Chuckie Buks

I've been reading a lot of Charles Bukowski lately. I feel like he is me. Or at least a version of how I like to think of myself. First of all, Chuck doesn't give a FUCK. But I'm too much of a nice fucking guy to follow through on being like Chuck. Yeah, I drink a lot of whiskey. Yeah, I smoke like it's going out of style (which it is NOT!). Yeah I think about women almost constantly, albeit sometimes in more abstract ways than others. I wish I could be that gruff old man, playing chess in the park with a lifelong friend on an autumn afternoon (because I was sleeping all morning) looking around quickly and passing a big old flask back and forth. Yelling obscenities at the kids skateboarding by. Those bastards. No respect for anyone but themselves. Throwing my smoldering cigarette butts on the cold and leaf covered cobbles at my feet. Then we finish the game, maybe get lunch at a bar, say our goodbyes and agree to meet up and do the same thing next week. Then I go home, turn on the news, maybe I have a dog who is just as jaded as I am. And we just sit there. Mumbling at the TV, everything is wrong with the world, and we know how to fix it.

I've been writing a lot recently, which is nice. It started when I did NaNoWriMo last month. I'm not particularly proud o the final product. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud as hell that I got it done, and soon I'm gonna have that sweet sweet winner tshirt to wear around and prove that I'm better than other people, but the content isn't great. I guess that's acceptable for writing about 2000 words a day and not editing anything. I think there is definitely a solid foothold for a story in there, but especially the second half of the story just kind of devolved into some weird socio-philosophical manifesto. I hit a wall, you see, and instead of just working through it, I skipped all the parts I didn't know how to write. As a result, the second half of the story has turned into a lot of weird and only thinly related events without a through line. Still though, it's done.

Because I got into a habit of writing a lot, I've been trying to keep it up. I doubt many people know about my secret urge to be a famous poet. But yeah. I started carrying my little black book around again and scribbling in it. I've been averaging at least one good idea for a poem a day, some of them I flesh out, some I don't. It's kind of nice in the dead time between classes. I'll go find some quiet part of the university and just sit down, enjoy the scenery, maybe just watch people walk by, and try to write something.

I hope to god I never lose that little black book. It has my name and phone number in the front of it, but if anyone ever really looked through it, I fear they would think me insane. There's a lot of weird shit in there. Things no one besides me was ever meant to read. A lot of weird symbols, a couple half pages just covered with the same words written over and over again in different patterns and styles. I have an image to maintain, goddamnit.