What is the feeling when you’re driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it’s the too huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

—Jack Kerouac

I saw Jack Kerouac once. He was crossing the USC campus. You wouldn’t have known he was younger than me due to the crease between his brows, but it was him, semi-buff in his black muscle T-shirt, black cowboy boots and black jeans and perhaps he wasn’t Kerouac at all, but James Dean and he was younger than I was, too, shaking his head as he walked towards Kirk, alone, hitting the air with his hands as though he was so, so sorry. I never felt so old. Wiping the tears from my face with all of my fingertips, I found a tree as fast as I could.

And I hugged it.

Until campus security made me let go.