Desolation Angels (Jack Kerouac)

One summer, old Jacky was stationed on Desolation Peak in the Cascade Mountains with a view of a small mountain named Hozomeen. Though he claims to have been without mind-altering substances, this is what his cocaine-fueled brilliance captured on the page:

“The void is not disturbed by any kind of ups and downs, my God look at Hozomeen, is he worried or tearful? Does he bend before storms or snarl when the sun shines or sigh in the late day drowse? Does he smile? Was he not born out of madbrained turmoils and upheavals of raining fire and now’s Hozomeen and nothing else? Why should I choose to be bitter or sweet, he does neither?—Why can’t I be like Hozomeen and O Platitude O hoary old platitude of the bourgeois mind ‘take life as it comes…’

Does the Void take any part in life and death? Does it have funerals? Or birth cakes? Why not I be like the Void, inexhaustibly fertile, beyond serenity, beyond even gladness, just Old Jack (and not even that)…

Hold still, man, regain your love of life and go down from this mountain and simply be—be—be the infinite fertilities of the one mind of infinity, make no comments, complaints, criticisms, appraisals, avowals, sayings, shooting stars of thoughts, just flow, flow, be you all, be you what it is, it is only what it always is—Hope is a word like a snow-drift—This is the Great Knowing, this the Awakening, this is Voidness—So shut up, like, travel, adventure, bless and don’t be sorry—Prunes, prunes, eat your prunes—And you have been forever, and will be forever, and all the worrisome smashings of your foot on innocent cupboard doors it was only the Void pretending to be a man pretending not to know the Void—“