“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.” -- "beat" writer Jack Kerouac (3-12-22 - 10-21-69) from his 1958 novel "The Dharma Bums." The Dharma Bums is an autobiographical novel concerned with spiritual discovery and self-awareness, with characters drawn from Kerouac's life. One of the major lodestars of the Beat Generation, Kerouac's other great work, 1957's "On The Road," was a masterpiece of prose-as-jazz describing his and friend Neal Cassady's free-wheeling road trips along the highways of America that spoke to their "live in the moment" ethos.
