Wednesday, June 01, 2005
The Essence
In Kerouac’s autobiographical-novel, The Subterraneans, he tells of Mardou Fox, a half-Cherokee and half-African-American who has grown up in poverty.
She has suffered serious emotional breakdowns and has traveled from lover-to-lover among the Bohemia of San Francisco until she falls into the arms of Leo, the character Kerouac has modeled himself after.
And Mardou tells Leo, “Men are so crazy, they want the essence, the woman is the essence, there it is right in their hands but they rush off erecting big abstract constructions. Instead they rush off and have big wars and consider women as prizes instead of human beings . . .”
Who can argue with her? I think we are all looking for the essence. All of us are trying to travel back to the Garden of Eden but have lost our way. We try big wars, are still trying big wars. They never get us there.
So we end them and start other wars—wars on drugs, war on terrorism, war on foreign soil. But they never get us to Eden.
And if I were Adam and Eve, I would have spent a lifetime searching for a way back into Eden. Imagine the change in their socio-economics. Imagine how different things were to them.
Imagine being rich and wealthy, talking with God in the cool of the evening, and then the Fall. It would be enough to kill about half of us Americans. We would riot in the street, demanding that God gives us back our rich and famous lifestyle.
Entertainment Tonight would go off the air. Hollywood movies would all be independent films on low budgets, making movies like, Super Size Me.
Imagine the life you have now. Then imagine living at the North Pole. The change for Adam and Eve was that drastic.
www.stofel.com
She has suffered serious emotional breakdowns and has traveled from lover-to-lover among the Bohemia of San Francisco until she falls into the arms of Leo, the character Kerouac has modeled himself after.
And Mardou tells Leo, “Men are so crazy, they want the essence, the woman is the essence, there it is right in their hands but they rush off erecting big abstract constructions. Instead they rush off and have big wars and consider women as prizes instead of human beings . . .”
Who can argue with her? I think we are all looking for the essence. All of us are trying to travel back to the Garden of Eden but have lost our way. We try big wars, are still trying big wars. They never get us there.
So we end them and start other wars—wars on drugs, war on terrorism, war on foreign soil. But they never get us to Eden.
And if I were Adam and Eve, I would have spent a lifetime searching for a way back into Eden. Imagine the change in their socio-economics. Imagine how different things were to them.
Imagine being rich and wealthy, talking with God in the cool of the evening, and then the Fall. It would be enough to kill about half of us Americans. We would riot in the street, demanding that God gives us back our rich and famous lifestyle.
Entertainment Tonight would go off the air. Hollywood movies would all be independent films on low budgets, making movies like, Super Size Me.
Imagine the life you have now. Then imagine living at the North Pole. The change for Adam and Eve was that drastic.
www.stofel.com
© 2007 by Robert Stofel