High Verses and Low Lifes: Charles Bukowski

Thank God for poetry. And thank God for Charles Bukowski! 

Poetry tells it as it is. Up straight and personal. And you couldn't get no more bullet-point-right-between-the-eyes than Charles Bukowski, famed American poet (otherwise known as Laureate of the low-lifes).  Radical, rebellious, raw and real. Alcoholic, low-life and womaniser. Poet, prose writer and artist. Melancholic, miserable and mean. Also, spectacularly brilliant.

For anyone who thinks poetry is complete upper-class snotty-nosed la-de-dah, read  some Charles Bukowski. He spent most of his life on the bottle, womanising and hanging around bars, unemployed, dispirited and hanging on to the edges of life. His poetry is an account of all this (hence the Laureate nickname). 

And it's anything but stuffy. Indeed, it was a while before Bukowski made it onto the reading lists. His work was not mainstream, not anything near. It subverted every tradition and he himself never concerned himself with traditions, never thought of his work as 'literary', merely true.

I must admit, I have just recently discovered Bukowski. And so far, I'm loving his work. It has an edge, raw, but real also. Brave. Couldn't-care-less. Honest. True to the craft. True to himself.

What I really admire about him is how devoted he was to his art. So many poems explore instances of him at his typewriter, pouring words out painstakingly, or easily, practising the act of listening, waiting, while declaring how writing is a curse, and simultaneously a gift. He saw writing as it really was: a compulsion. An urge. A do or die vocation. And living much the same, both a curse and a gift.

On grey days like today, Bukowski is a breath of fresh air, a colouring. He tells things as they are, no bullshit. He injects a good dose of real straight-up truth, a slap in the face of daily dreary sameness, a much-needed wake-up call,  'Your life is your life/don't let it be clubbed into dank submission' (from the outstanding The Laughing Heart). Yes sir. This line has saved me from ennuyed emptiness many a time.

Included are some of my favourite picks below. Be warned some of his poems come with a R rating! (Maybe that's why he's so 'cool' and almost everyone likes him. Adores even.) He's one of America's most popular poets and when you read him, it's easy to see why. 

Anyway, if you haven't read him yet, do! You won't be disappointed. 

~ Siobhán.

(I've included his infamous writer poem 'So You Want to be a Writer?' on a previous post in March.)

Writing - Charles Bukowski

often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman's love,
no wealth
can
match it.
nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.
the hordes from
closing in.
it blasts the
darkness.
writing is the
ultimate
psychiatrist,
the kindliest
god of all the
gods.
writing stalks
death.
it knows no
quit.
and writing
laughs
at itself,
at pain.
it is the last
expectation,
the last
explanation.
that's
what it
is. 

Bluebird - Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do

you?

The Laughing Heart - Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Birthday Blues (And Pinks)

Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time - Jean Paul Richter

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter

~ Mark Twain

But meantime let me whoop it up,
And tell the world that I'm alive:
Fill to the brim the bubbly cup

- Robert William Service

Love 'em or hate 'em, there's no in-between when it comes to opinion on birthdays.  Me? I LOVE them! We Ariens aren't ones to shy away from a celebration of ourselves.  We're all about the self, so why should we shy furtively away from birthdays, our very own validation markers?

Indeed, why shouldn't birthdays be celebrated? They're important! Trés important. More important than other calendar events, like weddings and themed holidays. Why? Because they recognise the gift of our presence here in this life. Our presence in other peoples lives. They are our very own anniversaires (- the French for 'birthday').  Why shouldn't they be acknowledged and celebrated?  Is each and every one of us not important enough to celebrate - regardless of our age, situation or mood-o-meter? Of course we are! Birthdays are our guaranteed one special day of the year. And I don't think it's selfish to demand recognition for them; it's our right.

Lots has been said about 'birthday blues', the accompanying twinges of sadness that come with getting older, but I prefer to focus on the 'pinks' of birthdays - ie: the cake, the greetings, good and real candle wishes, presents, blushing attention and all the sugar-sweet malarkey. I quite like being the centre of attention for one day out of 365, doesn't everybody? 

