Hello and welcome to my blog. I am John Loraine and I am a poet and a writer. Check out my new book, a collection of short stories and poems “Nicetown”. Thank you for reading. Cheers!
Life goes. It goes down and up and sideways. But it always keeps moving all the time. And then, the next minute, you realize that you’ve grown old, and the person in the mirror is somebody else. You still feel young and think you are a young and careless lad, but you are an adult now. This happens in life. Life happens. And honestly, it is good to get older and to look older because you got a chance to be here for a while. It is unfortunate to see someone young go into eternity before their time. The fact that you and I have a chance to wake up every morning to live our lives and do our things no matter how dull is a gift. It is a gift that not everyone appreciates or even stops to think about. But we should. We all should just stop the crazy nonsense of the day and think about ourselves, who we are, what we’ve become, what we are doing, and how we spend our limited time here on Earth.
I always thought that I lived the most boring and uneventful life. The life that doesn’t even have too many stories to talk about. I never had anything out of the ordinary happening to me. I have never been to many exciting places or done too many great things. I have nothing to brag about. Sure, after thirty-five years of living, anybody has something to say. Anybody has seen or done something interesting at some point in their lives. It may not be the experience that wows too many people, but it is our life story. I spend the holiday time off reminiscing about the good old days. The young and formative days when my hair was down to my shoulders, the ear piercing, or even before that time, the days when I looked as I would today call a child, but then I thought I was the shit. These are some great memories. Watching all those pictures of young myself with my friends doing things back in the day was a great experience and much-needed time to analyze and go over the past to see where I came from.
I remember how everything felt like for the first time. The first time not spend the night at home. The first job. The first paycheck. The first love. The first sex. The first car. The first fight. The first major disappointment. The happy days and the sad ones. The best friends and the worst friends. Hanging out until late at night, getting drunk, getting yourself into trouble, getting yourself out of trouble. There’s just so much that we go through in life, and there is also so much to learn from. But whatever you did back then, good or bad, made you who you are today. I don’t think I would ever want to go back in time and fix my shit. I don’t think that would help nobody. That would change history, my life, and who I have become.
I remember my circle of friends back then in my young days. Very few of those friends remained good friends today. At one point, we lived together, did things together, and had ordinary day-to-day life and the same problems. Now, as we all grow up and are adults, things are very different. We have wives, children, mortgages, jobs, and our problems are real and serious now. There is no time to have a beer on a random day just because there is nothing else to do. There is no time to hang out late into the night, smoking cigarettes and telling chokes and stories. The saddest part is seeing the pictures of your friend who is no longer alive. Who would ever think of that back then? We all thought we would live together into old age. I remember when I was young, that time was never a concern or issue. The only problem with time was the wait. I always waited for something to happen. Waiting until I am old enough to drive a car, old enough to get a job, old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of booze. Waiting until I am rich enough to continue to live this worryless life and have fun all the time. Looking at those pictures made me sad. It brought a lot of great memories. I felt the same as I used to back then for a brief moment. The power of the past. It was hard to find any serious pictures of us. We always did something fun. We always smiled, laughed, made faces, and made funny postures in those pictures. This is how I will remember that time, with a bright smile on my face. We were so alive and happy, and nothing would take this away from us but time.
Teens and twenties are a fucking worst times to live through. I don’t think I am the only one thinking that. People say you’re young and have your health, youth, and so much ahead of you. But what do you really have? Or what does an average teenager or twenty-years old really have? They have a whole bunch of shit to deal with. That’s what’s ahead of them. On the one hand, yes, it is a great time to be young and careless and have fun at your parent’s expense, but on the other, you are just drowning in the shit of life deeper with every year trying to figure out who you are, who you want to be, what is your purpose, what should you be doing with your life. I went through so much bullshit, stress, and anxiety that I would not want to return to those days to relieve myself again. Fuck that. I am happy and fortunate to have come out of it alive and kicking, and luckily for me, I’ve made some right choices in this life. I don’t have tattoos on my face, and I am not in jail or living on the street corner. That’s not true for so many others, though. Life takes time to figure out. It takes your whole life to figure this motherfucker out. You learn as long as you live. Try to explain this to a twenty-year-old.
Most of them are in school or college or a university, trying to get educated, getting a shit ton of loans to get the education which might not work out in the end. When you’re young, you have to deal with school shit, deal with or without your girlfriend or your boyfriend, deal with anxiety, stress, depression, bad habits, your classmates, your teachers, your neighbors, your shitty jobs, your shitty cheap cars, and so on. Throughout my time in college, I had no idea who I wanted to be, but I had to pick a major that I thought would work out for me well and I will be able to find a job after. Back then, a hundred dollars was a lot of money. My tunnel vision was too fucking narrow and nearsighted. I couldn’t think too far ahead or see much of anything to have a better plan. I had to eat the shit, be miserable and somehow get up and move forward. I had to switch to part-time schooling because I saw more value in working a blue-collar job at the wood factory, manufacturing fucking tables, closets, and countertops by making sixteen dollars per hour. That was a low-hanging fruit for me, and I knew I had to show up and do some work from 6:30 AM to 4 PM and punch out my card. I could only see that far ahead. I couldn’t see too far looking at my education path.
I was lucky to get my shit together and graduate from a junior college to attend a four-year school. That was a different kind of animal, much more expensive, and so much harder to study and follow the all-new rules and keep up with the schedule and assignments and exams. I remember going to bed one night, shutting down the lights, and crying. Crying as I used to back in my childhood days when my father would beat the shit out of me for something I did wrong. I was crying because I was failing the class because I couldn’t keep up with the learning material. I knew early on that I was a fuck-up, and this school wasn’t in my league and wasn’t even close to my family’s ability to pay for it. And now, with all these thousands of dollars in debt and all those efforts my mother put into me by working three jobs at a time, I was failing her and myself. I gave up on myself that night. My tears were falling like Niagara Falls, but there was no way out for me. I knew I would be miserable today, but I had to get my shit together tomorrow and make it all work.
I also had to work part-time at a restaurant on the weekends and study full-time during the week. At the restaurant, the work seemed like nothing. It was fun. It was my time off from anything else that was going on in my life. Also, we could drink alcohol at work, and pretty much all those years were full of insane hangovers and sleep deprivation mix-up with cigarette smoke. This was my twenties, people. Then all hungover and tired, I would show up to my classes on Monday after a long, tiring, and drinking weekend, trying to educate myself. Fuck, these were some crazy times. I never knew who I really wanted to be in life. I picked the major, but it all was foggy and unclear and too difficult to imagine this adult life I was preparing myself for. I remember looking at the expensive car with nicely dressed and good-looking people and thinking, damn, they’ve made it. I want to be like them one day. I want to achieve something in this life. I couldn’t even realize what life would bring for me in the next ten years and how things would turn around. I guess if you were not born into wealth, you have a very long and exhausting road ahead of you. Few people can come from total misery and break into the rich men’s world. Many people are stuck in poverty with their proletarian mindsets, and they never break through anything.
