Hey Jack Kerouac, Redux

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
-- Jack Kerouac

*
We are still "on the road" 51 years later (many of us not even born 51 years ago but who's counting numbers anyway), following in Kerouac's footsteps, trying to capture his beat barehanded and careful not to drop one bit of the rhythm, talking, walking, being mad and being alive and giving no notice to 24-hour increments on the calendar but instead reaching forward, moving in that kind of motion (that's a good thing) that traps other people's discarded dreams under our toes and keeps our own dreams breathing open-sky air, putting all of these dreams together, ours and the discarded, into a pot of dream stew, and it's quite delicious (won't you have a bite?) and never too filling ("I could eat a dozen bowls of dream stew!" says Eleanor, "and then a dozen more!). You should never discard your dreams on the side of the road, but if you do, we'll be along shortly like hunters and collectors. Nothing is ever lost. Some things are forgotten, but never lost. Some people are lost, until we find them. Everyone is waiting for something, but that's just silly, to be waiting when you could be walking or running or hopping trains or sitting in the backseat of a stranger's car, listening to life stories, and smiling because you know it's all a shared experience, all of it. Lose yourself -- just try to, and we'll find you sure enough and you can take back your dreams and live again with purpose, with determination. We've been taught more than once or twice that we're on this road together and always will be.