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

Getting old is very odd. The main thing is that you have to keep
telling yourself, I'm old, I'm old. You see yourself in the mirror as you
descend the escalator but you don't look directly at the mirror, you give a
little side glance, a wary smile. You don't look that bad, you look
something like a drusty candle. Too bad, screw the gods, screw the game. You
should have been dead 35 years ago. This is a little extra scenery, more
peeks at the horror show. The older a writer is the better he should write,
he's seen more, endured more, he's closer to death. The page, that white
page, 8 and 1/2 by 11. The gamble remains. Then you always remember a thing
or two one of the other boys have said. Jeffers: "Be angry at the sun." All
too wonderful. Or Sartre: "Hell is other peopple." Right on and through the
target. I'm never alone. The best thing is to be alone but not quite alone.
To my right, the radio works hard bringing me more great classical
music. I listen to 3 or 4 hours of this a night as I am doing other things,
or nothing. It's my drug, it washes the crap of the day right out of me. The
classical composers can do this for me. The poets, the novelists, the short
story writes can't. A gang of fakes. What is it? Writers are the most
difficult to take, on the page or in person. And they are worse in person
than on the page and that's pretty bad. Why do we say "pretty bad"? Why not
"ugly bad"? Well, writers are pretty bad and ugly bad. And we love to bitch
about one another. Look at me.
About writing, I write basically the same way now as I did 50 years
ago, maybe a little better but not much. Why did I have to reach the age of
51 I could pay the rent with my writing? I mean, if I'm right and my writing
is no different, what took so long? Did I have to wait for the world to
catch up with me? And now, if it has, where am I now? In bad shape, that's
what. But I don't think I've gotten the fat head from any luck that I've
had. Does a fathead ever realize that he's one? But I'm far from contented.
Something is in me that I can't control. I can never drive my car over a
bridge without thinking of suicide. I can never look at a lake or an ocean
without thinking of suicide. I mean, I won't linger on it all. But it will
flash on me: SUICIDE. Like a light going on. In the darkness. That there is
an out helps you stay in. Get it? Otherwise, it could only be madness. And
that's no fun, buddy. And whenever I get off a good poem, that's another
crutch to keep me going. I don't know about other people, but when I bend
over to put on my shoes in the morning, I think, Christ- oh-mighty, now
what? I'm screwed by life, we don't get along. I have to takй little bites
out of it, not the whole thing. It's like swallowing buckets of shit. I am
never surprised that the madhouses and jails are full and that the streets
are full. I like to look at my cats, they chill me out. They make me feel
all right. Don't put me in a roomful of humans, though. Don't ever do that.
Especially on a holiday. Don't do it.
I heard they found my first wife dead in India and nobody in her family
wanted the body. poor girl. She had a crippled neck that couldn't turn.
Other than that she was perfectly beautiful. She divorced me and she should
have. I wasn't kind enough or big enough to save her.

9/21/91 9:27 PM
Went to a movie premiere last night. Red carpet. Flash bulbs. Party
afterwards. Didn't hear much said. Too crowded. Too hot. First party I got