creative writing and living

 

    Some strange dreams a close friend had, and some strange currents I felt, as I followed the trial in a New York City state court, left 81+ year old lawyer me wondering if I should crawl deep down inside to a place I know is there but seldom visit, and I did it with something in mind, which was, although it won’t fix anything in America, it might really mess up a big theme park, and I told God that I don’t know if it's okay, or if it's possible, but I'm an American, so I have standing, and I clerked for a United States District Judge, who presided over every criminal prosecution in north Alabama, and I offer a life for a life: take Donald Trump and me, and let America get on without us.

    That done, I returned from the Mother Ship to resume being 80+ and what all that entails. 

    Something  from Poetic Outlaws in my email this Sunday morning aroused me a bit.

now, if you were teaching creative writing, he asked, what would you tell them?
By: Charles Bukowski

POETIC OUTLAWS
MAY 19, 2024

 

 

I'd tell them to have an unhappy love
affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth
and to drink cheap wine,
avoid opera and golf and chess,
to keep switching the head of their
bed from wall to wall
and then I'd tell them to have
another unhappy love affair
and never to use a silk typewriter
ribbon,
avoid family picnics
or being photographed in a rose
garden;
read Hemingway only once,
skip Faulkner
ignore Gogol
stare at photographs of Gertrude Stein
and read Sherwood Anderson in bed
while eating Ritz crackers,
realize that people who keep
talking about sexual liberation
are more frightened than you are.
listen to E. Power Biggs work the
organ on your radio while you're
rolling Bull Durham in the dark
in a strange town
with one day left on the rent
after having given up
friends, relatives, and jobs.
never consider yourself superior and /
or fair
and never try to be.
have another unhappy love affair.
watch a fly on a summer curtain
never try to succeed.
don't shoot pool.
be righteously angry when you
find your car has a flat tire.
take vitamins but don't lift weights or jog.

then after all this
reverse the procedure.
have a good love affair.
and the thing
you might learn
is that nobody knows anything --
not the State, nor the mice
the garden hose or the North Star.
and if you ever catch me
teaching a creative writing class
and you read this back to me
I'll give you a straight A
right up the pickle
barrel.

Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter

I would tell them, 
if they have not lived, 
then do that.
I would tell them,
if they think they can learn to write
by reading a book,
or attending a creative writing class,
they missed the entire point.
I would tell them,
if they are Americans,
yes, read Hemingway,
read Faulkner,
read Melville,
and Poe,
then forget them,
because they are dead
and cannot be resurrected,
nor replicated.
Then read John Grisham,
to see how getting religion 
can mess up good thing.
Then,
read James Lee Burke,,
read Tom Robbins- 
but if you have not lived,
if you have not been shredded by life,
if you have not lost everything
and gotten up and kept going,
if you think wanting to be a writer 
makes you a writer,
if you think reading Bukowski
will make you a writer,
you missed the entire point,
but reading other writers
might arouse something in you,
it might help you in some ways
to craft your own style,
or it might help you become
a robot, a clone-
the only way to really write
is to be demolished,
mutilated,
pulverized,
destroyed,
obliterated,
by life,
and not kill yourself,
and stone cold sober,
standing before a mirror,
staring into the depths
of your very own soul,
staring at you, 
your life,
naked,
bare,
no secrets,
no fig leaves,
no shame,
your reputation ruined,
by you, 
now you are free,
now you are unchained,
now you can write,
if you dare,
if you care,
if you wish,
if you don’t give a shit
what anyone else thinks,
or wants,
or cares

    The free internet library, archive.org, holds my stranger than fiction novels, which could be introduced by something that fell out of me in the spring of 1994.

    Although he sometimes tries to write fiction, when the tale is told, every character is a character is a character in himself, every plot, a plot in himself- there are no surprises- on his to discover parts of himself he has lost, forgotten, thrown away, or never even knew were there. Perhaps in that way, he and God are somewhat alike- they both create to discover just who and what they really are?

Kundalina, Alabama: A Strange Tale

https://archive.org/details/kundalina

Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale

https://archive.org/details/heavy-wait-a-strange-tale_202212

Return of the Strange

https://archive.org/details/retun-of-the-strange-v-20_202306

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com