As the years peel away, your tastes change. Authors, musicians, artists, etc. fall in and out of favor. But there’s always that one defining body of work that stays with you. That helped shape you and continues to provide nourishment.

When I was 22 and in the Coast Guard, my brother gave me a book by Charles Bukowski. Bukowski is not a great writer. His output isn’t very literary. You won’t find him being taught in the universities. But all of these decades later, his stuff still speaks to me on a very visceral level. I actually got a chill when I read these again. As though I was reading them for the first time. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving!

Here are a few samples from that book my brother gave me, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, when Bukowski was, in my opinion, at the peak of his powers.

style

style is the answer to everything —
a fresh way to approach a dull or a
dangerous thing.
to do a dull thing with style
is preferable to doing a dangerous thing
without it.

Joan of Arch had style
John the Baptist
Christ
Socrates
Caesar,
Garcia Lorca.

style is the difference,
a way of doing
a way of being done.

6 herons standing quietly in a pool of water
or you walking out the bathroom naked
without seeing
me.

and the moon and the stars
and the world:

long walks at
night —
that’s what’s good
for the
soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired
housewives
trying to fight
off
their beer-maddened
husbands.

Bukowski wrote this one for his daughter when she was about 8. Same age as my daughter, who’s upstairs sleeping as I type these words.

marina:

majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet —
out the door
picking a
flower, ha!,
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do.

And lots of it.

During the course of the story, the following happens. Hang in there because it keeps getting worse (which is to say, better).

Roman General vanquishes Goths. Goth Queen begs for son’s life but General stabs him in front of her. Claims it was his “religious duty.” Queen vows revenge. (Who wouldn’t?)

Roman Emperor was suppose to marry General’s daughter, but she runs away with Emperor’s brother with the aid of General’s sons. General feels sons have “betrayed” Rome and, in a fit of rage, stabs one of them, killing him.

Goth Queen marries Roman Emperor instead. During hunting expedition, Goth Queen’s sons murder General’s son-in-law, throws his carcass into a pit and then rapes General’s daughter. To keep her quiet, they cut out her tongue and cut off both of her hands. She spends the remainder of the play with two stumps and bloody clothes.

General’s two sons are framed for the murder of their brother-in-law by Queen’s Henchman and are carted off for execution. Henchman tells General that Emperor will spare son’s life if he chops off his (the General’s) hand. General chops off hand, Henchman takes it away. General spends remainder of play with a stump.

Had enough? Well, too bad. We’re just getting warmed up.

It turns out that the Henchman was lying about the Emperor sparing the General’s sons. The two severed heads are brought in and presented to the General, along with his hand that was needlessly sacrificed. Henchman laughs. General picks up heads of sons, his daughter picks up the severed hand WITH HER TEETH and they sulk off stage, vowing revenge.

Queen delivers baby. Baby is of mixed race. Uh oh! Henchman is black! Nurse that delivers news is strangled and Henchman flees with baby. Eventually, Henchman is captured and is buried up to his chest and left to starve to death. He is unrepentant and says he would do it all over again.

Queen’s sons are captured (don’t ask!). General castrates them (without anesthesia) and slits their throats. Daughter holds a basin IN HER STUMPS and catches draining blood. Blood and ground-up heads are baked into a pie. (You see where this is going, right?)

The next day at a banquet, General asks Emperor if a father should kill his daughter if she has been raped. He replies, “Yes, so she doesn’t have to live with the shame.” General snaps daughter’s neck, killing her instantly. Queen asks recipe for delicious pie she just consumed and is told she ate her sons. General jumps up on table and cuts Queen’s throat. Emperor eviscerates General. General’s lone remaining son stabs Emperor. General’s son becomes new Emperor and first order of business is to have Queen’s body tossed into the wilderness where it can be “devoured by wild beasts.”

Did I leave anybody out? I don’t think so. This is not the latest in the Saw series. It’s Shakespeare! Supposedly. Though attributed to him, many scholars doubt that he actually wrote it. The violence is so graphic and characters so over-the-top that they don’t think it’s his. T.S. Elliot deemed it “THE WORST PLAY EVER WRITTEN.” That’s a bold statement.

The production of Titus Andronicus I saw at the American Globe Theater was well staged and the costumes were pretty cool for such a small production. A few of the principals were good but many in the cast were young whelps just out of acting school and, boy, it showed. What a bunch of hams.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into this because I don’t want to offend anybody. It’s sensitive stuff and I don’t want to hit any raw nerves.

