Dharma Selected The Unpublished Blog Bums: Employee Express-Posts a Mexican Panda
Megan Boyle’s Book
Jack Kerouac’s Book
When you get in a pickle you always look for a good out-me-not. It’s true. Getting “unstuck” is perhaps one of the least appealing practices humans engage in. And there’s not really a “great” way to do it. A lot of time jacking off is good, if that’s your thing, or maybe “rubbing one out” is more pertinent here since it could apply to both men and women. I wasn’t ever sure if the “out” part was representative of a literal component, like sperm, or the thing they call womens’ ejaculate (if you’re so lucky). In which case rubbing one out may or may not apply. The point is, it doesn’t get you unstuck. It’s just really fun to do.
You can’t read books when you’re stuck. This is not a productive angle. All those ideas running together in a straight line so much like a tunnel. You want the dark room sans skylight. You want maybe something like a brick wall for skin, that covers your eyes. Wash down a few documentaries and the imminent Arrested Development pandemonium (plenty of Gob compilations) and tune in to your favorite porn channel and you’re set. Dig in, bud. Let’s do it big.
In my spare time I’ve found I have plenty of insight to spare on the topic of two books which pair together something like mashed potatoes and the skins you threw in the garbage can. The two books in question are The Dharma Bums (1958) written by oft-misunderstood Beat protozoa Jack Kerouac and Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee (2011) keyed by LED-eyeballed Megan Boyle. One of these books is compiled mainly in “real time”. This I would suggest is inaccurate compared to the author’s current undertaking. The other is compiled mostly from Moleskines and napkins, weeks to months after the fact, which is pretty average-to-poor in my opinion. We all know the tendency fiction has for making its way into history. I also have no problem being a little shit when it comes to anything “Moleskine”. I stole my first one from Powell’s Bookstore in Portland when I was sixteen. And I think I lost it or filled it with confessional accounts of late teenhood. Perhaps both.
Save that barf in your mouth for a few sentences, because after a while, it all starts to taste the same.
I picture quite easily a scene in a low budget movie whereinwhich Megan Boyle is half-clothed lying on a bed (there are Christmas lights strung over an open window) and on the wind Jack Kerouac is summoning himself through a fit of Buddhist Shangri-La, into another, not-very-distant room, where he opens the tab labeled “Skype” and rings up little Megan with one very important question on his mind. The question is of course never revealed. Kerouac has a big mouth for the narrative, but get him down to the nuts and bolts and he just falls apart altogether. Megan, on the other hand, quickly becomes the “glue” in their correspondence, a cornerstone of Jack’s process, even when he’s stuck in a fit of drinking and “writer’s block”.
I heard a story about Jack. This is back when they still called him Jean-Louis, or, “Ti Jean”. Baby little boy up there in Massachusetts with another little baby called Gerard. His brother. He wrote a book about it. It’s called Visions of Gerard. My point is that his little FUCKING BROTHER died and the book hardly convinced me he’d ever set foot in a daisy patch (like the cover of my illustrated copy had foretold). I don’t even remember this book. It vanished while, during, already. A blemish only a few days’ living could erase.
It is possible that I’ve switched into “doublespeak”, as they say nowadays. There is always the threat. The possibility. The only possibilities now are threats. So consider this a threat: Megan Boyle has done something entirely different than Ti Jean. She has crafted an aloof assessment of a pretty bleak existence that others have now turned into an image akin to Rihanna on her best days. Whatever that means. Like, people think you “get” a book and then you’re famous. And that’s maybe the most glamorous thing in the world. I believe in those people in the way that I believe they are not threatening to the biology of survival. And I’m not talking about “writing”. What the fuck am I talking about.
look at these O Faces
I am talking about SBPMPEE. Megan’s first book. Perhaps if I was out getting fucked at acid parties in a tipi trading slugs of rotgut in a round of yabyum I’d be disinterested in Kerouac’s stories. But I’m not. I’m hanging around typing on a computer and listening to Spotify and going out at night spending too much money on drinks and contemplating my future. If I wanted to read about that, I’d be submitting to a fucked up masturbatory model of my own undoing. But that’s what’s fucked up. I want to RELATE. I want someone to tell me what they’re doing and to have it sound similar-to-identical to what I’m doing. Because I’ve never done this before. And we’re all doing it together.
So lather up, priddy babies. Wrap your hands around a little Jergen’s Jitter, or, if you’d prefer, the Old Jergen’s Jiggle. Whatever suits you. If we can’t all materialize a bit on the outside, in that ethereal moment, then in least we can watch. We can always do that, and it never gets old: hearing about it is almost just as good, which sometimes feels all the mo betta.
