Kerouac was close with his mom.  She picked up work in a shoe factory when he knew he could not work anymore, feeling he rather needed to go across the country, to follow jazzmen and the roman candle people, to follow poets and the spiritual.  The railroad work as a brakeman was dangerous and exhausting.  She takes care of his cat when he is away.  Leo, Kerouac's father, has passed away, and there is no one else.

Ginsburg, "even Ginsburg," is surprised at the way they talk to each other, mother and son.  "You old smelly fish cunt," he calls her, something like that, perhaps in the dialect of the French Canadian.  While Kerouac touches the sacred in all his family relationships, the actual word, indicative of their relationship, is, here at least, not far from profane.

These terms of personal dialog are certainly not the only picture to be had of their generous relationship, one of understanding.  But the candor here, which all family members deserve of each other, is something.




There are times, my friend.  There are times when the normal lexicon of American cultural terms seems negligible as far as pertaining to actual life.  One that stands out, the concept of loneliness.  In cultural terms such a thing is to be banished, and yet, the reality behind the label is not far away from longer deeper truth, Buddha truth...