Kerouaaaayyyyyy

It is Christmas day 2009 and I am in Tahoe City after my Bend-er and Bachelor shred mission successes. Luke and the two lovely kiwi girls Rachel and Lucy are preparing our jerry rigged Christmas dinner in the tiny kitchen of the tiny studio apartment. The scene is smokey from the chicken juices overflowing out of a too-shallow pan and onto the bottom of a hot oven. Each time the oven is opened a smoke signal goes up only a few feet before it hits the ceiling and spreads its mass throughout the small entirety of the apartment. Good thing there is no smoke detector.

I wander over to the maroon textbook of Kerouac Road Novels that Kaleb left with me until our next rendezvous, which will be in NYC in the springtime. I start at the beginning with On the Road, and there, in the first few pages comes another Kerouac revelation. Words spoken in my mind quite often recently, written by Jack in 1957—the same thoughts spread over a few decades.

I had Kerouac in my head for the last few months, wanting to read him, and here I am in possession of six of his works in one old hardcover text. The universe once again, being the ceaseless provider. This is that thought of mine that he wrote over half century ago. I am sure there will be more to come.

But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulouas yellow roman candles exploding like candles across the stars, and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes, “Awww!”

Before sleep I read this beautiful line:

Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.