Monday, January 08, 2007

just when I thought I was on the mend

I find out from the doc that I have Bronchitis. It's not pleasant.

The Kinks have been extremely comforting and I'm reading like the dickens. These are the pluses of missing numerous days of work and wallowing in my pad like the sicky I am. I finished Diablo Cody's tales of taking her clothes off in Minneapolis quickly and it was a fantastic read. Now I'm re-reading (for the first time, it seems. do you know what I mean?) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and a book of Charles Bukowski's poems.

A few weeks ago, James and I got sucker-punched by the documentary about Bukowski, "Born Into This." It was phenomenal. Really well done, incorporating oodles of words and poems from the man himself and paints the picture of what a sad, complicated fucked up individual he was. A brilliant, tough, deeply flawed alcoholic, he comes across as acutely aware of his faults. And he is a total inspiration to me, as a writer.

His brutal and candid portrayals of his illness, his joy, his women, his despair...it's so rough and beautiful at the same time. It's like he strips away all pretense and bullshit and gets "right to the bone, to the marrow of the bone" as Bono says (amazing interview with the U2 frontman in the doc). Bukowski talks about how his father's beatings made him a good writer and it's not a syrupy answer, it's plain: after you gotten beaten that much, you learn to say what you mean. Whew.

Thanks to my co-worker, Tim, and the doc I am more rabid for a writer's work than I have been in a long time. I definitely think that I was made to discover him at this point in my life, cuz I don't think I was ready for him until now.

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