In 1999 I lived in the Middle East. En route back to the United States I stopped in Europe. I had lived in the Netherlands and Belgium from 1996 to 1998. There were now other parts of Europe I wanted to see. Changing parts of Europe. I would start in London and push eastward. The Berlin Wall had fallen 10 years prior and to the east was transition. Countries in motion. Countries redefining themselves. I wanted to see the old Eastern Europe meeting the new Eastern Europe. I wanted to experience the old before it was all new. And while much had changed over a decade, I was hoping some remained.
I had relatively little. I had few possessions. Everything I owned rested in the bag on my back. I had maybe two or three t-shirts. I had a single pair of shoes. I had few plans. No expectations. I had about $300 dollars and a passport tucked under my waist belt. I had a return ticket leaving from Berlin in about two months time.
I slept in fields and parks, in train stations and back alleys – the last of which I would recommend against even in periods of deep life exploration.
In London I picked up a few books, among which was George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London
In London I spent my first night in Hyde Park under a giant Weeping Willow Tree, the weeping branches draping over me. Providing a faux cocoon of protection. Of blocking out the outside world. My second night was spent in Salisbury – in an alley not far from the train station. I still see it. I still feel it. I wonder if I could find it today. It was dark when I arrived in Salisbury. I wonder if I could have found it the next day.
I was officially on the road. My thoughts becoming my only companion, my only diversion, my only friend. This is the journey. This is on the road. Thoughts – in all of their states – personal and raw – propelling you forward, sideways, forward.
I experienced the hollowness of transition. As Kerouac’s Sal Paradise put it,
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.
Where are today’s journeys? Where does this discovery take place today? Eastern Europe has largely matured. The U.S. is easy to navigate and many of the old ways of navigation – stowing away on a train or hitch hiking to the limits of the next town or street intersection is largely gone. Even things like the old Chinatown Express – an informal bus system that traveled between Chinatowns and was historically used to transport immigrant friends to family has become popularized by companies like Bolt and other competitors who have added Wi-Fi and formalized the process with websites and paper tickets.
Perhaps Africa still offers the potential – though in many places the potential is dangerous. Perhaps in that danger is the potential. When I was in Ethiopia last month I had zero connectivity during the day. I was left to nothing but my own ideas. My own thoughts. Left to only what my eyes could see, comprehend, and make sense of. Africa is in massive transition – a petri dish for self discovery. Though only there for three short days, the taste of being back on the road was bubbling at the surface.
As Kerouac wrote, the ones for me are “the ones who are made to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” The ones for me are the ones “desirious of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn…but burn, burn, burn…”
I too want to strive for life. Constantly in motion. On the move. Burning, burning, burning. I find sleep a waste of time – and avoid it as much as I can. I fear media has the ability to provide us memories that are not our own. I’m constantly seeking to supplant these memories with ones that can’t be videoed, recorded, or captured. They can’t be instagrammed or tweeted or facebooked. These memories live deep in our bellies. These memories can’t even be sufficiently described with words, diagrams, or drawings. We feel these memories. We live these memories. And these memories live deep in us. They are the wrinkles in our face, the scares on our arms and legs. These tell stories of our on the road, stories that reside deep in our souls. Stories that define us.
Can an On the Road experience be had in 2013?
Can self-identification, self-recognition, self-definition still take place as it has for centuries – between one location and a destination that remains hazily undefined.
In the November 16, 1952 New York Times Sunday Magazine, John Holmes writes “one day [Kerouac] said, ‘You know, this is a really beat generation’ … More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and ultimately, of soul: a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself.”
Kerouac spoke of a generation. Self-discovery taking place individually – but collectively across a generation. Much has been said and written about today’s Millennial generation – but never once have I seen them referred to or discussed in the context of self-realization.
Today we dial-up luxury towncars and black SUVs with the swipe of our smartphone. Can self-discovery be found in the back of a sedan while we change our phone charges – perusing twitter and reading Facebook updates? This isn’t a critique, but a legitimate question. I think it can, but rather than happening, we must make it happen.
