My father’s laughing heart

I grew up believing that I would be Oriana Fallaci but perhaps that's because her name is so delicious, particularly when you say it again and again and again. Out loud or just quietly in your mind.

I'm more Bukowski than Neruda, but has to do with my father - the man with a beautiful mind who when sober would read Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Thanks to him I grew up on a diet of robotics, artificial intelligence, black holes, reason, poetry, science and thinking. The kind of thinking that saved me the days my mother was emotionally fraught.

“What the hell does that have to do with Bukowski?” you could ask.

Well.

If you want to understand. You must read Bukowski’s “Laughing Heart”:

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

My father’s name was Charles. A name I have come to think of as gorgeous. Charles Dickens. Charles Darwin. Charles Thomas Bolton. And of course Charles Bukowski. But I love this name because it belonged to my father first. The man who never made it out. None of us do. But he was beaten by life. Died broken in a bed in my house early one morning. Just before the sun arrived. Beaten, but like Bukowski, not without beauty.

For a long time I found my life disturbing, so I avoided it or viewed it with abstract scepticism like one would sitting in the back row of a Fellini movie, not knowing what the hell was going on. Thinking it fascinating and incredibly interesting.

I'm more in the movie now, but I think that has to do with the fact that the more I read Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett or Bertrand Russell the more I realise that 'oh fuck!'  This actually might be it. The darkness is coming. How can I create more light?

Let me get it before I'm gone forever. Now I try. I really try. And I'm happier for it. If happiness as an abstract concept can be plausible or real. It's such a mercurial beast. A bit like a cat that never comes when called. Rubs herself up against your legs every now and again.

I might be trying to get it because of my own Bukowski. The broken man with the beautiful mind. In my imagination he sitting in the back row. Watching the film. But he gets it now. Because he wants to. Because that’s me in the movie and he loves me. More than is bearable. He loves me. And heart achingly he wants it to be better for me than it was for him. So he’s cheering me on and he’s saying:

“you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.”

 

Comments

[S]

This makes me cry every fucking time I read it Mands. Emotion distilled into words. You are brilliant.

[Mandy de Waal]

Myra - Bukowski never ends for me. He just keeps on giving, for which I am grateful.

[nursemyra]

No one writes quite like Bukowski do they?

"and to think, after I'm gone,
there will be more days for others, other days
other nights.
dogs walking, tress shaking in
the wind.

I won't be leaving much.
something to read, maybe.

a wild onion in the gutted
road

Paris in the dark."

[Clive Simpkins]

Hmm. The literary genes have been passed on. This is a profound meditation.

[Mandy de Waal]

Saaleha - thanks for taking the time to read and comment. Deeply appreciated.

[saaleha]

Felt this fully in my heart of hearts.