For some reason I keep thinking about
On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Mostly of his character of Dean, the "holy con-man". I first
read the book in high school. Dean was the id character of the pre-Homer era. Pickup on a few lines here and there. Found myself
wandering into town a few nights later in the middle of the night. I lived miles out in the country. For the majority of the trip, I walked the
yellow dividing lines. I wouldn't say I got a lot from the book back then, but one line stuck in my head that night.
"I had a vision of Dean, a burning shuddering frightful Angel, palpitating toward me across the road, approaching
like a cloud, with enormous speed, pursuing me like the Shrouded Traveler on the plain, bearing down on me. I saw his huge face over the
plains with the mad, bony purpose and the gleaming eyes; I saw his wings; I saw his old jalopy chariot with thousands of sparking flames
shooting out."
I stood in the road for a minute looking in either direction. It was probably around 3 am. The night was blue and dark. I saw fog rising
quietly off a pond in the distance. I walked to the side of the road and tried to imagine what "Sal" might have seen. For a split second I let
myself see the blistering day that was still hours away. I knew it would be hot, since at 3 am it still felt muggy and warm. The image of
Dean stuck in my mind the majority of the walk. I got to the town just at daybreak. I eluded a police car as it went by just on the edge of
town.. for fear of the curfew by ducking down in a ditch.
I wandered through town for most of the day. It was an interesting experience. I realized I had never really been in town before, on foot,
without anyone else... or some agenda. I followed the tracks for a lot of my wandering, seeing the backsides of everywhere. Eventually I
had walked as far as my legs would go. I called my mom to come pick me up from a pay phone outside a restaurant. I sat there on the
sidewalk and waited for her. By then the hot day that I had envisioned was well underway.
I read the book when I was in high school, but I got a lot more out of it much later. I was driving back to visit my mom and bought audio
cd's of it to keep me awake. It was a twelve hour drive each direction. It reminded me of that night and I drove past and stopped at the
restaurant where I had called. It was an abandoned building now. The phone didn't look like it had a receiver. On the way back from that
trip I listened to the last part of the book. It talked about the town with the water tower he had been at much earlier in the book and how
much at happened in between. I smiled with that thought and my pay phone.
"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks
dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the
skies."
Well there is a story for you. ; )
