Existential icons

The only thing to believe in now is now, because the past already happened so no sense in worrying about that and the future, well that’ll be here fast enough anyway. Even if it is from total nihilism, a certain sense of freedom is born from that even. Neal experiences optimistic nihilism, as he “longer cared about anything (as before) but he also cared about everything in principle, and that is to say, it was all the same to him and he belonged to the world and there was nothing he could do about it.” Indeed, when nothing matters, everything matters. Kerouac describes Neal as tremendously excited about everything in his immediate surroundings he is experiencing. It all falls equally before judgment. Neal the mystic, he exists with no qualms, never questions his own actions and carries no burden of guilt, as he explains on 222: “troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung up.” To get hung up, you see, is to get dragged down. “The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced—tho we hate to admit it—in death.” Kerouac becomes afraid and paranoid on 332 as Neal drives maniacally toward Chicago, but soon resigned himself to whatever fate await, be it death on this road or some other time? Is there ever an ideal time to die? 

How does one become god?

The moment you accept them as such. Enormous egos allow the beats to consider themselves gods above others and their views superior. Kerouac imagined himself appearing before his friends: In their eyes I would appear strange and ragged like the prophet that has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was Wow." On page 341, Kerouac describes himself and Neal as, “ragged and dirty, looking like as if we had lived off locust,” just as John the Baptist did, the predictor of Christ’s arrival.