To Jack Kerouac, On His 100th Birthday
To Jack Kerouac, On His 100th Birthday
March 12 2022
I am a writer. That's a bold statement from someone who has never been a paid a penny to write, and one who ends up with typos and grammatical mistakes out the proverbial wazoo. It's true though, and I can prove it. Our descendents in the year 3022 could bear witness to the fact, provided humanity makes it that far.
While playing cards with a friend back in high school, I wrote out a sad little poem and taped it on his wall amongst a myriad of other little scraps that he taped there himself. A year later he died in a car accident.
Months later I visited his parents and they allowed me back in his room. All the other scraps had been removed from his wall, but my sad little poem was still there! Seemed strange, but I kept my mouth shut.
Not long after that, I visited his grave and saw his gravestone for the first time. Maybe you've anticipated what's next. My sad little poem was inscribed in the stone. I had unwittingly written his epitaph! That might have been the most mystifying moment of my life.
“Then one day we die, and what did it mean? The autumns of orange, and the springs of green.”
Once your words are etched in stone, you are a writer, and that's all there is to it.
Kerouac wrote his own epitaph, of course: "The road is life." I wonder if that was his decision though, or a shrewd money-saving technique by those who survived him. The full quote is much better:
"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."
Now that would have been a proper epitaph!
Or they could have picked this Kerouac quote:
“And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.”
Haha, maybe not. That might have instead been written by the offspring of Oprah and the Crypt Keeper. I second-guess the epitaph I wrote too, and for the same reason. Too gloomy!
I wrote several extra stanzas on a pizza box once, driving home from James Dean's hometown of Fairmount, Indiana in the middle of a starry night, out of my mind on caffeine. The pizza box has by now certainly disintegrated in the earth, and the words are lost, but I remember the essense- Yes, the world can be gloomy at times, but we need to recognize the beauty while we have the opportunity, and even though something is short-lived, sometimes a moment will substitute for eternity.
That might be the closest I ever came to becoming what Kerouac's buddy might call one of the "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night."
What a strange contrast- words etched in stone, attempting to stand the test of time, and words scrawled on a pizza box, buried, becoming dirt. Words from the same poem- some eternal, some ephemeral.
The eternal and the ephemeral- neither are truly what they claim to be, nor are they opposites. The conflict between the two has been a key motivating force in my life.
I once asked my friend Kenneth Kendall, "Why bother sculpting James Dean in bronze? Why make the effort?"
You know what he said? He said, "because it's something definite." Look around. All you see will turn back into earth. (These days, it seems that could happen sooner rather than later.)
A sculpture cast in bronze could outlast humanity by a million years, unscathed by nuclear apocalypses, and plastic-eating amoebas. It could remain intact until the Earth is swallowed back up by the sun. But that's still not eternal, is it? Maybe not, but it's something. It one-ups a gravestone destined centuries of acid rain showers, that's for sure!
James Dean famously said, "If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live after he's died, then maybe he was a great man."
Read anything by Plato, by William Blake, by Newton, by Anne Frank, by Henry Miller, by Carl Sagan, by Christopher Hitchens, by Norm MacDonald. It’s as if they're talking to us from beyond the grave. They've bridged the gap, along with the kid who made the relief painting of his or her hand in that cave 17,000 years ago, in what is now Lascaux, France.
Kerouac once said, "I'm writing this book because we're all going to die."
Is that gloomy? Not to me. I get it. The important thing isn't the eternal, but the connection.
Writing is something of an ephemeris, a way to track the fact that we've been here. Reading then is a way to track the fact that others have been here, or still are here. Reader and writer, you and I, we're somehow bridging time, connecting. It's a notion so bizarre yet so commonplace, that it barely even registers. Anyone who creates anything lasting is taking part in this mystery.
And with that, it seems fitting to end on my favorite Kerouac quote, one that certainly bridges time and connects, from Dharma Bums.
“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstasy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.”
That should be written in stone!
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Don't forget to spring back and fall forward tomorrow morning. Also, don't ask me which red, black and yellow banded snake you can pick up and which one will kill you.
March 12, 2022
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Sean Hannity trying to get Trump to declare Putin evil, and Trump resisting at every turn, saying that he got along with him quite well…. that fact alone might be all that we need to know about Trump. There's a reason he would get along with him quite well!
March 12, 2022
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Kerouac would have been 99 today. I met lifelong friends on the road, while between the covers of On the Road, some no longer with us.
March 12, 2021
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Marty Stuart in Ken Burns' Country Music, putting it perfectly:
"It was almost badge of honor that you brought your culture with you to the table. That's why Bob Wills and his guys brought us western music. That's why Hank Williams brought the south with him from honky tonks. That's why Johnny Cash brought blackland dirt of Arkansas. Bill Monroe brought Kentucky bluegrass music. Willie Nelson brought his poetry from Texas. Patsy Cline brought her heartache from Virginia. I mean it was the most wonderful parade of sons and daughters of America that brought their hearts and their souls and their experiences and they gave us a great era of country music."
March 12, 2020
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Gretel was telling me about Amish people tonight.
Gretel- "They have no phones, no lights, no motorcars."
This sounded very familiar.
Daddy- "Where did you learn that, school?"
Gretel- "No, Weird Al Yankovic."
