When I was a young man I read only two writers who wrote about love in that puresweetmiserable way that told me they had felt what I’d felt. Jack Kerouac was one of ’em.

Kerouac: always so good at connecting the love and suffering he felt with the love and suffering the reader has felt:

no girl had ever moved me with a story of spiritual suffering and so beautifully her soul showing out radiant as an angel wandering in hell and the hell the selfsame streets I’d roamed in watching, watching for someone just like her and never dreaming the darkness and the mystery and eventuality of our meeting in eternity,”

or the frivolous people-watching kind of eye to eye love that passes if, when you don’t catch it

“A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world”

just take your time

“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”

Love is Holy, love is Dharma (truth):

“Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, “God, I love you” and looked to the sky and really meant it. “I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.” To the children and the innocent it’s all the same.”

Still, love oughta be fun:

“Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH…”

At least, at first. Later on, it’s usually sad, all so very sad.

“And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.”

But it’s very impermanent sadness makes it precious.

“Will you love me in December as you do in May?”

Bonus: