hey Jack Kerouac, what AM I doing here? I’ve hunted in the corners of this house, seeking your ghost amid the dust mopped and the food prepared. you told “Jerce” ⁽¹⁾ you found peace in Orlando, and after my first week here - where the temperature plummeted to an all-time low, and life was about scrambling to get settled in so that the WRITING would not be suspended for too long — you, my man, are already getting under my skin.

you’re teaching me how to write all over again.

there’s a raison d’etre to every movement in life, every place you go, every person you meet, every space you occupy. if I were Jack Kerouac, I would capture all those movements AS THEY OCCUR, because they are precious, god-given, the gem in the ointment. but that would take the unique genius that is yours alone. we who walk in your steps find our own paths. we DO WHAT (we) LIKE, as you once told a budding young novelist to do when she, in amour with you, sought insights into the writing life, into Life.

so this is the beginning of my jazz-like “improv,” to be propelled by our shared love of words and that crazy, zany desire — compulsion — energy-sustaining NEED to write, of which you daily remind me.

it is my exceptional privilege to be here (although through that first, long, and shivery, night with you, I wondered, aloud, what the HELL am I doing here????). perhaps after my three months are up (gaol term or respite - are both but two faces of the same eve, or adam?), I will know, a tiny bit more, about the meaning of this existence.

on the road, here.                                                                                                                 xx

⁽¹⁾ Joyce Johnson, Kerouac’s lover with whom he corresponded while living in Orlando. “Jerce” was his pet name for her in the letters.