Life is also a journey, and it ends whenever it does. Nobody knows when our time will come. Nobody should know this either. We all have to make the best out of today. Live to the fullest and enjoy every little moment because we have this great opportunity to do so. And no matter how much older we’ve become, we all should feel like those youngsters in those old pictures of us, smiling, happy, and free. They might not bring back our youth, but they will remind you how it was once. Amen.
It is getting cold here in PA, and even in this early December, we all knew that winter was here to stay. At night the temperature goes as low as the early twenties, and it takes about ten minutes to warm up my nineteen-year-old Mercedes in the morning. I fucking hate this weather and these low temperatures, and I cannot stand being cold all the fucking time. Who can love this kind of weather anyway? The holiday spirit is in the air right now, and a little snow would make the magic work. But as soon as we finish celebrating New Year, I want fucking summer. I like to see the good old happy, warm, and humid days again. I want to go to the beach and get sunburned. I want a cold beer in my hand and to wear my shorts every day. My shit’s out of luck for the next three to four months. And since I’m stuck here, I will have to wait until mid-April for the nice weather to come around. Well, I have patience. I wanted to summarize this year and analyze what it has been for me, what I have done or accomplished, and what went to shit in the past year. It’s been my little tradition to write some sort of year-end reflection and set myself up for the new 2023 year of the Lord.
I don’t have too many complaints about 2022. It always could’ve been better, but I have nothing to complain about retrospectively. Whatever happened, happened, and what was lost was lost. I’ve tried my best to stay on top of my shit, but it wasn’t always easy. Nothing is easy when you’re an adult. Nothing is easy when you’re a parent. Nothing is and will be any fucking easier in the future, either. This is life, and we are here to live it. If we are no longer around, somebody else will have that privilege instead. So, it just means that I shouldn’t take anything for granted, and I should be happy to open my eyes in the morning every day and close my eyes at night, knowing that I have a chance to live another day. How I spent that time is my fucking problem. Was there anything I could do differently? Of course. We are all humans, and we love to fuck things up for ourselves and then feel sorry about that. I don’t have too many regrets in general. Maybe because I am a selfish asshole? Or maybe because I am just too fucking pumped to be who I am and to live the life that I do? One thing that keeps me going and makes me happy is that I am not stuck in one spot. I always kept on moving. The pace doesn’t matter, multi-tasking is the fucked up corporate buzzword that I fucking grown to hate, and the movement in life, as well as the movement of our bodies, means life. So I was moving around a lot, at least I’ve tried, and some things came to fruition while others didn’t. Well, will have to deal with all that shit next year. We’ll have another twelve months of surprises and bullshit.
The beginning of 2022 was rough. It was fucking cold then as well, and I have been cold and stressed out and busy at work, getting used to a new job. I landed a decent job with decent pay, and my family didn’t have shit to worry about. I think that’s a win-win. I had to struggle a lot, though, and then the stress was too overwhelming, and then the depression came in, and I had to meditate like a fucking monk to keep my head above the water. The good thing is that it worked. Meditation always does the trick. Gotta love that shit. How simple and how powerful and liberating it is! A few months into the year, I went down with a fucking flu. Flu, the one and only, the long-forgotten beautiful flu, came knocking at my door and knocked me on my ass for a couple of days. I thought that shit died when Covid came around. I was mistaken. It came back stronger than anything. I hadn’t had that kind of fever for years. It all passed. I recovered. I am strong, even when I am not. This wasn’t my time to see the other side. I had another chance. I am one lucky motherfucker.
The war in Ukraine was the most unfortunate and depressing event this year. It began in late February, and as I write this, the bombs are still flying over Ukraine like seagulls in the blue sky, destroying the infrastructure, killing innocent people, and turning that place into hell on Earth. In my earlier blog post, I have written about my feelings and thoughts about this war, so I will not rehash it here again. It tears my heart to see my homeland going through all this today after going through so much shit in its history. It was a major fucking shock, not just in my life but for people in Ukraine and worldwide. How dare these fucking russians? Who allowed them to behave like that? Who can stop these crazy fucks? Why is the world so fucking unresponsive and afraid to step in and kick their little shitty drunken asses? The everyday peace of Ukraine is being destroyed and ruined, and people have returned to the dark ages. Literally, the dark ages, because now the energy infrastructure has been impacted, and people sit in their homes without heat, electricity, and internet, just fucking waiting on another day, just fucking waiting for this shit to be over already. My dear cousin has lost his life in this fucking war. There goes another close relative death in our family and another significant loss in my personal life. I hope his and all others’ lives were not lost for nothing. I hope that Ukraine will win this war and will bloom again.
Somebody once said you couldn’t repeat the past. They were full of shit. I did repeat the past in the best way possible. Florida is my spiritual home. Since I first visited that place, I have felt completely in love with it. There are so many great memories and great trips down there that I live and breathe to return any time I can. My family went to Florida in May and stayed there for an entire month at the same place we were last year. Everything was the same, if not better. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was living in a dream. The dream came true. I was so excited to be there again. I was so happy to go to the beach every day and enjoy the nice warm weather, walk on the whitest sand and watch the most beautiful sunsets while drinking my beer and smoking my cigarettes at the beach, thinking about life, listening to some great tunes, watching my family happy around me enjoying themselves. There is nothing better than that. These moments are worth living for. These moments are worth all the fucking money. These moments are worth twenty hours of car ride one way. These moments were so great that nothing else compares and nothing else satisfies as much.
I was happy to wake up early in the morning and start my days with my morning coffee while writing, which I kept doing every fucking day while there. The writing came down smoothly. After that, I drove to the beach for my morning run. I ran on the beach barefoot, listening to my music, the ocean’s waves and seagulls, the sun in my face, and the ocean breeze in my head. I was free and happy at once. I found my new spiritual home. I found the place where I wanted to live forever, and once there, I wouldn’t even want to go anywhere else. The place where I want my ashes to be scattered into the ocean so I can be there forever. Fuck the alligators and snakes and hurricanes. That place has so much beauty with the perfect climate, the bluest ocean, the good happy vibes, and the brightest sun ever. That fucking sun can cure cancer. That sun heals. These sunsets are unbelievable and worth watching every fucking day. They are just priceless. I am going back to Florida again next year for sure.
