You need enablers, which is a snarl word for many wounded people. There are so many in this world, tortured by syntax and innuendo. Maybe helpers is a better, more benign word. Benign is a good word, in a world where words hurt. Words are tools. How do you use them? People are tools. How do you use them?
A dude sitting at a computer, typing out whatever comes into his head. An old, white guy no less. Who cares, right? Coasting on his privilege, and an entitlement paid out from a fund he contributed to his entire adult working life. We can’t afford that! We have a middle eastern child hoarding OUR oil to disintegrate with a billion dollar munition. They hate our freedom, after all.
But that’s who I am. I own it. A USAMERICAN, of Irish/Scotch, Catholic/Adventist roots, who frittered away an adult life at a teenage boy/college student job, forcing myself to interact with people against my better judgement. I’m going to ride this ship down to its inevitable crash landing.
I don’t regret a second of it.
Well, yes I do. I was self-centered in a way that punished my self as much as my enemies1. And worse, my loved ones. I’m glad they still love me. I’m surprised I still love me. Don’t showboat. Act like you been there before.
But, I come from a tradition of people so selfish that they are driven to reveal themselves, to think (the gall!) that what they have to say is of utmost importance to the world that it has to be said, no matter what. I’m also quiet. I don’t want to share, but I’m compelled to do so. “It a dilemma” sez my personal hero Mr. The Toad.2 (Thank you Bill Griffith)
Rebecca Solnit puts it this way in her excellent LitHub essay:
“There is certainly more self involved in artmaking, or some kinds of it, in that it is often solitary, usually introspective, and sometimes personal, but that plunge into the depths may be as much about dismantling the blithe vanities of the unexamined life as celebrating yourself.”
And when it comes to the motivation to create art, Solnit doesn’t consider it as mysterious as Orwell did. She writes:
“You make art because you think what you make is good, and good means that it’s good for other people, not necessarily pleasant or easy, but leading toward more truth or justice or awareness or reform.
I’m not Solnit, or Orwell, or even Henry Rollins, much less Bukowski, but I owe them all a debt for inspiration. Me, Me! I, I! Write what you know, or write what you want to know. The journey is the work, but the goal? The work is the goal.
For me at least. I’m a process person. Sometimes the process doesn’t work.3
Ms. R and I have been married for three decades (almost four) and she has supported and suffered the travails of living with someone who lives in his head a good deal of the time, and is unreachable when involved in a story. How she endured my nonsensical flights of fancy, my half assed music, my teenage boy job, I will never understand, but always be grateful. I have never had the big payoff, but I’ve never wanted it. Honestly.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
EARLIER THIS WEEK ON YOU WON’T WIN
I returned to the stream of consciousness style I have used before for this forum. It’s ok. I wrote about games, playing games, living life out of view, and not playing to the crowd. Don’t be a showboat, says the lead singer.
LUSORY TIMES
It doesn’t matter if I can’t accept the rules. Someone else is always ready to play. Not everyone is ready to win. Because, what comes next? Distraction. Always something new. The best ability in the game is repeatability. Can you do it again? And again? The worst ability is distractibility. No focus, it means yo…
https://kenyonreview.org/2018/05/a-writers-capacity-for-selfishness/
https://www.semiovox.com/articles/2024/10/02/mr-the-toad/
I am a Seattle Mariners Baseball fan.
Hey, nice bookshelf John! I only got into Bukowski a couple of years ago really. I had read his poetry before, but not his novels. You have a women writer on that shelf too, and a mighty fine one too, so don't beat yourself up to hard, and don't beat yourself up to hard.
I am sure my wife and yours could talk. For a very long time at the library I was a shelver. i.e. lowest paying job. Well into my thirties. I was about to quit at some point but things finally opened up for me here...
...you know, if it wasn't for record stores and the people who worked in them my life would be a lot more boring. Thanks for all the years you put in on the front lines, even if I never want to the one you worked in. I have been a junky at many others, and at many used bookstores too.
I remember some people over at Ecosophia really dissing Thomas Wolfe and Jack Kerouac for writing from their life... but I find that approach works pretty well.
One of my favorite writers of all time, Rudy Rucker, did what he calls transrealism. He used the people in his life like his beatnik heroes did, but turned it into science fiction. He is a treasure.