A Tale of Ordinary Madness
Joseph Carl
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It would have been here in Tucson and it would have been sometime between the summers of 2016 and 2017—whenever I try and remember exactly when, I seem to remember things in a fainter and even fainter haze. I do remember some things, however.
I remember it was sometime then because I know for a fact my interest in writing really peaked soon after graduation. I remember it was inside of a Bookman’s, my favorite Bookman’s, in fact. It was located at the southeast corner of Grant and Campbell—now, there’s a Starbuck’s with a large, albeit magnificent, mural depicting several giant blue whales flying over a picturesque desert. Our desert, presumably. I remember how, years later, I was sitting across the street inside Upper Crust nurturing myself and my giant slice of pepperoni pizza as I watched a wrecking crew tear down the last bit of one of my favorite places on earth.
As soon as I saw it, I knew I’d be leaving with it. It was a hardcover copy of The Pleasures of the Damned by Charles Bukowski. I still don’t remember exactly why, truth be told. Something about a documentary about Bukowski I had recently had the opportunity to watch. I don’t remember what the documentary was called but I remember watching it with my ex-girlfriend’s uncle. Maybe it was his own admiration of Bukowski, how he said something to the effect of he was way ahead of his time, or maybe it was Bukowski’s own words, spoken delicately and in his own time, as he so often did, but I was moved in such a way that I never wished to look back. I suppose I still don’t.
When I try to recount those days all I can remember is how visceral it all felt. With every new poem read, each new letter to an editor digested and learned from, I felt as if I was in these poems. Like I could’ve written them and like I still might be able to.
“So you want to be a writer?” is still one of my favorite pieces of his. It’s located in his book Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way. It begins, “if it doesn’t come bursting out of you, in spite of everything, don’t do it,” and ends with, “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.” It’s a poem I still come back to in the quiet of my mind. It still floods my every thought whenever I struggle to find the words of a new piece.
I recall, quite vividly, how his writings evoked something within me that made me suddenly feel like I could write too. I remember inhaling both carefully and precisely compiled works of his as well as posthumously hand-picked collections. I remember how I spent so many afternoons and nights attempting to write in the vein of the late and great Bukowski and how so often it merely resulted in pretty shitty, untrue poems and half-finished short stories, all of which I still have and reread from time to time. I remember how reading Bukowski opened me up into reading other things. Things like King’s On Writing and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Writers like Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. I was swiftly pulled into the vast world of poetry, prose, and fictional truths.
I remember the loud clack, clack, clacking of my IBM Selectric II Self-Correcting Typewriter as I attempted ever so deliberately to slouch toward Nirvana as he once did. I remember how I sounded like him. And how I didn’t. I remember how I began seeing the distinction between our personalities even though I tried for so many years to pretend I couldn’t tell—how alike I’d desperately hoped we were. How much of it I’d forced. I remember buying my first bottle of whiskey to keep under my desk for whenever I needed some “inspiration.” I definitely remember how I began realizing just how problematic he can be at times and how I’d often heard the words misogynist and sexist used to describe him. I remember realizing that I needed to find my own voice if I was going to get any better and how freeing that was in so many ways.
I still read Bukowski. As often as I can I’m always sure to check out the B section in poetry whenever I’m inside a bookstore and I see if there is anything I don’t already own. I still read him despite the many valid critiques against him and despite many of the things he so clearly believed in his lifetime. I still find much of his writings extremely funny and relatable, at the very least provocative, which is a line Bukowski used to dance around all too well.
Now, at least, I seem to have found my own style, my own voice, my own way. That being said, I know I’ve learned and stolen from every single writer I’ve ever read and whose words I’ve ever fallen in love with. I know I take something away from everything I’ve ever bothered reading. I know there are people who have probably taken from me. Yet, what matters is how well you make it through to the other side—how well you walk through the fire as Bukowski once put it. What matters is what happens whenever I decide to sit my ass in that chair, or any chair for that matter, and pour whatever is in my head onto the blank page before me.
After all, there is no other way.
And, quite frankly, there never was.
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