The Mad One

 

 

"I was halfway across America,

at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future."　

That was the thing about him, the thing that made him a true American in a sense that only true Americans can understand.  He came from the East, but he was forever a son of the West, the offspring of the spirit of the West, the progeny of the spirit of freedom.

 

He was a founding poet of the beat movement, along with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.　 The term "beat" generation came from the post WWII sickness of the status quo.  They felt they had been "beat" by life, knocked around the block and they were sick of it.  There was too much living to be done, too much to be seen and hear and felt and touched and smelled.　

"This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do."　

 

What was there to say about the culture of front lawns that had to be manicured every Saturday, the culture of the Sunday barbeque with neighbors you don't really like because they are the same as you, the aesthetics of the lowest common cultural denominator?　

 

What was there to be said about the white bread and mayonnaise America by young men who had seen their friends die in far off places called France and Germany, young men who had to kill because people were trying to kill them.  The new plastic lawn chair America wanted them to settle down and buy a power mower and build a picket fence, but their souls burned, oh how they burned.

 

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved."　

There were the detractors, there's always a line of critics ready to pounce on any nuance of a phrase or thought and declare the work void of meaning, void of culture.  Some claimed that he was just running away, that all of them were just running away and they needed to just grow up and accept the responsibilities of modern life.

But they created something great, and he was their spokesman.

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."　

He loved the world, the whole world, and he embraced it with the passionate hunger of every feverish lover.  That was a gift he passed on, embrace it, embrace it all, grab onto something that you can believe in and go go go.　

A whole generation was inspired, and then another generation.  Yes, mistakes were made along the way, some lost the passion only to fall into an empty hedonism.  Yet many took the passions that burned within, took that love of the whole wide world, and they made it better.　

The beat generation was the spiritual parent of the hippy movements of the 1960's, although he hated them, he never accepted the "hippy-dippies", like many parents never truly understand their spiritual if not physical offspring, just too much the same while not being completely and exactly the same. Or maybe they were exactly the same in the metaphysical sense, the only sense that matters, the only sense that means anything worth meaning.

 

For him, the passion burned too hot.  He embraced the world, every corner of it, and when he embraced the world the redemption he had hoped to find slipped from his grasp.  Perhaps it was inevitable that his burning passion would be sidetracked, and lead him to his own failings, his own insecurities, his own downfall.

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you."　

In the end it was alcohol that took his life, a life that was wrapped up in the crazy march towards anything, a life that slipped into a nothingness, but not the nothingness of his Buddha soul beliefs, only the nothingness of the drunk, the nothingness of no pain that only promises to beget hunger, hunger for more of the same.　　

"I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life."　

 

"On the Road" inspired generations to move, to fall in love with the wide open spaces and the possibilities of the road.  "Dr. Sax" opened our eyes to the shadow world behind this "real" world.　 In "Tristessa" we fell in love, and in "The Subterraneans" we became beatniks.  In "Visions of Gerard" we learned the meaning of born innocent, and in "The Dharma Bums" innocence was reborn.　

Anyone who has read the works of Jack Kerouac and has been moved by them has probably been inspired in a different direction, each to take one special phrase or sentence as meant for them and only them, and that's their piece and they plant it in the garden of their lives. The mad ramblings of the holy shaman have been passed on to whom so ever shall listen, as the mad ramblings of every shaman are.

 

"Be in love with your life, every detail of it."　

* all quotes Jack Kerouac