The book doesn’t have a cover and much of the content is missing—I’ve had it for seven years and can’t remember how many times I’ve read the thing. The book is like a bird and has lost many feathers, and it wouldn’t even bother me if somebody stole it because there isn’t a real reason it is this book and not another book other than it survived.
After all these years and just now the binding has broke. The pages are drenched because there was a super cell that went by just a minute ago. Sixty mile an hour winds and a handful of hail left dents in cars, but less than a half hour ago when I first started writing I wasn’t sure if it was going to blow through, but earlier in the day I thought there might be a good chance because the sunset over the lake in the woods was perfect. And even before it was one of those days that reminds you you’re on a planet in space and anything can happen so enjoy. The book was with me then too and I was skipping stones and along with a Chinese version of tom sawyer it fits in my bag and nobody ever steals it because the typeset isn’t anything fancy—and he said “thinking is just like not thinking—so I don’t have to think”.
Soon don’t worry I bet the rain will get heavy and then in one blink it will turn to ice, and in less than fifteen minutes the book will loose more feathers. And I’m not reading that ragged anthology right now because I’m on my typewriter and I thought there was going to be a major thunderstorm but I guess it isn’t ready, but then again I don’t care what happens because it feels good to be outside and I don’t know the page number of the poem but I’ve memorized the words unintentionally out of boredom when I’ve been waiting around wherever I’ve been during the past decade if my life—and the poem is about meditation and I don’t know what Kerouac wrote after that line because the page was ripped out for one reason or another and the next page skips to original unedited writing by Neal Cassidy—and I’m not sure that many people know that he has a real good book called the first third that he never finished—and I don’t know if the page following Jack’s line belongs in this context because the book I have is a made from many writers, and not just from the beat movement but writers who wrote between the years nineteen forty-two and nineteen sixty-two.
The page after the word “think” starts off with “Leaving L.A by Train At Night, High.”—and the as I type this then it starts getting bright snap and then it is dark outside again and you can hear the tides crashing down the street—and I wasn’t sure if it was going to rain or just store it up for a bigger storm but it’s really coming down in buckets now and there’s no reason that any of this exists but it does and so I wanted to type something but I didn’t want to write an essay because my mind had other plans for where the fingers would dance—and I didn’t have a stem glass or even a coffee mug so after opening a bottle of wine I just took a big swell and almost one-third of the bottle is gone—and there’s no reason to explain what I’m doing because as I heard bats flying before the storm gets mean I wrote down some lines about thunder rolling and crunching teeth and the hiss of wild animals and then suddenly the drops were as big as apples—and it was nice to be here and my mind was empty and there was may thunder and a moped in the distance drove by.
Adventures In American Writing 