that is boring advice. but good too, i'm sure. i usually finish work around 930-10pm and bed just seems too depressing. leonard cohen said something about refusing to sleep being the first rebellion. don't remember the exact words. main thing should be to quit drinking.
here's something i wrote several months back. it's not a poem so i hope the moderator lets it slide:
I tried to show my mom a video called "The Ordinary Madness of Charles
Bukowski". I thought Sean Penn might win her over, but she wouldn't get into it.
"Is this who you want to emulate?" she asked, "He wasn't happy."
No I don't want to emulate Bukowski. Maybe he was happy after he made it, but what people don't understand is this: It's not about agreeing with the man. It's about the blood he put on the page, the fire that still burns through his words.
I wish I could have explained that, and if I drink too much I never say Bukowski told me it's ok. What's right for one man may be wrong for another, and I don't think he had to take Paxil just to keep from freaking out.
Let me hammer the same nail.
I was telling my aunt about his reaction to a tour of the German countryside. It was so boring to him, all the:
"Green! Green! Green!"
Personally I love nature, and, coming from Canada, was fortunate enough to be exposed to it since birth, but I can still appreciate another man's feelings, especially when expressed so vividly. My aunt's dislike of cities wouldn't allow her to have a look through someone else's eyes.
Let's get back to the topic of happiness, which is tricky since I don't know what I'm going to say. I love my mom and my aunt and they've been alive that much longer than me.
Clive Holden once told me in an email:
"You're never going to be happy if you try what everybody else does. If you look around it clearly isn't working."
So where does that leave us?
My mom in Toronto looking after my adopted sister, my aunt in Mexico contemplating her return to India, where she wants to set up a school for poor kids, and me in my Bangalore hotel room, happy enough just to be putting this down.