while reading 'On the Road..'

[flaviomatani]

Reading Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ and, curiously, getting what can only be a false memory of having read it before, many years ago, in Spanish translation in my old house in Catia, when the world was young and the nomadic life he describes still was possible. And, what a contrast with the necessarily sedentary life of one who, on the one hand, earns his living teaching music and therefore must be settled in one place but, also, one who always regarded the outside world with curiosity and desire but also with a certain amount of fear and mistrust. The shy boy from Catia ended up in London as a citizen of the world but still regards the world as a strange, alien and hostile entity, if sometimes also full of wonder. That tale of crossing the American plains on a truck platform under the bright stars resonates in me and evokes other stories, the glow of marine phosphorescence surrounding us in a cargo ship on another night under many stars long, so long ago, at some point where the Caribbean becomes the Atlantic, leaving behind a trail of bright foam under the moonlight as the ship broke through the waves on its way to this England that would become my home...

Comments

[androktone.livejournal.com]

Was England what you expected it to be?

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

Funnily, I don't know. England was a mythical place where, I don't know, the Beatles, Orwell, Tolkien and Bertrand Russell came from It was also a place where my girlfriend lived and to where I was going in order to study guitar with John Duarte for a few years and probably return to my life in Caracas, which wasn't bad at the time. I don't think I had enormous expectations and certainly wasn't thinking of staying here for good That's just the way life worked, but that wasn't bad either.

But that journey here in '87 on a cargo ship was quite something. Apart from the Customs officials in Liverpool practically taking it apart and rummaging my things and poking into my guitar but, then, a cargo ship from South America, what do you expect...

[androktone.livejournal.com]

It must have been exciting!


I read somewhere that a lot of Polish immigrants were going back, having decided England isn't all it's cracked up to be ;)

It must have taken a lot of guts to move that far away form your home though - I always have a lot of respect for people who change coutries on their own when they're young - it's such a big thing to do.

[bulletproofcat.livejournal.com]

I loved that book when I read it as a teenager. I am terrible for whenever I leave this country I never want to come home again. I love this London, so London itself is not the reason. Just travel always seems to give me such a different perspective on what life could be.

[strangepixel.livejournal.com]

I think your personal journey would make the basis of a good book sir!

It's funny to think that the legendary On The Road was blasted out on a big roll of cheap paper. Though in my opinion the actual tales of the beat writers themselves have always been more exciting than their various novels...