When you have a virus—cold or flu—it comes and goes in waves, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. I woke in the night, thinking about how to continue my memoirs. There’s plenty left in the pipeline. But after age 21 and before 59, there’s a waste land: not an arid desert, but something like the book of Job. I say that, but I had better read Job to confirm. It would be a sin against literature to say things merely for effect.
Apart from a tacit resolution to post daily, I started to write this piece because I could find nothing I felt like reading, apart from Bukowski: have you come across his stories? I haven’t yet learned how to summarise his style and content in a couple of crisp sentences. Suffice that it mirrors the laconic desperation I felt in my body this morning, and which made it impossible for me to enjoy anything.
Another reason for writing was to proclaim a Sickness Liberation Manifesto. Why should my creativity be based exclusively on rude health? What value can there be in such a biased view of the world, as if only the sleekly fit were worthy to give voice? Don’t the sick have a valid viewpoint? Perhaps but I will not inflict upon you mine, for it was gloomy and tedious. It may be pure coincidence but after reading a few of Hank Bukowski’s stories my temporal artery meandered across my forehead like the Mississippi River, bulging fit to burst. I never run to the doctor: but give me scant cause and I’m as ready to panic as the next man. I expected to lose the sight of my eye in the next few days, with other organs failing in turn like dominoes knocking each other over. I decided that when my condition was terminal, I’d hang a sign round my neck “Nil by mouth” and spend my last days under a kindly tree, weather permitting.
Now you can see I should have stayed silent. I did! but there’s restless blood in my veins, and not just in my temporal artery. My elder son phoned to arrange an impromptu visit: he said he would arrive with family in 90 minutes. I tried to guess his delay to the nearest hour: it’s the only way I know to end up pleasantly surprised. The reasons as ever were outside his control. This time, they were not for the squeamish.
My son has the same restless gene as I, and plans to install for me a high clothes-line with pulleys galore, like the rigging of a sailing ship; as well as build me a “tropical garden” in our backyard with a pergola covered in creepers. He’s a landscape gardener, professionally disappointed that I like things as they are, or as they will evolve with the gentle help of Nature. Setting that aside, I’m glad that he and my elder daughter (ages 41 & 37) are as resistant to the junk culture and hyped-up economy as I am. I don’t think I played any role in teaching them that resistance—in fact they achieved it years before I did. I didn’t teach them values, but I might have stumbled on something more important: to shield them from the world’s values, leaving a vacuum in which to discover their own.
Perhaps one day it will be possible to write about that Waste Land, and with my reader discover whether or not it was all waste.
But I owe it to you, me and Bukowski to convey something of his writing. Here’s the first paragraph of his story Animal Crackers in My Soup. Where it goes after that, you could never guess.
I had come off a long drinking bout during which time I had lost my petty job, my room, and (perhaps) my mind. After sleeping the night in an alley I vomited in the sunlight, waited five minutes, then finished the remainder of the wine bottle that I found in my coat pocket. I began walking through the city, quite without purpose. When I was walking I felt as if I had some portion of the meaning of things. Of course, it was untrue. But standing in the alley hardly helped either.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Occasionally I will meet someone a generation or two older than myself who has stories of the old North Beach Beatnik days.
Two weekends ago I met a fellow with such stories. He complained of the dark outlooks of the beatnik community and their tales of doom and gloom. He said he appreciated the animated manner in which they told their tales in pubs and coffee houses, but he found them too pessimistic for his taste.
I note from your Bukowski selection that you may be reading material related to one of your earlier posts?
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Hi Charles, I don't understand your last para. Do you mean I mentioned Bukowski before?
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Gaps … I think we all have them.
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oh, dear – Bukowski. He was a local for many years, you know. That's strong drink and can loft you to paradise or plunge you to hell in a paragraph!
I never thought much of it, but reading Charles' comments pushes me to contextualize the beatniks historically. The first generation to come to maturity after the end of WWII, (which itself followed “the war to end all wars”) and in the midst of survivors guilt and fear of the atomic bomb. I'm adlibbing here, haven't thought this out, but when I think of the post war landscape I can only think of two possible US responses: sunny, faux-virginal and carefully unthinking, and completely desolate cynicism.
Of course, with Bukowski throw in alcoholism and various substance abuse issues….
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Vincent, I was referring to the erotic content in Bukowski's work.
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I guess there has to be some kind of balance between troubles and ease for creativity to happen. Too much of either would work against it I think
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With Hank Bukowski, it was his childhood rather than the war, but then he was German too. I don't think of him as an erotic writer: even less so than Henry Miller, though I was first drawn to him for the erotic content, or should I say the vicarious experience, for I was a virgin (not faux-virginal!) when I read his Cancer and Capricorn.
Funny you should talk about contextualizing the Beatniks historically. In my first term at university (October 1960) there was an essay competition. the title was Beats and Squares. I was rather more into living than writing essays at that stage but my researches catapulted me out of my blazer and creased trousers, and into Levi jeans. More importantly I discovered Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso and Kerouac – and never looked back. Bukowski I only heard of in the last few years.
Paul, I think that creativity is looked after by the Creativity Goddess—the Muse, if you will. the artist chooses to follow her and what happens, happens. Perhaps an early death; perhaps the curse of wealth and fame. Either of these can derail him on his path to Parnassus. I don't believe that the artist is a captive of circumstance as you suggest.
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Skid row in a bottle, like a sailing vessel, proud, mystified, but who cares, lol? I can feel that, but really don't want to, lol. I didn't know he carried it all the way into the modern day as he did, amazing, but in a way, maybe a tribute to the wasted interpretations of the American Dream, like now, he could be a prophet of what's coming, the demise of affluence and the middle class, the deluge of homelessness and despair, the New American Dream. Just Ramblin' without thinkin', lol, a prophet maybe?
Those years, I have some of them, want to talk or write about, but they want to force their way into depression and tears, citing failings and lessons barely learned, fights with the old lady, lapses with the kid, trouble with the friends, back-stabbing sob's! I have thought about it, but it seems I would have to twist them into something other than what they would want to be, that might mean to cure myself, I don't know, but it might be interesting to undertake it and find out!
Lots not to tell, too much I reject now, not regret, but reject.
I can always say, something had to be done, I did it, not always the best, same with them, the others, no righteousness there either.
Hell of a combination, Bucowski and those 'inbetween' years. Man could have a hangover from that Vincent!, might cure the flu tho! Like pouring a can of beer into a box of cheerios for breakfast, who likes milk? Ugh!
Thanks Vincent, that was different, lol!
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I hope you are feeling better!
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