it's 3:42 am, on October 08, 2001 - jack kerouac's bible.
~
I'm halfway through 'on the road' and it's leaving me more unsettled than the idea that I hadn't read it in the first place. I think it's because, I know that the glory of roaring along the open road, the freedom and the poetry and the grime and the *songs*, they're, not real. I think I can read the glory that jack talks about, the wonder that was being with Neal and riding the rails to their end, and I can say, quietly, just to myself, 'you're wrong'.
I think I've already lost my belief in the power of the open road, and it hurts, because I don't have any belief in staying still, either. I can't go, I can't stay. This isn't a new problem, I'm sure, and I feel old knowing that, and feel old because I feel old, and nothing I know is new and I think, why do I have to know this at nineteen?
I'm not being childishly full of angst. I'm not, unhappy. I'm very happy. I think, I just miss the fact that at one point, I thought maybe getting in my car and having no money, I thought maybe living out of garbage cans, it could be romantic, in a huck finn sense of the word. Now I don't. --justin thanked huck finn in the liner notes to something. I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't believe in the open road, either. Of course, he's on it six months of the year, so he has a point.
I'm planning a trip to europe for next summer, you know. You probably do know; a lot of you are probably coming with me. That's why I can't go to Georgia, why I didn't; that's why I can't go to DC in February. That's why I'm giving up this continent. I'm seeing another one. Some day.
Half the time I want to get in the car and drive away, because I know I have people I can stay with in most places, I have people, I have boarding houses. Other times I want to throw the damned book out the window of the train, yelling 'you're supposed to make me believe -- you were the bible of a lost fucking generation, kerouac. where's your belief?'
Where's your belief. He didn't have any, really, I'm sure. People are all just people. I don't believe neal had anything that jack didn't. I don't think that even all of kerouac's flowery words could hide the fact that maybe, once and a while, he didn't believe neal one hundred and ten percent, and that maybe his life was a little bit empty, on the road. Allen's character is described asking them, why are going to the coast? What is the point of this life?
I get the feeling that Allen had his belief shattered in Neal rather earlier than Jack did. See, Allen had his heart shattered, too -- it's not something you forget.
I have a chance to pick up at least one of al's postcards the day after tomorrow. I have to do it after six, from my landlord's place, and because of this, I'll have to stay at rae's that night if she lets me. I don't know how I feel about this. Rather like Bobby, I'm thinking, going to London, or rather, Bobby coming home. Odd.
There's an old, dusty methaphor, come out to play.
It's three thirty in the morning. --did I tell you, I saw paris the other day? I did. I don't think I'll call him again. Everything goes away. We were like strangers meeting, with nothing in common anymore except a very faint whiff of history that I can barely remember.
I have to make a package up with this copy of 'the end of the affair' and a nazareth tape in it, and mail it away to its destination. I also have to post a letter full of nsync pictures to a lucky israeli, among a bunch of other things. note to self; post things to River.
I think I'm falling a little behind in Latin. I'm worried, because I'm not studying every day. --I had a bunch more about that, but I'm deleting it because it was rather, childish.
A lot of things in my life are childish.
I want to throw the book out the window right now, not jump in my car, because my belief is not one of them. My belief feels very adult and cynical and looks a lot like boredom from where I'm sitting. Could just be the reflection.
~
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