The Dharma Bums: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Jack Kerouac

And suddenly everything Japhy had ever told me about Seattle began to seep into me like cold rain, I could feel it and see it now, and not just think it.

It was the work of the quiet mountains, this torrent of purity at my feet.

I was feeling happier than in years and years, since childhood, I felt deliberate and glad and solitary.

Sharp jags popped up from behind slopes, like childhood mountains I grayly drew.

Every time I felt bored I rolled another cigarette out of my can of Prince Albert; there’s nothing better in the world than a roll-your-own deeply enjoyed without hurry.

Sometimes I’d get mad because things didn’t work out well, I’d spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I’d be so mad I’d want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

O gnashing teeth of earth, where would it all lead to but some sweet golden eternity, to prove that we’ve all been wrong, to prove that the proving itself was nil…

I didn’t know anything any more, I didn’t care, and it didn’t matter, and suddenly I felt really free.

as I was hiking down the mountain with my pack I turned and knelt on the trail and said “Thank you, shack.” Then I added “Blah,” with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.