Tag Archives: Jack Kerouac

Uses Book Orders

North Smithfield, Rhode Island.

North Randall, Ohio.

Lynden, Washington.

What do they have in common? Absolutely nothing—except they’re linked by my obsessive curiosity.

When I receive packages in the mail, especially from used book dealers, I like to write down the return addresses and look them up on Google Maps and Google Street View.

I do the same with canned goods, protein bar boxes, and other products.

I seek answers to the following questions: Where did this package originate? What’s the name of the company, and where is it located? And then I play my Out-of-State Game, documented in a previous blog post.

Which state would I relocate to if I had a choice, without considering income and family matters? Where would I go if only given these three options? Could I make a life for myself and my family in this particular locale? If given the opportunity to match my current salary, would I stay in Syracuse or risk moving to one of these other destinations?

Why the compulsion to research these places? It’s the tantalizing possibility of the unknown, of another life in another community, even as I am old enough to know that I would not be changed in the new town, village, or city. I would still be me—and maybe that’s what I’m really trying to escape.

The three books I had received were Devotions and Upstream, both written by Mary Oliver, and Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch (which I should have bought as a hardcover instead of paperback because it’s nearly 800 pages long).

The return addresses stamped were:

1770 Front Street
Lynden, WA 98264

Bay State Books
473 Saint Paul Street
North Smithfield, RI 02896

Amazon Fulfillment Center
21500 Emery Road
North Randall, OH 44127

So my choices are New England, the Midwest, or the Pacific Northwest.

Looking at the three spots, North Smithfield, Rhode Island, appeals to me because it’s near Providence—a city I have always wanted to visit. I used to watch the NBC television drama Providence, and the scenery looked beautiful. Plus, I believe Providence has a large Italian American population.

North Randall, Ohio, would be the safe bet, because even though it’s small, it’s located near Cleveland (where I could work). Also, my sister resides in Toledo about two hours away.

Yet, I read on Wikipedia that the population of North Randall is less than one thousand—so where exactly would I live? Do they have apartments or houses for rent?

But since this is pure fantasy, let’s skip realistic concerns. Let’s focus on where I’d want to flee if only given these three options. It feels good to fantasize about dropping everything, abandoning my job, mortgage, and family (at least until I get resettled and they can join me).

So I will pack up and move to Lynden, Washington, situated in the top-left corner of the Continental U.S., near the Canadian border. I am no outdoorsman. But I’ll embrace a sense of adventure, not to mention flannel shirts, Carhartt jackets, Timberland boots, and a red, plaid-patterned thermos of coffee.

And since this madness began with the delivery of books, I will dive into novels written by the two wild, literary Jacks—Jack London and Jack Kerouac. But I will not venture into the Canadian Cascades. Instead, I’ll stay inside, reading at night in a home with electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, and a warm bed.

Downtown Lynden, Washington. Photo by Joe Mabel.

Here’s a poem I wrote about my “grass-is-greener” obsession. It appears in my collection Sidewalk Stories (Kelsay Books, 2017).

Elsewhere

Elsewhere—a state of mind:
Reno or Raleigh,
Topeka or Tacoma,
an intentional escape
from the ordinary,
an imaginary vacation
from reality.

Elsewhere—another place to be,
an alternate zip code.
Elsewhere, when shall I go?
And where shall I roam?
Elsewhere, I’m ready
to embark on the journey,
but the destination is unknown.
Elsewhere is calling—is beckoning,
and I’ve already left home.

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Silly Little Adventure of Earth

I finished reading Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and I wanted to share one more passage that stood out to me. In this scene, during a massive going-away party for the character Japhy, held in Berkeley, California, the narrator, Ray Smith (Kerouac), reflects on people and existence:

“Then I suddenly had the most tremendous feeling of the pitifulness of human beings, whatever they were, their faces, pained mouths, personalities, attempts to be gay, little petulances, feelings of loss, their dull and empty witticisms so soon forgotten: Ah, for what? I knew that the sound of silence was everywhere and therefore everything everywhere was silence. Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought was this and that, ain’t this and that at all? I staggered up the hill, greeted by birds, and looked at all the huddled sleeping figures on the floor. Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me? And who was I?”

My battered copy of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.

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Buddha Bliss

I haven’t had a chance to blog in a while because I had to finish proofreading and indexing my forthcoming memoir, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. Producing a back-of-the-book index was an exhausting, onerous project—especially because my book is loaded with medical terminology and pop culture references from the 1980s and 1990s. Example: U2 see also The Edge, The Joshua Tree, Mullen, Larry Jr.

My messy index in process.

To avoid having to write an index for my follow-up memoir, I’ll make it 97 percent fact and 3 percent fantasy and call it autofiction.

But that’s not why I wanted to post today.

I am re-reading the autobiographical novel The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, which I think is a very underrated Kerouac work.

One passage caught my attention, and I wanted to share it.

The narrator, Ray Smith, has traveled from the industrial wasteland of Los Angeles to Riverside, California, as he tries to make his way to North Carolina to visit his mother. He camps for the night in a bamboo grove.

