On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac was a fury of words like jazz streaming out the cold brass of sweat-beaded musicians. Jack and Neal are off on the road looking for a light at the very end. I admit it was a hard book to get into as most of the same things happened on every single page, but it was autobiographical, exciting, written with a beat that craved for the bountiful feast of life. One sick read, recommended to those in the mood for a “road trip” book.
The simple foods I had eaten had turned into an ambrosia for me to sit here and write and write, the clicks of the typewriter sounding at an even pace, there was no room, no time for silence, but for the clicks and clacks. So involved, so concentrated, sweat beaded on my forehead, running down into my eyes, my weary eyes, but wake eyes that kept open to write this story. Blinded, I continued writing, wounded, I made several typos, but I kept writing and writing. If I would stop, I would lose everything, the rhythm, the beat, the feel that the night riders taught me, the drinkers taught me, the screaming and the laughing that echoed throughout the neighborhood, the bop of the black man’s sax along with the strumming of the bottom-bell bass, and the blood-curdling scatting. Not music to dance to, music to just listen, to rip your ears open and listen, listen till the blood rushed out of the brain and out of the ears. The salt in my sweat got me, pulling me away from my typewriter, some invisible hand grabbed me away from my work. And I stopped.
And for a moment, when eyes were clear and open, I saw myself sitting at the typewriter. I wasn’t typing, just staring at the pages written, at the desk lamp burning, at the dust particles dancing, and I saw myself struggle. The beat of the typing slowed to an unsteady pace like normal nights, nights dry of juice and drive. That was my body. That was my carcass, that poor lynched soul writhing and wringing out empty energy to move. Then who’s body was mine? From these eyes, who’s body was this? I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t myself. I was somebody else. But I felt the same, these eyes, this body, these hands, this feeling.
I shut my eyes and opened them slowly. Back at the typewriter, my hands moving slowly, the beat gone, the rhythm gone, the story lost, lost, lost, I’ve lost myself and the self that watched me. Thinking curved, head in pain, I moved away from the typewriter and to a window for a cigarette. I saw myself in the glass of the window. A reflection, but not a synonym. Antonym. My better self was in that reflection. I took a cold, aching hand, balled it into a fist and punched my face in, my body shattering into a million pieces, a field of stars that flashed out into the streets. Bloody hand, I went to bed at ease and slept and slept as if nights were spent with restlessness.
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