https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac#/media/File:Jack_Kerouac_Naval_Reserve_Enlistment,_1943.png


Sometime after this photograph was taken, and after a car accident, Kerouac sort of lost it, according to the official Navy view, and they admitted him to the hospital for some form of mental issues, and headaches.  Later on, he would admit it would have gone easier for him had he not been such a wise guy in attitude.

His experience out on the sea, losing his best friend, his truest literary friend, Sampas, to the War, his early letters, annotated by Ann Charters...

Youth, into adulthood, a time of upheaval.  The face is a strong one.

And what put him on the path he would now take...

Dinner around 8, my oldest friends in town, my best friends, a couple--I knew them separately before they joined and married, one from the place I worked, in her neighborhood, and he from the bar he worked, the one my brother favored going to on weekends when I was off.  I bring the wine, three bottles, and they put out a spread of prosciutto and soft dark salami and cheese, and then, as it's Good Friday, scallops with fettuccine and a salad.  They are hard working, and organized, shop owners.  They know what they are doing.  Dinner is quite delicious.  I stick to wine, no hard stuff for me.  And when I leave, though I check a new wine bar out, I avoid ordering anything, and get in a cab.  An Ethiopian gentleman, we strike up a conversation.  I want to go see if my old chef friend is around, along with Johnny, a great guy I let down once when the two opened a restaurant more than twenty years ago in Adams Morgan.  The guy takes me up 18th Street, perhaps to milk the meter.  The display on the streets of Urban Babylon turn me off, and I find they, my friends, are not there.


But the writer runs a sort of risk when he goes out.  It's as if he has to control, carefully, best achieved by cooking for yourself at home, what he eats, making sure he gets enough.  Otherwise, it will end up being later and visiting McDonalds and ordering foolishly, and then having to drag himself back, by bus, or on foot.  And then to eat on the couch with the television on, and then to sort of pass out, and then to put himself to bed, and then to wake up feeling crappy.  Why, who knows...  A safe return, but waking to angst and anxiety, and the glass of water beside the bed.

There is fun with friends, and they are important people to talk to.  They know me very well, all my ups and downs.  They are fun.  They have cats.  Where they live is interesting and happening....


But Kerouac...  is there a relationship to his going out on the town to listen to mad jazzmen blow their horns and then to have that experience filter down and come out as writing, is this a measure to which the man might otherwise feel lost and lonely...  Is there a correlation...  An original feeling of lostness that came upon him as he gained adulthood...  Everyone else taking upon themselves a responsible adult life (except for other madmen.)

The direct line between the mountain climb of experience, and a different sort of take on a professional life, and the writing...  The direct line between the anxiety and the spiritual work of writing itself, and yes, for Kerouac, and for anyone else too, it has to go in a spiritual direction...

Is that why some of us pick out certain professional activities, that they bring to us the maximum amount of anxiety...  somehow mimicking the experiences of childhood getting amped up by adult behavior, the experiences of passing into adulthood with all your cracks and faults... that by facing such headless horseman coming behind you on the bridge you find eventually, hours later that you are through the danger, that you can then repair to go back home, tired, almost ready for sleep,

A sketch before work, green tea, some turmeric tea cooling, time for the shower, and then some yoga and off to work.  The friars of EWTN have visited the holy land in the background television sounds.  The Lake of Galilee is seven miles at its widest, and thirteen long.  The sun is out.

I take Kerouac as a hero, a strong one, a profile in courage.  At least by my own scaredy-cat pipsqueak standards...