“Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy -- all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
The sun has burned the marine layer off and it’s lovely and bright and warm, and old Neil Young is playing the Bowl down the street. Should be good. Loud, probably. Neil’s always had things to say and a compelling way of saying them. He’s got quiet songs and rocking songs.
I saw a fair number of tourists on State Street when I was out earlier. Saw a wedding at the Courthouse, Mexican family, heavy young women in tight dresses, coiffed, glammed up head-to-toe for the occasion, men and boys in dark suits, baggy trousers, new shoes. Someone’s big day. The lawn in and around the Sunken Garden is covered with beach towels, blankets of many colors, folding chairs, for the movie that begins when darkness falls. Friday night, SB.
The mean world is at bay, for the moment, so why not enjoy it to the full? Because it doesn’t sit right, the complete, random dumb luck of being born here, not there, on this side of the line, not that side, on this continent, rather than someplace much meaner and harder than anything I’ve been forced to experience. Lucky, that’s all. In no way better or more deserving, just lucky. And because I have no illusions of permanent security of any kind. Circumstances can change quickly. Health. Money. Housing. Job. Family.
That’s why it’s a good day to read Bukowski, because he had a take on life, and luck played a significant part in his outlook. Luck with women, luck with wine and booze, luck at the racetrack, luck with the word. Roll of the dice. Snake-eyes, double 6’s. Have gratitude because it won’t last, nothing does. Nothing can, except the earth, and that is uncertain as of this week, when the hottest surface temperatures in recorded history were written into the books.
Consequences are felt, lives disrupted, the poor and less fortunate, the less lucky, feel the effects first and hardest. How it goes, right? Every time and place, under every social structure, bishop or king, queen or lord, mayor or general, chief or tsar. Some survive the consequences of greed and ego and fear, wars and pogroms and massacres and floods and earthquakes. Luck holds, they have the resources to sidestep pain and loss. Others die or get dispossessed or flee.
We’re on a planet that’s spinning and we trick ourselves into thinking we’re in complete control.
Bukowski knew that in America fear is piled atop fear. He wasn’t unaware of law and politics and racism and injustice but never paid it more attention than he thought it deserved. He knew politicians lied, priests buggered young boys, poor people were routinely exploited, women were raped, many of his fellow white people were racist; he’d been on the seamy and ugly side of the street, worked for years in soul-grinding jobs. He knew that in America a man as malignant and awful as Donald Trump would never be assassinated. He saw the knife’s edge and wondered why others couldn’t.
Bukowski was appreciative but never expectant.
How deep into the catalog will Neil Young go? Man made some great songs. Nostalgia time for some in the crowd. “I remember…” The old person’s opener.
How to describe it, gratitude laced with melancholy? Bukowski called that a gin & tonic.
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