It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the beauty and transient nature of life as observed during a journey.
In this quote, Jack Kerouac captures the breathtaking moment of arriving in San Francisco, evoking a strong sense of wonder and appreciation for the city's allure. The imagery of the 'fabulous white city' and the 'blue Pacific' highlights the enchanting scenery, while the mention of 'late afternoon of time' suggests a poignancy in life's fleeting moments, underscoring how journeys shape our experiences and perceptions.
In practice
In a speech about travel, one could use this quote to illustrate the transformative power of exploration.
Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.
The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories.
Holding up my purring cat to the moon. I sighed.
What's in store for me in the direction I don't take?
The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky
You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.
His overriding life necessity was not love, it was his profession…He had come to medicine not by coincidence or calculation but by a deep inner desire. Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all the actors the world over are similar.
To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!
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