triii

“I don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall – like seeking love in a whorehouse.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“In Patagonia, the isolation makes it easy to exaggerate the person you are: the drinker drinks; the devout prays; the lonely grows lonelier, sometimes fatally.”
― Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia

“the night was beginning
and i was standing before the
plate glass window of a
restaurant
and in that window
was a roasted pig,
eyeless,
with an apple in its mouth.
poort damned pig.
poor damned me.
beyond the pig
inside there
were people
sitting at tables
talking, eating, drinking
i was not one of those people
i felt a kinship with the pig
we had been caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time
i imagined myself in the window
eyeless, roasted, the apple in my mouth
…
i walked away from the window
i walked to my room
i still had a room
as i walked to my room
i began to conjecture:
could i eat some paper?
some newspaper?
roaches?
maybe i could catch a rat?
a raw rat?
peel off the fur,
remove the intestines
remove the eyes
forego the head, the tail
…
i walked along.
i was so hungry that everything
looked eatable:
people, fireplugs, asphalt,
wristwatches … my belt, my shirt
…
i sat in a chair
i din’t turn on the light
i sat there and wondered if i was crazy
because i wasn’t doing anything
to help myself

the hunger stopped then
and i just sat there
then i heard it:
two people in the next room
copulating.
i could hear the bed spring
and the moans
i got up, walked out of the
room and back into the street.
but i walked in a different
direction this time
i walked away from the pig
in the window
but i thought about the pig
and i decided that i’d die first
rather than eat that
pig.
it began to rain
i looked up.
i opened my mouth and let in the rain
drops… soup from the sky...”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“If at the moment you feel as though you don’t have any talents, go to a time in the past when you felt confident about some aspect of your life. Work on that section, study it, share it, and become more interesting. If you have a profession, a hobby, or a special interest, read about it, and mention it in conversations. Be excited about it, and you’ll be more interesting and more intelligent.”
― Maye Musk, A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success