Free The Captain Is Out to Lunch by Charles Bukowski Page B

think, this is another routine. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I felt ridiculous but I went ahead anyhow. What else could I do? Well, I should have crawled off and said, "Look, baby, we are being very foolish here. We are just tools of nature.“
    "What do you mean?“
    "I mean, baby, you ever watched two flies fucking or something like that?“
    "YOU'RE CRAZY! I'M GETTING OUT OF HERE!“
    We can't examine ourselves too closely or we'll stop living, stop doing everything. Like the wise men who just sit on a rock and don't move. I don't know if that's so wise either. They discard the obvious but something makes them discard it. In a sense, they are one-fly-fucking. There's no escape, action or inaction. We just have to write ourselves off as a loss: any move on the on the board leads to checkmate.
    So, it was a bad day at the track today, I got a bad taste in the mouth of my soul. But I'll go tomorrow. I'm afraid not to. Because when I get back the words crawling across this computer screen really fascinate my weary ass. I leave it so that I can come back to it. Of course, of course. That's it. Isn't it?

6/26/92 12:34 AM

    I have probably written more and better in the past 2 years than at any time in my life. It's as if from over 5 decades of doing it, I might have gotten close to really doing it. Yet, in the past 2 months I have begun to feel a weariness. The weariness is mostly physical, yet it's also a touch spiritual. It could be that I am ready to go into decline. It's a horrible thought, of course, The ideal was to continue until the moment of my death, not to fade away. In 1989 I overcame TB. This year it has been an eye operation that has not as yet worked out. And a painful right let, ankle, foot. Small things. Bits of skin cancer. Death nipping at my heels, letting me know. I'm and old fart, that's all. Well, I couldn't drink myself to death. I came close but I didn't. Now I deserve to live with what is left.
    So, I haven't written for 3 nights. Should I go mad? Even at my lowest times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me, getting ready. I am not in a contest. I never wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the word down the way I wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the words down or be overcome by something worse than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary things.
    Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word I simply read another writer and then I know that I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power and force and delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it.
    I have been wise enough to remain isolated. Visitors to this house are rare. My 9 cats run like mad when a human arrives. And my wife, too, is getting to be more and more like me. I don't want this for her. It's natural for me. But for Linda, no. I'm glad when she takes the car and goes off to some gathering. After all, I have my go-damned racetrack. I can always write about the racetrack, that great empty hole of nowhere. I go there to sacrifice myself, to mutilate the hours, to murder them. The hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours are the ones at this machine. But you must have impefect hours to get perfect hours. You must kill ten hours to make two hours live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours, ALL the years.
    You fix yourself up to be a writer by doing the instinctive things which feed you and the word, which protect you against death in life. For each, it changes. Once for me it meant very heavy drinking, drinking to the point of madness. It sharpened the word for me, brought it out. And I needed danger. I needed to put myself into dangerous situations. With men. With women. With automobiles. With gambling. With starvation. With anything. It fed the word. I had decades of that. Now it has changed. What I need