(don't) stop the madness

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say commonplace things, but burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."-jack kerouac

normal people can't seem to make sense of the mad ones. they look over, and with a concerned tone and a furrowed brow, make pleasant suggestions which are more within the bounds of traditional american life. they speak of things like "a phase", as though someone who is mad by kerouac's standards could just be going through a passionately nontraditional period. a disease, a cancer to be cured. they look at a person like chris mccandless and call him a stupid boy to have been so unprepared and later died as a result. they won't understand this, but were he alive to defend his choices, he probably wouldn't want to live any other way.

sparkly, exploding, breath-catching-in-your-throat fireworks don't often burn for very long periods of time. however, eighty "safe" years on earth is a cheap substitute for truly living out who you were created to be.