Michael Phillips
Contemplating Kerouac: A Pilgrimage to Lowell
I was skirting the northern edge of the Catskills when a sign for the
Schoharie Reservoir promised a chance to stretch my legs. I pulled off
Route 23 into an unpaved lot and cut the engine of my ancient Toyota
Corolla. It was mid-October, and the surrounding hills leaped with
color.
Fallen leaves clung to the reservoir’s still surface. After a short
walk I
sat at the side of the bridge that spanned the wide water and let my
legs
dangle. I had picked a great day to travel: not a single cloud
blemished
the sky, the roads were free of traffic, and I had already stumbled
onto a
new and beautiful place completely by chance. I had left Philadelphia
that
morning for a circuitous trip through New York and Massachusetts. My
destination was the grave of Jack Kerouac in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Visiting a grave may seem like a morose way to spend
fall
vacation from graduate school, but paying homage to Jack Kerouac was
something I had wanted to do since 1995, when, over the course of a few
days, he changed my life forever. I was seventeen, a junior in high
school,
listening to nothing but Bob Dylan and starting to develop an interest
in
books, ideas, and writing, when one night I noticed a copy of On the
Road on
a friend’s bookshelf. Having read somewhere that Dylan admired the
book,
and wanting to emulate Dylan however I could, I asked to borrow the
dog-eared paperback collecting dust on my friend’s shelf. I had no
idea
that I was about to follow a long line of American youths irrevocably
corrupted by Kerouac. I was sitting in my room the next day, bored and
waiting for dinner, when I first picked up the book. Sitting at my
desk as
the rain lashed my window, I poured through the first forty pages—an
unheard-of sum for me at the time—and went to the kitchen for dinner.
As I
ate spaghetti and discussed my day with my parents, I felt unsettled.
I
couldn’t stop thinking, almost guiltily, about what I had read.
Over the next few days I hurried home from school and
feverishly devoured huge chunks of the book. I didn’t know anything
about
the author; I had no idea if the characters were based on real people
or if
the events depicted ever actually happened—those things didn’t
matter to me.
All that concerned me was the movement. Kerouac’s book expressed
me more
fully and accurately than anything ever had. Before discovering On the
Road
I was a typical teenager: sheltered, inexperienced, and bored. I had
no
ambition to travel, no hunger for experience, and only the vaguest
interest
in writing. All that changed by reading On the Road. I became
restless to
the point of being in physical pain. I imagined myself hopping
locomotives
or thumbing rides on empty highways; I wanted to have wild intellectual
conversations at three in the morning; I wanted to boost cars and dig
jazz
like Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise. I wanted my life to be bursting.
And
more than anything I wanted to write. At once the world became
immense;
experience crucial.
I left the Schoharie Reservoir and proceeded to get
lost in
the Catskills for over an hour. I wound through labyrinthine roads, up
and
down hillsides, and around endless bends, surrounded by thick woods
that
offered no natural landmarks to guide me. Normally I wouldn’t mind
losing
myself in the Catskills on a sunny autumn day, but I was on a mission.
Evening was falling fast, and I had a lot of ground to cover. By the
time I
disentangled myself of the Catskills and picked up I-87, the sky had
turned
a hazy steel color. I still had at least an hour of New York before I
could
pick up the Massachusetts Turnpike.
By the time I hit the Mass. Pike, my legs and back were
knotted. I consulted the map for a place to spend the night, settling
on
the town of Lee, where I zipped into the first motel I saw. I never
knew
how zealously Americans celebrate Columbus Day weekend, but every room
in
the whole town was occupied by vacationers and travelers. I went to
four
places and was welcomed by either "no vacancy" signs or apologetic desk
clerks
who all claimed to be booked solid.
I had had enough of driving by the time I reached West Springfield. I
told
myself I’d sleep in the car if I couldn’t find a room. After two
motels
turned me down I was ready to cry. My last resort was a place that
looked
like it could’ve been in a horror movie. They had one room
left—the kind of
room you pray you don’t get. I wouldn’t have been surprised to
find a chalk
outline on the floor and police tape across the threshold. I tossed my
bag
on the bed and stood in the middle of the room, afraid to touch
anything. I
knew I couldn’t fall asleep if I wasn’t very drunk.
I walked a couple of blocks to a T.G.I. Friday’s and watched the
last two
innings of the Yankee/Red Sox game, but the mood became so sullen after
Boston lost that I cleared out after my second beer. I then went to a
Mexican restaurant a few streets over and found myself at the bar
discussing
politics (of which I know nothing) with two guys straight out of The
Sopranos. Maybe it was hanging out with gangster types or perhaps my
road-weariness that inspired me, but after my third beer I decided to
ditch
my tab. I ordered a fourth draft, took a big gulp, then went to the
bathroom. Anyone could see by my virtually untouched pint that I meant
to
return, but I slipped out a side door and bolted across the parking
lot. I
looked over my shoulder a few times, but I had made it. I assure you
that
ripping off bartenders isn’t something I do often. I was just so
bitter
about the cost of my crummy motel room that I felt West Springfield
owed me.
