"Чарльз Буковски. Дневник последних лет жизни (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

foot. Small things. Bits of skin cancer. Death nipping at my heels, letting
me know. I'm and old fart, that's all. Well, I couldn't drink myself to
death. I came close but I didn't. Now I deserve to live with what is left.
So, I haven't written for 3 nights. Should I go mad? Even at my lowest
times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me, getting ready. I am not in
a contest. I never wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the word down the
way I wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the words down or be overcome
by something worse than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary
things.
Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word I simply read
another writer and then I know that I have nothing to worry about. My
contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power and force and
delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it.
I have been wise enough to remain isolated. Visitors to this house are
rare. My 9 cats run like mad when a human arrives. And my wife, too, is
getting to be more and more like me. I don't want this for her. It's natural
for me. But for Linda, no. I'm glad when she takes the car and goes off to
some gathering. After all, I have my go-damned racetrack. I can always write
about the racetrack, that great empty hole of nowhere. I go there to
sacrifice myself, to mutilate the hours, to murder them. The hours must be
killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours must be killed. While you
are waiting. The perfect hours are the ones at this machine. But you must
have impefect hours to get perfect hours. You must kill ten hours to make
two hours live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours,
ALL the years.
You fix yourself up to be a writer by doing the instinctive things
which feed you and the word, which protect you against death in life. For
each, it changes. Once for me it meant very heavy drinking, drinking to the
point of madness. It sharpened the word for me, brought it out. And I needed
danger. I needed to put myself into dangerous situations. With men. With
women. With automobiles. With gambling. With starvation. With anything. It
fed the word. I had decades of that. Now it has changed. What I need now is
more subtle, more invisible. It's a feeling in the air. Words spoken, words
heard. Things seen. I still need a few drinks. But I am now into nuances and
shadows. I am fed words by things that I am hardly aware of. This is good. I
write a different kind of crap now. Some have noticed.
"You have broken through," is mainly what they tell me.
I am aware of what they sense. I feel it too. The words have gotten
simpler yet warmer, darker. I am being fed from new sources. Being near
death is energizing. I have all the advantages. I can see and feel things
that are hidden from the young. I have gone from the power of youth to the
power of age. There will be no decline. Uh uh. Now, pardon me, I must got to
be, it's 12:55 a.m. Talking the night off. Have your laugh while you can...

8/24/92 12:28 AM
Well, I've been 72 years old for 8 days and nights now and I'll never
be able to say that again.
It's been a bad couple of months. Weary. Physically and spiritually.
Death means nothing. It's walking around with your ass dragging, it's when
the words don't come flying form the machine, there's the gyp.