And if you ask me, birthdays should get to have gift-lists too, as well as just weddings and the like. Birthday gift lists would be a lot more exciting for one thing - no domestic  essentials for the birthday boy/girl nooo!  Our wish gifts would be in the realm of the exciting, impractical, fun and maybe just that tad bit fantastical (well, if you don't wish, you don't get!) Mine this year goes something along the lines of a trip to Paris (the ultimate gift ever), a pink-iced cake, a bouquet of peonies (but they're not in season yet!), a tattoo (all in the name of self-declaration and the marking of a new decade...), a publishing deal would be nice (as would a lottery win), a stack of coloured macaroons (possible, very), and topping it all off right now as I'm looking out the window to a dull and grey day (groan) - a sunny day. Yes, a big smacking smiling sun, that would be nice (ye gods, if you're listening...) *Excuse the self-indulgent listing here, but all in the name of if I write them, they may just materialize thinking...

Nah really, all anyone wants for their birthday I think is not even to be the centre of attention (eh-hem, well...) but just to know that they matter. Hence all the heartbreak that ensues when birthdays are forgotten, dismissed, fall under the radar etc. Their specialness diminished, and somehow, in the process, your specialness too. That's where the real birthday blues lie, not in the silly aging phobia.

Speaking of age.... well, as Mark Twain pointed out - it doesn't matter if you don't mind. Some people blow the aging process all out of proportion. They see birthdays merely as clocking up the years, the dreaded digits, rather than affairs of celebration and existential exuberance.  I don't get this. I don't do age-grieving. I don't dwell on the 'the years clocking up.' And I don't get people who do. Ok, you may suddenly wake up one day and think - "heck  I'm ____ age already! How did that happen??!!"  But then I look on the flip side of it.

Everything I've learned in those years. Who I've become. All the moments I've experienced that have taken their place in the gold of memory, priceless and timeless. Because time isn't measured in years, or days, or by clocks. It's measured in moments. One of my favourite writers Jeanette Winterson has the perfect line to explain this: "the continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative,  there are only lit-up moments and the rest is dark." And there is only now to concern ourselves with, the here and the now, the present, which is indeed a gift we are continually unwrapping. 

As  Gertrude Stein said, 'we are always the same age inside.'  We are indeed. If you feel young, you'll always remain so. And another wise comment from Henri Frederic Amiel, 'I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.' Never a truer word said. The people who complain about getting older in numbers are usually those who are getting older inside. Woe are they. As Picasso once said 'it takes a long time to become young.' It does.

And now on the eve of turning thirty (yes, the big 3-0, imagine!!!), I'm looking at Billy Collins poem below and thinking that the aging despair, the sadness, the regret should be multiplied to the power of 3. The nostalgia for all the years that have passed. But no, I refuse to look back, I'm an eternal optimist and its all fronts on forward. (But I've included the poem anyway for all those with a predisposition to the birthday blues...)

Thirty to me, means consolidating those flighty feelings I discovered in the flingsome twenty-something years. It does not mean old. It means maybe something more akin to maturity (yeah right, my inner daredevil spats!), but yes, it almost feels like a mellowing out. And by no means, do I feel the panic stereotype of my age-bracket that has afflicted thousands of peers - to settle down, get married, get a mortgage, get monotonous. Heck no! I'm too free-spirited for that. Thirty is just the beginning of more,  'everything I know I learned after thirty,' (- George Clemenceau) and I get the sense that the best is yet to come. More wingspan.

Indeed, 'we turn not older with years, but newer every day' (-Emily Dickinson.) We are continually learning and renewing.  Besides, if you're young-at-heart, like all Ariens are anyway, you never grow old. We're still the babies of the zodiac and children at heart, waiting for the next adventure around the corner, measuring time in heartbeats, not heinous years. 

On a last note, birthdays to me are more than anything else, a chance for new beginnings. With all the planets behind you, you have more chance of making a fresh start in your astrological new year than the calendar new year. Birth days are like standing on the edge of the past, about to tip into the future, a horizon up ahead, a blank slate, and everything and anything you want to be beckoning ahead. Your future in front of you like a great ribboned gift. That definitely calls for some celebration and cheer.

