It's the sight of the bridge that starts it all, sitting dirty white and lonely across a steep canyon a few miles further down the twisting coast road (tho on any other day the sea mists would have obscured it) -- just a glimpse before I take the car round another bend and then it's gone -- But the connection is made in that moment (abetted I realise now by the rustle of the Pacific to my left and the dank odour of the green and brown slopes around me that pervades the car even though the windows are all closed up).
We reach the bridge a few minutes later and I crawl across its narrow span, on my side the sea and on Jessica's sheer walls that go inland a short distance before turning sharply right -- The gazetteer says this is the Bixby Canyon, and way below (a big fall down) Bixby Creek flows anonymously beneath the big concrete arch.
I swing off onto a dirt road at the far end of the bridge which slopes gently down the north canyon wall -- stop and turn the car off -- Jessica hot and tired besides me saying 'Richard why are we stopping?' (our plan is to continue down Highway 1 to Monterey that day) and I cant answer -- We sit in silence (save for the waves in the distance and the odd car running over the bridge) but inside my head something strange is happening -- And the first recall occurs:
I am sitting on a rock on the beach just past the bridge, a sunset on the horizon, hands notebook and pencil protected from meaty waves by a clear plastic bag, I'm almost in the water ... and I am writing something ... a poem?? and I am lonely and my head is hurting.
But this memory is not my own.
Jessica insists we continue and we do -- she hates the idea of being without confirmed accommodation once six o'clock has come -- and we make Monterey and get a room in a place just off the Highway -- But I'm not feeling right, and I just cant get the bridge out of my mind -- We eat functionally at a Denny's and on our return to the motel I announce I have to get out -- I find the harbour and stroll along by the boats -- more stuff comes through and though I am tense I feel no fear (tho many might have, believing that a madness was upon them).
I dream of a cabin further back past the bend in the canyon, a little wooden thing that sits beside the gentle stream -- The cabin does not belong to me but to a friend called Lawrence who has let me stay there a while -- Some of the time I am on my own (and this isn't such a good idea it turns out because all I do is drink alcohol and sleep and only occasionally eat) though sometimes I have acquaintances over who seem to appear from nowhere to stay but even then the drinking carries on -- And these people call me Jack.
There is a strange pleasure to be had from the memories of the drinking (tho the memories of the pain and the shaking and the craziness that I now know was part of Jack's experience are curiously subdued) -- so I find myself in a bar in a bowling alley nearby the motel -- and while I start off sensibly enough on the beer I am later to eschew this for shots of Scotch in a big tumbler which is something I haven't done since studenthood -- The guy behind the bar is at first amenable but by the end of the session is noticeably nervous and I think tries to avoid me -- And when I am forced out of the bar at closing time (followed to the door by the anxious barkeep) I have a very hard time making it back down the road (I cannot walk in a straight line) which is a great surprise even to myself because at heart (at this time) I am nothing more than a sober, respectable suit (specialising in software).
Jessica back at the motel regards me with pained disbelief and banishes me to the bathroom -- 'Fuck you we're on vacation ain't we?' I slur but this is not well received -- And the next day I am too ill to drive or even be a passenger so we have to stay and have a look round anyway before carrying on to San Fran.
We breakfast in a grill on a jetty in the harbour and afterwards sit and watch sea lions play in the water below us -- I close my eyes as if to sleep (the sunlight is hurting them anyway) and more stuff comes through, filling in the gaps:
The cabin at Big Sur belongs to Lawrence Ferlinghetti who is an artist in his own right from San Francisco -- It is the fall of 1960 -- My surname is Kerouac -- I am nearly forty years old -- I am a writer, but also a drinker, and Lawrence has leant me his cabin because he is concerned about my health -- He believes some time away from the sources of my pain will lead to some kind of recuperation but all I've done really is abuse his hospitality and sadly do not care (which is a measure of how far I've come) -- The cosy campfire evenings with my visitors serve only to exacerbate the madness....
I try to get a hold of myself that day because I feel that I'm coming apart -- A new personality bourgeons within me, an absolute stranger (tho I am vaguely aware of the name from before all this started) and I cannot work out what is going on.
The following morning Jessica and I continue our vacation journey to San Fran -- She tries to talk to me but I remain basically quiet because I don't know what to say anyway -- All I can do is apologise for my behaviour and hope she'll give me some space.
