed me.

City Lights Booksellers & Publishers is a long-established book store and it has continued from 1953. I hear It is world-famous that this book store spread “Beatnik” writers’s works to the world.

On examination, “Beatnik” is that it rebels against the social system which has repressive and impersonal function and the conservative and  the middle class sense of values which they want to have a easy time, and for the unconditional release of the sense of humanity, they try to live with poverty positively, and they are one kind of the life-agitators who try to take a primitive commune life.

I think this book store is suitable to America which has the history of pioneering.

When I asked a Ayurveda doctor previously, he taught me that America where the type is fore-brain indicates the feature, Tokyo where the type is parietal-brain indicates the present, Europe and Africa where the type is occipital-brain indicates the past, Oceania where the type is side-brain indicates beyond the time.

I feel this book store has the spirit, the sense of feeling of America. The founder is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, he is a poet. There is a “poet chair” on the second floor in the back room.

何も前情報がないまま前を通り、その佇まいが気になり中に入ってみた書店。奥へ奥へと続いていく店内。とても文化的ではあるが、新しく、自由で、革命的な雰囲気に感動したことを覚えている。

City Lights Booksellers & Publishersは1953年から続く老舗書店で、ビートニクの作家たちの本を世に広めたことで世界的に有名だそうだ。

調べてみるとビートニク(beatnik)とは，”抑圧的で非人間的な機能をもつ社会体制と，そこに安住しようとする保守的で中産階級的な価値観に反逆し，人間性の無条件な解放のために積極的に貧困に甘んじ，原始的なコミューン生活を行おうとする一種の生活運動者”とある。開拓の歴史をもつアメリカに相応しい書店だと思った。

以前アーユルヴェーダの先生に話を伺ったところ、アメリカは前脳型で未来を表す地域、東京は頭頂脳型で現在、ヨーロッパとアフリカは後頭脳型で過去、オセアニアは側脳型で時空を超える感覚を表す地域と教えてもらったことがある。

この書店にはアメリカの感覚、魂があるような気がする。創立者は詩人のローレンス・ファーレンゲッティ。2階の奥の部屋には poet chair (詩人の椅子)がある。