Now I'm off to 'whoop it up/and tell the world that I'm alive', woo-hoo!!!

(And a Happy Birthday to all other April babies out there!)

~ Siobhán :)

A poem for the birthday blues...

On Turning Ten - Billy Collins 

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

And one that gets at the real meaning of birthdays...

A Birthday Poem -Ted Kooser 

 

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

It's April (yes, april; my darling)

"it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!" ~ ee cummings

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. ~ William Shakespeare

April prepares her green traffic light and the whole world thinks Go. ~ Christopher Morley

Whatever TS Eliot said, April is not the cruellest month - au contraire! Everyone loves April. It swishes in, all yellowed in sunshine and ribbons of Easter gifts. 

Did you know that April's birth stone is the diamond, the worthiest of all the jewels? Or that it has a full moon called a pink moon? (I hear Nick Drake chords... ) And legend has it that its name could have come from the Roman goddess of love, Aphrodite. Or also the Latin word 'aperire', which means 'to open,' a reference to all the budding and blooming of the time.

And because it's my birth month, I especially favour it. (And lots of other birthdays too - I know around 20 friends and family whose birthday occurs in April, making it a real 'birthday' month in every sense of the word! - May explain the newborn picture I have...)

But it seems I'm not that biased; hell, even old Willy himself praised it. (maybe it was because he was an April baby too; the 23rd). EE Cummings was a big fan too - 'the sky a silver/dissonance by the correct/fingers of April.' In the poem posted below, he really captures the playful, flighty, free, feel-good spirit of the month, 'and breathing is wishing and wishing is having...and wishing is having and having is giving...and having is giving and giving is living...'

Shakespeare is right too. It does put a spirit of youth in everything. A spring in your step. The earth coming back to life and beaming in blooms. A real new beginning (even if it's not your birthday, it is the astrological New Year...) 

And the  universe with its green light of Go beckoning everywhere. How can you resist its charm?

Happy April! 


~ Siobhán.

when faces called flowers float out of the ground - ee cummings

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

Adrienne Rich: Poet & Roofwalker Extraordinaire

I have just heard that Adrienne Rich has died at the age of 82. I first came across  American poet Adrienne Rich on a school syllabus while tutoring a few years ago. Her poems were revelatory and rebellious and I was instantly hooked. She was the first poet that I was passionate about teaching and such a great addition to the usual traditional line-up of poets (predominantly male, I might add) on the schoolbooks.

I especially admired her for her outspokenness in the restrictive time she was writing. As a woman, declaring herself (and pursuing being) a writer was an incredibly brave thing to do, given that the profession was so male-dominated and female-wary. I also admired the fact that she was fearless as a person in the pursuit of happiness, abandoning all things that kept her tied down, kept her from being her true self, was not afraid of taking 'leaps' to live a full and true life, a life of 'a succession of brief, amazing moments/each one making possible the next.'

Rich's poems lodge in your mind as fiery assaults on patriarchy, gender inequality and society's moulded stereotypical strata. Who can forget the irony of 'The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room,' the raw truth on the disillusionment and inequality of relationships in 'Living in Sin' and 'Trying to Talk to a Man', or the wise fortitude of 'From a Survivor,' the ground-breaking seminal feminist riposte 'Diving into the Wreck', the powerful and presidential  inauguration speech material 'Storm Warnings' and indeed, the tigers, those stitched and in spirit, of 'Aunt Jennifer Tigers', or the fearless and gutsy admission of her career choice in 'The Roofwalker'? Her poems pack a punch of truth that lingers long after reading. She is one of those rare poets who writes about things that really matter, who infuses her art with her spirit and uses it as a vehicle not only to express emotion, but to also further the cause she was fighting for, while at the same time, never letting it impinge on her abilities, skills and priorities as a writer.

Denise Pop has this to say about her in 'The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States'

(© OUP 1995)

'There is no writer of comparable influence and achievement in so many areas of the contemporary women's movement as the poet and theorist Adrienne Rich. Over the years, hers has become one of the most eloquent, provocative voices on the politics of sexuality, race, language, power, and women's culture. There is scarcely an anthology of feminist writings that does not contain her work or specifically engage her ideas...' 

