the Beats go on - San Francisco

Somebody lies with Jack Kerouac tonight.

…I'm looking at ash, human remains, scattered down foggy Jack Kerouac Alley. The ashes are sprinkled alongside quotes engraved in stone tablets. The tablets are embedded in the alley pavers, solid, immovable, imortal, positioned for eternity.

"Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations". - Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

The powerful draw of the Beats, their poetry and legacy is laid out before me tonight. A honored soul's remains rest in peace in the Beat mecca, North Beach San Francisco.

"The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world". - John Steinbeck.

I read On The Road by Jack Kerouac last year. It's why I'm here in North Beach. It's a road trip book. It's THE definitive road trip book. Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac), the main character, travels with his buddy Dean Moriarty (based on Neal Cassady) from New York to San Franciso and points in between; multiple times. The road traveled is not just taken in miles but in the culture, landscape and mindscape of America in the immediate years after WWII. I enjoyed the "trip" but struggled to see what was so important about the book until I came to realize the common language it's written in IS Kerouac. He was a major influencer on the language we speak today inventing and bringing jazz speak to the literary world. What seemed so common to me in the book was at that time a rejection against the conservative 50's. It was a new way of thinking, speaking and writing. Baby, it was holy and groovy when we hit the road with Sal, cool. I still use those words in 2008. :)

Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. - Maya Angelou.

The Beats championed a powerful freedom of thought and expression that helped bust open the 60's. The beats turned into the hippies. The hippies went on to change American culture and politics in a lot of ways.

As I stand in the alley, in a misting San Francisco night, I look onto Columbus Avenue. The street howls with the reflecting colors of the neighborhood neon. The colored lights paint the street in a wash of wet color. Jazz wails from Pearl's Jazz Club across the street. I could be Sal Paradise on this "mad night, hearing a wild tenorman bawling horn across the way, going "EE-YAH! EE-YAH! EE-YAH!" and hands clapping to the beat and folks yelling, Go, go,go!....Blow, man, blow!"

Feels good man. I am, On The Road.

"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great...." - Jack Kerouac