Thomas Johnson, editor-in-chief
I want to speak freely for a minute. I had other remarks prepared, but my moods swing wildly these days. I’ve been really astounded at the work coming in to Union Spring, and the work going out. And in all of it, through all the words, under each of the photos, I can see that everyone is hurting.
Suffering might be the human condition, but it appears so much of it is avoidable. I walk around in the fog of a particular sadness that somehow it doesn’t have to be this way. This isn’t what I want, not for me, not for you. We go looking for answers, and the other day I came across a letter from Kerouac addressed to Ginsberg, June 10, 1949:
“I decided someday to become a Thoreau of the Mountains. To live like Jesus and Thoreau, except for women. Like Nature Boy with his Nature Girl.”
And before you throw up your arms at that, think of the possibilities of love that exist in a life devoted to the Other, the companionship of living alongside and in service with a partner. When the image strikes up inside, whatever it is you look at that makes that utopian possibility real in your mind, it is a place not like this one – not here with the suffering. Kerouac pictured a place far away, remote, in isolation from society:
“I’ll buy a saddlehorse mix for $30, an old saddle on Larimer St., a seeping bag at Army surplus, frying pan, old tin can, bacon, coffee beans, sourdough, matches, etc.; and a rifle. And go away in the mountains forever. To Montana in the summers and Texas-Mexico in the winters. Drink my java from an old tin can while the moon is riding high. Also, I forgot to mention my chromatic harmonica…so I can have music. Thus–without shaving–I’ll wander the wild, wild mountains and wait for Judgment Day.”
‘Cause it kind of feels like it isn’t far off now, doesn’t it? And he said all that some seventy years before Trump II:
“I believe there will be a Judgment Day, but not for this society. It is evil. It will fall. Men have to do what they want. It has all got out of hand–began when fools left the covered wagons in 1848 and rode to California for gold, leaving their families behind. And of course, there ain’t enough gold for all, even if gold were the thing. Jesus was right; Burroughs was right.”
Picturing the end of days, like terminal illness, brings about the immediate need to express one’s wants and desires and needs and petty human wishes. It makes you think, what are yours? And what do they say about you? Kerouac:
“I want to be left alone. I want to sit in the grass. I want to ride my horse. I want to lay a woman naked in the grass on the mountainside. I want to think. I want to pray. I want to sleep. I want to look at the stars. I want what I want. I want to get and prepare my own food, with my own hands, and live that way. I want to roll my own. I want to smoke some deer meat and pack it in my saddlebag, and go away over the bluff. I want to read books. I want to write books. I’ll write books in the woods. Thoreau was right; Jesus was right. It’s all wrong and I denounce it and it can all go to hell. I don’t believe in this society, but I believe in man, like Mann. So roll your own bones, I say.”
We put in the work of trying not to die and I wonder, what do my wants say about me?
I want to live a long life with a good woman by my side. I want to wake up pain free. I want to be rid of my depression. I want to get in a car and drive as far west as the continent will allow, then turn north into Alaska, and get so high on a peak that all I can see is a sea of points sticking out of the snow. I want a fire nearby when it’s time to sleep and coffee in the morning. I want the noise to quiet down.
I want to tell someone I love them. I want them to know that I mean it. I want to have to change my life for someone, because what is it to be alone? I want to wear fine clothing and take a cab to the Philharmonic. I want to drink cocktails late into the night while dancing to Sinatra. I want to smoke cigarettes on the balconies of Midtown. I want to two-step in smokey honky-tonks while Waylon sings over the loudspeaker. I want to sweat profusely and feel my body throbbing with life.
I want to write books. I want to be known for my ideas and my thoughts, and I want to inspire other people to choose a better world. I want to put my hands to work at only those things that make for creation, never for destruction. I want to believe in things again.
I want everyone to be healthy and rich and free. I want you all to have everything you could dream of, wrapped in a bow. I want every family to remain close. I want the wars to end. I want borders to dissolve and water to run freely through the streets, should we all be cleansed of our sins.
I want to sing at the top of my voice walking down the sidewalk. I want the internet to go away. I want people to enjoy the spirit of community again. I want to talk to strangers. I want the trains to run from the east to the west and bring people together. I want capitalism to go away. I want free rent for everyone. I want the end of money. I want the planet to remain habitable for our children. I want to explore space again. I want our societies to build things of wonder and achievement once again. I want to cheer people on. I want to erase all sarcasm. I want to speak truthfully, sincerely, and only with my intention from here on out.
I want to see my dog’s life made comfortable and easy at the end, under the sun, with a box of treats by her side. I want to cry the hardest I ever have on the day she goes, and I want to drive off, having done my work for her, leaving everything behind. I want to know that I tried, for her, for everyone, and that that was enough, now it’s time to go. I want the end of my years to come slow, peacefully, and silent. Preferably in the desert, under the soft, purple horizon, somewhere near West Texas. I want a radio playing Merle Haggard and a low ball glass of tequila. I want to come in from a hard day’s work and feel the rewards of human effort. I want to work for someone I love.
I want to do something big and powerful and full of light and I want the light to carry on forever.
I want a world that makes all that possible.
‡‡
THOMAS JOHNSON lives in Hoboken, New Jersey and writes in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The New School, New York, New York. Johnson grew up in East Texas, graduated the University of Texas at Austin, enlisted in the United States Army, lived in Germany, returned to the federal service, then moved to the east coast and received a Master of Arts in Writing from Johns Hopkins University, all in that order. He escaped Washington, D.C. by the skin of his teeth and is for the umpteenth time unemployed, but life remains beautiful.
Union Spring Literary Review 