A sleepless night

Two months of great health drinking water, less caffeine, eating less, but the last few days have been a bit different. Too much coffee! Couldn't sleep, mind slipped back into impulsive and beatnik tendencies.

I was there I had the chance, 

I'd heard the name but didn't know 

Wasn't ready, what would I do?

Big Sur, a park, a place on a Wild coast, a wilderness to visit. I was right there but I didn't go, I didn't know.

Then one time alone in Bali, staying in the house of an ailing sober friend of Bill, (he was away receiving treatment for cancer). I found the book in Dave's collection, Big Sur. 

I knew Kerouac, 'The Dharma Bums', 'On the Road'. The mad alcoholic adolescent decadence, I knew the life I'd skirted, the orbit drawing closer to final oblivion, I saw the collapse of reason, or ability to live in any reasonable way. I knew that life but without the glory, or romantic success of poetry beat ranting celebrity, without the intelligence, or fame, women or interesting friends to abuse and neglect. I knew it at its core reality and bleakness, I knew its sham and hope without reason.

From the edge of experience chance brought grace, my trajectory deflected by the atmospheric density of the sphere, confounding gravity that pulled me down, I was cast blindly into the gaps between the stars and looking down at the waste resurrected.

I read Big Sur with a sober eye and truly saw the sadness of the life of Jack, a soul sacrificed for the sake of desire and self will, addiction and his own funeral pyre. I read it and I knew that with all of my experience and all that I knew I am the same. I would struggle with solitude. The forest is fine but like Jack I'd known that Emerson was right and I am weak! 

BUT I must go! I had intended before I knew what it was and now it taunts me like it tortured him! 

So many beautiful places to see, but I am compelled to return to visit Big Sur. To find a hidden hollow and without booze, or drugs or human company, confront the demons Kerouac put there for me!

This has been on my mind for about 15 years. I don't know what exists there now. Don't know when I will be there, on the other side of a dying planet. 

I am watching the film right now as an actor speaks the ranting words I'd read years ago. Filling my head with the madness of the alcoholic author in the deathgrip of addiction, his soul clutching for hope too late.

It is a rescue mission to find the man and chop a log for Jack.