I've been reading a lot of Charles Bukowski lately. He's one of my favorites. I think we are all thinking and wondering lately, some more loudly, some more silently. But these contemplations are nothing new.
Humankind has been experiencing, contemplating and fighting the same cycle since the beginning. We are led by our fears and ego. Our emotions, like fear, are easily manipulated and controlled. If only we could see each other as the same clones, and instead connect through our mass similarities like loneliness, fear, suffering, burden, love and pain. Perhaps, then we would stop championing what is different between us — carrying them around like flags of declaration and instead swell on what connects us.
I like philosophy. I don’t call myself one but I like to curiously contemplate. I think philosophers, studied and self-proclaimed, are interesting, though. Some are genuinely curious and others wear it like an academic badge without ever truly having life experience to accompany their precious intellect nor get involved with changing said social ills while judging pockets of society. In which case you’re just a ball of judgement drunken on superiority complex and intellectual masturbation.
Bukowski was a writer, novelist and a poet who lived among the subjects and social ills he wrote about. He was what he wrote about. He experienced it.
Largely inspired by his home city Los Angeles, he wrote of the economic, social and cultural issues. I would consider him a philosopher with real life experiences to ground his observations upon. His writing was so honest the FBI even had a file on him.
Some of these favorite Bukowski quotes and poems verbalize it for me:
“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory
windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer
speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings
and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive
that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much
it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full
and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
-Charles Bukowski
My art gallery
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