I took the wheel and drove among reveries of my own, through Linares, through hot, flat swamp country, across the steaming Rio Soto la Marina near Hidalgo, and on. A great verdant jungle valley with long fields of green crops opened before me. Groups of men watched us pass from a narrow old-fashioned bridge. The hot river flowed. Then we rose in altitude till a kind of desert country began reappearing. The city of Gregoria was ahead. The boys were sleeping, and I was alone in my eternity at the wheel, and the road ran straight as an arrow. Not like driving across Carolina, or Texas, or Arizona, or Illinois; but like driving across the world and into the places where we would finally learn ourselves among the Fellahin Indians of the world, the essential strain of the basic primitive, wailing humanity that stretches in a belt around the equatorial belly of the world from Malaya (the long fingernail of China) to India the great subcontinent to Arabia to Morocco to the selfsame deserts and jungles of Mexico and over the waves to Polynesia to mystic Siam of the Yellow Robe and on around, on around, so that you hear the same mournful wail by the rotted walls of Cadiz, Spain, that you hear 12,000 miles around in the depths of Benares the Capital of the World. These people were unmistakably Indians and were not at all like the Pedros and Panchos of silly civilized American lore - they had high cheekbones, and slanted eyes, and soft ways; they were not fools, they were not clowns; they were great, grave Indians and they were the source of mankind and the fathers of it. The waves are Chinese, but the earth is an Indian thing. As essential as rocks in the desert are they in the desert of 'history.' And they knew this when we passed, ostensibly self-important moneybag Americans on a lark in their land; they knew who was the father and who was the son of antique life on earth, and made no comment. For when destruction comes to the world of 'history' and the Apocalypse of the Fellahin returns once more as so many times before, people will still stare with the same eyes from the caves of Mexico as well as from the caves of Bah, where it all began and where Adam was suckled and taught to know. These were my growing thoughts as I drove the car into the hot, sunbaked town of Gregoria.

- Jack Kerouac's impressions on driving through northern Mexico, c. 1950 (On the Road)

This project - human impressions - is about the impressions we form, and the impressions we make on others, as we make our way along the road in life. It's about exploring our reactions to each other and to life's moments, and exploring the stories that arise from our encounters. It's about sharing life's stream of consciousness and what Kerouac called the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being.

It's also about making connections and gaining an understanding of one another, so that we no longer think of each other as Fellahin Indians or moneybag Americans, or anything else that detracts from the humanity of any one of us, so that we may learn to see each other as individuals.

The project's spirit is reflected in this meeting between Kerouac (Sal), Neal Cassady (Dean) and some Mexican kids in the sunbaked town of Gregoria:

'Hee! Wheel Hoo!' yelled Dean. He was wide awake and jumping up and down in that drowsy Mexican street. 'Let's all go!' I was passing Lucky Strikes to the other boys. They were getting great pleasure out of us and especially Dean. They turned to one another with cupped hands and rattled off comments about the mad American cat. 'Dig them, Sal, talking about us and digging. Oh my goodness, what a world!'

 What a world indeed. I hope you can dig it.