Thursday, May 22, 2014

Dear Jack Kerouac... and JG

I can't remember when I started working at the Concordia University libraries. 

I had probably already started university, which made me at least 18 years old/young. I wasn't looking for what Oprah describes as an Aha! moment, but I sure as shit found one.

I found him...

I found Jack Kerouac.

I was shelving books and  suddenly, somehow, everything changed.


My job was to take carts of books that had been returned by students and replace them on the shelves according to Library of Congress classification

As I entered the PS section, dedicated to American literature, the air changed and something in me shifted.  

I opened a book called On the Road

I didn't know who Jack Kerouac was, and I sure as shit didn't know what a hipster was, but I did know that for the first time in my life, I read something that described almost exactly how I felt.


I was floored. 

Like, literally, on the floor. 

Reading, reading and reading.

And then, reading some more.

Everyday, I would sneak into the PS section, find Kerouac and read. 

When one book was done, I would start another. When they were all done, I read them all over again.

I was in heaven.

I was in love.

In love with words. 


In love with the truth.

Since then, a lot has happened. 

Some good. 

Some bad.

No matter what happens though, I can always count on Kerouac for pointing my soul in the right direction.


I'm not one for talking about my emotions, and maybe it sounds cheesy, but I literally cannot read one of his lines without shedding a tear.

A big, fat, long, juicy one.
 

Even though I graduated in Journalism (and Political Science) and live for words (metaphorically, of course), I'm not great at saying them. 

Thinking them, sure.

Writing them, maybe. 

Saying them, definitely not.


 So here's to my hero, the great thinker, speaker and writer of words.


Jack Kerouac

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts to French Canadian parents in 1922. Started writing On the road in French. Died in 1969, at the age of 47, while drinking whiskey.

You stole my heart at the age of 18. 

And again at the age of 34 (35?) in the DR.

And over and over again.

Until the end, and forever.