Living in the slipstream, listening to Jack Kerouac’s book ‘On the Road’, and addressing problems at home and at work. Being on the slipstream means living at a different level than one normally is accustomed. Something like getting on a stream and following the currents, trying to establish some equilibrium. We are living on a new age, where the stage has been ‘reset’, that’s what the head of GE said when determining the new sign posts. It’s like all the old markers have been swept away. In Asia, it was always like that all along while looking at the roads leading to China now that the dragon has finally awakened. It’s a frightening sight to see the new cities springing up in the Chinese coast and large factories producing stuff. It’s like a monolith consuming everything like raw materials, in its path.
Living in the slipstream, listening to Jack Kerouac’s book ‘On the Road’, and addressing problems at home and at work. Being on the slipstream means living at a different level than one normally is accustomed. Something like getting on a stream and following the currents, trying to establish some equilibrium. We are living on a new age, where the stage has been ‘reset’, that’s what the head of GE said when determining the new sign posts. It’s like all the old markers have been swept away. In Asia, it was always like that all along while looking at the roads leading to China now that the dragon has finally awakened. It’s a frightening sight to see the new cities springing up in the Chinese coast and large factories producing stuff. It’s like a monolith consuming everything like raw materials, in its path.
Looking for the new normal is the operative sentence. It’s scary to be alive for some when all the old truths don’t seem to matter anymore. Health care reform for example, being passed recently has unhinged a few people in the conservative right. It’s like the end of the world. But so has the collapse of housing prices, the fall of financial institutions, the rise of China and India and so on. But that’s what it means to be on the road. To accept everything that comes on the road and adapt. Kerouac and the beatniks used a lot of alcohol and drugs to understand so maybe some sort of assistance is needed such as meditation and Tai Chi to avoid the substance abuse. It’s a ground breaking work that people often mislabel as a drug filled hedonistic voyage along the American highways. But I think it is a much more mature work compared to Alan Ginsberg or William Burroughs.
Admittedly, there is no transcending goal or noble objective in the novel. Just a drunken movable feast led by charmingly, funny deviants. It lacks the weight of Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’. Somehow the psychological abuse and carnage described in the book reminds one of the financial institutions and their greed and excess. Established institutions and even countries all plunged headlong on the road to financial ruin. It has all brought everyone to a new level of overindulgence. The new stage has disturbed many and the reaction is either to increase regulation and control or accept the new playing field. The new normal is radical wealth or excessive debt and no in between. Perceptions are rapidly changing. Watching the excellent movie ‘Milk’ would shock conservatives as well as it’s about a gay rights leader who was assassinated in San Francisco.
Gay movement is rightfully rising to the proper place, following the principle of equal rights for all and health care as well becoming basic human right shows there is progress in the world. ‘Broke back Mountain’ is the new normal which would cause old heroes like John Wayne to roll in their graves. Perhaps there is still hope for the old normal with sensible people trying to keep things in a normal groove. Like Sal Paradise in Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ or people like Jaime Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase or even Barack Obama. Sensible people who try to navigate the new normal and try to bring order for the rest of us. Make sense? At least we still have Warren Buffet who through the years has profited through the changes and who one can learn from.
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