Nothing behind me, everything in front of me, as is ever so on the road. - Sal Paradise, On the Road by Jack Kerouac
So okay, this book wasn't on the list. (Womp womp.) But the quote was written in the planner. Et voilà! And why not officially begin with a story about the importance of life's journeys and what they inevitably teach us?
On the Road is one of my favourite books of all time. Jack Kerouac's semi-autobiographical tale of the beat generation in post-war America is a classic that is still studied, analyzed and picked apart in high schools and universities today - and sadly, I did all of that to the novel during a Literature & Popular Culture class in my undergraduate English years. (I also happened to do it in a Québécois lit class - I'd call Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin the French-Canadian version.) However, I was drawn to the story by the sheer wildness of the characters (Sal, our wide-eyed, easygoing narrator, and his demigod of a best friend, Dean Moriarty, the craziest cat who ever dug a horn section) and the romance of travelling across the United States. Every character in the book is based upon Kerouac's family and friends; many of his Beat contemporaries in American literature make an appearance under new names: Old Bull Lee (William S. Burroughs), Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg), and the larger-than-life Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), to name a few.
On the Road is one of my favourite books of all time. Jack Kerouac's semi-autobiographical tale of the beat generation in post-war America is a classic that is still studied, analyzed and picked apart in high schools and universities today - and sadly, I did all of that to the novel during a Literature & Popular Culture class in my undergraduate English years. (I also happened to do it in a Québécois lit class - I'd call Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin the French-Canadian version.) However, I was drawn to the story by the sheer wildness of the characters (Sal, our wide-eyed, easygoing narrator, and his demigod of a best friend, Dean Moriarty, the craziest cat who ever dug a horn section) and the romance of travelling across the United States. Every character in the book is based upon Kerouac's family and friends; many of his Beat contemporaries in American literature make an appearance under new names: Old Bull Lee (William S. Burroughs), Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg), and the larger-than-life Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), to name a few.
There ain't no highfalutin' language to get bogged down in when reading this book; I really like to think it's written like a dialogue. Even the way the characters talk to one another is punctuated (no pun intended) with bursts of apostrophes and exclamation marks and random bits of "Whee!" and "Blow, man, blow!" I absolutely LOVE it. This is LIFE, man. This is LIVING. And perhaps that's why the excerpt above made it into Mom's mind and flowed out through her pen.
The lunatic ravings of Dean Moriarty and the sheer joy of Sal Paradise could have been the escape Mom needed in the last few months of her life. She had so many travel dreams that were left unfulfilled - granted, between being in remission and then trying to get back to work and then falling ill again there wouldn't have been much time to really plan a trip. I was lucky enough to receive a visit from her and my sister when I lived in Ottawa, which was only about three months before she died. See, that's what boggles the mind: she was well enough to travel five hours each way (in a car!) and walk around on my guided tours of my neighbourhood haunts, and yet about a month and a half later things just went downhill. It makes me really upset to think about all of the places she wanted to see and the culture and life she wanted to experience before she died. This was a woman with an incredible zest for living - she and I used to take trips to Toronto to go dancing at alternative clubs until the wee hours of the morning, Depeche Mode in our ears. We went shopping downtown and saw musicals on Yonge St.; we had cocktails on patios. La vita era bella. I was originally supposed to come to London to visit a friend who was studying here in February 2012; I cancelled my trip three days before I was scheduled to take off as the oncologist told me she wasn't sure Mom was going to make it through that night. She did a complete 180 and was really upset that I had cancelled, but didn't show it. Stoic or bust. But that fall, she grew sicker, and I found myself hiding things I was planning on doing - concerts to see, weekends away, etcetera - from her to try to keep her spirits up.
I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.
Years later - and even now - as I roam the streets of this incredible city, I wish I could have had Mom with me. Kerouac could easily have been writing about my constant state of awe, living here: The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream. I wanted to bring Mom to Victoria Park and laugh at the ducks going by, twirl the world away in the light of Piccadilly Circus, seek out the goth bars to find our dance cave for the night. There are times when I get so excited about something happening here that without even realizing it I begin to call her phone number - only to pause, smile sadly, and try to move on with whatever I was doing. It's a fact of life, I guess. But in every journey, I'm learning to accept these new roads and listen to the lessons they're teaching me. Hell, sometimes I even stop and ask for directions. And somehow, Mom's still riding shotgun, beating a rhythm on the dashboard beside me.
What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
The lunatic ravings of Dean Moriarty and the sheer joy of Sal Paradise could have been the escape Mom needed in the last few months of her life. She had so many travel dreams that were left unfulfilled - granted, between being in remission and then trying to get back to work and then falling ill again there wouldn't have been much time to really plan a trip. I was lucky enough to receive a visit from her and my sister when I lived in Ottawa, which was only about three months before she died. See, that's what boggles the mind: she was well enough to travel five hours each way (in a car!) and walk around on my guided tours of my neighbourhood haunts, and yet about a month and a half later things just went downhill. It makes me really upset to think about all of the places she wanted to see and the culture and life she wanted to experience before she died. This was a woman with an incredible zest for living - she and I used to take trips to Toronto to go dancing at alternative clubs until the wee hours of the morning, Depeche Mode in our ears. We went shopping downtown and saw musicals on Yonge St.; we had cocktails on patios. La vita era bella. I was originally supposed to come to London to visit a friend who was studying here in February 2012; I cancelled my trip three days before I was scheduled to take off as the oncologist told me she wasn't sure Mom was going to make it through that night. She did a complete 180 and was really upset that I had cancelled, but didn't show it. Stoic or bust. But that fall, she grew sicker, and I found myself hiding things I was planning on doing - concerts to see, weekends away, etcetera - from her to try to keep her spirits up.
I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.
Years later - and even now - as I roam the streets of this incredible city, I wish I could have had Mom with me. Kerouac could easily have been writing about my constant state of awe, living here: The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream. I wanted to bring Mom to Victoria Park and laugh at the ducks going by, twirl the world away in the light of Piccadilly Circus, seek out the goth bars to find our dance cave for the night. There are times when I get so excited about something happening here that without even realizing it I begin to call her phone number - only to pause, smile sadly, and try to move on with whatever I was doing. It's a fact of life, I guess. But in every journey, I'm learning to accept these new roads and listen to the lessons they're teaching me. Hell, sometimes I even stop and ask for directions. And somehow, Mom's still riding shotgun, beating a rhythm on the dashboard beside me.
What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.