I closed Why We Can't Wait today and just stood there, breathing, my hand laying across the worn, folded cover. And I looked at Dharma Bums with contempt, wondering why I had ever been in awe of a man who had never amounted his life to anything. Selfish, ambitionless escapist.

But I have to remind myself it's not the way he lived his life that I admire in Kerouac; it's the way in which he witnessed it.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a saint. Jack Kerouac was an artist. They both hold their place in time.

Hero-worship makes it hard to remember that sometimes.

ink :: graphite