Plastic Coated Dharma Bum

It's almost midnight. I'm sitting in the dark, smoking Blend 27s, watching Great Expectations with the sound down too low to hear over the fan blowing in the window. Keeping things quiet so my sweet love can get her rest.

I've turned the computer off, then on, then off, and finally, on again. I made a false start at putting on a pot of coffee, smoked another cigarette and then made it for real. My own blend; Mocha Java Hazelnut Italian Roast. The tastes mud together a bit, but I still love its full bodied mix of flavors. It reminds of a coffee I had regularly at Alpha Farm in Oregon. They ordered a blend for the cafe in Appleton from some distributor in Seattle and also served it on the farm.

I like staying up late and writing. The darkness and silence frees me in some way and I seem to access deeper levels of that spontaneous flow of ideas - words - sentences - paragraphs - pages. It's something I need lots more practice at; I'm a slow novitiate.

I should be writing an article on politics. The editors have put out a call for election 2006 pieces and I could use some more Omaha steaks. There was a recent debate between the two major party gubernatorial candidates that I've watched and I've already done some research to support such a piece. I could probably wrap it up in three hours time. But..,

I'd rather be reading the copy of "The Dharma Bums" I recently picked-up, and be reflecting and contemplating the mysteries, questions and experiences of life. Fifty pages into the book, my curiosity is pushing to see what Kerouac reveals while wandering some paths I've set my feet near.

I've never read anything by Kerouac before. My gal and I went to Barnes and Noble last weekend and spent some of our Gather points ($50 a piece.. Woo-Hoo!). After a fruitless quick browse through the stacks I waited at the information desk and asked where Jack could be found.

The clerk walked me over and handed me a copy of "On The Road" suggesting it as a good place to start and then left me to it. I read the jacket and hesitantly put it back. "The Dharma Bums" was next to it and that was the book I'd come looking for. I wanted to read the book that supposedly chronicled the start of the Zen lunatics and the rucksack wanderers.

You'll probably think it pretentious that I think of myself as spiritual kin to Kerouac types. Rest assured, I'm fully aware that compared to their solar brilliance I am but a twinkle in the eye of someone who was looking the other way.

I feel kin to them because their stuff makes many kinds of sense to my ways of thinking; because I feel like I relate more to them and their lives then Friends, Seinfeld or the King of Queens; because I grew-up a latch key child in the mountains of upstate New York and I think I met a rucksack wanderer when I was eleven.

One fine day I rode my bicycle down the two miles of tree-lined country roads from our little pastoral trailer park to the little small town and stopped at the trailer dinner for a coke. The owners knew me, my mother had been the tiny town's music teacher for years and I often played with their kids.

I sat on a counter stool next to a fairly thin, bearded guy with long black hair, a solid olive-green fatigue jacket and a medium sized duffle bag tucked between his feet and the counter. I'd never seen a guy with long hair before and I tried not to get caught studying him too closely as I sipped caramel flavored sugared soda water through a straw with eleven year-old earnestness.

It was autumn, 1969. I wondered if he was a "Hippy." There were two college campuses in the city twenty miles to the north (my grandfather was a music professor at one of them) and Woodstock, NY was only sixty miles away. That great event had caused a stir of talk in our village that even kids had overheard and then discussed among ourselves.

He finished his meal, ordered another cup of coffee, lit a cigarette and opened up a featureless black book that had been sitting next to his plate. It was a standard size, probably 8 x 6, and the outer coverings made it look not too old. I had recently become addicted to reading and was always curious to know what other people were reading. What captured my attention, and got me caught staring, was the fact that the pages weren't pre-printed. They were blank and the book was a third filled with hand made sketches and writings. The guy pulled out a pen and, after flipping back and forth through a few pages started writing.

Since I couldn't stop gawking he turned, said hello and showed me his book. We had some polite small talk. He was "passing through" is about all I remember. Any details he may have shared were washed over by the impact this interaction was having on me. My mind was rocked by the idea of a book with blank pages. How freakin' scholarly. This was cool.

I caught the locals frowning over the fact that I was talking so long to a stranger, so I made my goodbyes and pedaled home like a wild animal, high as a kite on the idea that I could write my own book.

I started journaling after that. I carried folded up notebook paper with me everywhere and started "keeping notes." My mother was impressed, as was the rest of the family when she shared the news. They were all glad that I was showing signs of using my brain.

Growing-up the latch key kid of a local teacher in the country had me spending many hours mostly alone in the woods. Our trailer park sat on a ridge. Across the maple tree lined road a cow pastured valley sloped down to the Susquehanna River. The river was about thirty yards across at his point and run deep and muddy.

The other side of our ridge was densely tree covered, undulated for a bit, then sloped down to the valley floor of the Ouleout Creek. Farmers alternated corn and alfalfa crops in the fields and I once caught blue gill and sunfish in that creek. A highway runs through there now.

My mother and her family were academics. By the age of seven or eight I had been given certain oral-tradition lessons on the importance and value of people like Thoreau, Emmerson, the Founding Fathers and Jesus of Nazareth. Wandering in the wilderness and thinking deep thoughts was a course I had already deliberately started on.

I've only grazed the rucksack way; I've lived homeless, driven across the country in an old car, seen countless sunrises after all night discussions, expanded my mind, reads tons of books, lived in campgrounds, stayed at a commune, practiced meditation, and tried to find the best handles on the human conditions.

But I have been torn. Throughout my life I have wandered back and forth between the way of the philosopher and the regimented life of the middle and upper-middle classer. The later is fun but to often leaves me feeling like I'm living life in the shallows; while the former is deeply fulfilling but comes with  humiliation, alienation and controversy.

Ideological Lunatics of all stripes have lamented feelings of isolation and rejection; I've been there. I'm weak and the pressures of MY needs for acceptance and comradery have to often led me to gloss over my heart's feelings and spiritual callings with the appearances of the more normal person.

I'm a plastic coated dharma bum,
dashboard companion to a station wagon,
bubblin' down some roads of life.

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