Chuck B said “Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, ‘I’m not going to make it.’ But you laugh inside, remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.” Not sometimes. But sometimes with a laugh. And remembering all those other times without laughs is precisely the problem, Charles, or has been. They do abound, did.

Life gets primitive, making fools of us all, beautiful, ugly, primitive fools, all. Be what I’m not and find no glory in that, doing my bestest reflective affectation stunts to turn it around into a little semi-sweet campy something more, or other. That’s every day, almost, too many days, I’m afraid I can fairly safely say but I’m not afraid to count, I just don’t want to because I’m not a numbers guy. But I’ve met numbers people and no matter what you are, nothing plus nothing has a way of becoming a lot of stuff that still can’t be expected to amount.

Days without meaning, but for purpose, though, for purpose, yes, purpose, my forever sum because I heard chasing meaning is better than trying to avoid discomfort and that’s the kind of stuff I like to tell myself over and over when I hear it, over and over till in the morning foggy mind forgets how it was put the night before but does recollect the gist and how it blends into the gist of other stuff like “but you laugh inside” and “all the times you’ve felt that way” and then this is how it all comes back out, primitively, but I think I walk away understanding. I think.

I don’t know. Makes me wonder what I’d do if I ever had to speak clearly. If I had to tell tales straight out and up, in the way I don’t get out of bed, not this euphuistic climb and crawl and I just learned a new word. Rather laugh outside like a beautiful fool and go on living with it because everybody feels a little crazy and I’ve felt a lot and this morning I have to say something has changed, and it’s done been so, I’m just saying it this way now and what I’m saying is that I’ve truly never felt like this—seems I’ve learned a new feel too, or recovered an old one, no matter, it’s now,

partly stolen, partly made, all muddled and summarily manifest, secretly evident and it goes like this, today: Dark things, shadow, soul, and “despondency breaks off its course, anguish breaks off its course, the vulture breaks off its flight” and you know what Charles I’m happy, daresay, actually happy even with the residual memorial pain of times I’ve felt that not-going-to-make-it way, even with the prospect of meaningless numbered days outside the covers

so I slough it all off and sit up “because in my darkness quakes at last the great topaz, word that has its own light” and I no longer dread the climb, despondent, anguished courses broken off and lone searching sad scavenger flight brought down to the floor under feet beside the bed and the bloodflow changes, hungry as ever, finding solace and sense as usual in words put better than I ever could and as unusual as a certain particular only you I’m thinking of behind and around and within it all and I rub my eyes and stretch my wings and take a deep breath to breathe in two thoughts spurred by all this and some Aurelius, “today is now” and “everything has never always been only the same,” and on the long, slow exhale I reach for that poem I reread last night and reread again these three lines: “The distance between myself and the anatomy of happiness is a plane ride with a failing engine. When we begin to understand the real meaning of falling, we can hold hands and describe the sea. We can watch wings admit they never really knew how to belong to the sky” and think

why don’t you just come on over and we’ll go it alone together and describe the sea as if that’s where this bed floats and it won’t even be a fall at all, not even a climb, just a rise toward and in and for a word that has its own light.

And that’s how I get up and make it.

Thievery: Charles Bukowski • Lispector, Agua Viva • Tranströmer, “The Half-Finished Heaven” • Privitello, “What It Pertains To” • a little Neruda and some other stuff I can’t remember cuz it don’t matter none now does it