I had indeed pondered Kerouac in the period of landing at the new apartment out in the Palisades on the upper floor of the old three story G.I. type building near the reservoirs off of MacArthur.  I'm not going into the depths of any great literary criticism now, but to heed how one might have, as a reader, puzzled over Jesus's parables of the vineyard, as he struggled along with Kerouac and his own choices and actions over his own finite time.   (Jesus Christ, Jack Kerouac, take good care of yourself.  You're too brave!)

Those parables of the vineyard and the keeper, the owner, the son, the wicked servant, they strike me as literary lessons themselves, in that at least sometimes as a reader you have to read and return, read and return, and in your gut, yes, there's something there you see, but you don't really know what it is, what the kernel is, the point, the applicable meaning, so you keep reading, while the perception of what that meaning might be slowly simmers.

And indeed, one day that slow simmering might reveal some wealth of thought, some riches.

So, feeling nearly homeless and on the road at this new fresh juncture in my life, as I tried to make up for my juvenile irresponsibilities as such that had led me here, the new apartment, without the old shelter of good old George's house and all my books, I read Kerouac.  I read Kerouac, as if that whole reading thing had fallen out of the blue, against my will, and not on any whim, but very serious now, as I had no more juice to write with, too scared, and I needed an Old Master to consult with, and Dostoevsky was not around at the present time.

So, I came across his, Kerouac, having found again The Dharma Bums at my new local library, in this period of my whole library gone up in upheaval along with the rest of my life.  My own Kerouac books were kindly stored by a dear friend, the Scroll Version of On the Road, a red covered Desolation Angels, a Penguin Big Sur, a Visions of Cody, along with some others...  stashed away over in Virginia somewhere by the kindest of persons who was there, a good mystic Christian soul, when I had to move, actually had to move.

And even as I write, there is all of On The Road in mind, including the brilliant beginning, about an illness, his father's passing, etc., all very much to make you jump into this presence of mind that is the most simplest and basic and most effective writing way, which is to, in effect, light a campfire, one we can sit around.

I read Kerouac, picked up a used copy of the fire watcher book, by happenstance found On The Road again down in the basement laundry room...  And as ever, the mind goes back and forth.  Completely irresponsible, madman, partier, slacker, but also, some form of saintly monk when grasped on his own terms, thereby allowance of insight.

And here, having found yourself so devoted, even as you live life as life goes on, trying to take suggestions of friends and therapist and mom to heart, to do new things, to keep up with the good things, here you do find a sort of pay-off, and one that you wouldn't have really expected nor anticipated.

Saintliness and insights are never really found in careful preparation, nor in things that go in accordance with plan.  No.  These are things that happen on the road, not quiet planned, live, happenstance, a night one gets through, somewhat just barely, finally sneaking off back to bed where the rent has been paid.

The moments where there is a ceding of perfect control, when you're along for the ride with life, maybe even in a feeling of being far too exposed and open, drifting, swept up in the vagaries of life, it is here in such places and times that one will come upon the spirit and the meaning.  The things from which one will leave, and find that safe place, and say to himself, Depart From Me, Oh, Lord, for I am a sinful man.

And this is Kerouac's business, not that he always gets credit for it.  His spiritual endeavor is so front and center, so strong, that we too must recoil, wishing for someone to put the brakes on in this grade slide downhill into American fevered madness.  We feel the discomfort even from years and miles and miles away, life habits far away, reading material far away--Kerouac was a well-read individual versed in the life of letters, an interesting choice for a poor man in this era, the same era which gave birth to the G.I. Bill educational benefits--just by reading Kerouac!  And in doing so, facing some form of death, yes, along with poor Jack, poor Jack who has no idea where his next meal or place of rest and safe sleep might be, literally, as we read this in our great little schoolboy or fallen schoolboy sense, uncomfortable, yes, we get something.  And maybe even, through his light Kerouac, as fallible as any writer, Kerouac really is giving us access to The Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, just as clear as anyone might.

Just that we don't expect it so much, given all these characters, Dean Moriarty... To mention nothing of all the poor women involved, who too must be dragged uncomfortably, to saintliness.  A whole 'nother story, which other voice are better off at telling than I.


Again, saintly understandings come through that weird light, that strange very strange but powerful present moment.    There's St. Francis going to talk to this big scary mean wolf...  There's the Awakened One Buddha with this crazed elephant bearing down upon him in fury in a very real present moment...  These are things that happen live, on Live Television, in Live Time, just as if you were a bartender, just as if you were a bus driver, just as if you were a cop, dealing with, yes, like an old Irish Beat cop in a great American city like a Chicago, a New York, a Boston, the talk, the rapport, the contact is the key to keeping crime and weirdness down, and even maybe in going out an looking for it.  (Irish:  so good at being Beat Cops, so good at writing, poetry, music, and all the spirituality encapsulated, within, allowed to develop as they were, in Ireland.)


Thus, to me, the vineyard parables of The Gospels are themselves most clearly understood as being pictures of being out on the road, where things cannot be planned so well, where traffic, good and evil, whizzes by, pulling over and stopping sometimes, and sometimes, even you are mad enough to go along with the ride.


In the end I cannot condemn Kerouac, not at all.  I would rather celebrate him as some form of see-er visionary of real timeless eternal insight.



When people revile you, "god, what a piece of shit you are," that's when you are a saint.


The literary life?  Pretty much a curse, but it's something in the genes, something you have to figure out, after all the years...