Friday, April 07, 2006

the fact of the matter is that i haven't been feeling all that creative, although it seems there might be something out there worth writing about. it would be good to be more drawn to sitting down and scribbling in the commercial way that bukowski ended up being, but that's not what it's about, it is more about doing the sort of work that really has meaning, wandering to and fro and writing long letters to old friends on the computer. I've been reading "some prefer nettles" in Japanese, and don't understand quite a bit of it, but do understand enough of it to keep going, I guess. i may not precisely know what a word means, but i can often guess and be right based on the context or maybe something about the character.
The cherry blossoms are in bloom in Japan, which is a major big deal. their big thing is to go out and get very drunk sitting under the sakura and all of that, and the whole blooming and then fading away thing is a big part of the japanese aesthetic and buddhist ideas of transience which are such a big deal in the poetry and consciousness of that particular scenario. That reminds me of brother lawrence, who when viewing the branches of a tree was struck by the fact that it would bloom again the next year, and in that moment was gripped by an earthshaking awareness of the power of the world which never left him, although that has not much to do with sakura, although they are both involving trees that bloom, which I guess would be the connection.
I've been thinking of getting back to pine, my old email program from the old days. apparently it is still being developed, and I liked something about its simplicity. Then again, do I really want to mess with the world in a way that will just frustrate me and make me want to be irritated and demoralized? Absolutely not.

I was in a room on the second floor across from a bar. The bar was called the Gangplank Cafe. From my room I could see through the open bar doors and into the bar. There were some rough faces in that bar, some interesting faces. I stayed in my room at night and drank wine and looked at the faces in the bar while my money ran out. In the daytime I took long slow walks. I sat for hours taring at pigeons. I only ate one meal a day so my money would last longer. I found a dirty cafe with a dirty propietor, but you got a big breakfact, hotcakes, grits, sausage, for very little.

-from Factotum, by Charles Bukowski


I'm glad I've gives up drinking, but there are a lot of interesting faces around, not only in bars.

No comments: