Free The Captain Is Out to Lunch by Charles Bukowski

heroes are long past gone and I've had to live with others. Some of the new creators, some of the newly famous. They aren't the same to me. I look at them, listen to them and I think, is this all there is? I mean, they look comfortable... they bitch... but they look COMFORTABLE. There's no wildness. The only ones who seem wild are those who have failed as artists and believe that the failure is the fault of outside forces. And they create badly, horribly.
    I have nobody to focus on anymore. I can't even focus on myself. I used to be in and out of jails, I used to break down doors, smash windows, drink 29 day a month. Now I sit in front of this computer with the radio on, listening to classical music. I'm not even drinking tonight. I am pacing myself. For what? Do I want to live to be 80, 90? I don't mind dying... but not this year, all right?
    I don't know, it just was different back then. He writers seemed more like... writers. Things were done. The Black Sun Press. The Crosbys. And damned if once I didn't cross back into that age. Caresse Crosby published one of my stories in her Portfolio magazine along with Sartre, I think, and Henry Miller and I think, maybe, Camus. I don't have the mag now. People steal from me. They take my stuff when they drink with me. That's why more and more I am alone. Anyhow, somebody else must also miss the Roaring 20's and Gertrude Stein and Picasso... James Joyce, Lawrence and the gang.
    To me it seems that we're not getting through like we used to. It's like we've used up the options, it's like we can't do it anymore.
    I sit here, light a cigarette, listen to the music. My health is good and I hope that I am writing as well or better than ever. But everything else I read seems so... practiced... it's like a well-learned style. Maybe I've read too much, maybe I've read too long. Also, after decades and decades of writing (and I've written a boat load) when I read another writer I believe I can tell exactly when he's faking, the lies jump out, the slick polish grates... I can guess what he next line will be, the next paragraph...
    There's no flash, no dash, no change-taking. It's a job they've learned, like fixing a leaky faucet.
    It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there.
    In my mind I saw Gorky in a Russian flophouse asking for tobacco from the fellow next to him. I saw Robinson Jeffers talking to a horse. I saw Faulkner starting at the last drink in the bottle. Of course, of course, it was foolish. Young is foolish and old is the fool.
    I've had to adjust. But for all of us, even now, the next line is always there and it may be the line that finally breaks through, finally says it. We can sleep on that during the slow nights and hope for the best.
    We're probably as good now as those bastards back then were. And some of the young are thinking of me as I thought of them. I know, I get letters. I read them and throw them away. These are the towering Nineties. There's the next line. And the line after that. Until there are no more.
    Yeah. One more cigarete. Then I think I'll take a bath and go to sleep.

4/16/92 12:39 AM

    Bad day at the track. On the drive in, I always mull over which system I am going to use. I must have 6 or 7. And I certainly picked the wrong one. Still, I will never lose my ass and my mind at the track. I just don't bet that much. Years of poverty have made me wary. Even my winning days are hardly stupendous. Yet, I'd rather be right than wrong, especially when you give up hours of your life. One can feel time actually being murdered out there. Today, they were approaching the gate for the 2nd race. There were still 3 minutes to go and the horses and riders were slowly approaching. For some reason, ti seemed an agonizingly long time for me. When you're in your 70's it hurts more to have somebody pissing on your time. Of course, I know, I had put myself into a