Sunday, January 23, 2011

What a great way of putting what I thought was impossible to express clearly

I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've been depressed. I've felt awful - awful beyond all, but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me.

In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?"

Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidfy themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!

-Charles Bukowski

Monday, January 17, 2011

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Prufrock distilled to its finest parts. I love T.S. Eliot

Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

There will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions.

And indeed there will be time to wonder, "Do I dare?'' and, "Do I dare?''
Do I dare disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Should I have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.

Would it have been worth while to have bitten off the matter with a smile, to have squeezed the universe into a ball to roll it toward some overwhelming question? It is impossible to say just what I mean!

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.