As usual, Jack Kerouac has echoed my life in his writing. My memories often resonate with his passages and observations on life. In his book the Big Sur, Kerouac describes his beatnik friends all living together in a flat in Frisco. It was like looking into a mirror of my partners in crime in Roxburgh Place. We lived like the moment was all we had, like the bottle would disintegrate were it not consumed immediately, like sunrise and sunset were inconsequential to our actions. The road came at us.

"It's a wonderful place but at the same time a little maddening, in fact a whole lot maddening... and at night there are bottlecrashing parties usually supervised by wild Pascal who is a sweet kid but crazy when he drinks... the kitchen was also the main talking room where everybody sat in a clutter of dishes and ashtrays and all kinds of visitors came-...the phone rang consistently- even wild hepcats from around the corner came in with bottles... there was Zen, jazz, booze, pot and all the works but it was somehow obviated (as a supposedly degenerate idea) by the sight of a 'beatnik' carefully painting the wall of his room."

As the dripping blue spray-paint on the wall in my brother's Brooklyn apartment reads "Look at us, young Bohemians just trying to find our way in the world." And so we do.