In these long, bleak days of the winter months, I feel the sadness deep in my bones. It’s always there—nestled just beneath—but something about the cold and the dark gives it life and it creeps ever up until I can barely breathe. Some days I manage to find the little things that bring just enough beauty and light to get me through the day. Other days I drown in it. I want to be anyone else but me. To be anywhere else but here…

It’s 1998. On a cold night in December, Kristie wants to go somewhere—anywhere—just away.  Away from the college textbooks, the endless studying and the stifling country campus. When the hour slips past 9 pm, four of us jump in a car and begin the long drive to New York City.

The journey is quiet. We stare out our windows at the night rolling by, minds full and clouded, droning endlessly like the car engine and the scraping of the road as it moves beneath us. An hour slips by—trapped in our heads, rhythm of pavement, emptying—then a dim light from the back seat clicks on. We hear John shifting positions on his seat towards the light, and then his soft, deep voice begins, slowly penetrating the silence.

“Peyote Poem. ‘Clear—the senses bright—sitting in the black chair…’” His voice soothes, draws us away from the pavement. “‘The beautiful things are not of ourselves but I watch them…Writing the music of life in words.’” The road slips beneath. We listen to John’s voice, following Michael McClure through his peyote mind journey as the highway brings us ever further from our own familiar.  Still the road slips beneath.

“‘I have lived out the phases of life from patterned opulence to stark unheeding…I KNOW ALL THAT THERE IS TO KNOW, feel all that there is to feel…Perfection.’”

Suddenly New York City stretches before us in a mass of lights and a rainforest of tall concrete, heightening the awe we feel at this moment for the written word and how it reaches deep in our bones. Perfection. We wander the city, listening to each other read Philip Lamantia, Diane DiPrima and Amiri Baraka, drinking in the energy of the city as it mingles with the beauty of the night. We watch the strikingly diverse people that pass us on the street and sit around us in cafes. We bathe in the music that flows from windows and doorways and jazz clubs. We drink our fill of the night as the city’s glow slowly shifts to dawn.

Soon it is 5 a.m. and we are back in the car, listening to the drone of the road once again. Our eyes fall for awhile, heavy with the weight of early morning, until the sun begins to rise above the city skyline that we have long since left behind. John hands his Beat Reader over to Kristie and her faint, tired voice seeps slowly into our skin. “Sunflower Sutra. By Allen Ginsberg. ‘I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock…’” Her voice guides us back through the dirt and the chaos as the road continues to slip beneath. Rhythm of pavement. Emptying. Reminding me that there is always beauty to be found. Always. Even in the cold and the dark. “‘We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all golden sunflowers inside.’”

The sunrise paints our faces orange at that moment and we sit back to hold our memories there—hold them in that beautiful light of new day—before we return completely to where we came from.

And forget.