Put it down.

I like Charles Bukowski. When I read his books as an early 20 something, with the mind of an early teen, I admired many of his characteristics. I liked his clipped sentences and simple vocabulary. I liked that he worked and lived in mundanity and made his observations compelling. I liked that he wasn't afraid of his disdain of everything and everyone (I on the other hand was being eaten alive by my own).  I liked his ambition and his daily dedication to two things I liked: drinking and writing. Most of all I liked that he was the archetypal writer: difficult, ugly, and alcoholic. His talent transcending background or opportunity or trends. I read a fair few of his books - Ham on Rye, Factotum, Post Office and perhaps Women. It was comforting and a source of hope that his success came so late on in his life, after being laid so low by the day in and day outness of boring jobs.  I also really liked the fact I was reading Bukowski whilst other young women were immersed in Austin and Shakespeare, perhaps that was the point I liked the most. 

I said I like Charles Bukowski, but if I am honest I don't remember any word he has written. Not one word. My memory is formed from what came after I had read his works (which books- I cannot be sure). Articles screamed about his misogyny and suggestions that no woman could (or was it should) like his work. I watched that alarming YouTube where after drinking too much he kicks out at his final wife.  You see, I cannot be at all sure if I like his books. I don't have that special memory that other educated people seem to have, you know the ones that catalogue events, dates and happenings which then can be called upon in the heat of an intellectual argument. I only can conjure up feelings and vague ones at that. I vaguely recall feeling a sense of ease in his ugly-arse autobiographical fiction - nothing happened of note and yet he was able to craft words into something. Nothing has/had happened to me, I reasoned, and yet there is a possibility that I could/can take some other impressionable mind on a journey of words. Reading Bukowski gave me a sense that I could be a writer - a vague sense that I abandoned easily and quickly and forgot how much I liked the discipline of creating words on a page. 

The thing is, if I really wanted to make the public declaration that 'I like Bukowski', I would have to afford time to research. For a start, I would have to reread all those books that I claim to have read. All those hours where my head did not lift from the pages he has written I would have to relive. I would be changed by 20 years of experience and the unfavorable articles I have read and also the changing of my perception as to how this world should or could work. The truth is, I have no idea whether or not I like Bukowski or his books. So I am left with a personal examination of my memories and what I have been able to build from them. I don't remember much. I often rely on others to fill in events and happenings in my own timeline. Whilst experiencing a free bout of psychoanalyses the concept was put forward that those who are 'unattached' to their daily events or relationships are often unable to form lasting memories, at least that is how I remembered it. I have been troubled by my 'inability' to attach ever since. 

One of the good things about this lockdown journal is that I finally have a fairly regular and detailed account of what I was doing and thinking at one time. My memories have been encapsulated, like a flower found and pressed in a heavy book. For once my memories are catalogued for a period of time outside of the present. I am sobered by that thought, I cannot claim these memories are not mine and neither can I pretend I didn't at one time think it, even if in the future I change. And not just any period of time, this time has been a time of significant global and personal importance. However for me, and luckily I might add, it has been for the most part mundane and unlike Bukowski my sufferings have been few. It is this strange time that has caused my eyes to cast over the books of my past and instead of glancing away, pause to wonder if I would still enjoy what I once read.