On the family side of the business, things have also been busy. The little one grows fast. He learns things fast as well, and looking at him now, and I wonder how smart this little fellow is for his age. I have been a moron for the most part of my life, and he’s already brilliant at three. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for him and us. I spend more time together with my son now. I always try to spend time with him no matter what, but this year, especially once I’ve settled with the new job, my wife is busy getting her education done, and we are handing out together like two great bodies. I love to see him smile and laugh and play with me. I love to see him develop and become a person. He’s already the best person I’ve ever known at three years of age. I am such a fortunate father to have a son like that.
The best thing about becoming a parent is that nothing and nobody matters as much as your child, and everything and everybody else can go fuck themselves. This is the secret power of a parent if you ever wonder how in the fuck they can handle raising their kids. They don’t give a fuck, that’s why. They have much more important things on their minds and real problems like raising new humans to worry about rather than freaking out about what other people think or say. Fuck other people. I cherish every moment I spend together with my son. I try to be there for him, play with him, and make him a happy child. I want to be his best friend. I know this will not last forever. He will grow up one day. He will change. He will not walk by me, following me around the house with every step. He will become an adult with his own problems and worries. The father figure will move down the line and maybe even stay there forever unless I do my job right.
Now about writing. I always have so much to say about writing, but my writing process could be more consistent. I have my moments where I was dedicated and focused and inspired and creative, and this shit was pouring out of me, and then I have plenty of downtime or no time for writing at all. Some days it felt like I don’t even know what the fuck to write about. But that’s the resistance. Once I am on it, I am on it, and the writing flows.
My foremost priority since late last year was to publish my second book. I had this idea in my head for about two years now, but, man, it took so much time to finally, piece by piece, get it done and be over with. The book was meant to be a collection of everything I’ve written and posted on my blog. So-called “Writer’s Blog” book. I was working on editing and rewriting a lot of material, and many changes needed to be made. I began editing early in the year and only finished by mid-November. I had to polish everything and make it shine for the book. I think I did a pretty damn good job with that. I am proud of finally getting this second book out of my system and into the literature world. I had my closure. Let that bird fly.
It was a heavy lift for me, editing everything I’ve written and published on the blog over the last three years, plus writing new stuff and regularly posting on my blog. But, at the end of the day, I did it. I fucking did it. My second self-published book “Nicetown” went for sale in the Kindle store on December fourth. The paperback is coming out soon. I need to invest in online promotion and advertising through my media channels. Who knows, maybe, this book will do something. I am hopeful. But if not, then fuck it. There is a novel in process and several other writing project ideas in my head. The hold-off is just me. I need to sit down and start working again.
I renewed my Bluehost contract and blog domain for another three years. It wasn’t fucking cheap, but I thought this fucking thing kept me writing all these years, and it was proven to be working for me. So, I will be there for at least another three years. I have also recently started my Substack page and will post all new material there. Substack seems to be the way to go. It is a new, more modern way of blogging that removes the pain in the ass of building and maintaining your own website and distributing your content. Plus, all the cool kids are there. This could be another potential to get my audience, whoever they might be. I don’t get much of anything by just running my blog. I do need to acquire some audience and write for them. I mean, I always write for myself first, but it is always better when you have a group of fans looking forward to reading your next shit. I am sure they are somewhere out there. I would’ve been willing to read some new, raw, authentic writing from a writer who doesn’t give a fuck. It is hard to find anything like that anymore these days because everyone is afraid to speak out and write open-mindedly without sugarcoating anything or being too safe, trying to appease the audience and not get canceled. A lot of people just blindly went woke. It may be about time to take a little nap for them.
As I said, this 2022 was decent, much better than the last two years, and I hope for an even better 2023. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what the new year will bring, but I do know that I don’t and can’t stop for anything. I must keep moving forward, work on my writing, create new content, and get some life. We only get one chance at life, so why in the fuck would I stay humble and not try new and different things? We all have to get some life before it ends. Nobody knows when that time will come around, but we all sure as fuck know that it will come eventually. There are no sequels. I need to set larger goals for myself. I mean, regardless of how shitty life can become and how busy I can get with the daily chores, I am always happy when I write. I am always satisfied when I can put out some great work. Great, in my understanding. I am not shooting for a Pulitzer Price; let me make that clear.
So, I am ready for a new fucking year. I have a little plan to go after, and I will be working my ass off. I know that the minute that clock strikes midnight on the first, the shit might go haywire. No magic happens in a new year unless we create it for ourselves. Unless we work towards getting something for ourselves and work hard to accomplish something, whatever it is. Sometimes even small victories can make your day. Sometimes even a small thing can be a major turning point. So, happy New 2023 Year! Don’t get fucked up too much. The date will change on the calendar, but all your bullshit will remain unless you decide to change something. Cheers to all of you, free people of this fair country, and let’s be kind to one another, open-minded too.
It’s been a while since I wrote anything here on my blog. I have a good reason. I’ve been busy editing and self-publishing my second book called “Nicetown.” That’s a good excuse, right? Publishing a second book is a great thing to do if you’re a writer, and it feels like a very fulfilling task. I’ve invested in this book for a very long time. The idea came to me about two years ago, and it took all that time until last week to actually publish this motherfucker. Well, it takes what it takes, and now this book will be out there in the world on the digital Amazon bookshelf for as long as Amazon will last. And I think that beast will outlive all of us.
The book I am talking about, “Nicetown,” is a collection of stories and poems, both fictional and autobiographical. These are all the stories I’ve been working on for the last five years. It is a random collection of stories I’ve written at different points in my life, mainly about my life and the shit I was going through at the time. There is a bit of a theme in that book based on my personal experiences, letting go of two jobs, driving for Uber for a living, trying to become a writer, struggling and eventually making it all work, becoming a father, and raising a family. This book covers a lot of topics and subjects. Some of them are series, and some are just random shit that I thought would be worthwhile to include in the book. There are some decent poems in this book as well. I think my poetry has improved over the years, and there is a lot of interesting and deep stuff readers might enjoy and appreciate. My first book, “My Poems, My Soul,” was a collection of early poetry. Mostly very mean and depressing poems written by a young wanna-be poet and writer, trying to write like Bukowski and suffering through everyday life, trying to find a meaning of it all. But these poems sound immature and naive in a way, even pretentious. They are essential in my writing life because this is where it all began. This is where it all happened. This is what I’ve been going through over the years, trying to fit my life into a poem. Poems in my latest book, though, are more mature and serious. I am taking it all to the next level here. I am happy about that material and am glad they got their new life in this book.
So how this book came to be? I’ve been writing and posting my stories and poems on my blog for about two years at the time, and approaching the second anniversary, I wanted to do something special. I thought about collecting and publishing everything I posted on the blog into a new book. The original name was “Writing Blog.” I started editing the material for the book, and I couldn’t get myself to finish it. There was always something in a way. It took too much time and effort. I felt fucking lazy to do it. Life got in the way. A lot of changes in my personal life indeed. So I had a plan, but I wasn’t going to follow it for some time. Eventually, in early 2022, I decided to finally get it done. It took me ten months to finish what I had planned, as usual, with multiple interruptions. Fortunately, I finished editing by late October, and this massive stone was off my chest.
