On The Road

Amorella on the right heading to the unseen tunnel which is the reason for the zigzag symbol on the street sign. Drivers sometimes tool along at about forty-five or so until the right curve on up by where the tree limbs hang above the road. I chose this photo because it reminds me of where orndorff exists.

The real world has white and yellow lines and particular directions as to the driving experience. Most of the rules of the road around the world are simple and direct even if they are not always followed to the letter. There shouldn’t be much philosophical debate on stopping at a sign that said such.

 Physics and the threat of loss of limb or life are usually enough to keep a certain amount of focus on the road. And, good drivers are always driving for themselves and for the people around them just in case they aren’t driving as they should, that is, following the rules.

Orndorff thought this piece was going to be about Jack Kerouac and the Beat generation that he was once enrolled in back in the early sixties. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind, Poem, “5”, is orndorff’s favorite poem of those times. He really didn’t like Kerouac’s On the Road all that much, but he did enjoy the 1955 poem, “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.

Thanks for mentioning it, Amorella. I like to think of myself as a Beat in those days, at least in my head I was one. There were a couple of coffee houses down on or near High Street across from the main Ohio State campus where people gathered to sing a few songs and listen to some poetry along with drinking a little. Some patrons of those ‘real life’ arts were pseudo-intellectuals along with a few who were authentic, at least in my mind. Authenticity is one of the most important things to me, and I have to say it is almost a spiritual quality in a person’s character.

I would hope I am an authentic and an honest man. How else can one be at peace with one’s self? Along with this I have to admit that I do not fully know who I am, so authenticity is limited as is honesty. I always remember the translated words of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms. He said something akin to: “Here I stand, I can do no other.” That to me is the heart of authenticity.

I figure that if one might stand before G---D or an Angel of G---D this way, one might as well stand this way before anyone else. Keeps matters simple even though it doesn’t always work in practice. Polite respect where possible, that’s how I see it.

Orndorff thinks I’m interrupting because he is off on a lecture, but that is not the case. These words are his perspective and they hold true in the books as best as he can remember, and they will hold true here in this blog as long as I have anything to do with it. A person, any person, when standing alone, does best when sheorhe knows who sheorhe is. Otherwise, the moment is not real, it is not an existential moment.

With orndorff most moments are existential because he feels that one, his age and older, can be here one moment and gone the next. Being fully alive in the moment is the best he can do and he does it best when he is writing his thoughts, when he can read how real his thoughts are.

It is humbling to think that a few people may be reading my thoughts. By the same token, allowing others to read them makes me freer from the inside out whether the readers exist or not. – rho