Charles Bukoski: The Crunch

Winter is Dark and Stormy

Winter is dark and stormy and wrought with drinking.  It's a boozy season.  But then again, so could be said about every season really.  Summer's for drinking, fall's for drinking, spring's for drinking.  But winter's for drinking in a different way than the others.  In California, winter means rain, so we drink indoors, and we say it's to keep warm.  It's spiced wine and cider with brandy.  The wine's red.  The liquor's dark.  It's stormy outside and in the mind.  Moods fly particularly so in the winter.  It's a dangerous time.  Short-sighted.  Immediate.  Gluttonous.  Prowling.  Lying in wait.  Traps baited.  Fingers cold to the bone is what winter feels like.  It smells like wet rain.  Damp ground.  Red wine.  Ports.  And pastries from the bakery.  It's love lost and right in front of you.  Of me.  Hearts are crushed slowly underfoot, just after the holidays.  Dreams of new beginnings are dashed by grim reality.  A freeze of the soul.  Difficulty breathing before the rains come.

Barometric pressure.  Feverish forgetting, whispering, "Stop, stop, stop, stop."

Like the old cliché, what doesn't kill you, if it doesn't drive you off the road, it just makes you stronger.  Strengthens the grip, sharpens the mind.  Winter hollows out the core of me.

Each year.

Although to be true, there hasn't been much in there for some time anyways.  I am a hollow core.  An empty vessel. 

*****

When I was driving back with Lennon it was winter.  No, maybe Spring.  What color were the hills.  (Is that the white or the red?) Oh, jeez.  I can never remember that.  White?

No, they were green, bright green.  And the rolling hills of the Salinas valley are always the greenest in spring.  So it must've been spring.

No, it was winter.  That's right.  They were brown.  Wet brown and dead.  Not raining, just wet.  Lennon and I were both sufficiently high by the time we hit Salinas, and the sun was still out, not so high, but fighting the clouds to the west over the hills.  We were talkin'.

"We are all parts of a whole," he said.  "And we are each one whole.  Does that make sense?"

"Sure. Like a pie."

"Yes, like a pie."

"Mmm. Pie."

"But we are not always whole pies, Brian.  Like you.  You say you are happy and self-fullfilled all on your own."

"Yes.  Perfectly content."

"But you are not everyone."

"I know.  I can see it in others.  That need to be with someone.  In a relationship.  With a boyfriend or a girlfriend."

"Some people need that.  Some people are not whole pies like you.  They need someone else's slices to fill them."

"Not me.  I need the right one."  But at the time I felt like the right one wasn't ever going to find me.  Consigned to a single life.  But I did know what he was talking about.  "I don't need that intimacy, but I can't be alone.  Not completely alone.  I'd fuckin' die."

[stop]

Charles Bradley

The Deserved