Oh, right!
I've worked with 100+ Amish farmers for Gretel's entire life, and where does she need to turn to learn about them? Weird Al Yankovic.
March 12, 2020
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Did anybody see the president's coronavirus Oval Office address last night??? I'll be damned if that rube doesn't believe our hoax.
What should we bamboozle him with next? Global warming is caused by bigfoot dung? Bill Hicks is Alex Jones? He should drop Pence for Michelle Obama?
March 12, 2020
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We have 300 trillion microorganisms in our guts. That means every second they live a combined 9.5 million years.
March 12, 2018
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Nice weather, we're getting busy with the spring crops at Hands-On House.
March 12, 2017
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The president said Obamacare was intended to implode in 2017 because Obama wouldn't be president anymore. Yep, he was just setting up Clinton! This constant stream of hogwash, in my opinion, is against the public interest and evidence that he is not faithfully executing the powers of the presidency.
March 12, 2017
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If the president doesn't present his wiretapping evidence to Congress tomorrow as they required, we should start referring to him as President Hogwash. Maybe that's disrespectful though. Disrespectful to hogwash. Hogwash doesn't make up things and believe it, and it certainly doesn't criticize the faces of its opponents, it doesn't call for Saudi Arabia (and all countries) to get nuclear arms, and it doesn't think we should still steal Iraq's oil, or kill the families of terrorists. Way too light, hogwash isn't an existential threat.
March 12, 2017
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Oh boy, if you have Netflix consider watching Finding Vivian Maier... the first great movie I've come across through Netflix in a long time. It's about a reclusive street photographer who was discovered after her death...amazing photographs, amazing how they pieced together her story after the fact.
March 12, 2016
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Mahatma Gandhi began the Salt March on this day in 1930- a 200-mile march to the sea to protest the British monopoly on salt in India.
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FDR's first fireside chat was on this day in 1933.
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On this day in 1993, North Korea announced it's withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and banned inspectors.
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On this day in 2009, financier Bernie Madoff plead guilty to one of the largest frauds in Wall Street's history.
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A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant exploded on this day in 2011, releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere.
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Pope Urban II was born on this day in 1088, famous for initiating the Crusades.
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Irish bishop and philosopher, George Berkeley, joined us on this day in 1685.
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Yep, someone had to think of that initially. That person was George Berkeley. He also said:
"Few men think; yet all have opinions."
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Other notable birthdays - Edward Albee (1928), Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas (1931), Mitt Romney (1947), Darryl Strawberry (1962)
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Sir Lancelot died on this day in 2001. From I Walked With a Zombie, a haunting scene.
The highest echelon of filmmaking, courtesy of Jacques Tourner:
https://youtu.be/Mna6IdRKRqA
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Dick Harter, the American basketball player and coach, died on this day in 2012. Yep.
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Another notable death- Morton Downey Jr. (2001)
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A Short History of America, by R. Crumb
https://youtu.be/3ym5n-ZZWUs
March 12, 2011
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Rough one, Fox News
March 12, 2014
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The highest echelon of stand up comedy (or art?) Louis CK- Nothing good ends well
https://youtu.be/ejAbo03NQ7
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Carlin- “Electricity is really just organized lightning.”
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Neil deGrasse Tyson- "Does it disturb anyone else that "The Los Angeles Angels" baseball team translates directly to "The The Angels Angels"?"
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Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo- "As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer."
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Bukowski- "We are paper thin. We exist on luck amid the percentages, temporarily. And that’s the best part and the worst part, the temporal factor. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You can sit on top of a mountain and meditate for decades and it’s not going to alter. You can alter yourself into acceptability but maybe that’s wrong too. Maybe we think too much. Feel more, think less.”
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Tom Waits:
"Let me fall out of the window
With confetti in my hair
Deal out jacks or better
On a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets
But I lie about my past
So send me off to bed forever more"
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Leonardo da Vinci- "Everything comes from everything, and everything is made out of everything, and everything returns into everything."
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Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women- "Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart."
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Mitch Hedberg- "I saw a band in LA and the band was having an off night and some people starting throwing tomatoes at the band. I thought "Who would throw a tomato at a band?" That's bad. But then I thought "Who would bring a tomato to a show?" That's even worse. "
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Hagakure- "Takeda Shingen's retainer, Amari Bizen no kami, was killed in action and his son, Tozo, at the age of eighteen took over his father's position as an armed horseman attached to a general. Once a certain man in his group received a deep wound, and since the blood would not clot, Tozo ordered him to drink the feces of a red-haired horse mixed with water. The wounded man said, "Life is dear to me. How can I drink horse feces?' Tozo heard this and said, "What an admirably brave warrior ! What you say is reasonable. However, the basic meaning of loyalty requires us to preserve our lives and gain victory for our master on the battlefield. Well, then, I'll drink some for you.'' Then he drank some himself and banded over the cup to the man who took the medicine gratefully and recovered."
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Aquinas- "Beware the man of a single book."
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Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow- "A general “law of least effort” applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature."
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Douglas Adams:
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
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Someone on Twitter- "I'm just saying, everybody who confuses causation with correlation eventually ends up dead."
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Cato the Elder- "If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave."
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Kerouac- “So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.”
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