Late Night Writing Session on the 101

A car swooshes by every ten minutes or so - it’s 1 a.m. in the morning on the 101…it rocks my van like a boat.  I’m sleeping on the highway that’s been home to so many of the best traveling writers.  It’s a reassuring feeling when you’re all alone.  When I hear the sound of a car cut through the silence of 1:17 a.m., I’m transported back to the time of Kerouac, and I see an old 50s Chevy Bel-Air with big circular headlights and chrome metal accents passing under the buzzing neon sign of the one and only gas station next to the one and only diner till you get to the next little town.  On the Road.  The book that a favorite professor assigned us to read in a Modern American History course back in college and has ever since steered my mind in a direction that it never otherwise would’ve gone - to a life that never otherwise would’ve been lived - to a world that never would’ve been opened. 

Following trends has always irked me, any sort of cult following scares me to death, but if there is any trendsetter that I’ll admit to dropping my walls and welcoming in, it’s Kerouac.  But it wasn’t Kerouac on his own that cracked the code - it was where I was in my life when I read On the Road, and the professor who introduced me to him who I was completely fascinated by.  It was all of those things combined that built up and combusted into this radical and rebellious literary idol in my mind that for the first time made me feel completely free to think for myself by giving me the freedom to use words however I felt.  It was as though the words were a vehicle for my thoughts…without them…they stood still…never leaving the driveway…never leaving home.  But Kerouac showed me that words and thoughts can be boundless - depressing and ecstatic all in one sentence - free and deliberate - romantic and solitary all at once.  Kerouac had a lot to do with me finding the direction for The Bracelet Slinger.  Kerouac and sociology and the wilderness are my soul’s most trusted bearings.  I think whatever this new direction is, these three things will lead me there.  It’s now 2 a.m.  A car passes every 20 minutes or more.  I hear one in the distance now.  I’ll be asleep before the next one comes.  Just a slice of my thoughts right before dreams take over while being rocked to sleep on the 101.