Adrienne Rich is not only one of my favourite poets, but one of my most admired people.  When I think of how to sum up Adrienne Rich, I think of Aunt Jennifer in her poem 'Aunt Jennifer's Tigers,' the woman whose life was blighted with domestic servitude and gender inequality. But still she found time to create, and even after her death, Rich notes that 'the tigers in the panel that she made/will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.' A fitting line to describe Rich and her legacy.

~ Siobhán.

 

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers - Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.

They do not fear the men beneath the trees

They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. 

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool    
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.    
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band  
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.  
 
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie    
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.    
The tigers in the panel that she made    
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

The Roofwalker - Adrienne Rich 

Over the half-finished houses
night comes. The builders
stand on the roof. It is
quiet after the hammers,
the pulleys hang slack.
Giants, the roofwalkers,
on a listing deck, the wave
of darkness about to break
on their heads. The sky
is a torn sail where figures
pass magnified, shadows
on a burning deck.
I feel like them up there:
exposed, larger than life,
and due to break my neck.
Was it worth while to lay--
with infinite exertion--
a roof I can't live under?
--All those blueprints,
closings of gaps
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn't choose
chose me: even
my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do.
I'm naked, ignorant,
a naked man fleeing
across the roofs
who could with a shade of difference
be sitting in the lamplight
against the cream wallpaper
reading--not with indifference--
about a naked man
fleeing across the roofs.

Poems for a Sunny Day: Mary Oliver

What a beautiful day! A beautiful day to lounge in the sun, relax, soak up the light. One of those beautiful days you just want to sit and look at it all day, let it seep into your soul. 

And what better poet to read than Mary Oliver on such a day? Her poems really exhibit and explore how beautiful a day it really is, or can be, if we stop to take account of it all,  be attentive and appreciative, really look - 'Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with your arms open.' 

So since reading her today, that's what I've been trying to do. Sitting still in the sunny golden afternoon, looking and marvelling with my arms open.  I saw six pigeons frolick and splash about in the neighbourhood fountain, watched the blue sky haze with heat, lay on the grass, admired the flowers that have sprung up everywhere, got sunburned and listened to the birds singing and the green greening and the clouds drifting and came to the conclusion that yes, this really is a precious life. 

Mary Oliver's luminous sentiments are everywhere to behold, even in the chants of passers-bys' 'beautiful day!' greetings. The simple lyrics of these poems describe something so simple it  sometimes eludes us: to enjoy life.  So don't forget it. And sunny days remind us everytime.

Enjoying the sun, 

Siobhán.

 

Such Singing in the Wild Branches - Mary Oliver

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that's when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

for more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Peonies - Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
   to break my heart
     as the sun rises,
        as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
   pools of lace,
      white and pink--
       and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
    into the curls,
      craving the sweet sap,
        taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
   and all day
      under the shifty wind,
       as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
   and tip their fragrance to the air,
     and rise,
       their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
    gladly and lightly,
      and there it is again--
        beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
    Do you love this world?
      Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
       Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
   and softly,
      and exclaiming of their dearness,
       fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
    their eagerness
      to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
        nothing, forever? 

The Summer Day - Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? 

A Writer's Work is Never Done (Or, The Closet Writer's Confession)

~It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. ...I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. ~

Fact 1: a writer's work is never done. Fact 2: A writer's work is never 'seen' to be done or in the doing by other non-writer people.

By that, I mean a writer inhabits a private working sphere. We don't go to an office and clock in for a 9 t0 5 routine, a public 'proper' job so to speak. Our work is not a starched -stiff 'noun', it's not a place we go to where we adopt a professional persona, it's more of a flexible verb, a constant and ongoing process, a purpose-fuelled personal quest.

It's more than work. More than a job. It's a vocation. A pursuit. A pledge. A purpose. A fire. A be-all-and-end-all. It's consuming. It's everything. And that's why we commit everything to it. All hours of the day and night, all energy, all thought space. As Eugene Ionesco said, 'A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.' Because it's a passion, an obsession, a calling we have no say in or ability to decline. It is simply, who we are. 

