But you have to remember, how the web works for the spider...  the connection, the circle, all points framed, reachable, tangible, the spider's patience, waiting for any tick on her radar graph.  She needs speed sometimes.  Patience other times.

The tree has its web.  Vertical, spread out in all directions, up and down, limb and leaf.  Catching sun and dew...


And any great idea or thought, or moment precise, for the thoughtful of humanity, those with an ear turned, vigilant, participate in the craft of a strand in the collective unconscious web.

Any great imaginative conception...  Be it done, be it done by, be it done to, be it thought of by the subject of the imaginative conception who becomes what imagination wants to conceive, or be it represented by, who knows, all these lines become less clear divisions...


And so here is Peter, looking at Jesus, the man, the prophet, the strange poet of live theater of a very important kind of news...

And Jesus does not know the answer when he asks the question, and maybe it's even a vulnerable moment...  What do they say I am, what do you think I am...  And the fledgling apostle friends, what do they say, but words bandied about.  "What do you say I am, old Peter?" the man with his followed visions must ask, knowing that by now they are all outside of the norms of accepted behavior and jobs, moving into a field that has no system of credential granted unto it safely recognized by the rest, and they were just as scrupulous about paperwork and documentation then, as they are now.

So here's this rather reckless kind of a guy, Jesus, who really seems to thrive, as it were, on a way, a path, a walk, a journey, a strange professional choice...

He's the guy who was out there with them on the lake when the storm was coming.  He was the one who associated himself with the publican and the sinner.  He was the one who did such things as to be eyed with some suspicion by the normal media gatherers as a man "gluttonous and a wine-bibber," not to mention his habit prone to parables, beautiful poetic statements that really cut so deep and into everyone's basic understanding of existence, whether or not they hid from it, the childlike ability to get it, how did all these beings of nature come into existence, and being so perfectly created that they have just the right and perfect means to gather sustenance just as they are, the bird having its seed, the violet having its own perfection of raiment such to catch the sun and the rain from down up the ground...

Here's the guy who gave a long talk that captivated people, and then he did something strange, which was feed them...  Out of nothing.  Here's a guy who knowingly took his friends out on the boat when it was the season of storms and all the conditions just perfect for them to sink to the bottom.  Here's the guy who made faith come out in certain individuals by doing strange things that only a stranger would be able to understand or being to account for.  It's even in his parables.  Who the hell are you, Jesus, and he gives them the story of the Good Samaritan on the road, saving the poor guy who robbers beat the hell out of, because they are logical, robbers, robbers who need money, preying on travelers by surprise and thuggery.  And here's Jesus telling us this whole reckless story, of not only saving the poor bastard, but then giving money, giving money to the innkeeper to take care of him, until he is "better," as the pay the innkeeper until the guy is healthy and able to walk out on his own two feet is definitely a part of the story...

(And if you've listened to one of Jesus's parable stories about the vineyard and the owner and the vineyard keeper, you know yourself, that the guy is hard to understand sometimes... downright mystifying...  It only makes sense perhaps, because Jesus likes his wine, a fixation...  It's telling, that he would chose the particular setting for his little lectures...)  Jesus, WTF, the apostles, would-be, texted each other, on their cell phones....

Who do they say I am, who do you think I am?

And old Peter, he gets it.  He's the mortal bridge.  You're not the reckless, you're not the whatever they might say you are...  You're something...  Let's call it, The Son of Man...  I don't know.

And old Jesus is pleased, of course he is. For Peter hasn't judged him.  Jerk.  Asshole  Winedrinker.  Peter has acknowledged that the man, Jesus, is working, working on something, doing his job.

His job.  We might speculate about that now, or compare it.  Jesus delivered sutras.  He did yoga cures.  He was a reader, a thoughtful person, a scholar.  He knew from inside out, sin and stupidity and lust and all that, but rather than letting it get to him, he chose to live in the present and be sin free, as that's what living in the present is, not imposing any kind of great plan or selfishness, as such things are foreign to us anyway.

All we know is things like "driving down the road."  We are on the road.  We're in a car.  We're driving from Clinton, down College Hill, and out Bristol Road, Route 233, to either catch 5, the slow way, or on to Westmoreland, to gas up, to get on the New York State Thruway westward, out along the flats, past Lake Oneida, and on through toward Syracuse, and then off to catch 481 to Route 48, on up to Oswego..  From Dad's, your old home town, up to where Mom is, and her life at the SUNY town...



Kerouac, On The Road, by this point you're read a lot and your tired out by it all, and we're out in San Francisco now, and Dean Moriarty, his thumb is up in a great bandage, and he's being called out, by the women folk, for caring nothing about anyone else but for the thing hanging between his legs...  And Kerouac, as Sal Paradise, despite it all, and even what the reader might want, or feel up for, offers a quiet defense of Moriarty, who is of course Neal Cassady, son of good tinsmith worker father gone wino in the depths of old Denver and railroad tramps and jails...   It's not been an easy life for Dean.

In some quiet mimic, one we have to go look for backward, unconvinced upon the first careful reading, and readings afterward, here is Kerouac, a gentle Catholic Christian sensibility kind of a guy, offering a pronouncement.  Here is IT.  Dean is The Holy Goof...  Dean is Beat.  Beatific. Beatified.

You'd miss it if you weren't' careful.  After the Holy Goof passage, Part Three, Chapter Three, reading On The Road is easier, more fulfilling, less a torture of irresponsible travels, the writing grounded, falling into a tradition.