There are a lot of stories based in and about Philadelphia and my life and my fictional character’s life, based in Philadelphia. I thought having this book framed around this town would be a great idea. This is my adopted hometown. I lived here for half of my life. So why the fuck not? The name Nicetown means what it sounds like it means. I decided to call this book a Nicetown sarcastically. There is a neighborhood in Philadelphia called Nicetown, and nothing is nice about it. Philadelphia is known to be a City of Brotherly Love. Based on my experience, it has anything but love. So many stories in the book are about getting lost and finding yourself. It is about making shit work, finding your purpose, finding the right way, getting lost, making a living, surviving, raising a family, struggling, and so on. At the end of the day, all the puzzles came together. The stories, the poems, the book title, and the themes inside the book all make perfect sense. They are part of me. They are part of my life. They are part of who I was and whom I became.
It all began mid-2017 when I was let go of my first job. I was lucky then, and I had a new job right after. That new job didn’t last for too long either, and I was fired for the second time in about four months. Fuck. Where do you go from here? I went to drive for Uber. Something that at one point felt scary and liberating, on the one hand, has become my curse for the next eight months and counting, on the other. I had no luck finding a new place for a while, so Uber became my primary source of income. I thought then this was my opportunity to become a writer and write all the time as much as I wanted. But this was a very short-lived feeling. The more time passed, the less money remained in my bank account, and driving for Uber was the only option to keep afloat. And after driving for fifteen hours a day, I had no fucking energy or creative juice to write anything. It all lasted for about eight months until I found a job at a company and industry which I fucking hated the most, but they needed me, and I needed the money and something to put on my resume, so it all began again. The short series of stories, “My Shit’s Out of Luck,” is all about that. There are also a lot of fiction and other stuff I’ve written over the years that are quite an interesting take on life, writing, life lessons, and searching for yourself. This book is dedicated to those who are lost and searching and to those who have found and keep searching. As this search in life never ends until life ends.
It feels good to have something done. It feels good to have a new book out. It feels good to have your second book published. It feels even better when you’ve done it all yourself. It is all yours; I mean, it is all mine. It is a piece of me and a piece of my life, and I am happy to release that burden out there in the world and take that baggage off my shoulders. Let it go. Let it fly. Let it do what it does. Let it live. The future is here. The future is near. The future is all the unwritten books out there in the world. And I will make this future more interesting, as there is just so much more to say and to write and to think about. Life has just begun.
He checked into Hampton Inn by Hilton in Florence, South Carolina, around 10 pm. He had to, and it was getting late. The highway was endless and pitch dark, his vision was getting blurry, and his head was starting to spin from driving all day. Rightfully so, he’s been driving from Florida for nearly nine hours straight, and it was only halfway to his hometown, Philadelphia. Nothing and nobody was waiting for him in Philadelphia besides a bunch of problems, frustration, depression, bad old memories, and the cold grey days which ate him alive slowly. Mark McGuire was at one point the greatest living writer in Philadelphia, turning into the greatest suffering and mediocre alcoholic. The lady luck wasn’t on his side this time.
Writers are better writers when they genuinely suffer; the more they suffer, the better their writing becomes. It was true for Mark. After a month of trying to find his muse in Florida under the bright warm sun, basking on the beach every day didn’t help him much. Somehow it was harder to write in that environment. Mark would wake up early, brew some coffee and sit in front of his laptop, wondering why his writing wasn’t coming to him. Back home in Philly, he wasn’t even thinking about that. Once his laptop was on, the writing came to his pages. It might not be the best of his writing, but it was something. He knew it. He knew he had to stay consistent. He knew he had to do his homework. It will be hard to outperform his previous legendary work, but there was always a bit of hope for him to get there. He was good at writing everything poetry, prose, blog rants, and pretty much anything while living and suffering in Philadelphia. The main problem was that he hated that place and all its people. This could be why he had so much on his mind, which came out of him in a sentence form on the page.
His retreat in Florida did solve, however, one problem. His anxiety went away. It was diminished almost completely. He wasn’t the angry middle-aged man anymore. There was some sense of balance and relaxed vibes about him. He felt it. He was relaxed, and his mind was of so much shit he usually had to deal with daily for a very long time. Even though he wasn’t that productive in Florida, he did write something. A few pieces were not much, but they were shaped perfectly. He needed to figure out where to take the storyline, but what he did have was a great beginning of something that could turn big. Something that might bring his name and fame back on the bookshelves in America and Europe. Who knows? This might be just it.
Hampton Inn and Suites was pretty quiet inside the lobby, and there was almost nobody there except the receptionist. She greeted him warmly and asked how she could help. Mark asked for the room. The king-sized bed was alright. On the first floor, no problem. She rang him up. He paid and went over to his room. It felt like his feet were not his anymore. They felt like they weren’t really listening to his mind. Somebody might think that he was drunk. Who cares? He was too tired to think about it too much. He just needed the rest, the shower, and a pillow under his head. The room was very conveniently located, not too far from the side exit, which was perfect since Mark could get back to his car and bring his stuff over. He also thought that this would be very convenient to go outside for a smoke. The gym room was right around the corner, but no energy was left in him for a workout.
He opened the room and, entering, flipped the switch on. The room was nicely designed and smelled fresh. He looked around with great satisfaction because he liked what he saw. The room was immaculate and well-designed. It felt like you wanted to stay there and chill. There was a bathroom to his right and the TV set to his left, and across in the middle of the room was the king-sized bed. There was also some sort of a reading nook with a lamp hanging over it. This would be perfect for writing and reading something tonight. I might even write something in this room, thought Mark. Like the good old guys, staying at some random hotel room late at night in the middle of nowhere, trying to get his worlds and soul on paper. He put his bag down and turned on the light everywhere. Shower first, he thought, and started unzipping his bag.
The bathroom looked pristine and modern. It has anything one might need in the hotel room. After the shower, Mark felt a bit more relaxed and refreshed. He looked at himself through the stimmed foggy from the hot water mirror. Man, you’ve come a long way, he said. Where are you going next? It was more of a rhetorical question he asked himself. There were things that he needed to think about and some priorities to set.
He had a sandwich in his bag and a beer with a small bag of Doritos he had just bought at a local gas station. This will be my dinner, he thought. He was hungry. It was too late to eat that kind of stuff, and he never tried to get his belly full before bedtime, but he didn’t care. I’ll eat this, and then I can relax and read, maybe write something, or maybe I’ll just watch some bad night TV? There was always something useless to watch on TV every time you turned it on. Whether you wanted to watch it or not was another question. Just something to kill time and switch the brains off for a brief moment.
