Like I say, it slipped past me too, during my re-read of On The Road, the material surrounding The Holy Goof realization segment here in Part Three, Chapter Three, and I turned away from the passages after it, as I read them, when they go down to the jazz clubs there in Frisco, a final thing before they head back east...  Another bar, more madness, more of Dean sweating...  No, thank you, this is not the way to live.

And in some hindsight, a few weeks later, I begin to acknowledge what I might call a recognition of some Theosophical Reality, the faint background--to be turned up later, in reflection--of a kind saintly participation, as it were, an allowance for fated things, for the things of odd, perhaps not good, but recognizably human behavior of a complex sort, in all this sweaty listening to live jazz in the setting of Sal and Dean craziness.  I say that I, while I would rather say "we," recognize this sort of general mislead behavior that comes out of circumstances that have to do with one's situation of employment, or, here, unemployment.   Beatness...  We might have been there, in our not-so-neat lives...  and there is something saintly here, when the saint can get back to some place of home and peace and quiet, to reflect and to write.

There is, to my ear, a sweetness, sad though it may be, of Kerouac, and his own inner missing saint, allowing for all this.  In order to see something, to ponder it.  To come to terms with it.

No writer has forever.  This is what Kerouac went with.  This is the news he sent to press.


And certainly, it would be easy to dismiss.

I do not dismiss, knowing the cost of bearing experiences such as Kerouac, brave and bold writer of experiences here in Post WWII America, a homeless wandering that seem to fit his psyche, if he could have stopped to find the peace for the kind of continued spiritual reflections that might have gotten him there in the first place, whether that be regrettable or not.




I guess it's in The Power of Now, Eckhardt Tolle's little treatise on present spirituality.  There is the related tale of the monk, found in the literature here and there, in the little Book of Zen, of the monk's response to the vagaries of life:  "Is that so?"  The neighbors have a pregnant daughter, who, for convenience's sake, points to the monk as the father.  "Is that so," the monk says, hearing of the accusation, calmly.  "Yeah, and you can raise the kid, too!"  And this is what the monk, dutifully, does.  Later it turns out, no, she admits it was not the monk who did the siring, and apologetically, the grandparents take the kid back from him.  "Is that so..."

Yes, folks, THAT'S HOW IT GOES.   (More or less what the final chapter passage of On The Road says...  As "Dean, bent to it again...")


Having received a little bit of news the evening before, this on All Soul's Day, the day after our little Halloween festivities in urban suburbia, the writer found it not very easy to get up and go to work.  Feeling a kind of shame that can only come from offending the female of the species...  Was not aware, but learned about, through a managerially-led phone conversation explaining, after the little friendly catching up about this and that, the state of health of cats and bicycles and business, etc., of, in effect, there existing the state now, since the offense, of my presence no longer being required, nor welcome, nor friendly, basically.

I absorb this news, I suppose, as I toil away, thrown off the deep end into a nervous Saturday night at the old Dying Gaul Wine Bar.  The bar, to begin with, is reserved, from about 6 on, for a birthday party, finger food, wine, the food decided upon, but not what exactly the "Consumption Bar" will entail specifically.  (Fortunately, the husband had read the wine list...)  Which meant turning away from the bar's six or so stools, people who normally come on such an evening.  Putting me in an awkward spot.  The reservation list is full, and the wait list will have to be carefully choreographed out of a rush of incomplete message and changes made.

It's a long night, quite full, on up to the ending of dessert and coffee and calvados and final checks and then the final group of friendlies familiar at the bar who have their own tales of coming here.

I am able to eat some charcuterie at the end of it, and then the deluxe Italian sub with roast beef extra from the Korean market, before I'm able to pack it all in, do the paper work, clean up, gather myself and Uber home...

And the next day, what can you do. ..  "Is that so..."  You shrug, you go okay.  You get on with it.  Almost with some relief, a distraction swept away, an innocent understandable reaction from those more able to deal with the cold business of society's business dealings than you, that only reconfirms the living efficacy of the stuff that catches your eye, as things catch the eyes of the crow and the raven, collecting little bits of spiritual stuff in this life that we must pass through.   Pass through somehow.

And all those labels that haunt you, fuck up, drunken aggressor, bum-ness, beat-ness, what have they to do with you anyway, go in peace.