Reading Charles Bukowski poems. They will keep you honest. But honesty is a bitch when you’re employed and don’t hate your boss and don’t drink too much and don’t give a shit about women. Honesty is nothing. I think and feel nothing. Wake up, healthy breakfast, bike to the train, sit down and nod kindly at my fellow commuters. Open the laptop. An hour with no internet. A gift carved out of the day. Nothing comes out of your fingers because nothing’s there.
I don’t hate anybody. I don’t care about the government. Women are just women. They’re still out there, I still want them. But wanting to fuck some teenager on the street is so old now it’s like the weather. Nothing happens. I go to the gym. I’m unhappy that they got rid of all the good magazines. That’s the only emotion I feel in a day. Cook chicken and jerk off. Three dollar bottle of wine, fall asleep watching a movie. Nothing.
Having a normal life feels like waiting out the clock to die and even knowing that gives you nothing. People are out there writing things. Elaborate novels. Political screeds. They get pussy and make a living. But he’s right, that’s all nothing. Even these words about those things being nothing are nothing. If it isn’t exploding out of you then don’t do it, he says. Well what the fuck am I supposed to do then? Something’s gotta show up on the page. People need new words to read on the toilet. Take their mind off of work.
You need pain to make something. And it can’t be fake pain that you chase. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get hit by a truck.