Mark was alone and lonely. Not just in this hotel room but in life. Since his wife divorced him and his latest girlfriend was tired of babysitting him, he just ran solo. There was nothing wrong with being alone. It was liberating in the way. He could think straight now and focus more on his writing with fewer interruptions. But still, something felt missing. He was still searching for it.
He heard voices in the next room. They were man’s and woman’s voices and laughter. He saw a young lady walking into the room next to him earlier. There was somebody with her. They laughed, and Mark didn’t pay too much attention to it. Then it was quiet, and then the moans began. They were very passionate about it. The girl was not hiding anything and gave it all out. Mark could hear her very honest, loud, and unapologetic moans. He wished he would have somebody over. He wished he would be in that room with that girl right now, making her sound like that. The moans continued for the next five minutes before breaking into total silence. It was over. Now they both were satisfied. Mark imagined them lying in bed looking at the ceiling, out of breath, sweaty and happy, just looking and breathing loudly with satisfaction. I need a smoke, he thought and walked outside.
It has been a quiet night outside, and it felt pleasant regardless of the humidity. Mark pulled his cigarette out and lit it. He inhaled the organic tobacco deeply and exhaled the thick white smoke into the night sky. The cloud of smoke went up and over his head and into the air, moving slowly and heavily. Mark inhaled again and exhaled with a feeling of satisfaction and calm. This stuff will kill you, Mark, he thought to himself. Life will kill you, was the internal response he gave himself. That was true. You never know what to expect or not to expect these days. One day everything goes smoothly. Another, all the shit hits the fan, a wall, or something else. And then you find yourself with your back against the wall, gasping for another chance for another breath, trying to survive and live just a little bit longer. There was nobody in the parking lot except for Mark, which allowed him to focus on his thoughts. It has been a while since he could think in peace and quiet and evaluate his life situation. Many things needed to be worked out.
Yes, he wished for a comeback. Yes, he wanted to be loved again. Yes, the middle-life crisis was a real thing. Yes, Mark wanted to be a great writer again now or soon, not in the past. He was tired of trying to live up to his past. The past was good to him on the one hand and not so much on the other. He had it both ways. He’s been poor and broke, rich and famous, and now he’s just lost almost everything. The greatest living writer was drowning in his life and his bullshit with no way out. The people will wait, and the fans will stay if they care enough. Who knows if anybody still cares? Mark cares. But does anybody else care about what Mark cares? There was a shitstorm of thoughts moving through his mind while tobacco smoke was moving through his lungs. The “Don’t close your eyes” song by Kix repeatedly played in his mind. He’d listened to that song dozens of times while on the road. There was something in this depressing music and the lyrics that would cheer one up during the hard times. This one was helping Mark and making him feel like he’s not alone and other people are also in the fucked up situations. This thought calmed his shit down for a moment.
He finished his cigarette and exhaled the last cloud of smoke into the air. The lonely figure on the parking lot at night, full of his thoughts and nicotine, looking into the sky, asking for another chance. You’ll get it, Mark. Just wait. Just wait and write something and you’ll see the fans will be back, you can get your life back, and you can feel much better and appreciated like never before. You will be a great writer again, if not better. Just trust this feeling. Stay hopeful, you moron.
He went back into his room. The room looked empty and lonely. His laptop sat on the writing desk with the corner lamp on. It reminded Mark that he could use a bit of the time he had in this room to write. There is no better place to focus on writing than the hotel room, where you are all alone with no distractions and nobody who can disturb you, especially at night. He returned to the desk, turned the laptop on, and opened a new word document. The worlds came to him in no time, and he secured them all on his pages. One word after another, one line after another, he was getting somewhere. He knew this was his chance to stay productive. He once wrote about a successful writer trying to find his purpose and return to his writing, much like Mark these days. He was busy writing for another forty minutes, then he hit the bump. He looked around and up at the ceiling, thinking, I need to spice this up a bit. I need to get out there and get something to write about. You can only write so much about being lonely in a hotel room. He decided to go out. There were a bunch of restaurants and bars in the area, and there could be his luck somewhere. There could be his next story in one of those bars or restaurants, waiting for Mark to discover it.
The feeling of being tired went away quickly. Mark was ready to go out and see the local nightlife and live some life. This could be a good thing too. I am a stranger in a new city far away from home. There are some moments I can capture, he thought. The Hampton Inn was located in a very touristy area in Florence, and there were many other hotels, restaurants, and bars around. This area seemed like you could go out and not worry about getting into trouble. Mark went into the bar close to the hotel.
There were many people for the late hour of eleven o’clock at night in the middle of the week. All those people are probably tourists just traveling by or staying in South Carolina on their vacations. The bar had dimmed lighting inside. There was a small round table across the room, and bar seats were available. The pool table is in the far right corner, and a few people are at it. Quite a few people were sitting at the bar, and Mark decided to join them.
“Blue label, please,” he ordered a shot of his favorite scotch. The bartender nodded his head and turned around for the bottle. Mark looked to his side. Some women were sitting there, couples, some singles as well.
“How is it going?” The fellow to this right asked. He was pretty lit by that time, and since nobody was sitting to him this close, he decided to talk to Mark.
“It’s alright, man. How have you been?” Asked Mark, sounding disinterested.
“Going well, man, just taking it easy. It’s been a long week for me, you know?” “No, I did not know that, but I feel your pain, buddy.” Something about those lonely people at the bar who are always trying to share their shit with strangers. Mark never liked talking to anybody, but now this guy was stealing his attention.
“I was driving a truck from California and was on my way home and broke. The fucking repairs are taking a week to two weeks. There is nothing else for me to do. I am behind schedule, and the delivery has now been reassigned to another driver. Just coming here to this bar and getting loaded. You know? Fuck I hate when my truck breaks down. What can I do right? While I’m stuck here, I might take it easy and drink.
“Yeh, man, sorry to hear about that,” said Mark with a grin on his face. “At least you can relax and take it easy at the bar. Eventually, you’ll be back on the road, working again.”
“That’s right, man. Ok, I got to get out of here. I think I’ve got my doze by now. I’ll see you around, man. Take care.” He left some tips on the bar table and went slowly to the bathroom before leaving the bar.
Mark drank his scotch while watching a TV screen in front of him. He was glad the guy didn’t hang at this bar for too long, and he wouldn’t have to listen to his misfortunes. He was now alone, a loner in the strange City, in the strange bar, too far away from home. In these situations, you feel like you’re a ghost. You are here, and nobody knows who you are. Nobody really pays any attention to you. You came and left with no return to this place. It was almost perfect.
