Monday, November 17, 2008

Living the answers - Kerouac style

In Gerald Nicosia's wonderful 1994 biography of Jack Kerouac - Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac - he says:

"The liberal-radical quest to 'find the answers' would get one irretrievably lost. Jack's way, like that of pioneer America, was to live the answers" (p. 155).

As I state at the outset of The Beat Handbook: "Jack Kerouac was a man of action. When in doubt, he did something (p. 10).

Live the answers! The road beckons! There are people to meet and places to see and adventures to live. And every single bloody juicy second is an adventure. Do you see?* It's not about materialism at all.



It's about DIGGING THE RIDE!

I'll close with some of my favorite quotes.

"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle."
~Albert Einstein


"To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle."
~Walt Whitman


"May you live all the days of your life."
~Jonathan Swift



*A creepy line from a great movie. Figure it out if you can. It has to do with William Blake, poet/painter extraordinaire.

2 comments:

Cheray Natalie... said...

Living the answers really is the best way to go! :)
There's so much out there, and getting lost really is the best way to experience it all!
Really love the quotes too
- Cheray Natalie

Rick Dale, author of The Beat Handbook said...

Yass! After all, "Not all who wonder are lost." ~J.R.R. Tolkein