On the Road in Lowell, finally...

I finally made it to the Kerouac commemorative bus/walking tour on Sunday, Jun 17 in Lowell, MA. The guide, a gentleman by the name Roger, who happened to be French-Canadian himself, provided a very insightful account of Kerouac's writing and also his thought process, as far as the primary language of writing goes ("I sometimes dream in French...but I always think in French," he is said to have remarked.)

The tour started at the Kerouac commemorative monument on French Street in Lowell -- something I had not seen before even though I lived n Lowell for about a year...and did know vaguely about him...and then later have lived just about 25 mins north in Nashua, NH...

The monument comprises of " the eight large three-sided granite panels, each eight feet high, with writing on two of the sides. The Commemorative includes 15 passages from 11 books etched into the polished granite stone, which allows you to read the Kerouac’s words while the city of Lowell is reflected back to you. The panels that are placed on the outer boundary of the Commemorative represent Kerouac’s Lowell books and include passages from The Town and the City, Visions of Cody, Dr. Sax, Maggie Cassidy, Vanity of Duluoz, Lonesome Traveler, and On the Road. The inner panels, which represent Kerouac’s spiritual side, include passages from Book of Dreams, Mexico City Blues, Scriptures of the Golden Eternity, and Dr. Sax." [source]

...
and...

"The arrangement (in a circle) of the columns and the surface stones form a kind of Buddhist- Christian mandala. The symmetrical cross and diamond pattern of The Commemorative is a meditation on the complex Buddhist and Catholic foundation of much of Kerouac's writing."

That certainly is the charm of the commemorative, the space to walk between the powerful words of Kerouac...

We next visited several landmarks that Kerouac mentions in his books -- he seems to believe in very literal representations of objects and in a way that makes it easy to locate and recognize them -- the house he was born in, the house he lived as a young boy [both in Centralville, Lowell], his schools, the church he attended (?), and also many portions of downtown Lowell he was familiar with.

The tour concluded with a visit to his rather simple grave at the Edson cemetary...

"He honored life," the grave marker says. This, of course, was no Jim Morrison grave, tho' Kerouac too was a rider on the storm...
someone who seemed have done what Morrison sang about much later: "Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel"



After the tour I decided to take a peek at the exhibition of the "On the road" scroll:

It was partially unspooled in a glass case and the yellowing tracing paper of the scroll and the dark smudgy typing on it gave it the appearance of a real scroll! The exhibition is well mounted with several artifacts from Kerouac's life and short clippings from some of his poetry readings (American Haiku) and public appearances.