Jack Kerouac

 

 

Excerpt from Big Sur

"Take one quick peek at the water as you cross, just water over rocks, a small creek at that.

And now before me is a dreamy meadowland with a good old corral gate and a barbed wire fence the road running right on left but this where I get off at last. Then I crawl thru the barbed wire and find myself trudging a sweet little sand road winding right thru fragrant dry heathers as tho I’d just popped thru from hell into familiar old Heaven on Earth, yair and Thank God (tho a minute later my heart’s in my mouth again because I see black things in the white sand ahead but it’s only piles of good old mule dung in Heaven).

And at first it’s so amazing to be able to enjoy dreamy afternoon meadows of heather up the other end of the canyon and just by walking less than a halfmile you can suddenly also enjoy wild gloomy sea coast, or if you’re sick of either of these just sit by the creek in a gladey spot and dream over snags—So easy in the woods to daydream and pray to the local spirits and say “Allow me to stay here, I only want peace.

“How’d’st rain rule here?” says I to Evelyn to show her what a big poet I am—She really loves me, used to love me in the old days like a husband, for awhile there she had two husbands Cody and me, we were a perfect family till Cody finally got jealous or maybe I got jealous, it was wild for awhile I’d be coming home from work on the railroad all dirty with my lamp and just as I came in for my Joy bubblebath old Cody was rushing off on a call so Evelyn had her new husband in the second shift then when Cody come home at dawn all dirty for his Joy bubblebath, ring, the phone’s run and the crew clerk’s asked me out and I’m rushing off to work, both of us using the same old clunker car in shifts—And Evelyn always maintaining that she and I were really made for each other but her Karma was to serve Cody in this particular lifetime, which I really believe and I believe she loves him, too, but she’d say “I’ll get you, Jack, in another lifetime. . . And you’ll be very happy”—“What?” I’d yell to joke, “me running up the eternal halls of Karma tryina get away from you hey?”—“It’ll take you eternities to get rid of me,” she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I want her to say I’ll never get rid of her—I wanta be chased for eternity till I catch her."