“And then I thought, later, lying on my bag, smoking, ‘Everything is possible. I am God, I am Buddha, I am imperfect Ray Smith, all at the same time, I am empty space, I am all things. I have all the time in the world to do what is to do, to do what is done, to do the timeless doing, infinitely perfect within, why cry, why worry, perfect like mind essence and the minds of banana peels.’”

And I know this is a quote I will revisit during stressful times. Have a good weekend, everyone.

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Kerouac Poetry

I’ve been reading Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems, which includes the works Mexico City Blues, San Francisco Blues, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity and Book of Haikus. The Beat Generation novelist and author of On the Road inspired my writing of poetry many years ago. Kerouac, Langston Hughes and Charles Bukowski taught me that you didn’t need an MFA to write poetry, as their art sprang from life experiences. They showed me the power of raw and real voices and stories expressed in the form of free verse.

Kerouac’s collection has more than 600 pages of poetry, but I found much of it gibberish—stream-of-consciousness thoughts, rantings and Buddhist and Catholic references. Yet Kerouac also delivers heart-crushing beauty within the pages of this doorstop.

The poem “Hymn” appears in a section entitled Pomes All Sizes.

“Hymn”

And when you showed me the Brooklyn Bridge
in the morning,
Ah God,

And the people slipping on ice in the street,
twice,
twice,
two different people
came over, goin to work,
so earnest and tryful,
clutching their pitiful
morning Daily News
slip on the ice & fall
both inside 5 minutes
and I cried I cried

That’s when you taught me tears, Ah
God in the morning,
Ah Thee

And me leaning on the lamppost wiping
eyes,
eyes,
nobody’s know I’d cried
or woulda cared anyway
but O I saw my father
and my grandfather’s mother
and the long lines of chairs
and the tear-sitters and dead,
Ah me, I knew God You
had better plans than that

So whatever plan you have for me
Splitter of majesty
Make it short
brief
Make it snappy
Bring me home to the Eternal Mother
Today

At your service anyway,
(and until)

I also enjoyed many of the pieces in the section Book of Haikus. I believe Kerouac’s haikus do not follow the strict Japanese pattern of three lines of five, seven and five syllables.

Here are some autumn-related selections:

Late moon rising
—Frost
On the grass

Waiting for the leaves
to fall;—
There goes one!

First frost dropped
All leaves
Last night—leafsmoke

Crisp cold October morning
—the cats fighting
In the weeds

A yellow witch chewing
A cigarette,
Those Autumn leaves

Kerouac, Jack. Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems. New York: Library of America, 2012.

The book also served another purpose for me. Late last night I found a nail sticking out of the cheap wood paneling in the bedroom of my apartment. I was worried my son would catch himself on it, but I didn’t feel like going to the closet to grab my hammer. So I used the book to bang the nail back into place. Thanks Jack!

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Summer Reading Inspiration

Digging through some totes in my living room, I found this archival evidence of my early obsession with books.

Library reading certificate, 1976.

During America’s Bicentennial year of 1976, my mother had enrolled me in a summer reading program at Jervis Public Library in my hometown of Rome, New York. The librarian had divided the group into two teams—the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees—and we competed against each other for the most books read over the course of the summer. I can’t remember which side I was on, but the librarian was prescient, because Cincinnati would meet New York in the World Series later that year, with the Reds sweeping the Yankees to win the title.

I wish I had a list of the eighteen books I had read during the summer of ’76, as I would like to revisit some of them now.

As for this summer’s reading list, I am starting off with these selections.

The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found, a memoir by Frank Bruni.

Frank Bruni book cover.

Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems, published by Library of America, and The Closers by Michael Connelly.

Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems, published by Library of America.

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Hotel Room Drapes

Recently I spent a weekend in a hotel room in the Albany area while my wife attended a dermaplaning class at The Aesthetic Science Institute (ASI); she works as an esthetician in Fayetteville.

On the Sunday afternoon, while my three-year-old son curled up on the bed and fell asleep, I could not turn on the lamp to read or flip on the TV because I was afraid the bright light or the noise would wake him. I’m sure parents of toddlers can relate—you don’t mess with nap time. So while I had nothing to do, I listened to the AC unit purring and studied the drapes fluttering. And I thought about the loneliness of hotel rooms—especially on a Sunday afternoon.

I thought about all of the lonely people passing solitary hours in hotel rooms scattered across the globe. If I could have listened to music, I would have selected some Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison or Hank Williams. If I could have read a book, I would have chosen a Kerouac paperback or Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America—or even pulled the Bible out of the drawer and thumbed through the New Testament.

But with the baby sleeping soundly nearby, I dared not move. Instead, I pulled out my phone and captured the hypnotic motion of the drapes blowing. I wanted to freeze the ephemeral moment and preserve it digitally.

Later on, when I thought about the scene, I was reminded of Edward Hopper’s Hotel Room (1931).

Hotel Room (1931) by Edward Hopper.

And just a side note: the best part of my hotel weekend was being able to get fresh diner coffee from the Denny’s nearby.

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