But I didn’t feel like going back to my room.
Deciding I might as well have a few more drinks, I
marched
toward a neon-trimmed building a few lots over that looked to be
jumping.
As ridiculous as it may sound after ditching a tab, I shelled out five
dollars at the door. I went directly to the bar and ordered a beer.
The
bar was situated on a mezzanine; below was a floor the size of a
football
field holding about thirty pool tables. I found an empty stool and
watched
the action. It was a Saturday night, and close to a hundred people
were
playing pool or just hanging around the tables. Waitresses wove
through the
crowd shouldering trays of drinks and appetizers; music poured from
massive
speakers hanging from the walls; and the smack, smack, smack of
colliding
pool balls rang in my ears. Some of the players looked like real
pros,
whose breaks sounded like gunshots, while others shot around for fun,
hardy
sinking a ball the whole time.
I spent the next few hours nursing beers and looking for
someone to talk to. I felt self-conscious and foolish sitting alone,
so
around midnight I settled with the bartender and began the long walk
back.
I was still a few blocks from my motel when it started to rain. I
flipped
the collar of my jacket and picked up my pace, jumping over puddles on
the
sidewalk and squinting at the headlights of the occasional passing car.
I
passed rundown restaurants, empty parking lots, and dilapidated gas
stations. I cut across the parking lot of a closed-down movie theatre,
which looked to have been vacant for decades: the roof sagged over the
box
office, the paint had peeled from much of the exterior, and grass poked
through the cracks of the front walkway. I lowered my head and hurried
on.
I had almost forgotten about the wretched ambience of
my
room when I opened the door to the stench of old cigarette smoke and
what
smelled a lot like a dead animal. I collapsed onto the bed and stared
at
the paint-chipped ceiling—drunk and worn out.
As I started to drift to sleep I remembered a passage from On the Road
that
had always moved me, a passage that seemed appropriate in the moment.
I
dragged myself out of bed and grabbed my copy of Kerouac’s novel from
my
pack. It took a few minutes, but I finally found the passage. In it,
Sal
Paradise, having stopped in Des Moines on his cross-country trek, wakes
up
in a dingy motel room:
"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. I
was
halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my
youth
and the West of my fortune, and maybe that’s why it happened right
there and
then, that strange red afternoon."
I guess that passage is what Beat literature, or the Beat
lifestyle,
is all about for me. Although definitions abound, I have never
encountered
a definition of Beat or Beat literature that satisfies me. It used to
bother me that I couldn’t articulate what the concept meant, as if a
definitive understanding of Beat would unravel Kerouac’s mystery to
me,
would somehow peel back the film from my eyes. But now I think Beat is
just
a feeling, much like you get when drunk and alone, staring at the
ceiling of
a rundown motel room while on a great journey.
I woke to the sound of rain tapping the window. I could see a
sliver of gray sky in the space where the curtains failed to meet, and
I
immediately wanted to fall back to sleep. Somehow I managed to pull
myself
up, splash water on my face, and stumble out the door.
I still had a couple of hours to Lowell. The rain fell in torrents;
even my
windshield wipers, on full assault, did little. With the rain and the
fog,
I could barely travel over fifty miles per hour on I-90. My spirits
plummeted. I had imagined myself sitting at Jack’s grave, maybe
thumbing a
book, or twiddling a blade of grass between my fingers, but now I’d
have to
huddle under an umbrella in the rain like some grief-stricken widow.
All I
could do was forge ahead, on what seemed like a completely different
journey
than the one I had begun the day before.
It was shortly after noon when I swung north toward Lowell on
I-495. The rain had subsided to a drizzle during the last thirty
minutes of
my drive, and my spirits steadily improved. When I reached Lowell I
couldn’t believe how closely it matched the way I had imagined it
while
reading The Town and the City, Doctor Sax, and Visions of Gerard.
Overhead
hung a featureless sky, and all around were cold brick buildings, empty
storefronts, and modest homes standing beside crooked sidewalks and
patchy
lawns. Lowell, which had previously been a mythical place for me,
actually
reminded me of the towns near where I grew up, like Scranton and Wilkes
Barre, Pennsylvania—towns which share a similar working-class
provinciality
that Kerouac attributes to Lowell in several books.
After stopping at a drug store for directions and an
umbrella, I
located Edson Cemetery and passed through its yawning gates. Clutching
my
directions, I found Lincoln Avenue, which I followed to 7th Street. I
pulled over on the narrow pavement between 7th and 8th Streets and
began to
wander the plots. Although Edson is a fairly large cemetery, there was
no
one else around. I had only the rain and the dead for company. As I
wandered through the wet grass, my umbrella bouncing against my
shoulder, I
spotted a pile of colorful debris several yards away. As I neared, I
saw
that the debris consisted of beer cans, wine bottles, and flowers. I
had
found what I was looking for.
