My first venture into Kerouac. Absolutely fascinating to watch the stages of his breakdown, yet he ends on such an optimistic note. (and then a poem that I was unable to comprehend).
I marked at least five sections where Kerouac’s ability to perceive and articulate his circumstance and environment were unlike anything I had ever read. Pure brilliance and clarity, even in the midst of madness.
Makes me want to go back and read On The Road, but I definitely need to take a break from him for a bit.
Notes
‘That’s all there is to it, take it easy, everything’s okay, dont take things too serious, it’s bad enough as it is without you going the deep end over imaginary conceptions just like you always said yourself’
Any drinker knows how the process works: the first day you get drunk is okay, the morning after means a big head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if you pass up the meal and go on to another night’s drunk, and wake up to keep the toot going, and continue on to the fourth day, there’ll come one day when the drinks wont take effect because you’re chemically overloaded and you’ll have to sleep it off but cant sleep any more because it was alcohol itself that made you sleep those last five nights, so delirium sets in – Sleeplessness, sweat, trembling, a groaning feeling of weakness where your arms are numb and useless, nightmares, (nightmares of death) … well, there’s more of that up later.
All my tricks laid bare, even the realization that they’re laid bare itself laid bare as a lotta bunk – The sea seems to yell to me GO TO YOUR DESIRE DONT HANG AROUND HERE – For after all the sea must be like God, God isn’t asking us to mope and suffer and sit by the sea in the cold at midnight for the sake of writing down useless sounds, he gave us the tools of self reliance after all to make it straight thru bad life mortality towards Paradise maybe I hope – But some miserables like me dont even know it, when it comes to us we’re amazed – Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH … but I ran away from the seashore and never came back again without that secret knowledge: that it didnt want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in the first place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period.