I want to run away to the woods and find the perfect Christmas tree.

"Suddenly I found myself on Times Square.

I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square;

and right in the middle of a rush hour, too,

seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York 

with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream-

grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried 

in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City.

The high towers of the land- the other end f the land, the place where Paper America is born.

I stood in a subway doorway, trying to get enough nerve to pick up a beautiful long butt,

and every time I stooped great crowds rushed by and obliterated it from my sight,

and finally it was crushed."

excerpt from "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac

photos by William Eggleston