HOMAGE AND ODE OR OF THE MILKY WAY, A PONTIAC, AND DREAMS OF JACK KEROUAC
I actually
dreamed of Jack Kerouac, though if I read that, I would not believe it. ‘Tis
true though. And ‘dreams of…such and such’ is even more poetic if it is loosed
more loosely, denoting not real night dreams, but say, ‘Dreams of Northern
Ontario,’ or ‘Dreams of Pompano Beach.’ But they were real dreams, and they came
after a day and night of travelling.
First
we were in a white car, a Cobalt, and going along in the sun. Music was
playing, and the Virgo majestic Queen was with me. Looking out the windows, the
cities had been excited and it was all these beauteous flaxen fields on the
sides with the picaresque blue sky overhead. Beyond the purlieu of the fields erupted
so many verdant woodlands that I was put in a sort of waking trance state? The
blue, the coppery-white-yellow stalks, the deep greens, - and sometimes a pastel
or darkly painted barn, dwelling or other.
Along
we went.
Soon
in other towns I thought of how well positioned the little stores were, the
streets where some buildings were built from cobblestone type rocks, - and one
big lot said that there were granite rocks for sale. I wondered what was in the
fields beyond…bear, coyote, wolf, one million flowers feral and unknown to
human eyes and yes, I can say, because I heard the whistle at least,- the cargo
train way in the distance sounding over it all, the noises, though industrial
and mechanical, perfectly wrought at those moments for reasons I do not
understand.
Later
it was to other towns, a city in fact, where I used to work in the elevators
for a time, and where we had friends that we don’t know any longer because
though time keeps the same it also changes situations, faces, souls, landscapes
exterior and interior. I liked the shrewdness of that city, its realness, and
its gritty-salt of the earthiness. Many people were around and they were happy
on a summer evening, some clinking glasses, the conversations outside that
reach along the streets darkened and then the voices fade out like the yellow
glow and peculiar night shadows from the electrical lamps.
Coming
back, hours later, among good and trusted people, I looked to the right and saw
the firmament and its constellations that waited there. I waited and longed to
see a UFO, like Whitely Strieber, like Jim Sparks, like the others that make up
that wonderful and immensely interesting canon of literature. But I didn’t see
it.
No worry, for the Big Dipper I did see, and I watched it a long while as
the car, well made, well tuned, with a
I put
my head back, and looked up straight in to the sky through the back window. For
a second I thought or at least hoped it was all inside of me. Decades and
decades ago I watched through moving windows like that, - in Dade or Broward
County, and my spirit, - in a satori, opened up and expanded in white grace and
unseen but somehow, against logic and reason, pronounced light.
This
was not that.
But it
was wonderful as summer nights go nevertheless.
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A blaze of simply fine writing, bringing each and every relaxed reader together in splendid moments traveling together with Brian as he discreetly features both Floridian and Canadian wonders.
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