We are History

It was said that, as a literary spokesman for the post World War II generation, he didn't have the talent of Hemingway or Fitzgerald.  That he was, by comparison, a kind of literary James Dean.

His work, "On the Road" was a journal of adventure, observation and an earnest search for revelations. Revelations which, while pondered, sadly never came.

He was Jack Kerouac. Poet, bard, beatnik and philosopher.

I imagine Kerouac in a smoke-filled diner - hungover, smoking and scribbling words into a notebook ... perhaps on a red vinyl bench in a kind of otherworldly diner - a place few of us can visit. Penciling his intoxicated and sometimes despondent narrative. 

In a collection of journals completed during the late 1940's, Kerouac wrote his historic, spiral stream of consciousness, which became the book "On the Road" in 1951. It was later described as one of the best and most important treatises of the twentieth century. 

In fact, The New York Times called it, "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is."

I can see him in that cafe, looking down at his own shaky cursive, squinting his eyes through the haze:

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.” 

Many months ago, I was in a country on the other side of the world. On that trip, I received a kind of Dear John text saying, “I owe you nothing.  All we share is a history.”  The unspoken inference was that it was a paid debt.

They were words that felt as cold as the February wind that used to blow across Lake Michigan and down the icy steps of my college dorm. Words like erasers. A disclaimer, a hurt.

In that strange hotel, I felt Kerouac's same uncertainty - that I was disconnected and I didn't know who I was - lost in a land of nowhere. Sent by those words.

Looking out my hotel window, it was like watching a movie - a staged drama of street vendors, flashing lights, taxis and motorcycles. Not real; disconnected. I felt like a ghost.

But now I feel better. I know better. No one owns history.

I've been thinking about my Dear John text and about history. And slowly, my thoughts are coalescing; that our history is created and shared together. It's best described, for lack of elegant poetry, simply as who we are and who we were. A past and a present that exist - that can only exist - together.

Who we were on Easter mornings, remembering the brilliant greens of newness together - is who we are. We are who we were looking at the storm that night, holding hands. Our now is an eternity of coming home after work and holding a child together in parental bliss. Visits to the obstetrician and pediatrician. Weddings, funerals.

It's not a thing, it's a soul's journey - meandering across space and time and collecting character. It becomes an impressionist sense of self, its colors and textures and brush strokes materializing into something beautiful and intangible - like art ... or music. But it can only be seen and heard - especially - looking back.

It's not a forgotten 80's song with cheesy lyrics and guitar solos. It's Bach and Beethoven and Mozart - historic and ageless symphonies that are a concord of sounds - scores built upon individual musical parts.

Movements. Moments. Merging into a timeless atlas of life when played just right.

Perhaps our history is a kind of karmic puzzle, its pieces pre-cut and scattered across time and space, waiting to be placed into a proper design, its image slowly emerging piece by piece. But those pieces are there – and they fit together. And no one owns them.

But, one night, I saw the puzzle, in all of its wonderful pieces, spread across my floor. I felt calmness and connection. I knew.

My children and their boyfriends and girlfriends were visiting. One of the kids asked, "Dad, what's in this box - are these pictures?" They started pulling old Kodak envelopes out of the box, and soon we had a room full of memories.

They were showing the old printed photographs to their friends, laughing and smiling and hugging. Taking pictures of the pictures. Sharing them on Facebook and Instagram; younger days, old school friends, forgotten family vacations. Catching fish in the backyard. Little league games in forgotten uniforms. Grandparents and cousins.

Scores and scores of instrumental love. The music of our history filled the room. The past and the present sat on the carpeting together, merged into a perfect harmony. The future ... perhaps it could be glimpsed too.

And it really helped heal my soul.

In the Weekly Standard, Ted Gioia described Kerouac's book.  He said, "...if you read the book closely, you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on every page. In truth, 'On the Road' is a book of broken dreams and failed plans."

Well, maybe so. But, I think Kerouac was like all of us - but with a keener eye and a better pencil. Because we all have broken dreams and failures on this journey of our soul.

And that's OK, because our journey, our history, is who we were and who we are.

It's beautiful music, this journey of the soul.

We all keep traveling, just like Kerouac - filling our journals. And making history on this long road.

It's all we have - she was right. And so wrong.