You’ll come to when you lean your face over the nose will fall with it – that is know as death. You’ll come to angular rages and lonely romages among Beast of Day in hot glary circumstances made grit by the hour of the clock – that is know as Civilization. You’ll roll your feet together in the tense befuddles of ten thousand evenings in company in the parlor, in the pad – that is know as, ah, socializing. You’ll grow numb all over from inner paralytic thoughts, and bad chairs, – that is known as Solitude. You’ll inch along the ground on the day of your death and be pursued by the Editorial Cartoon Russian Bear with a knife, and in his bear hug he will poignard you in the reddy blood back to gleam in the pale Siberian sun – that is known as nightmares. You’ll look at a wall of blank flesh and fritter to explain yourself – that is know as Love. The flesh of your head will recede from the bone, leaving the bulldog Determination pointing thru the pique-jaw tremulo jaw bone point – in other words, you’ll slobber over your morning egg cup – that is known as old age, for which they have benefits. Bye and bye you’ll rise to the sun and propel your mean bones hard and sure to huge labors, and great steaming dinners, and spit your pits out, aching cocklove nights in cobweb moons, the mist of tired dust at evening, the corn, the silk, the moon, the rail – that is known as Maturity – but you’ll never be as happy as you are now in your quiltish innocent book-devouring boyhood immortal night.

Jack Kerouac. Doctor Sax. 1977.