Why I Do It

“Man, you got a weird hobby.” K told me.

“What? That I visit graves?”

“Yeah, it's creepy.”

I have to explain myself again. (Sigh...I get tired of that. And when I speak honestly, they don't believe it anyway)

“Look, it's not that I want to sneak out there at 3 AM, dig them up and scatter their bones all over the ground then run barefoot through them....is that what you think?”

I tell him that there places, people and events from the past that interest me to no end, but there's a problem. Either it's in the past or they're long since dead. Going to these places, cemeteries, is as close as I can get to it/them now. I can't jump into a time machine and go live that period, so what else is there for me to do but stand next to it 25, 50, 300 years later? There's a bit of an aura to the grave/place when you finally get there. The aura says, “This happened. This was true. It was real. I was there.”

“Oh shit, I said the word 'aura' to him.” I say to myself. That's not a word in the lexicography of the limited, narrow and intolerant. Saying it tips them off to the fact you're not one of them.

I get a stare. Then finally a dismissive “hmmph.” I get it. I've heard that judgment before. It's the judgment of a blue collar, uneducated, local and small-minded moron. To them, anything worth doing or knowing has to, in some way, benefit their daily lives of getting ahead and surviving. Everything else is meaningless. Well, for YOU it has to be buddy, since your feet are always so close to the damn fire and since you've never figured a way to even leave the Street, if only for a few hours. What the fuck can you possibly know outside of that? The box you live in is small and what's revealing, is that it's self made and hasn't changed in decades.

I don't say that, of course. Instead it's: “You oughta get out of Pawtucket and this electrical supply shop more often K. You won't fall off the edge when you cross the border into North Providence you know.”

His response? There is none except the look of “Fuck you” on his face. That's all I needed to prove I was right.

I'll say it again, I”m usually pretty tolerant of most people, but these kind...ugh. I've had too long an experience with them over the years and it's solidified my aversion.

**

I made it to Jack Kerouac's grave in Lowell yesterday. I've wanted to see it for a few years now since I managed to nail it's location down to 10 feet on GPS. Once I saw it, I found it's kind of impossible to miss. It's the only stone with cursive writing and a pile of remembrances stacked around it like the ones you see on Rt 95 after a car load of drunk teens slammed into a bridge abutment.

This was as close as I could get to Jack. As I approached the grave, I heard my mind saying, “Holy Shit, There you are Jack! You really DID exist!” He no longer was some blurry myth I was once told about. This was a real person.

**

I read “On the Road” at the insistence of my brother back when I was 20. Then, I just had a clownish view of what the Beatniks were and it looked like this clip from Youtube. The two Beatniks are Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek of the Cars.

Click the Pic!

As I read it, I became kinda bored with it. I surmised this was going to be in the vein of hopping freight trains to travel like during the 30's Depression. The “philosopher bum” didn't do it for me, in any version, be it Dust Bowl America or Kerouac's travels West.

“You're reading it wrong!” bitches my brother when I told him what I thought of it, just a ¼ way through.

“Wrong? How can I read it wrong? I know how to read!” I thought

“Read it in the context of the TIMES! The late 40's!” he complains.

“Ohhhh....”



This is what you get from an English Major who also berates you into reading Chaucer in the original, 1300's middle English



I reread Road again and then something clicked for me. The independence, the non-conformity. The willingness to say FUCK YOU to even your friends when they try to force you into doing/thinking a particular way. I have always had that part in me, even as a child. I was pretty sharp as a kid and grown up/adult BS rarely got by me. If I knew it to be horseshit, I wasn't going along to keep them happy when I KNEW it was against my best interests. To make it worse, I'd point it out. Like pointing out the Giant Elephant in the room no one else dares to make mention of.



I gladly pointed it out, again and again and again.



I once was harangued, in school, to “respect” my elders. My big mouth got me into trouble for that but I didn't care, I was RIGHT.



“Respect my elders? Like the one down the street that likes little boys? Or the guy across the street that beats his kids in the front yard...in full daylight at NOON? Or his neighbor who loves Nixon and would vote for him again if he could?”



I violated a cardinal rule of being a child: “Adults are always right and shut up.”



(I ought to tell you the story of how I really drew the hated of Goff Jr High's principal, Mr. Forrest, some day. I blew his attempts to turn the kids into “good little Do-Bees and followers” once. In sort of 60's fashion, I “raised their consciousness” to what was going on and started a mini rebellion)



So, Jack's independence, his willingness to live his life on his terms, is what brought me into the book. It also coincided with that time in my life when Icould be as independent as I wanted too. Being 20 with the protection of a roof over my head, some money finally and old enough to go venturing out into the world was great fun! I did what I wanted to, if I could pull it off, with great abandon. It's that part of your life when you are an adult in many ways, but you aren't financially so yet. You get the perks w/o having to pay for them, for a while at least.



Reading Jack was a confirmation that I was right in my thinking, for that time in my life. It was valid then and that's what hooked me about the book.



**



I tell people to re read books they've read decades ago. After 30+ years of life beating the fuck out of you in various ways, you tend to read them differently. I had reread On the Road, but this time with more knowledge of who Jack was, the Beatniks, Counter Culture and the addition of my cumulative experience of my own life. I came to a different conclusion of the book this time around. I suppose everyone who is my age would reach a similar conclusion as well, but you have to be over 50 to do it.



It's nostalgia in a way, a yearning to relive the best part of your life, but THIS time around, do it right, or at least do it better. And without the uncontrollable forces that buffet everyone's life and force you to navigate a different direction, or at best, outside forces that don't blow you too far from your desired heading.



But that ain't what life really is, is it? You know this truth, finally, as you get older and you accept it. This isn't defeatism. Defeatism is when you don't even try. Being in the fight all the time and having to negotiate, skipper and aim as close as you can for your heavenly Goal and being shoved around, delayed and hampered from the goal, is Real Life. You do the best you can.



(I once saw a Johnny Carson interview with an old dowager 1920's actress who said: “I regret NOTHING in my life.” Richard Pryor, who was sitting next to her on the couch turns and says, “Lady, are you KIDDING? NO one gets life exactly as they want it!)



Jack's book blew the top off 50's society and the money and fame it brought him finally ruined him. He couldn't really hack it and having publishers on his ass to redo “On the Road” in other forms wasn't going to happen. There was only one. He was also pushing middle age when it was published so he was just starting to have that yearning for a past when things were Golden and when you thought you were in reach of that Nirvana. You do reach it at times, but it's always fleeting, it never stays. Jack's idea of returning to that period, and doing it “right,” was blown out of the water for good after he was crowned King of the Beatniks. He ran from that Title with a flame coming out his ass.



So, even so with all that...



The conclusion you reach at 20 about One the Road is valid for it's time. It's right and true. Any conclusion you reach about your life then is true, for it's time. You do it with the best intentions and with what you have learned and know.



The one you reach at 50 is valid too, but only to Fifty Somethings.



There will be other, different conclusions to reach as you and I age as well.



That's Life, That's the Road.



(“That's the Road.” Ain't that a hackneyed ending? Sure it is! I am too hot and lazy now to put the effort into a better ending...so nyah nyah!)