Remember that time you read that one book? The book that made something click inside your head and now you live your whole life based on something in this book? I had a book like that and I hope you did too at some point. If you will allow me -- like you have a choice. I am the one typing here and YOU WILL READ WHAT I TYPE!-- I will tell you a little bit about the book and the author that impacted me.

Lets see, it was the first couple years of college and I had stumbled into a drawing course taught by the strangest guy ever. His name is Bob Granger and he is the most laid back dude ever. He shuffled into class on the first day sporting a rockin' plaid shirt, dark glasses, shaggy non-cut hair and a crazy full beard. He would talk of lying face-down in the grass out on the quad and making love to the earth. He argued about the voting rights of the bears when a hunting law was passed in his native Wisconsin. I don't think we put pencils to paper in his class for the first 6 weeks. It was all about thinking, talking and trying to figure out what was important to each of us and why.

Bob gave me a copy of a book when I told him I had never read it. I read the book and I liked it, I enjoyed the journey that the characters took and the situations they were involved in. That book was "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. I read it. I kinda got into it, but I am not certain that it rocked my world. -- Now wait. You are probably thinking "this dip told us he was going to tell us about a life changing book/author that impacted his life and now he is telling us that he KINDA' liked the book?" Just wait for it. I swear, television has rotted your brains.

I read "On the Road". I liked it. I liked it enough to go pick up another book by Jack. This book was Dharma Bums. When I read about Ray hanging with Japhy at his tiny shack, I could see everything. I was there with Ray, eating fried rice and sitting under the tree among the flowers, as Japhy tried to teach him about zen. As Ray tried to reconcile his New York, party lifestyle on the east coast with his open minded, zen mentality on the west coast, I was trying to open my own mind from the narrow confines of what I thought I knew, to the crazy thoughts of how light affected me and if trees cared to be tied up. (The climbing club was learning how to tie knots and had tied up all the trees in the quad one day. To see purple climbing ropes binding rich brown trunks against the screaming, green grass was quite a sight from our windows on the fourth floor.)

In one section of the book, Ray borrows some heavy boots from Japhy and they climb up a mountain, leaping from rock to rock in a beautifully complicated dance. They compose tiny haiku as they jump among the boulders and through the poems they learn more about the nature that surrounds them. I think this is what Bob was trying to get us to do. He was leading us among the rocks and asking us to look at the things around us. Bob was our Bodhisatva trying to show us the path to enlightenment, just like Japhy was trying to teach Ray.

So "Dharma Bums" got to me. It made perfect sense to me then and it still makes sense to me. I have tried to follow the path ever since I finished the book. I am still trying to be a better Buddhist. In my head, you never get it right until you get it right. So until I do, I write tiny haiku and I try to spend a bit of time out among the trees letting the grass know that we are still friends. So why am I telling you this?

"Dharma Bums" was written in 1958 at the height of "On the Road's" success and basically covers Kerouac's life as he comes to terms with the success he has been thrown into. "On the Road" is having an anniversary this year. It has been fifty years since publication and there is a bit of interest in the whole thing. John Leland has a new book called "Why Kerouac Matters" and he is coming down from New York just to talk with you guys. Ron Collins is going to be there with us and he is going to introduce the event.

So, wait. Back up a second. Who the hell is John Leland? John Leland is a New York Times writer who comes from a long line of John Lelands all of them famous on one level or another. The first John Leland I found was born in London in 1506 and is described as the 'Father of Local English History' and his Itinerary introduced the shire as the basic unit for studying the history of England. Who knew? Hertfordshire? Shropshire? Worcester? Cheshire? All his idea.

The second John Leland I found was born in 1754 and was a Baptist minster in Massachusetts and Virginia. This Leland is never mentioned directly in the episode of the West Wing, but he was the one that brought the Mammoth Cheese to the White House as a gift to Thomas Jefferson. He died in 1841 being the man that brought a 1400 pound cheese to Washington DC. You should thank him the next time you have a grilled cheese at Tonic. Know what kind of cheese it was? Cheshire.

John Leland has his own center in Arlington. I have no idea what goes on there, but I have the address if John Leland wishes to pop in to his center and say hello. If he has any extra time, he will hand out with us at Lansburgh and talk about his new book. I learned a lot of things about John tonight, if I can find one thing that links him to Cheshire, I will know for certain that he is of the famous Leland family and not some upstart like that guy who sells real estate in Spokane.

Editor's note: If you have an extra couple of hours, Google 'John Leland' and read up on all the Lelands through history. Even the real estate guy.
If you have one extra hour, watch the big block of cheese episode of West Wing. It is a good one. So good that it warranted a sequel. Check it out.