I had seen pictures of Kerouac’s grave several
times—most notably
in the photo of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg sitting before it, circa
1975—but to actually run my fingers over Jack’s name and over the
epitaph
“He Honored Life” made me forget all about rain, hangovers, and
miles. I
then traced Jack’s birth and death dates: Mar. 12, 1922 – Oct. 21,
1969. My
eyes then shifted to the head of the marker, where a tattered American flag lay in a clump among
the other items, as if an insane and
patriotic party had taken place here the night before. There was even
a
brown bag with a poem etched on it, but the rain had smeared the ink,
rendering the poem illegible. Elsewhere, the ground was muddy and
trodden
by visitors.
On the Road didn't just make me want to be
a
writer, it made me realize I had to be a writer. There was no
choice
involved, no decision I had to ponder; I simply felt it at the center
of
myself. Kerouac is the origin, the ground zero of my writing life. Like Chapman’s Homer for Keats, Kerouac
opened vast
realms to me; he folded back the veil and made me feel like “some
watcher of
the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken.”
It’s difficult to describe how Kerouac informs my writing.
Stylistically, I like Hemingway and Steinbeck; thematically, I identify
with
Andre Dubus and Raymond Carver; but Kerouac imbues my writing with a
sort of
romantic edge, a dual awareness of the beauty and suffering of the
world
that I am keenly aware of while reading his work. While drafting my
own
stories, I try to remember Kerouac’s advice to “preach living for
life’s
sake,” as he wrote in “Credo,” “not the intellectual way, but
the warm way,
the way of love.” I try to drive it home “American-wise.”
It’s the beauty
and passion, as well as the agony, of Kerouac’s words that made me
want to
be a writer in the first place. And I try to honor him with what I
write.
That’s why I had to come to his resting place—to say thank
you.
And I realized, while standing at his grave, that Kerouac still means
as
much to me at twenty-nine as he did when I was seventeen. It’s not
that I
haven’t grown up, it’s that Kerouac has grown up with me. It has
never been
the speeding cars, jazz, drugs, or women that draws me to Kerouac.
(I’ve
always identified with Sal Paradise far more than with Dean Moriarty.)
What
I loved and still love about Kerouac is the stripped-to-the-bone
tenderness
in his writing. Kerouac was capable of expelling such sad truths, such
lugubrious turns of phrase, that when I read works like Visions of
Gerard or
Big Sur it as though I am witnessing the rawest depiction of humanity
literature can offer. If anything, my admiration of Kerouac swells
more
each year and with each rereading of his works.
Over the years, Kerouac’s work has become an increasingly
spiritual element in my life. A lot of Kerouac’s work deals with
journeys—actual and metaphysical—and I tend to think of
spirituality as a
sort of journey. And what is unique about Kerouac’s spiritual
journey, as
he depicted it, is that it ultimately proved a failure. There is
something
so sad and compelling in the fact that he never found what he was
looking
for. Despite—or arguably because of—the wild behavior, drugs,
alcohol, and
womanizing, Kerouac ended up spiritually bankrupt, lonely, and
unfulfilled,
much like many of the characters in his work. But who among us
wouldn’t
want to still take the ride? And that is the thrust of Kerouac’s
writing.
No matter how good or bad, no matter how satisfying or painful, it is
the
experience itself that counts; it is the experience that ultimately
proves
righteous.
Crouching beside the grave, I brushed a leaf from the stone
and
noticed ten or twelve pens sticking out of the ground at the edge of
the
marker. I took my pen from my pocket and added it to the bouquet. I
then
ripped a sheet of paper from my notepad and secured it on the tablet
with a
penny. Then I said a few words. When I was finished, I plucked a few
blades of grass from around the stone and stuffed them, despite their
being
wet, in my copy of On the Road.
I wanted to do and say more, for my gratitude was boundless, but it was
time
to go. The rain, falling hard again, cascaded off my umbrella. My
soaked
shoes must’ve weighted five pounds each. I said goodbye and walked
back to
my car.
I visited the Kerouac Commemorative and walked around
Lowell,
cold and huddled pathetically under my umbrella. The rain pounded
down, and
my clothes sagged. I caught a glimpse of the red-brick warehouses,
chimney
stacks, and the stagnant waters of the Merrimack Canal, but I had had
enough. I needed to get warm, to put on dry clothes, and gather
myself.
Despite my wretched state, I was very happy.
I paced back to my car, put on a Dylan CD, and started for
the
highway. But I found, just as I was leaving Lowell, that I didn’t
have the
heart to begin home. I had to keep going, if only for another day. I
couldn’t run straight back to Philadelphia; that would insult the
spirit of
the trip. I continued north into New Hampshire just to see what was up
there, because, as Jack wrote, “There’s always more, a little
further—it
never ends.”
©2007 by Michael Phillips
