I totally forgot. Everything I read came from reading something else. Usually, I'm reading something, rather SOMEONE, because they appealed to me. So it naturally follows that what intrigues them will most likely intrigue me. This starts a process of discovery. Really, without being dramatic, it can turn into a quiet intellectual adventure, a journey with life altering possibilities. It is one of the better antidotes, albeit temporary (although much preferred to lesser alternatives like drinking, gaming, or indulgent online dating), a sure countermeasure against the vicious ennui and reluctant loneliness faithfully delivered by life's daily scrimmage of mundane inanities.
Shit, that was a miserablely stuffy sentence with some 100$ words! Lol (although, I have to credit auto-text for at least two of those words, scrimmage and inanities; they were brilliantly original and unpredictable- once they popped up, I could not resist the challenge to work them in). Basically, when life gets boring, I need to read; it stirs the pot, and I find new things that were hiding under the flotsam and jetsam swilling on the top.
One hour of reading on the porch this morning (a rare day off from school), I found a chapter in Big Sur devoted to Jack's discovery of a resonance to Samuel Johnson that parallels my appreciation of Jack.
He gets up in the morning, and reads Samuel Johnson in the bathroom, makes a brilliant connection to his own life, and then gallops down the stairs to assault his friends at breakfast with his epiphany while they stare at him bleary eyed and hung over. Lol I can relate. He is self aware enough to recognize he is being too "literary" too early, but he can't contain his excitement. It bursts out of him, and they receive it whether they wanted to or not. Probably a dick move in the moment, but I'm glad he recorded it in the book because I could see it happening as if I was there. I'm sure his friends forgot about it, at least until they read it in the book and shook their heads and smiled. People often find writers and artists annoying when they get up close for awhile. On paper, we get to choose our story, edit when we want to. Day to day, it's quiet different. Like a war, most of it is actually boring but punctuated with brief moments of holy terror and even shorter seconds of glory. But, most people don't know this, so they only believe the story. Unless they get a rude dose of reality, and then they write a different story... Until someone goes out and proves them wrong and starts it all right back where it ironically was in the first place.
I don't agree with everything Jack wrote. Sometimes his existential whining really annoys me, but in a way I'm glad for it because I recognize my own tendency towards introspection and I snap out of it. So, I'm merciful to him. Often, he's very real and I appreciate his rare vision of the world.
Kind of amazing how writing works. Today, when I read that passage, suddenly I was back in 1961, at the breakfast table, smelling black coffee and bacon while Jack chattered on about Samuel Johnson. In fact, I even went back to 17-whatever for a second and listened to Samuel J chortling to his lady friend. Yep, two unique moments in time and space got resurrected today on my front porch in Kansas at 11:04 AM. Pretty damn cool. Writing is a form of magic and books are like a mystical Egyptian coffins that resurrect moments back to life. In a strange mysterious real way, as long as writers scribble things down and share it to the world, people never really die. Truly a precious form of technology.
And now, I'm googling whatever book Jack was reading about Sam J so I can read it and order it on Amazon. Holy shit! Simba's circle of life! Lol
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