I attended a parochial elementary school but left the church when I became an adult. There are many Catholic teachings that I disagree with and I gradually distanced myself. It took a long time, but I found that Buddhist teachings speak to me in a way that Christianity never did. No disrespect meant to my Christian brothers and sisters.

Mrs. Wife takes The Daughters to church every Sunday. Because she attends a public school, 8-Year Old Daughter also participates in a religious education class 1x per week at the church. Although I’ve rejected Catholicism, I think it’s a good idea to get the kiddies involved in church. It’ll stimulate the idea of spirituality and make them feel part of a community. Later in life, I’ll make my feelings known and they can either embrace what they’ve been taught or reject it (as I did). That’s how my mom ran the show and I approve. Aside from that, it’s important to Mrs. Wife and, hence, it’s important to me.

These…

…are Silly Bands. All the cool kids are wearing them. They’re rubber bands (elastics) in fun shapes that are worn on the wrist, 20-25 at a time. My daughters gave me these two because they know how much I love music and how much I love to abuse my guitar.* I wear them on my right wrist and will probably never take them off.

8-Year Old Daughter has a few Silly Bands that are shaped into Christian icons. Angels. Crosses. Crowns (i.e., King of Kings). I saw one that was shaped into a white apple with a bite taken out of it and said, “Oh, that’s the logo for Apple Computers!” She said, “No, Dad, that’s an apple to remind us that we are all sinners.

I was taken aback. Stunned. It made me so sad. I hate it that my pure, innocent little 8-year old girl is having that “you’re a sinner in God’s eyes” shit pumped into her head. To me, it’s the dark side of what she’s being taught. You tear ‘em down to build ‘em up. It’s what I went through in boot camp. It’s the oldest method in the book.

Hell is other people.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Hell is a dead cell phone jammer.
The Unbearable Banishment
* My all-time favorite critique regarding my abilities as a musician: Daughter opens the door, pokes her head in and says, “Dad. We can’t hear the TV. You’re playing too loud.”

Dear God. Or Jehovah. Or Jesus. Or Jupiter. Or Allah. Or Buddha. Or Zeus. Or Gwydion. Or Yahweh. Or Beelzebub (yeah, I’ll go there). Or G_d. Or Thor.

Anyone. Whoever is out there listening.

Please.

NO MORE motherfucking SNOW! Enough already! I’m a beaten man, okay? Every weekend there’s a fresh 8-12 inches of new snow dumped on our asses. You’ve beaten me. You’ve beaten us all. You’ve beaten the entire northeast corridor from Boston down to D.C. You set a record for snowfall. The most ever. Good for you. Well done. But that’s enough. Okay?

More relaxing than it looks.

Drifts taller than a 3-year old.

Atlantic City is a much sadder, slower place in the winter than it is in the summer. It makes me melancholy and blue. But it’s the good kind of blue. It’s not the kind of blue that drags you down. It’s the kind of blue that makes you sit up straight and appreciate what you have. It’s the kind of blueyou get when you listen to B.B. King play his guitar or Billy Holiday sing. I like it just fine.

I certainly don’t mind navigating the summer masses that choke the boardwalk. If crowds bothered me, I wouldn’t have stayed in New York City all those years. But there’s a certain sad allure to strolling on a cold, snowy, almost empty boardwalk.

The beaches are deserted and clean. The lines where sky meets water and water meets sand aren’t broken by a gaggle of noisy tourists. By the end of August, the sand will be disrupted and large metal drums filled with trash will dot the shore. Occasionally, a treasure hunter with a metal detector will come into view.

He’ll stop, bend down and dig furiously. His efforts will be rewarded with a bottle cap or a key.

Though chilly, the sun can be quite bright and sitting outside is comfortable. The broken, the lonely and those brought to their knees by their bad luck in the casinos claim a bench and stare out at the ocean.

The oul dogs wonder where it all went and what’s left.

There’s a colony of feral cats that live under the boardwalk. They’ve been there for as long as I can remember. Local volunteers have built shelters for them and drop off food in the winter time.

You can see them napping in the afternoon sunshine. Nobody bothers them.

They don’t seem to have any fear of people. They will almost always jump up on your lap if you invite them. And, like us, they enjoy a good scratch in the right place.