Big Sur

by Jack Kerouac

The once pleasant thumpthump gurgle slap of the creek is now an endless jabbering of blind nature which doesnt understand anything in the first place—My old thoughts about the slit of a billion years covering all this and all cities and generations eventually is just a dumb old thought, “Only a silly sober fool could think it, imagine gloating over such nonsense” (because in one sense the drinker learns wisdom, in the words of Goethe or Blake or whichever it was “The pathway to wisdom lies through excess”)—But in this condition you can only say “Wisdom is just another way to make people sick”—“I’m SICK” I yell emphatically to the trees, to the woods around, to the hills above, looking around desperately, nobody cares—I can even hear Ron singing at his lunch inside.