Then this woman came into the bar with her girlfriend and sat there. Mark glanced and nodded at them, like hey, hello, I saw you coming in and thought I’d say Hi. They made the same gesture in response. There was some laughter and some conversations that the two were so deeply involved in. Mark minded his own business sipping on his scotch. After a while, the two ladies approached him and said Hi. This was surprising, but it was also good to be around. Mark smiled back with this charming smile and introduced himself.
“Oh, you are Mark McGuire?! I cannot believe it. Lora, look, this is him, the famous writer! Wow, what a surprise! I thought you were just a random handsome, lonely guy sitting at the bar at night and looking for company.” Lady giggled and showed their white teeth through their smiles, looking at each other and Mark, laughing silly.
“And all of that was true, except for the “famous writer” thing. I’m still working on it. But thank you, very pleased to meet you as well, ladies.” Mark felt that now he must live up to his fucking image. One of these ladies was clearly into him. She was a fan. He was trying not to be involved with his fans. However, it was hard to manage since he was so famous and some women he couldn’t ignore. He had to have them and enjoy them while they came.
“The pleasure is all ours, Mark. I have read all your books. I wonder if there is a writer these days in America who can write well as you do. Something about your particular writing and its tone and realism just attracts the reader to the story and the book. And then you find yourself reading it straight through the night, and I love it.”
“I’m always glad to know that people are or have been enjoying my books. I was working on each and every one of them really hard. Not so much harder lately, but back then, back in the day, I was on fire! Thank you, though.”
“Do you mind a little company?”
“Make yourself at home, please,” said Mark. This night might not be so dull and lonely anymore. His writing will suffer, but he has to live his life too. He needs this. His writing needs this. His little writer’s soul needs this. To live. To create. And to fuck.
The next couple of hours at the bar went by quickly. Mark found out that the two women also staying in the same hotel as he. What a coincidence! One of the women gave him his room number on the way out. This is another fucking night of adventure in his lonely writer’s life worth living for. Great, Mark thought. I need to take it easy and relax. It’s been a long fucking ride home, and more is still ahead. The chances are high that I will be stopping by that room tonight.
He didn’t remember what led to this and how he ended up in the next-door hotel. It was one of those mornings when you feel every cell in your brain vibrating, but you are happy because you know it was worth it. It definitely was. The two naked women from the bar next to him were on the bed, sleeping peacefully. What a night, he thought?! Who would ever imagine I would wind up here? He looked around the room. It was a large room with a king-sized bed. There were leftover beer bottles with snacks and cigarettes all over the table. They sure got a great time last night. Fuck, Mark thought, it is time to get the fuck out of here before everyone awakes. They might wake up with no recollection of what the fuck happened last night. They may say it was all my fault. Or whatever might come up, I don’t want to suffer through this shit.
He got out of bed and picked up his clothes, scattered all over the floor. It reminded him of some sort of aftermath in a crazy sex-movie scene. He picked up a beer bottle and drank as much as possible in one shot. It felt so great and refreshing. Even the warmed-up beer felt great at the moment. Mark thought the beer was going straight into his head, and the last night’s buzz was resurfacing and hitting him in his brain again.
He left the room quietly. I need to get to my room now. He took the elevator down and walked down the hall toward his room. The hotel felt a bit strange, but he wasn’t too concerned. His entire life felt very strange as well. He tried the key, and it didn’t work. He tried a few more times, but clearly, something wasn’t right. If it feels wrong, it might be wrong, Mark. He went to the lobby and saw a lady at the reception. He wanted to come to her for a moment and ask about the key not working, but somebody had just entered the hotel and went straight towards the reception desk. Let me get some smoke first, Mark thought.
Where the fuck am I, he thought, standing in the parking lot. This is not the hotel I registered in, and where the fuck is my car? My car was parked right outside the side door. Shit. I am at the wrong hotel. He walked around the building, checking the nearby places. There were five hotels in this area, one next to another. He looked up and saw the Marriott sign on this building. Yeh, definitely not my hotel. He walked around and saw Hampton’s building, two buildings down. Hotel’s sign appeared on his face, and he exhaled the smoke with relief. At least he knows where he’s at. He strolled towards his room. I don’t feel like hitting the road anytime soon, he thought. He went into the lobby and extended his stay for another day. Then walked towards his room and collapsed on the bed. He stayed there till the following day.
He slept in late, and once he checked out, he knew he would have something to write about his adventures at home. It was always a good practice to let any new experiences and thoughts marinate in his mind for a little bit before they were ready to go out. He knew this was about a matter of time before he’ll get this shit on the paper in a novel form. The remaining ten or so hours went by quickly. He was excited to come back after a long time. This trip was indeed helpful. He realized a few things throughout. He’s changed. He couldn’t remain in the same place, doing the same things, and hoping for better results. The results were shit, and he felt like it quickly. And with time, it was the only thing he felt like. Someone had to give. Some things had to change.
Once in Philly, he was happy again. He realized that he missed his beloved fucked-up City, with all the homelessness, pollution, dirt, traffic, and shitty restaurants. I am home, baby. I am happy to be back. The new novel was written in record time after his return. Mark worked days, nights, and everywhere in between whenever he felt he needed to write something. It all worked out well. There was a press release from his publisher, and the world was excited about the new upcoming book from their local, famous writer-hero. He’s back. He was fucking back.
There are moments when I feel like I’ve exhausted my creative sources. The well has dried up. I don’t know what else to do. I sit and fucking wonder, and nothing will come to me. No ideas. No creativity sparks. I just sit there with my mind blank, blanking like a motherfucker. This must be resistance. That bitch is undoubtedly in the way, keeping me away from my writing. I have to work. I have to get something down. I have to keep going. Fuck resistance, I think, as I open a new document and start typing my useless thoughts in some weird, chaotic order. According to Mr. Pressfield, the only way to beat resistance is to show up every day and do what you have to do regardless of how you feel, how much you produce, and what kind of fucking day of the week it is. One sentence is good. One sentence is much better than nothing. One sentence written down shows you’ve overcome resistance, and you showed up, and you’ve written something, anything. That matters the most; no matter how strong that fucking resistance is, you have to work against it. Once that becomes the habit, you shouldn’t care about anything else in the fucking world. You know what to do, and you show up daily or regularly to work on your craft or whatever you’re working on. Why am I reciting Pressfield? I don’t know. I guess this is the main lesson I’ve learned from reading his book “The War of Art,” which inspired me in so many ways. And secondly, this is the time when I am really struggling with my creative thoughts and my new creative writing, and he’s the only one who provides writers and creative souls with a legit solution. It seems like nothing else or nothing new to write to me about. And the time goes by, one month after another, and there is no new material, and that fucking sets me back. I get used to producing nothing; hence, I produce nothing over time. And I start looking for reasons why I haven’t written and what has been on my way not writing. I am fucking looking for excuses while not trying to do the work.
