"The American police are involved in psychological warfare against those Americans who don’t frighten them with imposing papers and threats."

"There’s no defense. Poor people have to expect to have their lives interfered with ad infinitum by these neurotic busybodies. It’s a Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don’t exist to their satisfaction. Neal was so mad he wanted to come back to Virginia and shoot the cop as soon as he had a gun. 'Pennsylvania!' he scoffed. 'I wish I knew what that charge was! Vag, probably; take all my money and charge me vag. Those guys have it so damned easy. They’ll out and shoot you if you complain, too.' There was nothing to do but get happy with ourselves again and forget about it. When we got through Richmond we began forgetting about it and soon everything was OK. In the Virginia wilderness suddenly we saw a man walking on the road. Neal zoomed to a stop. I looked back and said he was only a bum and probably didn’t have a cent. 'We’ll just pick him up for kicks!' laughed Neal. The man was a ragged bespectacled mad type walking along reading a paperbacked muddy book he’d found in a culvert by the road. He got in the car and went right on reading; he was incredibly filthy and covered with scabs. He said his name was Herbert Diamond and that he walked all over the USA knocking and sometimes kicking at Jewish doors and demanding money. 'Give me money to eat. I am Jew.' He said it worked very well and that it was coming to him. We asked him what he was reading. He didn’t know. He didn’t bother to look at the title page. He was only looking at the words, as tho he had found the real Torah where it belonged, in the Wilderness. 'See? see? see?' cackled Neal poking my ribs. 'I told you it was kicks. Everybody’s kicks, man!'"

Kerouac, Jack. "On the Road: The Original Scroll" (p. 238). Kindle Edition.

I'm reading that as a consequence of searching for the word "poor" in the only Jack Kerouac book I have in searchable form. I was looking for "poor" because I'd read — in a non-Kerouac book — "Just a moment before, I was feeling a little like Jack Kerouac in that line that Gregory hated, when Kerouac says how, because he was poor, everything in the world belonged to him."

That line, it turns out, isn't in "On the Road." It's in "Visions of Cody." I found it here: "Everything belongs to me because I am poor." Why would you hate that line? "Gregory" was Gregory Corso, and the book I was reading was "When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School." I have been reading that book for practically the entire history of this blog! Here's my post from March 15, 2004, which says I've been reading the book for the past month.

Line from the post that really places it in the past: "Ah! Too bad there weren't video cameras everywhere, because that could be the perfect reality show, combining The Apprentice and The Osbournes!" (the book is about going to study at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics, where the teachers are famous beat poets who turn out to be — as I put it in '04 — "all old men, somewhat addled and shambling" and the author finds that he is "not quite so much a student as an apprentice").

Yes, why can't I just get through the book, which is quite likable? Obviously, I got very distracted by the blog and fell out of the habit of reading things in paper form. But I picked it up again today because the light was so good for reading outside. It was bright but overcast. I'd read paper books outside all the time if the light could be like that. It was 72°.

"This weather is perfect," I said. "This is the weather in Limbo."

I was talking to Meade, who said: "Limbo, Kansas."