My Favorite Bukowski

and of course, this, which made me laugh and fall out my chair (almost):

The Dream of a Ridiculous Girl

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Petrov (1997)

I know it's a bad idea to read Dostoyevsky when you're depressed because he doesn't exactly tell happy stories. The magic of Dostoyevsky's books however has always been in their honest and childlike depiction of reality. I use childlike not in the sense that it's good for children or that it's simplistic but childlike because he always seems to imbue a certain innocence of mind in his language.

There are only a select number of books that I can read when my mind is reeling with unhappy thoughts and my chest bombarded by unwholesome feelings. One of those is Dostoyevsky. His stories are always a forceful slap in the face that eventually become a gentle caress. "Look this way, at reality, for all its sufferings and joys. Face it with honesty and humility," he seems to be saying.

"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is about a nameless man who has been trying to shoot himself every night for the past couple of weeks. He has irrevocably decided to do it tonight, but not before meeting a little girl (see painting) who desperately asks for his help, which he refuses. He goes home that night thinking about her and feeling ashamed of himself (although he justifies his refusal to help). He falls asleep on his armchair and this is where the dream begins (if you want to know what it is, read it yourself; it's only five chapters long).

A dream! Was it really a dream? Could the human mind formulate a dream so elaborate, so chronologically solid? Whatever it was, it changed the ridiculous man when he woke up and made him even more ridiculous. He saw an earth that was uncorrupted by sin and fell in love with it but at the same time witnessed it turn into the same world that he had wished to leave using his revolver. The strange thing was that he found a new appreciation for this corrupted world, a kind of love that is consubstantial with suffering. A sad kind of love, if you may.

Dostoyevsky has once again cleared my vision polluted by the unsatisfaction and selfishness endemic to sentimentalism. This story reminded me of how much I loved the world and the people in it—the silent splendor of nature, the fluid existence of humans and the mysterious looks in their eyes when they think. They are all beautiful. Reality is beautiful.

I woke up today feeling grateful. I looked at the children who rode in the jeepney with me and was amazed at the wide-eyed wonder with which they looked at everything. At that moment, I wished I could be like them, that I could see the world again and be enchanted by its wonders. I realized that it's really all you need to be happy: to see reality with the eyes of a child.

And what does it matter if I get sad and lonely sometimes? Isn't that only testament to my humanity? What does it matter that I suffer if it allows me to love deeply and truthfully? So thank you. Thank you, Dostoyevsky, for waking me up and making me realize that dreams, no matter how ridiculous, are sometimes necessary to face and appreciate reality.

Self-Crushing

The mind of a writer, or those who think they are, is frightening. There always seems to be a cloud of depression and self-doubt looming above you, imprisoning you in the mindset that you're not good enough—or ever will be. You read books and get the courage to rise above whatever emotional stupor you're battling only to sink bank into the void.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those who can enjoy swimming at the surface, who never think what the deeper waters hold and who do not desire to go there. They always seem to be happier.

What destroys me is the pain brought by words. Especially if they are cruel, especially if they have been said by someone I love. It is easy for me to forget a punch that it is for me to forget a verbal insult. A stranger once called me fat and ugly when I was in fifth grade, and I carried those words with me until I was well into college. Even now they still haunt me although I have heard them refuted a hundred times. With a word, I easily fall apart.

My mind sometimes scares me. And sometimes I wish there was a way to shut it all out, to go to sleep and never wake up again. Sometimes I wish I never wake up.

I read the stories of other people who write and have begun to wonder if this self-crushing inadequacy, if this chronic depression is endemic, maybe even necessary, to those whose lives lie in the vertical axis where words reside. The world is joyful—why can't I see it sometimes? Why am I always trapped inside a catastrophic train of thought that makes me so sad?

Someday, I told myself when I first decided I wanted to write, you will be good enough. Not perfect, just good enough. Good enough to face reality. Good enough to love and be loved back. Good enough to write. What I'm realizing is I'm never good enough, and perhaps I will never be.

To my eleven-year-old self, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't grow up to be the person you dreamed about. I'm sorry that I'm such a disappointment.

Be Free

I don’t know what freedom looks like, but I’m guessing it looks a lot like a bird. Or dandelions. Or anything at all that sails on the wind. It would probably smell like the earth on mornings, especially after it’s been raining and the sun has just come out—moist and soft and warm. If it could sing, it would probably sound like the calm breaths of an ocean at dawn, a majestic kind of silence that only manifests itself in very special moments.

No, I cannot be sure about any of this. I am not sure how my senses can perceive freedom. But I am sure of one thing: I am free.

And you. You don't need a certificate or a government or a religious sect to tell you that you're not free. You were made free. In your heart you must know that, that in every situation you have a choice. You can't ever say "I don't have a choice." Just the fact that you can say that you don't have a choice already says that you do! So make good choices. Make choices that will not hurt you or the people around you. Educate your freedom with truth and exercise it with love. Don't just be free. Be good.

How To Be Alone

If you are at first lonely, be patient.

If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We can start with the acceptable places: the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there, where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There is also the gym. If you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors; you can put headphones in.

Then there’s public transportation because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and mediation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath-seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid-being-alone principles: the lunch counter where you will be surrounded by chow-downers, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cellphone.

When you are comfortable, eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner to a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo dessert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. 

Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back, like a book of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. 

Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets. There are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute. And these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if after a while nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.

You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.

But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts, an essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, were tokens for holding the lonely at bay.

Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique. No one has the same synapses, can’t think like you. For this, be relieved--- keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach. And it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected and that community is not present. Just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it.

If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.

If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.

There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

—Tanya Davis

Good Morning

I haven't been sleeping properly these days. And when I manage, I wake up mercilessly early as if I still needed to get ready for a 7 AM shift.  I miss working. It gives me a sense of being necessary to something.

When have I become this petty? When did my days count on messages that have now started to come in trickles, although I know I really have no right to expect them? No matter how much I tell myself to stop waiting, that I don't have the privilege to be angry when it doesn't come, my eyes refuse to take themselves away from my phone, and I wait like an idiot anyway.

You took this upon yourself. How the fuck do my friends say these things so scathingly and still manage to make me laugh after?

I am not the cool customer who can't cry at the hospital after all. I can't act cold and indifferent. I can only fall apart.

Vodka tastes better diluted, also when you drown your shared disappointments in it about how well you imagined your life would be at this age and what is actually happening now. Maybe we aren't meant to be in relationships. Maybe we'll end up like the three rich old ladies who sat across from our dinner table- unmarried but still friends. And I thought that isn't so bad (but it would be really nice to have children).

Don't worry about tomorrow. God has a way of making things come into place at the right time. Rest in the Mystery. Don't lose sight of reality and its giftedness. You have Christ and the witness of people you love, so why trifle with those minute technological atrocities, about things to come that you're not so sure of? Let it be a mystery. Let it be.

So get up and don't waste the beauty of the morning.