It's true to say that a writer's work is never done. We have no set routines, but we write at all hours, usually into the wee hours and beyond. Instead of 9 to 5, how does 10am-2am sound? Or 2am - 10am? Not even while seated at the computer, but while travelling, eating, doing dishes, having a drink, walking, washing, even sometimes, while chatting to others. We can't switch it off; it's there all the time. Our muse is our demanding (and delightful) boss and when she calls, we drop everything. When it's going good, we don't get paid for overtime or when we manage to get something published, we don't get a double-bonus promotion or an applause. What we do get is an inner satisfaction, a glowing. It's all absorbed into the private world of our writer selves.

And to be a writer is to work in secret. An invisible job almost. No one knows we do it. Because it's done on the side of other things (or as I prefer - other things are done on the side of it.)

It's a silent and secret occupation. Unless you work in journalism, writing is a solitary private activity. Many of your family, friends and peers probably don't know (or don't care) that you do it. When you say you're busy working on something, they fob it off as an excuse - what could you possibly be working on in general leisure time? They don't see you typing frantically into the wee hours. Or if they do, they choose to disregard it, put it down to a hobby, a tic, or a personality default, jeez.

But we writers, we live for the written word; nothing else matters. What other job can compare to it? (Well, except to be an artist of course). It absorbs us. It's our life. So should I not feel particularly wounded when this 'profession' of ours, this purpose, this obsession, this grand raison d'etre - goes under the radar to other people? Like it doesn't count somehow in the great big boring work world of commutes and routines and wages and bosses etc, etc.

Oh but it does. It so does.

How many people out there I wonder, pursue what they really want in this life? Their dream occupation, what it is they really 'ache' for? Or how many just settle for a 9-to-5 - to make use of the ironic phrase -'to make a living'? How can you really 'live' if you're not doing what it is you yearn to be doing here in this life? What really makes you come alive? You can exist sure, but not live. And whatever your choice of dream-job, regardless of how practical or impractical it seems (-excuses made up be people who are afraid ), it can be done. And it matters.

Sometimes I feel like a closet writer. Like I'm two people: my public job persona (tutoring/teaching/proofreading/whatever) and then my private writing persona, the thing that I really want to pursue, the thing that defines who I am, who I want to be. And sometimes it gets overshadowed by the 'day-job'. Darn, I feel almost like Clark Kent, who had a superhero alter-ego to tend to! (Sudden image of all us writers rip-revealing a W-emblazoned t-shirt beneath our everyday disguises...) Well, look where Metropolis would have been if he'd neglected to attend to that secret profession! Because to him it wasn't a duty or a job, it was who he was. So when people dismiss what I do, it feels like they're dismissing not just my 'work', but who I am. Because you see, 'all writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation - it is the Self escaping into the open'. (- EB White).

So instead of succumbing to my day job charade, I wish I could proclaim to the world: look here, I'M A WRITER, a writer you know, and I WRITE!!! (to the theme tune of Superman - do-do-do-dododododo preferably....) I write every day, every night, for publication, for purpose, sometimes just for sanity, sometimes just to drop a penny wish into the great big well of the universe, but - THAT'S MY WORK. Now next time you ask what I'm doing, please respect when I say I'm busy. Because I am. It might be invisible work to you, but not to me. It's as damn important to me as saving the world was to Superman! So please - do not disturb!!!!!

Yes, a coming out of the closet of sorts. Even though it probably would be met with dismissal, indifference or contempt, it would be worth it. I guess that's what I'm partly doing here in this post. And what I intend on doing in the non-digital world soon. There's only so much Clark Kent caper a girl can take.....

~ Siobhán.

So You Want to be a Writer?

So You Want to be a Writer? - Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

***

Telling it like it is, as always, Charles Bukowski. (More to come on him later...)


And do you still want to be a writer after reading this? Do I? 


 -Hell yeah. 

(No more commentary needed. My first ever blog without it. This minimalist post - an exercise in validation, consolidation, and affirmation. And like a marriage vow, I say yes, I do. I do want to be a writer.)

tending the fire in the gut,

~ Siobhán.