I woke up at five am this dark and cold Sunday morning last September 2022. I had a plan. I needed to wake up early to spend some alone time on my writing, with no distractions. I’ve been slacking too much lately. I better cut the bullshit out before it becomes another annoying habit of mine. So, here I am. I am back to the old me. I woke up early, and I was ready to ramble. I am ready to write. I remember days when I wasn’t even thinking about writing. I opened my laptop first thing in the morning and started to type, and the words came to me effortlessly. That happened multiple days and weeks in the raw, and at one point, I thought, holy shit, I got it. I am on the holy writing trail again. I’ve cracked the code. My excitement lasted until that habit was put on hold several times, then life kicked in, and I was out of the loop again. And then, I was fucking lost yet again. Then, I struggled with getting my routine back in order, getting my stupid mind back to work, and getting my creative juices flowing again. It is hard to start over too many times. It hasn’t gotten old yet, but it is like fuck; I’ve been here before, and now I have to go through it just one more fucking time. Life isn’t perfect, and it is tough to build a routine or a steady schedule, and shit always gets in the way. I have to provide and be here for my family. That is priority number one for me. Everything else comes second.
I watched the new Elvis movie last night. There it was, the perfect example of how one great, super successful, and world-famous Elvis sacrifices his fucking personal life and his family life for his fucking show and career. He seemed to have all the right intentions to provide for his family, but in the process, the family was not the priority anymore. Not having a normal life. Not having any family nearby to care for him. He was not even able to leave the fucking country for his International tour. He stayed here. He was committed to his act. He was performing and performing fucking well. The show must go on regardless of the misery that went along with it. He’s sold his soul in Vegas. That fucking schedule and even dedication will destroy anyone. There was a chance to take a break, stop for a while, clean up, return to his family, start all over, and live to a hundred years, but it didn’t happen. He didn’t want it. Once he was on the move, it was until the wheels came off. The wheels did come off but sadly, at forty-two years of age, dying in such fucking misery. Even for Elvis, it was a too sad way to go away like that. His priority was his art. The family was not. My priority is my family. Then all the other bullshit in its random fucking order. But I am dedicated, and I am not self-destructive. I am continuing on. I keep up the good fight. And I will be writing regardless of how slow or good or bad. I will be doing this because this is what I love to do, and it makes me feel fucking great.
I have been into J.D. Salinger’s writing a lot in the last five years. I read all of his, at least, popular books. I am sure there is more writing of his somewhere, maybe not all on Amazon. I developed a deep personal connection with “The catcher in the rye.” A true classic novel that never gets old. There are several good reasons why this novel resonated with me and so many others. I think this novel based on its writing style, theme, and rebellious protagonist, could be a great and, in a way, helpful read for all ages. Salinger combined all his Holden stories in this novel and centered them around this young and troubled fellow. Holden is an example of everyone searching for purpose in life during our formative years while searching for himself, going through some shit while voicing his thoughts and philosophy and asking questions about simple things that have a much deeper meaning. Young folks may enjoy this novel because it is fucking interesting to read and learn about this young fellow going through something during the challenging teenage period. This time in life is tricky because as one learns more about life and slowly gets introduced to adulthood, one may dismiss the adult world as phony and stupid and many things adults do as unnecessary and without a good reason. Being young and angry at the world, rebelling against the social norms and structures and institutions, dealing with depression and stress and social issues, indulging in bad habits to escape reality, and so much more. It is a protagonist that most young folks would like to be or are, in a way, already like Holden.
I read the Catcher in my late twenties and learned a lot, even more, when I re-read it several times in my early to mid-thirties. This novel has some hidden passages that shed light on the philosophy of life from a teacher Holden was visiting. The drunk fucking teacher once talking to Holden, in his drunken state, voiced pretty much the central wisdom in that novel, what it is to be an adult and what it takes to be a man. “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for the cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” Holden might not be entirely ready for this wisdom, as any youth exposed to such serious talks might not get it the first time. It usually comes to most younger folks later in life. As it did come to me later in my life. I wish I’d read this novel back in my teens. But I am happy to have discovered it in my late twenties and early thirties. At different points in my life, I found something very true and relatable in the “Catcher in the rye” novel.
Holden’s philosophy of being the “Catcher in the rye” is very interesting when his younger sister asks him what he wants to be in life. Even though it seems like he has no idea what he’s talking about, his response made a lot of sense to me as a father. Realizing how phony the adult world is, Holden wants to prevent children from falling into it. He realizes how great and innocent young people are, looking at and admiring his little sister. Holden wants her to avoid falling into the phony adult life journey he’s going through, as well as all adults are. He wants to protect and catch these little children from falling off the cliff. Salinger’s idea of protecting innocent youth from the mean and unjust adult world is described this way in this novel. It took me a few years to really understand what he meant. When I became a father, I finally got it. It was clear why protecting children from falling off that cliff and into the adult world was crucial for Salinger and Holden.
Once on the playground, I saw my two and half-year-old son playing with other kids. My son ran around among all these other kids, some older, some bigger than him, some more crazy than others, and my little son was up there with them trying to be part of it. He was up there on top of this pretty tall playground construction with all the tubes, pathways, and other shit. I was watching him from the ground. I saw him out there. He was shy and just looked around, watching other kids. Sometimes, he would smile if he saw something they did that was funny to him. Sometimes he imitated what others did as he walked on top of the bridge up there or crawled through the tubes and climbed ladders. I worried he might fall. I worried other kids could push him out. I felt like snatching him out of there and taking him away from all of these kids and that fucking slider. I wanted to hold him close because he might get hurt out there. I felt like my heart was being torn apart. I did not know what to do. But I knew one thing, I loved this child more than anything in the world, and I wanted to protect him and keep him safe and close for as long as possible. I knew I was not able to help him then and there. He was there on his own. I called out his name, but he didn’t see me. I saw him looking down from the top of that structure, smiling, enjoying his moment. He did not see me or hear me, but he was up there with all these kids living his life. I realized then that he will not always be close to or near me as he has been for his first three years of life. As he grows up, he will be more independent, living his life, making decisions, getting into trouble, and making things happen. I will not always be there. I will not always be able to help him. Eventually, he will fall over that “cliff” from his childhood and become an adult. Eventually, his innocent youth will be over. Eventually, he will become a father and probably feel the same about his children. The fact that I would lose him to his own adult life made me feel sad.
