From my window on the world, where I sit in silence and staring every day in awe at The Mountain, I've learned so much. About myself. About the world. Thus I strive even more towards a simpler, more streamlined and minimalist existence.
Yesterday, while it bucketed down and The Mountain and most of the city remained hidden from view, I sat in a simple but favourite coffee joint in Mostert Street re-fashioning my personal vision and constitution, so to speak. It's a work in progress so I won't delve deeper into it now, other than to say that anti-Beat Jack Kerouac features prominently in it; Kerouac and Ginsberg have influenced me enormously.
Interesting (from Doglas Brinkley's 'Jack Kerouac: Windblown World' (Viking: 2004)):
"With a ferocious intensity, Kerouac began keeping journals in 1936, as a fourteen-year-old boy in Lowell. His obsessive habit continued for the rest of his life. Long, detailed passages, usually produced daily, are ornamented with poems, drawings, doodles, riddles, psalms, and prayers. "I resort to these diary-logs in order to keep track of lags, and digressions, and moods," Kerouac noted as he began writing On the Road. Kerouac's modus oprandi in these handwritten journals is one of voluntary simplicity and freedom, of achieving sainthood by being lonseome and poor, with empathy for every sentient creature. Early on, Kerouac wanted no part of the postwar scramble for monetary success: "It is beneath my dignity to participate in life." To Kerouac, the "most ringing sound of all human time" was Jesus' refrain "My kingdom is not of this world."
Tomorrrow evening I leave for Prague.
A cherry-flavoured Beacon fizz-pop tastes like my childhood.
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