Memoirs. Endings. Jack Kerouac (The Obsession Continues).

So I've been thinking about memoirs. Or creative non-fiction. Whatever you want to call it. And what I want to know is, how do you end a book that's about a life, when it's still happening? How do you sit there, Mr. Kerouac, in front of your type writer and think, "This story is about my life and my life is still happening and how do I keep myself from writing this forever and ever and never end it?"

I know people do it all the time; end stories about their lives. Hello, memoirs. But how do you choose where to end it? I can't even figure out where to end my novel--which is FICTIONAL, which means I can do anything I want with it (or really, anything my characters want). I could have a fucking fire-breathing dragon swoop in and rain destruction down on the little Philadelphia suburb my story takes place in. Probably no one would publish it if I ended it like that, but I could, if I wanted to.

But how do you choose? How do you say, "Oh, this is a good place to stop writing about my life," and make it work like Kerouac does?

See, my problem is that in general, I'm terrible at endings. I think it's because I'm afraid to make that final decision, put that last period down. Because isn't there more? There's always more. I want the story to keep going. I always hate it when a good movie ends, or when I reach the last page of an amazing book. I get so attached to the characters, their lives, the place, that I never want to stop. There has to be more, right? My mind just goes nuts with all the other things that could happen.

So I can't stop. I can never stop writing.

Which doesn't solve my problem with endings at all.

Regarding my crush on Jack Kerouac

"...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' " -from "On the Road"

I want to put Jack Kerouac in a box. One that will fit in my pocket. I want to fold him up, sew him shut with his own long strings of sentences and fit him into a locket, maybe one shaped like a heart and worn always around my neck, the metal warmed from resting forever on my chest.

I want to ring around his rosies, stuff my pockets full of his poems and the places where he once breathed so deeply he couldn't help but write about it. I want to stick Denver to my skin, whirling and drunk like he saw it, and soak Frisco into my hair, smoke-scented and sprawling.

I want the long nights spent talking-- the words left out in his mad frenzy to get where he was going, to see what happens next. I want to hit the pause button and just settle into a moment, wrapping "On the Road" around me and, like a rush of wild madness, feel it seep into me, sinking into my eyes and ears, nose and mouth.

I want to live this, breathing wild and frantic beside Sal and Kerouac and Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx and Remi and Eddie and Eddie's Girl and Major and Rita and everyone who ever took up a space similar to Kerouac's.

And so I guess I should admit it, now. I guess I should mention that I have a big, fat, juicy crush on Jack Kerouac. On him and his writing and his characters and his eventual, inevitable misery. Maybe I'm a couple of decades too late, but that boy is just the right amount of mad for me, for life, for being a writer.

The way he weaves his words, like he just closed his eyes and put himself back there, back to that second where everything was happening, and he just wrote it, typed the hell out of it, cigarette burning, eyes still closed, writing his life.

I want to be there, to see the expression on his face when he buries himself in his writing. I want to watch the way his fingers cramp and his shoulders clench and his back aches, the way the cigarette ashes float across the type-writer keys. I want to see the crease in his forehead while he crouches, taping together all those pieces of paper so he can just go and go and write and never stop. I want to witness his genius exploding across the page.

Perhaps I'm being a bit too dramatic. But what you have to understand is, I love him. I love Jack Kerouac. The kind of love where it is hard to find fault, the kind of love where all you can do is exist in awe, rapt and attentive, waiting for the next great thing he'll say, think, write, mumble.

Which is why I am too late. I was born too late to soak up the actual man, so now I just read, read, read. I don't care what they say about all of the other ones being crap-- I want to understand this man and everything he writes. Wrote.

I want to put Jack Kerouac in a box and take him out and listen to him spout lovely words and angry ones all full of passion. But since I can't do that, I guess I'll just settle for reading. Every word.  

My Writing

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." -Kurt Vonnegut

One of my instructors at Columbia College asked me the other day how I would describe my writing. This is my answer... sort of.

I think there is a difference between how my writing is and how I want it to be.

I want my writing to be like music, like a song, like notes floating across the air, singing into your ears. I want my writing process to be like band practice, hundreds of jam sessions all culminating in an amazingly mind-blowing, life-altering performance of those songs I've worked so goddamn hard on, poured my life and soul and body into.

I want my words to slam into you, careening of the page like a car crash waiting to happen.

I want my stories to be unforgettable.

But the reality of it is that my writing is usually flowery and cushy, sloppy with love and lust. Boys and longing leaning up against the walls and waiting their turn to lie on my pages.

My words tuck themselves into your pockets, digging down and nestling into the corners where your fingers never quite reach.

My stories are all the same.