Fri, Oct 05, 2001 10:40PM -0600

WARNING: I am being overly melodramatic because I'm tired and I'm not looking forward to the immediate future and there are too many things on my mind, none of them relevant to the situation at hand....

Louise Ferdinand Celine. Charles Bukowski. Their books lay side by side at the Virgin Megastore in Vegas last winter, and maybe it was destiny. If someday I learn how to write, maybe they are the kind of man that I'm likely to turn into... thinking too much about my absurd powerlessness in a universe that will rend and tear me to bits, love and happiness nothing more than mere words to torture the credible soul. The stark ugliness and hopelessness of the world is the only Beauty, is the only Art, and all that matters is the Art, because that is all I have. Not because I'm even close to being good at it, but because without it I know that I'd be running completely on empty.

But I'm still young. I haven't developed the necessary sense of fatalism. In my moments of weakness, I still believe that I can be saved, that all I need is love and understanding. The Right Woman. The One. But miracles happen maybe once or twice in a millenium. There's no point in wishing on stars. There's no such thing as The One, and even if there were, the odds of finding The One are literally 1 in 6 billion or so, never mind the confounding factor of time. Probably about the same chance of winning the lottery. You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning.

Wishing is, in some ways, the first step to psychosis and delusion. If there is any sort of force that is going to change things, it lies inside of our hearts, like a tank of gasoline, slowly evaporating day by day. Some of us will get lucky, will catch fire, and set the world ablaze before crumbling into lifeless ash, blown into the wind, but for the rest of us, one day we'll wake up, the needle will be pointing to empty, and we'll wonder where our lives went. Or worse, we'll lie to ourselves and say that everything went according to plan, and that we've led the life we always wanted.

But I know normal, well-adjusted people do not think of these things. It is left for us who scream and rant in the periphery, for the sheer egotism of it, trying to say something that has never been said before, but it's all been said before. Whatever. I'll say it anyway.

Some quotes from What I've Been Reading:

"Even masturbation, at times like that, provides neither comfort nor entertainment. They you're really in despair." -- Bardamu from Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

"Out of all the millions of women, now and then you see one that brings it all out of you. There is something about the shape of them, the way they are hung together, a special dress that they are wearing, something about them that you cannot overcome." -- from "Rape! Rape!" by Charles Bukowski

"often, the state of the kitchen is the state of the mind, confused and unsure men, pliable men are the thinkers. their kitchens are like their minds, cluttered with garbage, dirty ware, impurity, but they are aware of their mind-state and find some humor in it. at times, with a violent burst of fire they defy the eternal duties and come up with a lot of shining that we sometimes call creation; just as at times they will get half drunk and clean up their kitchines. but soon again all falls into disorder and they are in the darkness again, in need of BABO, pills, prayer, sex, luck and salvation. the man with ever-orderly kitchen is the freak, however. beware of him. his kitchen-state is his mind-state: all in order, settled, he has let life condition him quickly to a basened and hardened complex of defensive and soothing thought-order. if you listen to him for ten minnutes you will know that anything he says in a lifetime will be essentially meaningless and always dull. he is a cement man. there are more cement men than other kinds of men. so if you are looking for a living man, first check his kitchen and save yourself time." -- from "Too Sensitive" by Charles Bukowski

"you begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics." -- from "Too Sensitive" by Charles Bukowski

"there are good women in the world, I've even met one or 2. then, there's the other kind..." -- from "Too Sensitive" by Charles Bukowski