Damn Kerouac

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful dusk falls on North Carolina and I am once again sitting on my back porch with Jack Kerouac. Damn Jack Kerouac, you had it easy in your gifted days. Your distractions are my life and your simplicities are my mind wonders into what I wish my days could be. We both feel the same pain and frustrations yet why would I trade mine for yours for the years that separate us? I stare at a blinking cursor, a turning hourglass. You stared into a blank notebook, an open window.
I have traded simplicity for convenience. Even now a pop up reminds me that new updates are ready to download, but I'm not ready for those updates. I'm ok with the state of things as they are now. How did you give up your wonderings, your freedoms for a home in Florida the days before you died? Even now the light fades, what was the orange glow of the sun setting is now blue like a glass of water against a dark wall. Before I was under a white sheet with the light on overhead. Reading a book with comfort of sleep not far away. Now I am sitting looking through my glass, knowing that soon I will be staring into the woods after a set of headlights has passed and the detail of the forage blackens to nothingness. Lightning Bugs. They are even sleeping as I type. Night has not yet fallen.
Damn damn Jack Kerouac, I can't live to be in the place you were. Why must I hear of your challenges when my own will never apply? What would you do about a page not found when it is the last one that you desperately need. How am I to find my dessert retreat when you never made it to yours? There that’s it!
You never made it to your place either. You worked around the edges in the box that you were in, didn't you? You were still afraid as well. Sure, I will never hop on a train to somewhere in California with a Mexican girl that I just met. I will never work on a migrant farm or beat it with Cassady. But I will be a man of my time. I will muse and I will explore. I will wonder and I will doubt. I will write and I will read. Who will listen to me, Jack Kerouac? Who will read my notes and wish that they were in my simple time?