Impressions from On The Road, part 1

I mentioned in a previous post that I would share some of my thoughts after I recently completed reading Jack Kerouac's classic novel, On The Road. This was not a book that I just put down after finishing it; it has lingered in my thoughts, the stories and images coming back, refining my own impressions to increasing clarity. Perhaps that is the true test of a classic work of art, be it a novel, symphony, or painting; it's not the initial experience of reading/seeing/hearing it, but the thought it inspires. This novel has certainly stayed with me more than anything I've read recently.

Kerouac's use of language is as vivid and rhythmic as anything; I am there, in the smoky jazz clubs of San Francisco, in the steamy bayou night of New Orleans, riding across the high plains of Nebraska in a flatbed truck. I am brought back to the cross country trips I have taken, to the excitement and mystery of the road. I am also taken to the depths of despair, at getting to the end of the continent, my destination, and still feeling empty somehow, beat, alone with myself.

The passage that had the most impact on me was this:

I took up a conversation with a gorgeous country girl...she was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. ONce this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do. "And what else do you do for fun?" I tried to bring up boy friends and sex. Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of chagrin that reached back generations and generations in her blood from not having done what was crying to be done--whatever it was, and everybody knows what it was. "What do you want out of life?" I wanted to take her and wring it out of her. She didn't have the slightest idea what she wanted..."What are we aching to do? What do we want?" She didn't know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen, and most lovely, and lost.

I realized: That is my heritage! My whole family tree is full of people who know nothing, practice nothing but the idea of what one should do! I'm afraid there aren't even any interesting black sheep or skeletons in the closet! I grew up with this incredible naivety, not even knowing where to begin to ask questions, not knowing how to experience anything other than what one should do. I wrote poems, they were good ones, but they were only supposed to be good and happy and the way they ought to be; that bored me eventually but I did not know why, yet I did not know how to understand or appreciate poetry that strayed from these constraints. So I quit writing poetry.

Fortunately I must have had some kind of vision, to see beyond that protective shell. I am still shaking myself free from it. On The Road is helping me to crystallize the longings, the feelings of what I really want in life, and how depressing and constraining the modern, industrial-commercial model of the world is. We are beat.

Four day weekend

It's been way too long since I've had the time to post here! Last week I was doing another fish population assessment on a lake an hour's drive away from the office, and it made for some long days. All I can say is, if you're not catching walleye, northern, largemouth bass, crappie, or bluegill on South Lindstrom Lake, you're not trying hard enough. They are there.

I took Friday and Monday off so I could spend some time with the family and Russ could get some quality house building time. He singlehandedly assembled the framework for the front wall, all 2 x 6 construction, in three separate sections. I think the house is 48 feet wide, and the front wall has a few openings for windows and a patio door, so it was a big job.

I had enough time to get things done in the garden; staking tomatoes, trellising cucumbers, and cleaning out and replanting my greens bed. I'm experimenting with succession planting this year, hoping to harvest fresh lettuce, kale, savoy cabbage, and spinach way into the fall. We harvested broccoli for dinner twice during the weekend; I've never grown such big, beautiful broccoli heads. I hope to have enough pickling cucumbers by the weekend to try making a batch of dill pickles. The whole garden is thriving, despite the dry July we've been having. Bees are buzzing everywhere, doing their job of pollinating and making me realize that this garden is part of a larger ecosystem, and in order for it to thrive I must think in terms of that system, not "what chemical can I apply to increase yield?"

Of course there was pond time. Vincent can now dog-paddle and backstroke his way across the deep parts, and Nina wears her life jacket so she can swim right along with him. Joe tried his life jacket yesterday but he thought the deep water was a bit too cold and was content staying where his feet could touch bottom. While the kids swam, I finally finished Kerouac's On The Road. To sum it up, it really spoke to me, got me thinking what it is we're looking for in life. More to come in a later post.