i know it's not christmas

[treeline]

All you see is marshes and great black distances of night and far off, on hills, the little communities with Christmas lights in their windows blearing red, blearing green, blearing blue, suddenly sending pangs through me and i think, "ah America, so big, so sad, so black, you're like the leaves of a dry summer that go crinkly ere August found it's end, you're hopeless, everyone you look on you, there's nothing but the dry drear hopelessness, the knowledge of impending death, the suffering of present life, lights of Christmas won't save you or anybody, any more you could put Christmas lights on a dead bush in August, at night, and make it look like something, what is this christmas you profess, in this void?...in this nebulous cloud?"

from "Lonesome Traveler", by Jack Kerouac

i read this the other night and i think it's righteous.