Kerouac’s Death Day
It was on this day in ‘69 old alchy Ti Jean gave up the ghost. Here’s a montage of him representing some of his best (but of course the very best couldn’t have been televised) on the Steve Allen show (oh, sure your ain’t nervous Jacky boy) and some of his worst, dead drunk making of fool of himself, in front of the ultimate cocksuck William Buckley Jr. no less. The more you read from and about him, the more you realize the general public had no idea who this guy was or what he was doing. He had golden moments of transcending much of the muck, but then there was that which he just couldn’t let go of, and it took him on down. Well, it took the mortal coil down, the rest is still out there.
Surprised to hear how bent he was on religious imagery.
One of the things he ‘couldn’t let go of’, another being such a complete momma’s boy, but back to the first. As Snyder and Ginsberg and others turned him on to Buddhism, and he saw the reality of it, for a time he was going with a pantheistic sort of thing, trying to blend the two, but as the booze and grappling with ‘fame’ ate away at him, he sank more and more into his inital conditioning.
I’m glad it was you who made this comment, because something occured to me the other day from a conversation we had: the thing I can’t handle about atheism is a lack of essential optimism (somewhere WAY down there) that any religious belief presents. I can handle all the arguments against the existence of a creator entity, and don’t mind getting downright shitty and desolate with those that deserve it, and can dig the secular humanist ‘rise to ethics for their own sake and that of the whole of man’ idea, but I crave that extra burst of magic implied in a religeous belief system. Even though I accept chaos as cosmic truth over fictional order systems, you could still say I want to use faith as a crutch to some extent. And I’ve never been able to put so much faith in Science, as it is so clearly revisionist. Science is the new kid on the block, and look how long it’s taken for quantum mechanics to get to the point of saying things yogi’s in the east were saying centries (millenia?) ago. I’m a sold Deist, but fuck anyone trying to define God absolutely, much less trying to dictate rules for others based on their interpretation of the godhead notion.
Long live all the gods. Who doesn’t need a crutch. It’s magical, biological, psychosomatic crack, heals most ailments with no side effects. Except of course divine dictatorships, crusades and missionaries (and maybe a liberated S&M tendency?)
Exactly, down with those who beat the rest of the world with their crutches. I have no problem with fictions, so long as they are kept private, only they rarely are and that’s my beef with “socialized religion.” Why can’t people be happy and skeptical at the same time? Ain’t nothing wrong with not knowing or caring even if god exists…(it’s none of your business if you really think about it.) Worship the senses if you get bored.
Woah, MUS, DON’T worship the senses says Lord Buddha, that’s exactly the problem and cause of suffering; deny the senses, or more accurately ‘don’t take too seriously your senses, see them only for what they are’, they are the bars of your cage. After all: only 5, what a jip in the BIG picture. Boredom is for the unenlightened. Skeptical I can handle, but that’s agnosticism - denial is arrogance=atheism.
And sorry Doc, one more inside joke I just couldn’t resist…
“My father brought God to earth in the year 0″ - Jesus H. Christ
There’s an arrogance about the science worshippers which almost rivals the worst religious fundamentalists. Both groups are convinced that they know absolutely how the universe works. Science is surely useful and will continue to be a big part of how we understand the world but, as chili wrote, it’s just the strict categorization of what we are able to perceive. Fundamental ‘faith’ in science leads to a denial of all which lies beyond our power to grasp. For example, if you’re monolinguistic, all other languages are just noise without sense, from a scientific standpoint, the communication taking place in a foreign language ‘doesn’t exist.’ Science, and any idea of god, are just a couple of languages, but the universe is polyglot.
Great to have another novelist in our midst, welcome!
I love how a tribute to St. Kerouac (that’s right, I cannonized him) instantly led to ‘godtalk’.
Polyglots are whores. God is dead. If you see the Buddha in the middle of the road, smack his ass.
Frodo is a whore. Nietzsche IS dead. Never let anyone else define God for you.
Insert ‘Dieties and Demigods’ reference here. I’m thinking the original Lovecraftian ‘He Who Must Not Be Named,’ and not that candy Harry Potter shit, either.