“I was born at five in the afternoon when the sun was red on the rooftops of March and snow was melting in the warm mysterious air. Pisces, the 12th, 1922, Lowell, Massachusetts, Jean Louis Kerouac. The soul fell sighing into the fault sour sea of suffering wondering instantly on sight of the grainy makeup of the portals of the world. Why? The Infinite had woven itself a new limited wonderer trapped inside a burden of flesh at the dissolution of which years later in the sweet hour of the death it would re-admit to its imageless ecstasy which is not only eternal like ‘God’ but I am ‘God’ as you are who am me as I am you. The babe is pure but only bearer of mind in a body of dung.”
The Buddhist Years Collected Writings
Jack Kerouac’s Buddhist account of his birth.