I know I have the best of time and space - and that I was
never measured, and never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey,
My signs are a rain-proof coat and good shoes and a
staff cut from the woods;
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, nor church nor philosophy;
I lead no mad to a dinner-table or library or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooks you round the waist,
My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a
plain public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far …. it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and
did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds, and I will mine, and let us hasten
forth;
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of
your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me;
For after we start we never lie by again.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the
crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders
of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of
every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied
then?
And my spirit said No, we level that lift to pass and
continue beyond.
You are also asking me questions, and I hear you;
I answer that I cannot answer …. you must find out for
yourself.
Sit awhile wayfarer,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet
clothes I will certainly kiss you with my goodbye
kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.
Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and
of every moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the
shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and
nod to me and shout, and laughingly dash with your
hair.
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn’t in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn’t remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled. I thought I was going to die the very next moment. But I didn’t die, and walked four miles and picked up ten long butts and took them back to Marylou’s hotel room and poured their tobacco in my old pipe and lit up. I was too young to know what had happened. In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco. There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too. Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu and I’d eat it; let me smell the drawn butter and lobster claws. There were places where they specialized in thick red roast beef au jus, or roast chicken basted in wine. There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel. And oh, that pan-fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman’s Wharf — nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market Street chili beans, redhot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that’s my ah-dream of San Francisco. Add fog, hunger- making raw fog, and the throb of neons in the soft night, the clack of high-heeled beauties, white doves in a Chinese grocery window…
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road
