Jack Kerouac.
Why did I not discover this man earlier in life? He is my hero with a voice of which I’ve longed to articulate. Seriously, his mantra is mine.
Just finished reading The Dharma Bums, the successor to The Subterraneans and the second release following the biblically followed On The Road. The Dharma Bums, although steeped heavily in Buddhist philosophy, to which I remain largely unenlightened, still has the On The Road poetic style for which I’ve craved since the lonely departure of Dean Moriarty in the novel of the same name. A good accompaniment for South East Asian living and gaining patience in a landscape of frantic city life in which the motorcycle reigns supreme. Here’s a few choice paragraphs in which to become ensconced:
…“Everything is empty but awake! Things are empty in time and space and mind.’… Whatayya mean, empty, I’m holding this orange in my hand, ain’t I?’ ‘Its empty, everythin’s empty, things come but to go, all things made have to be unmade, and they’ll have to be unmade simply because they were made!”
“This poor kid ten years younger than I am is making me look like a fool forgetting all the ideals and joys I knew before, in my recent years of drinking and disappointment, what does he care if he hasn’t got any money: he doesn’t need any money, all he needs is his rucksack with those little plastic bags of dried food and a good pair of shoes and off he goes and enjoys privileges of a millionaire in surroundings like this. And what gouty millionaire could get up this rock anyhow…And I promised myself that I would begin a new life. All over the West, and the mountains in the East, I’ll tramp with my rucksack and make it the pure way”.
So I guess it really is the philosophies in the novel which hold my interest, more so than Ray Smith’s debauched energies under the stars. In a place where so much change happens before one’s eyes, at a rapid pace, there are clear seductive tones in such writing. I don’t really know how to better articulate what I feel or what I know from this novel or from living elsewhere, or why these passages hit me like they do, I can only show them and hope that others get out of them something that is deep and maybe inexplicable.
