Diving right into the subject on this one. I’m sure I’ll dip in and out of anything I have to say. Thought about all of this six hours ago. My favorite book of all time is Post Office by Charles Bukowski. If you haven’t read it well. Well, you should have by now. Bukowski is something else. Amazon has labels, the library has a section, but to me Bukowski is life. With that said is Post Office the greatest book ever written? Probably not. Could care less if anyone or no one else likes it.
The thing about Post Office that I love so much is this feeling. This feeling that life will never get better. This feeling that life is a trap. This feeling that you will always be stuck doing the same thing forever. I struggle with these issues on a daily basis as I’m sure most of us do. This doesn’t go away as we get older. But in a sense, you have to settle. I hate to use that word and by definition what I’m about to say would go against that word. You get a fucking Thesaurus I’m writing here.
Point is that in life not everything is perfect all the time. Not every aspect of your life is what you dreamed it would be. One realizes with time that the only power they have is to choose which aspects of their lives to focus on. You can only spin so many fucking plates until it all comes crashing down.
I work hard at my job. Ask any of them and I’m awesome or whatever, but that place could burn down tomorrow. I’d be more pissed that I now have to find another job I don’t care about then anything to do with that place. I settled for my job. Oh well could give a fuck. I need money for things I actually care about.
I didn’t settle on my family or the time that I spend with them. I don’t settle on my writing. Maybe after draft eighteen, but most of the time I don’t. These are things that I can make perfect. Things that I can care about. Things that make me happy. Yes, I have that emotion somewhere deep down in there. Things I won’t settle for.
Post Office didn’t teach me any of this. What Post Office did was made me realize I was trapped. That I was lost. That I was going to get stuck. Post Office made me think and that is why books are important. I saw the parallels that I was living to the main character, and I knew that, that was not what I wanted. I knew I didn’t want to just get by in this life. I had a goal and I needed to do more than hope. I needed to do more than let the waves drag me under. Fuck what happens. That is what Post Office left me with. This feeling that what was going to happen was going to happen anyway. Might as well fuck with it until it does. We get one life. Take a chance.
“In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I’ll write a novel, I thought. And then I did.”
Charles Bukowski, Post Office
Is That A Funeral? 