Pulp

by Charles Bukowski

Most of the world was mad. And the part that wasn’t mad was angry. And the part that wasn’t mad or angry was just stupid.

‘What’s too awful, Jeannie?’ ‘The earth. Smog, murder, the poisoned air, the poisoned water, the poisoned food, the hatred, the hopelessness, everything. The only beautiful thing about the earth is the animals and

now they are being killed off, soon they will be gone except for pet rats and race horses. It’s so sad, no wonder you drink so much.’

I had made some good moves. I wasn’t sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren’t fools, they just didn’t fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering. It was a grim set-up and if you found yourself sleeping in your own bed at night, that alone was a precious victory over the forces. I’d been lucky but some of the moves I’d made had not been entirely without thought. But all in all it was a fairly horrible world and I felt sad, often, for most of the people in it.

Often the best parts of life were when you weren’t doing anything at all, just mulling it over, chewing on it. I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can’t be quite senseless because you are aware that it’s senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean? An optimistic pessimism.