Ah! God! Life!

I just finished reading Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. My neighbour Megan had a combined birthday party with her friend at a Mexican restaurant and Megan’s friend reminded me of Terry, the Mexican girlfriend that Sal Paradise lives with for a while on his journey, so I read the book again. The way it picks up on the mundane, the hopeless, and the atmosphere of places is great. You read it and feel like you’re breathing in the place Sal is describing. It’s a Kierkegaardian search for something worth living for.

Dean and I sat alone in the back seat and left it up to them and talked. ‘Now, man, that alto man last night had IT – he 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 equal to 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 soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it’s not the same tune that counts but IT -’ Dean could go no further; he was sweating telling me about it.

At lilac evening I walked with every single muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver coloured section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.

Also, I’ll just throw it out there, I think that Dean Moriarty is Sal’s alter ego.

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