The posts are less frequent. It's not that I don't have ideas - I have ideas all the time - but it's that I get one and then think, "Nobody wants to read that." I forget that I started this blog for myself, to finally write what I wanted to write, when I wanted to write it, how I wanted to write it.
Then people started reading ....
Mostly about MG and "the accident." I'll update MG soon for those of you who are kind enough to keep asking. I'm trying to figure out how honest to be, to be honest.
Sometimes I wonder why I pick up certain books to read. Books have always had a huge impact on my life. Like most book-lovers, I have always been able to lose myself - for awhile, at least - in a book, and books always make me think.
And there are certain books that I can read over and over; some I read long ago that I decide to read again to see if the magic still holds.
Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" is in that second category.
Written more than 50 years ago, it is considered a classic of American literature, although sometimes I'm not sure why. At times Kerouac's writing makes no sense. It's a rather disjointed series of stories of traveling around America in the late 1940s, and became the voice of what was known as the "beat" generation.
I can't remember the first time I read it, but I know even then I found the writing disjointed, the descriptions at times ridiculous, the characters not always easy to keep straight, and the main character not really likable (something I always think important in a book).
However, I get sucked into the idea of the book.
I have always loved to travel around the United States. My family took these extended road trip vacations when I was a kid, my Dad driving and usually pulling his latest home-built camping creation.
As I got older, I loved long road trips. The summer after I graduated from college, a friend of mine and I were going to drive his Tahoe (or whatever the early Chevy SUV was back in the days before everyone had an SUV) and head to the Rockies, camping along the way. He was a musician, and we were not great friends but good friends and just an odd enough character that I thought would make for a trip unlike any I'd ever experienced before
Then he got a gig he couldn't refuse (he said; maybe he just backed out), and we didn't go. The good news is that I'd saved up enough money to get me through a few months while looking for a job and entering the world's work force.
My wife knows -and fears - the fact that my dream vacation is a road trip to Mount Rushmore, meandering along the way, seeing "America," however that may be defined.
I have been fortunate to have been in a profession that allowed me to travel the country quite a bit, and while a good deal of it required flying, I always drove whenever I could. There is nothing like a rental car, a company credit card, and the open road. (Fun fact: The only true all-terrain vehicle is a rental car with a collision damage waiver).
It's not exactly Kerouac's story of bus rides, hitch-hiking, rail-riding and driving across country on $15, back in the days when $5 worth of gas would get a car from Baltimore to Mobile. But it's not bad. And like Kerouac, I've collected a lot of stories over the years.
But anyway, I came across a passage in Kerouac that jumped out at me.
Kerouac's character is going from San Francisco back to New York, and because Kerouac's character (Sal) has some money, they got what was called a "travel-bureau car," which, simply put, is where several people go in together and share expenses and driving. Sal and Dean are traveling with three people, including a tourist couple that Dean describes this way: "... They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where they're going to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgency's false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end. ..."
I am a known worrier.
And as Kerouac points out, sometimes I feel my soul isn't really at peace unless I can latch on to a 'worry.' And, again, the vast majority of the time whatever happens happens and whether my worries are founded or not makes no difference: my worrying didn't really affect events.
There's a Biblical principle here, the one about Jesus saying the birds of the air don't worry about what they eat or wear, and whether you can add one day to your life by worrying. I get all that.
But still, I can't help but try to play god, as if my actions will somehow affect the universe I live in.
Those current commercials about being a fan - the holding of the labels of the beer bottle a certain way, for example - resonate with me. If I'm watching a game and something good starts to happen, I freeze. Whatever position I'm in - no matter how awkward or uncomfortable - I hold it. I spent four innings of one of my sons' baseball games half on and half off the bleacher seat, because as I was sliding off something good started happening and I didn't want to alter the karma (which I don't seriously believe in except in sports).
We were watching a recent football game in which the team I was pulling for got off to a big lead. MG got up from her chair to go do something, and the fortunes changed just like that. I blamed her.
Have you ever been driving your car and a warning light comes on or you realize you're almost out of gas, so you turn off everything non-essential - kind of like a jettisoning gear from a sinking ship - and lean forward, 'willing' the car to make it to the next exit?
And those are just the silly things.
I can lie in bed at 3 in the morning, dreaming up all kinds of things that I just know are going wrong all around me but that I can't see and won't see until it's too late.
The Trophy Wife chides me for worrying, and rightfully so. However, I point out that if you worry about everything, then sooner or later you're going to be right, which somehow justifies all those other worries.
I think it goes back to Eden (doesn't everything?). When Adam sinned, he was cursed with self-awareness. By that, I mean before the apple incident (I know, I know - the Bible never says it was an apple) Adam's sense of self was all tied up in his relationship to God. He walked with God, talked with God on a daily basis. He understood his self-worth from a true God perspective.
Then, when Adam (and Eve) stepped outside the safe boundaries of their relationship with God, they became self-aware - which is how we came to wear clothes. Before sinning, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed because they didn't think of themselves and their own actions; after sinning, they suddenly saw each other as fallen human beings and recognized they'd exposed themselves as naked - physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
So Adam began to worry. What if God doesn't talk to me again? How far does this exile from God extend? I've disobeyed God ... what do I do to regain His favor? Can I regain His favor? What about my wife and kids - I'm responsible for them now, too. I have to play "god" to care for my family.
And so it went, and so it goes.
We've travelled a long road from Eden, and worried every step of the way.
Even as free as Kerouac's character lives, he worries too - about food and money and shelter and caring for the friends he meets along the way.
It's hard not to play 'god.' I'm not very good at it, but still I try.
No comments:
Post a Comment