Chivalry Is Not Overrated

last thing

LADIES: Why all the hate?

In my opinion, if you’re not joking, and are seriously staring a girl down for any reason at all, you’re insecure.

You’re beautiful! We all are. Know who you are, and the fact that compliments don’t mean a thing. Only the ones you give yourself are important. Even if you never say them aloud.

We’re going to go nowhere if we continue to objectify ourselves.

I wear what I want, when I want, and how I want to because I feel comfortable in it. Not because of how it will be received.

All the women I know and love are amazing, and fucking rolemodels.

If you have to call out other chicks for hating on you or calling them jealous thats just as bad as their judgement of you.

It may be hard, but meeting eyes of other women with smiles would be a good way to start in the cause of not being a bitch.

Having strength comes with responsibility.

Own up to your beauty, but don’t use it as an excuse to be ugly.

That’s just what you become when you talk back to the people who hate on you.

Truth is, they probably wouldn’t if you didn’t have an attitude to begin with.

As good a place as any

Originally, I started this for rants.

Granted I have quite a few places to rant, including the lovely patient ears of my friends. Letters too, I write quite a few that my friends anticipate receiving.

Ok, so I’ll ask the question first:

Does anyone seem to notice that the internet and all of these little ‘blogs’ are turning into alternative methods of internet dating??

I hear the opposition already. YES, some start it to get their writing out there. YES, some just enjoy posting things they love like Art, Film, Mementos on their way to work, etc. How-ev-er, there seems - to me - to be a thin divide between posting out of sheer enjoyment, and posting to accumulate ‘fans’ ,interested parties, dates, and especially rendevous’.

Granted, this is probably not news for most. I just don’t subscribe to it.

Artists I love are reaching out to their fans and crossing boundaries to show there truly are none, and that indeed without each other art wouldnt mean shit. BUT, they also don’t necessarily consider their fans friendsssss. For we are not. We are appreciators. That is all. Chatting with them online does not mean we are friends.

So when average albeit talented shmoes start gathering together online because perhaps the attention they’re getting at home isn’t satisfactory, and they feel they share something with COMPLETE STRANGERS, they seem to become disillusioned.

These people are not friends.

Until or if you meet them in the flesh, no phone call or text, or even blog shouting match means jack. Call me confused, or maybe un-hip.

Fact: I appreciate a lot of people I’ve never met. I find people to be beautiful, talented, inspiring and I can’t get enough of meeting them; but truthfully they’re not my friends. When I click ‘sign off’ or turn off my phone, they disappear. But the friends in my life, the people I know, they don’t. This does not exclude people I’ve met who’ve moved across country or even live in different parts of the world. Just because you don’t see someone daily, weekly, or annually doesnt mean they’re not your friends. But I’ve met these people. I’ve stayed in some of their homes, and them in mine. We all have lives to attend to, and above all I understand that. I love them all from across whatever distance.

Maybe I’m old fashioned. I am utterly flattered when I get to chat with someone who has respect for what I do, or who I am, or what I’m about. Words can truly woo this girl, or any gal into believing that you share something with this -doesnt matter how many words you’ve exchanged- person. That makes me think that maybe people are becoming more afraid.

Are we? Are people becoming less inclined to interact with what’s in front of them, afraid to fucking take a chance and change their lives?

Go, travel, move, do something if you’re not satisfied. Investing so much in acquaintances you most likely will never meet, rather than the great people you know seems pretty wasteful to me. I travel a lot, but I know who my friends are no matter where I am. New ones are always welcome, but honestly aren’t tangible unless I can shake their hand.

Maybe I was just surfing the wrong places and came by one too many people that were less about sharing Art, and culture, and more about socializing.

The kind of people that post on their blogs before they’ve even had their first cup of morning coffee.

There are days that I just want to disconnect for weeks on end and it brings me to think of this essay Stephen Elliot wrote when he went offline for a month. People treated him like he was a freak; abnormal.

If it’s your craft, it becomes immediately apparent why you’re doing it. But some of ya’ll are slipping. Some just want to flaunt their narcissism, and maybe score some tail along the way.

All I’m thinking is there’s got to be a happy medium for the rest of us who apparently, are in the minority.

He was getting paid to drive a truck from New Hampshire to California. It was a way to earn a few extra bucks, and while we spoke on the phone he described to me what he saw.

It inspired a piece I began, that was in an entirely new voice so foreign to my own.

I still dig it.
——

Burning with the lust for adventure, he visits volcanoes in California. Legs swinging, he sat beneath the hot springs liberated by volcanic oozes, magma, and geysers visualizing the boiling water beneath the ground….

Bukowski's birthday is this weekend

"So You Want To Be A Writer"

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.
--------

FUCKING a. One of the most brilliant men I never got to meet.