Day 22 Kerouaction: On Gifts

Day 22 in The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions is titled, "On Gifts," and references the above passage from The Dharma Bums.

It's one of my favorite passages in all of Jack's work. The paradoxical imagery of using a "diamondcutter of mercy" just slays me. As readers of The Daily Beat know, I got a tattoo of that phrase a couple of weeks ago. Even though I find it to be a gem of a phrase, a Google search reveals very few hits relevant to Jack, and most of them are from this blog! I find that very weird. And cool at the same time.


The point of the entry in my book, though, is about gift-giving. In this case, Jack gave from his heart and gave something that was uniquely his to give: words.

What is it that can uniquely come, that can only come, from you to another? That is something to ponder carefully the next time a gift is in order.

Tomorrow: We leave The Dharma Bums behind and venture into On The Road, which has a total of 78 entries in my book (22 + 78 = 100). If we get damn lucky, the series will still be going when The Movie comes out.