It's gotten dark by the time we hit the city (Jessica getting anxious beside me) -- We come off the Highway just before it crosses the Golden Gate and find a room at the western end of Lombard Street -- Jessica carefully unpacks her stuff as I crash out on the bed and though I've nothing but the most profound of feelings for her (or think I have) as she bends and turns about her task (and often wonder what on earth makes her want to be with me) I can feel the bond dissolving as I think about it and what's really worrying is that (again) I just dont seem to care anymore.
Kerouac knew San Fransisco intimately (this notion comes to me there on the bed) -- and all the seedy hotels and the bars and the often hunger and the people (including the ladies) that were his experiences there come to my mind -- and later I have to take a cab downtown (without Jessica of course) and see for myself (and I too have to dabble with one of the ladies and on my return I see Jessica in a very different light as I sit besides the bed watching her sleep gently her hair all splayed out over the pillow).
We argue the next morning -- Jessica wants to do tourist things but I've no other inclination than to go downtown again and get out of my tree (tho my head throbs like hell and I've been ill in the bathroom in the middle of the night) -- It ends with her storming off to do what she wants to do anyway and I know I should be more supportive and go after but I just cant raise the energy -- I rush out onto the balcony when I realise she hasn't taken the key and throw it down to her as she walks by underneath -- it clinks on the floor before her feet -- she stoops and picks it up and continues without a glance.
I go back to the room and arrange for reception to get me a cab -- In the city I repeat myself from the day before only on a much larger scale -- Jessica is awake when I return, she's sitting on the bed rather than in it and it's clear immediately she's been crying -- 'Richard why are you doing this to me?' -- I shrug my shoulders, I still can't tell her -- She says 'I want us to go home now' -- And we do.
But we have to drive all the way back to LA first because it's from the airport there where we picked up the hire car and we've no arrangements for a one-way deal -- Jessica rings ahead and reschedules our flight back to JFK -- We zoom down Interstate 5, completing the trip in a day -- In the departure lounge at LAX, the shop there sells paperbacks by this guy Kerouac -- I buy Big Sur (a chronicle really of his internal crises during the stay at the cabin but in which all the names of the people and places have been changed, Bixby becoming Raton, for example) and another story called On the Road -- I read them both over the next twenty-four hours and thus begin to understand.
(The flight home by the way turns out to be a nightmare -- all of a sudden I'm afraid of flying.)
Two months have now passed since our trip -- I've read most of Jack's work in the interim and have accessed further pools of his memories in this strange miraculous way (and there're many more to come I'm sure just waiting for some trigger to release them) -- his books being journals of his life as it was lived correlate broadly with the events that I recall and by now I have a substantial handle on him -- I've been able to speak with Jessica at length (tho have avoided "professionals" so far) and she believes sincerely that I have become him -- I cant say I disagree -- But we do disagree on the mechanism at work here -- She thinks I have gone mad, that I am having some kind of crisis of my own (and I can't say I blame her).
But I know the truth to be different -- I have tried to explain that Kerouac is my father (I recollect a clumsy coupling in an alleyway in New York in January 1961, shortly after his return there from Ferlinghetti's cabin) -- his memories (and more -- his "brain-state", if you will) having been passed to me enshrined in his genetic material -- I say in all sincerity that we should consider the "experiments" that took place in his friend Allen's (the poet's) flat in New York at around the same time -- A man called Leary (a professor from Harvard) -- Dr Timothy Leary --gives those present a drug called psilocybin to take because he wants to see what it does to creative people like Jack (it really screws their minds as a matter of fact) (and some would question whether Jack truly was a creative type for after all he only wrote about the things he knew and had experienced) -- And Jack spent a whole night ranting and raving (and drinking at the same time it has to be said) and I will maintain that this substance did something to his body so that at the time of my conception the contents of his mind were downloaded into my darling mother too.
And as I write this piece (peace, even) my wife (tho not for much longer), my beloved Jessica walks in the room without a sound thereby giving me no time to hide the bottle and the secret's out (tho it's really no mystery we both know that but I haven't had the wit to get it straight with her) -- She stands in the doorway looking like she's gonna cry so I try to get back to my work flashing in front of me hoping she'll go away, but she just keeps looking at the vodka on the desk and eventually bleats 'Why?' and of course there is no answer.
With a muted snort she leaves the room and shortly I hear scuffling upstairs as she throws things into expensive luggage, and later the front door slams and she's out of my life and I feel a strange subdued sunrise of relief knowing that now the fun can really begin.
Bio:I'm thirty-five years old, a freelance interactive multimedia developer, living in Dorset, England. My fiancee Tracy is expecting our first child April 1999.
E-mail:stuart_cormie@compuserve.com
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