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| When you're burning on the inside... |
American Buddhist Jack Kerouac is recognized for his style, which is
stream of consciousness called "spontaneous prose."
Thematically, his work covers topics such as
Buddhism, promiscuity, his Catholic spirituality, drugs, jazz, travel, life in NYC, and poverty.
He became an
underground celebrity and, with other Beat Poets, a progenitor (precursor) of
the hippie movement...
He greatly influenced many 1960s cultural icons, including
the Beatles, the Doors, Bob Dylan, and the founder of
the Grateful Dead Jerry Garcia.
More
BEAT IT |
| Allen Ginsberg with Jack Kerouac |
Cruising Hollywood, 1959,
family wagon, parents at the
wheel, little sisters gawking at
Grauman's and the imprints of idols,
feet, hands, endearments
etched in concrete, Walk of Fame,
pointing at the stars set in the sidewalk
between tourist toes and heels
"Look, a Beatnik!" mom directs us
toward a man who sits on the curb,
his sandaled feet dangling in the gutter,
dressed in a dark turtleneck and smart
black beret, whacking a bongo,
singing, billowing smoke
as a young woman sits next to him
with an arm around his waist, cigaretting
smoldering on his lipstick stained cheek,
as tourists drop coins in a cup
"What's a Beatnik?" I ask, but a man
without options, who looks cool doing
nothing
"They like poetry," Mom explains, "and
music, don't care too much about money,
seeking enlightenment or come what may"
Wow, I think, a man after my own heart,
as I'd already memorized dozens of poems
in school and liked to sing, a choirboy
with a radio and TV, eager to learn
the way to enlightenment, something I
read in the World Book of all the Buddha
knew, understanding stated in haiku
like a novel on James Bond in the 6th
grade, when 007 visits a faraway land
to extract useful information from the
Japanese Secret Service, offering
some spy service in return, but JSS
Head Tiger Tanaka teaches 007 how
to compose haiku instead
You only live twice
once when born and once when you
finally face death
A spy evades capture, and a ten-year-old
is blown away, one avoids execution
the other asks his mom, Is Death here yet?
There is reality and there is fate
and are they not the same? Knowing
that we all know Death, who is yet to
come, I resolved to live, to do something
to make life amount to more than
not yet dying
So I did, I understood what the Buddha
must have meant, only etching out haiku
much later on a cube of rice paper, square
and the size of a cigarette with twisted ends,
discovering Kerouac Jack, who presented it
to an audience American, altering the rules,
setting it free
On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and
artful lines in 5-7-5 or not
all to kindle a sense of the adventure, an
excursion with and without signs
do not enter here
do not look behind
enter over there
Did it rhyme? Did I trek with Scouts
arm myself with the Sierra Club
get away with friends until my 16th
summer on the planet, hitching my sole
and the other on a hike to NorCal to visit
Berkeley and Stanford and grandparents in the Bay,
listening to the Jefferson Airplane and Grace
steering clear of the scene psychedelic, blazing
on a natural high and the books at City Lights
and a man named Ferlinghetti
who gave me a Little Red Book by Mao
a souvenir of what might have been had I
been a Beat, had I penned as artfully as
the JuBu Ginsberg and other rows at City Lights
Snyder, Everson, Rexroth, Jeffers, Welch, McClure
many of whom I met at their readings, discovering
former Zen monastic Leonard Cohen who sat atop
Mount Baldy overlooking L.A., searching for Truth
in nature, peace, love, spirituality, seeking
the mystical in the ordinary, while I climbed mountains
in the vast out of doors, seeking it in science at the UC
with Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics, exploring the
parallels of East and West on a quest for Truth
ism after ism saying the same thing: we are all
connected as we learn to see
all of it a mystical experience, haiku poetry
