The Borderlands Cafe, Part Two

With a nod to Carl Jung, here's Part Two of a Tale from the Road as told in Brother Gypsy's words, about his dance with the Veil that separates this world from the next, while Kerouac and the Beat-boys do their thing. Was it real? What is reality?

I'm stone cold sober. Not a drink for weeks, except for the metal that's coursing through my veins, the metal that's killing me. And I want you to make the annotations as the writer of this, the condition I was in when you came to wake me up, and what you saw in my eyes. Did I come back from the Veil, or am I mad? (Chronicler -- You're not mad.)

The wagon, the set, those were all props that my mind provided. But I have no doubt that I danced with the Veil with Kerouac and the Beat-boys. The last line for me, for my gravestone: "One Should Never Fear the Veil."

Tell them about me not breathing, with the red eyes and non-reactive pupils, the low body temperature. Tell them I answered after sixty seconds of not breathing, that I told you I had lunch with Kerouac and my mom, that you had to ask me who I was, who he was.

Most of America, when they looked at the book "On the Road," they saw a man with his hair all long, and a beard, and they saw a bum, a homeless wild man. It's lucky the book ever sold at all. Truthfully, he'd just come in from the wilderness.

He'd been sitting in a fire watchtower up on a mountain, alone in the woods writing for like, a couple of months. And they didn't see his eyes. But I saw his eyes when I saw that book. His eyes were all shiny and alive, and he had Knowledge, knowledge not many have: what it is to be truly alive. Not many get that.

They think they know. They mouth the words. People will think they understand, but they don't. You can't understand till you've been there. The way some might convince themselves that they understand the desperation and hope of tumbleweed coffee. But unless you've been there, you don't get it. You totally don't get it.

Just like someone is going to think they know what it's like to dance with the Veil, but when they get there, they're going to sit in their wheelchairs and eat their slop, or whatever symbology presents itself. They're not going to get the fact that Kerouac and I went to this place where everyone was at the border of life and death and started doing what we do, we Live. Even when our bodies give out, we live.

That's it. That's the story. I danced with the Veil again and came back. The last time, I walked through the Veil and came back.

#TalesoftheRoad, #BrotherGypsyandtheVeil, #KerouacandtheBeatBoys, #deathanddying, #symbology, #dreams, #Jungianarchetypes