August 29, 2004
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My book is, on one level, an attempt to explain what happened to me. I realize this as I met an old friend who goes to NYU law school. I realized that that was the path I was on, the path of being a well-respected professional. I think what happened was I wasn’t surrounded by the type of people I expected. Those who were driven to be lawyers, those who constantly engaged in not simple discussions about life and society, as I love to do, but discussions grounded by learning, by reading many many books, from lectures. Rather, I became who I was through observation. And I realize there’s nothing wrong with either side. I sometimes look down on myself because I’m not very grounded in the real world that I encounter most days, but then I remember that I am full of my own sort of intellegence of the world that has come from traveling, although it doesn’t always translate so well to those who are up to date in the happenings of american affairs.
Anyways…on a lighter note, something which i haven’t been on in a while, my friend and i joked that i need a purpose to my upcoming road trip. one purpose was the search for the greatest burrito. i already have austin, tx. , denver, and san diego pegged as good places. i can’t do best pizza, since i’m from ny and besides chicago, everything else is 3rd best. i was thinking to make my book promotion into a “happy hour book promotion tour” looking for the best happy hours. either way, i’m hoping to go into the next 2 months as if i’m writing another book. i’m not, but the attitude that i had when i was in south africa and every experience was book worthy, made that experience, shall we say, the beez kneez.
I see hundreds of people on a NY city street, and I think to myself, “ants,” and I think to myself, what if something squashed those ants? It shouldn’t matter. Ants die all the day. People are more interesting than ants though. In South Africa, I carried a dead ant, and it wasn’t sad, really. I would be sad if I knew an ant who died. Otherwise, there’s just so many ants running around. I have often made the mistake of trying to understand what ants are for. I have made the mistake of claiming to know what ants are for. Trying to do that is trying to determine what is real. We are all fantasy. We exist as real people, but the lives we live are fictional. In our fiction, we declare meaning to be good, but that’s just our way of making sense of our fiction. I don’t think we were meant to have such complex thoughts. Surely ants don’t. They just wander about. Ants are forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten too, and it’s not sad for real, it’s sad in our fiction. We walk this fine line between the real and the fiction. The real that we have created for ourselves is a good form of fiction, an entertaining form, a real where we strive for meaning, for purpose, for happiness, for these things which are not real. Then, we escape from the fictional real back into the fiction that is our fiction, as i am doing now. realizing that ugly thoughts are not so ugly when they are not real. depressing thoughts are as gloomy as a dead ant.
“[Life] went back, maniacally, to further earlier events in this gnashing huge movie of earth only a piece of which here’s offered by me, long tho is is, how wild can the world be until finally you realize “O well it’s just repeitious anyway”
“it’s like all the mosquitos that had ever lived, the density of the story of the world all of it would be enough to drown the Pacific as many times as you oculd remove a grain of sand from its sandy bed.”
Kerouac, showing us fiction and fantasy within his own reality. Saying fuck you to punctuation, oh, how that makes ME WaNT to SaY WHeRe have you gon
Why cant we be like Jack anymore? Accepting only our chosen fiction to be our reality.
I’m on my way Jack. But i’m on my way, i don’t know where i’m going, but i’m on my way. my inhibitions are dropping, my self-depricating, self-judging, self-esteem killing need to be him who is not me is passing. i am getting closer to what will be the freedom america won’t tell you. wandering, how sweet, eating up words in books, and talks with people, and seeing things that once seen will make my mind mis-understood again as it is now, by so many. advice, i received advice from ilan, ilan from israel who is free, he told me to never listen to anyone who hasn’t experienced the life altering experiences i’ve encountered, i must acknowledge that this fiction that i am allowed to write will not be accepted in the fictional realities of others close to me, but soon i will find those who have written their own stories to mimic how i want mine to be read.
Jack, i can understand you now. i am ready to enter your era, to escape this culture, “when there is nothing to be afraid of, you can leap from the earth,” me, i made that up, yes, i write quotes that can shake the earth, that can be only understood in the moment at which my fingers punch the keys what comes first, my thought or me thinking, are there really 2 me’s, that sub-conscious processing like a computer without my control, freakishly controlling who i am,
push one word after another and see what happens why’d you fix that type-o and you’ll see that the one thing i’m trying to say is really inside me, it’s so bizarre, to type without thinking, what allows us to do this, why can we begin to think of a sentence without knowing the completion of that though
yes, i’m free to the absurd, the non sensical
