Happy Birthday, Jack!

Exactly 82 years ago today Jean-Louis Kerouac alias Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Boy, did that guy ever have an influence on my life!

While he is most famous for "On The Road" and he himself apparently considered the books about his childhood and early life as the most important, I got inspired by his most commercial piece of work -- The Dharma Bums.

I was still a teenager living in my hometown of Flensburg when I first read a German translation. I was instantly on fire. Finally here was a guy who did exactly what I wanted to do! And not only that, he also opened a few doors and windows into realms I had not even considered. Zen? I didn't have the foggiest notion, but I was determined to investigate it.

California was a bit far away, living in a wooden shack would have been suicidal in our temperatures, but at least there was almost a whole continent open for exploration by hitchhiking. I crisscrossed that continent over the next few years, read more books by Jack and his friends and reread "The Dharma Bums" many times.

There was absolutely no doubt in my mind: I wanted to become a Dharma Bum myself. So, with only fifty bucks in my pocket, I ventured into Morocco and ended up without a penny in Marrakech. Fortunately I still had the ticket for the ferry back to Algeciras in Spain. That trip only wetted my appetite for the real thing.

Two days after I graduated from high school, I started on the trip of all trips. Overland to Asia.

My head full of lines from "The Dharma Bums", I met people who were looking for the same dream, people who had lived the dream and embodied it. Many strange and wonderful things happened, some rather more dangerous than I was aware of at the time and after three months I had decided that I would study Chinese just like Japhy Ryder (Gary Snyder) had done in the book. I still very much wanted to be a Dharma Bum.

So I enrolled to study Chinese, went to China and after two years I moved to Taiwan where I still live now. I lived in an old Japanese wooden house with a wild garden full of bananas, bamboo and flying squirrels. I studied Kung Fu with an old Chinese master and after a while I spoke mostly Chinese. These days I even swear and dream in Chinese, but then again, by now I've been here for almost 22 years.

Somewhere along this time I realized that I in fact had become a Dharma Bum myself, not quite the same kind like the people in the book, but a Dharma Bum nonetheless.

So I bought a sailing boat, called it DHARMA BUM and went on a trip of a different kind. After that came DHARMA BUM II and right now I am looking for DHARMA BUM III.

And still, after all these years, I am looking. Looking for the dharma, the truth. Except that it is my very own personal truth which is not transferable to other people or even other circumstances.

Thank you for writing that book, Jack! And Happy Birthday!

© 2004 Holg / KrautHolg / Holger Jacobsen

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