Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Jack Kerouac, The Virgil to My Dante


This was written shortly before graduation last May:
So here I sit, thinking of Jack, my friend, who knows my heart better than anyone here.  Thinking in French, longing to curve my lips around la langue francais.  It is so beautiful, amorous. Compassion drips in the cave of my heart.  Drip drip drop stop.  Oh God.  I don’t know where I’m going and it’s scary a little, to sit and feel the heat against my skin.  I want to live again. Please God I want to live again. To scream tonight. At the top of my lungs if only you would hear my broken voice. I used to sing of you, and now I find that I have to remember the notes, struggle to push them from my throat until it’s raw.  Unnatural.  It is too much.  This life. These times when bombs go off and the world might end at any second.  Are we ready? We who sit in awe of natural creation. We who wander around this earth, with our shopping bags full of useless trash, on to the next thing already. We forget so quickly.  Haiti. Chile.  Turkey. China. We forget you.  You are gone. Only us. Only me. Only me.  Here we are, we humans, are we ready? For the end? Maybe. Together we will wait, and only together can we be ready.  We were made for each other.  Oh God, show us how to love.  Teach us how to comfort each other and teach us how to live, for life is precious and every moment holy.  Jack said that once.  He was right, that sage who drank himself to death.  But, God, how he loved life.  To the bitter end.  He savored it.  Not just tasted here and there.  God, he knew every nuanced flavor, and he savored them all.  Life is, God.  Life is good.  Life is.  Life is beautiful and tragic and we are here to feel it all and feel each other and give each other our lives.  I love.  I love you.  I love. 

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