Borrowing Bukowski

I finally got around to renewing my public library card a month or so ago. It's good to be back. Like the first swim after winter. Standing in a public library facing all those shelves full of books. So many strange & wonderful possibilities of borrowing combinations. Not knowing what you'll emerge with, what new doors will open in your mind. Better than a university library. Better than a gallery archive. Better than any non-lending library (pfft! what a tease). It's not grand, it's not precious, its not pretentious. But it's all yours. You can borrow so many books you break your back getting them home. When you get home you make coffee-table high stacks out of them & gradually paw your way through them clutching your tea cup as autumn sinks in. Renewing them over & over... Until you know you can renew no more & you break your back lurching back with them all. Promising to yourself that you'll get less next time and failing. Somehow unable to face the loans counter unless you're arms are at breaking point. The thrill of scraping through without overdue fines... one of life's small mercies.

I love cruising the shelves and watching my fellow book cruisers. Being a member of the public amongst other members of the public in the public library. It's a good kind of public. It's quiet. A little taste of monastic living. Nooks & crannies. Little stools & carpet to sit on. Little muslim girls getting excited about DVDs & public game consoles. Neatly dressed skinny men with wire-rim glasses hovering in about the autobiographies of old film stars. Pudgy patrons nudging the books in the health section. Spanish tourists making "chic-onomic" use of free internet facilities. Asian students sleeping or tapping away on lap-tops in the reading room. Newspapers of the world on sticks like wordy fairy floss at the fair.

One concern. Where have all the vagrants gone?

So I borrowed some Bukowski.

a strange visit
20 years ago when
I was a starving writer
a lady in a gold Cadillac
pulled up outside my humble place
got out and
knocked on the door.
she was well dressed,
smiling,
really beautiful.

she sat on my couch
and I poured her a drink
as she said,
"I am the Queen of
Rats in a woman's body."

"you look great,"
I said

"I have come to invite you to live
with us
in Rat Kingdon.
the world is going to end
with a bang
soon and all that will be left
will be Rats and a few
roaches.
we admire you and I have come
to invite you to join us
before it's too late."

"come on", I said, "let's go
into the bedroom and talk it
over."

"you're being frivolous," she
said. "I'm asking you seriously if you will
join our Kingdom of
Rats.
will you?"

"have another drink," I
replied, "and I'll think it
over."

she got up then, walked to the
door, opened it, walked out.
I stood at the window,
watched her get into her
gold Cadillac and drive
off.

20 years ago
I thought it was someone's
idea of a feeble
joke.
now, I am no longer so sure.

sometimes I think I should have
left with her.

other times
I am sure that I
did.

-Charles Bukowski

Here you, listen to Bukowski here