SUPER FUN BLOG

". . . during these naked revels, I just kept my eyes closed and listened to the music: I was really sincerely keeping lust out of my mind by main force and gritting of my teeth." (178)

I find it interesting that everyone thinks of Ray as the person who is open to learning new things as opposed to Japhy, which would fit in with the theme of duality in the book, comparing Japhy and Ray, calm and craziness, city and nature, good and bad. However, for years now, Ray has been more or less adamantly opposed to sex and lust, despite everyone else's urgings and reasonings. Ray refuses to believe that anything good can come out of sex. sometimes his instincts make him question himself, but he'll always renew his determination. Either way, the theme of duality in the book becomes inconsistant here. Either Ray suddenly becomes as stubborn as Japhy as opposed to the flexibility people associate with him, or he becomes as open with sex with Japhy, as opposed to the way he used to be.

"But then I'd find something like a dead crow in the deer park and think "That's a pretty sight for sensitive human eyes, and all of it comes out of sex." (186)

Once again, Ray brings up his strict disapproval and condemnation of sex, with illogical reasoning to boot. He claims that death is the result of sex, and this is true. But like I said in an earlier post, life is also a result of sex. And you can't have life without death, but what a miserable exist the world would be without life. If there was no life in this world, would Ray be happy? Of course he wouldn't be happy, he's dead. So the more he talks about sex and how it's evil, the less I can sympathize and relate with him.

"I don't care," said the old cook, with lidded eyes, and I told Japhy and he said, "Perfect answer, absolutely perfect. Now you know what I mean by Zen." (16)

I don't see how this answer explains what Zen is. I think it might have been an acceptable explanation if Japhy was talking about agnosticism, but not Zen. Or maybe, on some subtle level, it is about Zen. Officially, Zen is the belief that you must experience the ultimate truth, rather than learning it from a teacher. Therefore, you don't need to care about the history of Zen, because it's meaningless in the big picture of finding the ultimate truth.

"Finally he learned Chinese and Japanese and became an Oriental scholar, and discovered the greatest Dharma Bums of them all, the Zen Lunatics of China and Japan." (9)

I suppose Zen Lunatic is another phrase coined by either Japhy or Ray, but I would have liked to have gone into it a bit more and in detail. What exactly constitutes a Zen Lunatic? The usage of the word 'lunatic' suggests that a type of militant or fundamentalist Zen movement may exist, or the word 'lunatic' could simply be used to imply that an individual is obsessed with Zen to the point of being unreasonable.

"... Samadhi Ecstasy, which is the state you reach when you stop everything and stop your mind and you actually with your eyes closed see a kind of eternal multi-swarm of electrical power..." (33)

The swarming sparks of color Ray is seeing are fatigued cones and rods recovering from staring at one area for far too long. When you stare at a certain color or a certain area for a period of time, the color receptors in your eyes become fatigued, and when you close your eyes, your receptors will send off misfires that result in a color show at the back of your eyelid. Same concept as blinking into a bright light. Nothing spiritually related at all.

"Lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and I had really no lie come to a point where I considered lust as offensive and even cruel." (29)

Lust and sex are basic human instincts which lead to the preservation of the human race. Does it result in more death? Logically, yes, since it causes more birth, and everyone must die. But maybe it causes even more death to not engage in intercourse? Without humans, the world's food chain and ecosystem will collapse, and most life-forms on the planet will die, resulting in a complete worldwide reform of sorts. So, is it really all that evil, as Ray tends to feel?

"But it was the evil city and I had my virtuous desert waiting for me." (156)

A recurring theme in this book is the duality in Kerouac's life, the duality between calmness and insanity, the pure and the tainted, and the good and the bad. In between brief stints of staying in a corrupt and tainted and insane city, he heads out into the wilderness to relax and meditate and contemplate the good and pure in the world. Immediately after his long afternoon with the Mexicans and the marijuana, which to him is like a bad dream, he heads out into the desert and sleeps under the stars whilst contemplating the roaring silence of the blood rushing through his ears.

"I'm gonna get married, soon, I think, I'm getting tired of battin around like this."
"But I thought you'd discovered the Zen ideal of poverty and freedom."
"Aw, maybe I'm getting tired of all that" (170)

This quote tells me that even the most determined Zen lunatic has trouble becoming a Zen master and sticking with it his whole life. It's a lot harder than just living through life the same way everyone else is living their life. All the meditation and koan undoubtedly gets old after a while, and Japhy is becoming disenchanted with his Zen lifestyle because of all the depressing things going on in his life. Japhy is probably doubting whether Zen is just an idea that doesn't work or not.

The Swimmer

"What do you want?" she asked.
"I'm swimming across the county."
"Good Christ, will you ever grow up?"
"What's the matter?"
"If you've come here for money," she said, "I won't give you another cent."
"You could give me a drink."
"I could but I won't. I'm not alone."
"Well, I'm on my way."

The interesting thing about this quote was that the swimmer seemed to be in a bit of a daze, unaware of the contextual awkwardness of the situation, while his perfectly sane ex-mistress becomes irritable and cautious. She believes he is there for no good reason, and swimming across the county is a lie. I believe that the swimmer is the occasional mold-breaker of the 1950's. Every once in a while, someone breaks out of the mold, but in doing so goes a bit nuts in the head. Those are all the individualists and counter-cultural figures that came about in the 50's. They do things we consider insane for reasons we either cannot grasp or reasons we feel are trivial and unimportant in our lives.

The Persistence of Desire

"Poor Janet, Clyde felt; except for the interval of himself--his splendid, perishable self--she would never see the light."

This quote is filled with irony. Here is a man, deluded with visions of how great he is, feeling sorry for a woman whom he thinks can't see how insanely awesome and manly he is. The only time he thinks her existence is complete is when she is in a relationship with him. The irony is that she probably feels sorry for him, because he cannot see how much of a shallow and dumb human being he is.

"The poor devil, he had all those letters memorized, all that gibberish--abruptly, Clyde wanted to love him."

I picked this quote because it just jumped out of the blue. I don't know if the author was trying to screw with my mind or what, but all of sudden this man wants to love another man because the latter has memorized the letters on eye charts. I can't even find any symbols or connections in it, it's almost as if it was a prank played by the editor.

Are The Actual Miles?

"For a while they didn't know what to do with the money. Then they put a thousand on the convertible and doubled and tripled the payments until in a year they had it paid."

More irony in this quote. Here, they don't know what to do with a sudden income of money, so out of sheer impulse they bought an expensive convertible for themselves. A few years later, everything has fallen apart, and the money used on the convertible should have been in the bank, safe and sound. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, so in a last ditch attempt to avoid bankruptcy, they need to sell the car. In a way, the moral of the events leading up to this story, and maybe even the whole story itself, is to not go for impulse buys. The back-story in this short story isn't explicitly stated, and the reader has to connect the dots, which I find is kind of unusual for books.

"Things are going to be different!" he calls to her as she reaches the driveway. "We start over Monday. I mean it."

This is a promise he can't keep, but he doesn't know it. I think he's only trying to reassure himself that he still has time to start over, that he still has time to forget everything that happened prior to the coming Monday. But Monday will come, and he will try to start over, only to find that the consequences have shattered his resolve. He's bankrupt and going batty, and he knows it in the corner of his mind. He'll deny it and try to repress it as long as he can, but it'll haunt him and bite him in the ass for the rest of his life.