Letter to Bukowski
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
Mr. Bukowski, I can understand your torment and your cynicism. Tapping the keys alone in your apartment in Los Angeles, the symphony on a small radio overlaid by the background street sounds blowing in the open window. I can see the fresh poems falling from the typewriter toward chair legs but finding neither, coming to rest in grooves across beer cans. Though you never wrote about it, I imagine an oscillating fan spinning the midnight air, and the pale lamp light, a sickly yellow, drawing out the color in your skin.
I’ve read in your own works and those written by biographers that you led a rough life of homelessness and gambling addiction, and that alocoholism was your method for coping. I’ve read that your promising writing career was sidetracked for.a decade by bars and liquor stores and alleys where you slept off hangovers, but I now realize that the art form itself might have been one among lesser addictions that made your downfall so steep.
So many fall victim to it, this disease called writing. We share the same dehabillitating conditions with those we don’t know, whose names appear on book spines or above the copy blocks in newspapers and magazine. With anyone who scribbles in a journal or writes a simple letter or e-mail message, we share it – with anyone who has gone to the well and found the bucket empty and the source dried up except for the rotten leftover marsh at the bottom. This false lover called writing has romanced (but more often teased) me for the better part of 20 years, despite my faithfulness, my commitment to it and the profession.
Here’s the recent bitterness I’ve tasted: Yesterday, on the final day of the year – one that has been the best for me professionally and that I might have made the most significant strides in my abilities as a writer – I practically had to wrench words from my mind. I was working on two stories on deadline as I have been all week. The problems began even before the initial drafts, which is usually when I spill out all my thoughts, no matter how incongruent nonsensical, just to put them on paper. During the days leading up to deadline, I almost always scribble notes or sentences – sometimes entire paragraphs – when inspiration strikes, but this month, the place where those words were stored had been robbed. I know that must be hard for you to believe – a bard who takes a few sips of beer or a pull of whisky and taps the typewriter keys comfortably and careless of what comes out. If only I had the time to leave my work spilled on the floor and, after recovering from a hang over later in the day, toss out the pieces that miss the mark and keep the ones with a line or two of brilliance. I admire the fluidity in your approach and sometimes even the drunkeness. Most days, I’d trade my health for a few beautiful lines.
I would like to blame my recent lack of passion on the holidays, but I wasn’t looking forward to last few days in the year dwindling away. It has been so good to me. I suppose I am worn down, Mr. Bukowski, and if I knew where to find your gravestone, I’d gladly pour us drinks and bring a racing program for us to look over together.
