The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship by Charles Bukowski

Author:Charles Bukowski
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Classics, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781574230581
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1997-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

12/9/91 1:18 AM

The tide ebbs. I sit and stare at a paper clip for 5 minutes. Yesterday, coming in on the freeway, it was evening going into darkness. There was a light fog. Christmas was coming like a harpoon. Suddenly I noticed that I was driving almost alone. Then in the road I saw a large bumper attached to a piece of grill. I avoided it in time, then looked to my right. There was a pile-up of cars, 4 or 5 cars but there was silence, no movement, nobody around, no fire, no smoke, no headlights. I was going too fast to see if there were people in the cars. Then, at once, evening became night. Sometimes there is no warning. Things occur in seconds. Everything changes. You're alive. You're dead. And things move on.

We are paper thin. We exist on luck amid the percentages, temporarily. And that's the best part and the worse part, the temporal factor. And there's nothing you can do about it. You can sit on top of a mountain and meditate for decades and it's not going to alter. You can alter yourself into acceptability but maybe that's wrong too. Maybe we think too much. Feel more, think less.

All the cars in that pile-up seemed to be gray. Odd.

I like the way philosophers break down the concepts and theories which have preceded them. It's been going on for centuries. No, that's not the way, they say. This is the way. It goes on and on and seems very sensible, this onwardness. The main problem for the philosophers is that they must humanize their language, make it more accessible, then the thoughts light up better, are more intersting still. I think that they are learning this. Simplicity is the key.

In writing you must slide along. The words can be crippled and choppy but if they slide along then a certain delight lights up everything. Careful writing is deathly writing. I think Sherwood Anderson was one of the best at playing with words as if they were rocks, or bits of food to be eaten. He PAINTED his words on paper. And they were so simple that you felt rushes of light, doors openin, walls glistening. You could see rugs and shoes and fingers. He had the words. Delightful. Yet, they were like bullets too. They could take you right out. Sherwood Anderson knew something, he had the instinct. Hemingway tried too hard. You could feel the had work in his writing. They were hard blocks stuck together. And Anderson could laugh while he was telling you something serious. Hemingway could never laugh. Anybody who writes standing up at 6 a.m. in the morning has no sense of humor. He wants to defeat something.

Tired tonight. Damn, I don't get enough sleep. I would love to sleep until noon but with the first post at 12:30, add the drive and getting your figures ready, I have to leave here about 11 a.m., before the mailman gets here. And I'm seldom asleep until 2 a.

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