For an older reader, the “Catcher in the rye” book can also be a fun read because it will remind them of how it was and how it felt when they were young. Holden’s voice in this book is the voice of youth. That semi-fictional character from the early fifties still sounds relevant and accurate today in the 2020s. Salinger writes the story from Holden’s perspective, but he has himself in his mind. I believe that Salinger and olden are very similar people with similar ideas and attitudes. Salinger combined all these ranges of emotions, themes, and ideas, which are relatable to just about anybody alive. This is why this book never ran out of print, and this is why this book is still popular so many years later and will continue to be relevant because it mentions the questions and issues that are part of being a human. Everyone is closely familiar with, younger or older, regardless. I am now seeing more and more and feeling more and more about the world outside and my three-year-old son and how I wished he always stayed this little and innocent and not fucked with that utter world with its nonsense and bullshit. Salinger felt that himself and described that in this Holden protagonist and a similar character in his other works. I cannot think of a more likable example in the literature that has been so popular and so prominent and appealed to so many people over the decades.
From the moment I read the first few pages of the Catcher book, I felt like, damn, this writing is something. It is written in Holden’s voice as he deals with his life and has all these different experiences, which help the reader see life and its phoniness from a teenager’s perspective. The writing itself is Salinger’s typical stream of consciousness which comes from the first person, from the protagonist. The language that he uses is the language of the youth. It is meant to sound that way. It sounds and reads pretty cool, even after it was cool to talk like that back in the fifties. This simple, casual, and sometimes even dull language is easily accessible and relatable to most people. Writing this way helps to deliver the critical message better. And it did, as we can see over the years. On a personal level, I do relate to Holden a lot. I felt like that many times growing up. I always wanted to be in that pristine, careless state, doing things that I liked to do, knowing that getting older would require shifting priorities and getting educated and getting a job, and getting married and dealing with like like all adults do. I wasn’t necessarily against it, but I knew the fun would be over soon.
When I was in my mid to late twenties, I had accomplished half of the required program that I had on my mind. I got my education, married, and worked jobs, but I wasn’t happy. The more I lived and experienced life, the more I knew how fucking rough and ridiculous it became. I read this book when I was twenty-nine, and at that point in my life, I was on the edge of being lost. I was on the edge of switching my life from a careless young lad to a young adult who had to support his family. I knew that many people my age were pretty damn fucking set up and organized and were much further in life than I was. I was always behind on everything. The book, even by accident, was read with quiet enthusiasm, and it felt very relatable and entertaining. I was about to be fired from one job, and I was working on landing a new job. My wife and I lived with my in-laws, on our last dollar, with no good prospects for the near future. I wanted to become a writer, but I knew I couldn’t just drop out of the professional world because we would die in poverty. I was trying to do my writing in my personal free time while making a paycheck to support my family. As I wasn’t any good or prolific writer, this lifestyle wasn’t a problem to maintain. The problem was that more and more, I felt like I hated the office job, corporate job, or any fucking job. I knew how things usually turn around, and I knew that no matter the excitement, in the beginning, every fucking job would be turned around to be a disappointment. Sooner or later, either by my or my company’s request, this fucking professional journey would end. Whatever I’ve been working on so hard wouldn’t matter to anyone anymore, nor to me. So, the question that I faced so many times was, why in the fuck do I need to suffer like that all the time? Why wasn’t I dedicated to doing what I love to do? Why wasn’t I writing?
There I was, feeling like Holden, unwilling to work, feeling down and experiencing the phony, dull fucking outside world, trying to escape it somehow by running away. Holden is raising the same question. Why bother with the real phony world if you could just run away and live somewhere further and outside of these typical social circles? He knew at an early age that adult life is not easy, and there is a lot of unfairness and bullshit involved, and he refused to be part of it. However immature, his thoughts always focused on little things, which showed how big his inner world was. He cares where the duck goes when it gets cold and the lake in the park freezes. He cares about the young children being fall off the cliff. He feels sorry for the poor nuns on the bus ride and gives them money. He loves his little sister more than life and cares for her. When he spoke about being a catcher in the rye and protecting children, he meant his little sister on his mind. He’s not interested in education, like probably 90% of young people, but he doesn’t seem like a guy who refuses to know things. He’s trying to acquire information, talk to people, and he knows many things as he’s coming along. His rebellious soul is always looking for something, for some purpose, that would come to him later in life.
We all want to live great lives and have everything we need, but we refuse to deal with the consequences and the struggles which make many people miserable. It’s sometimes good, however. This is how one learns about life, what it means, and how to make it all work. This is how wisdom arrives. This is how people learn about their purpose and the important little things which matter the most. And the main thing is that life is a journey, and everyone has their own. Some people are lucky early in that journey, and some later on. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the journey itself. It’s time to enjoy it. It’s time to live now. It’s time to enjoy every little moment because there will be no second times. Prioritize what you love to do and do it. Enjoy it. Enjoy all the great books and writing we have and learn from them. Books will help make one’s life more enjoyable, and the phony world outside will always be that way.
The ocean looked calm, more or less. Waves were hitting the shoreline, But no more than usual. It’s never too quiet or simple, anyway. The sand under our feet felt rough and a little wet From the last night’s rain But it still felt great To be at the beach with my family. The kid played in the sand, and I played with him And he smiled and laughed as we both did At something that he enjoyed doing. We ran on the sand, chasing seagulls, Chasing dreams, Chasing life. My wife was smiling, playing with our son, And he was happy and excited to be there. He loves playing in the sand, building or ruining the sandcastles, Running in the sand, falling on the sand, walking on the sand Do anything on the sand. We stay out there late until the sunset As the sun was rolling down the hills, we packed And left the ocean to be there, lonely in the dark. It was a great day at the beach, indeed, And sadly, there aren’t too many days like this one, Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a poem about it.
This October is the third anniversary since I started my blog. It is quite a new milestone for me personally, and it is this new activity that kept me going and kept me writing and trying and posting regularly. I created this blog with a simple idea to write regularly and share it with other people. I used to spend a lot of time trying to submit to other websites, publications, literature contests, and all that other shit, and as time went by, I figured it was such a fucking waste of time, money, and energy. I could’ve been creating more instead of trying to get some assholes to accept and publish my poems or stories on their sites. At one point, I looked up several of those publications and their shitty websites, and I thought, fuck them all. Who is going to find and read my stuff there anyway? I might as well create my own site and post there any fucking thing I want, as often as I want, and make this site as good as possible. And one sunny day in October of 2019, I fucking did it. I created my own website, and the John Loraine Blog was born.
I was still early in my writing life and was writing sporadically here and there whenever I could. I had my moments of inspiration, and I wrote a lot, but then I had some long holes where I couldn’t bring myself to write a fucking thing. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that a writer’s job is as little as sitting down and writing. I didn’t have any discipline. I lacked character. At times I didn’t know what to write about. I was overthinking everything. Then I waited a long time for the perfect moment to come to sit down and write, which never came. I wasn’t any fucking good, to begin with. Not saying I am any fucking good now, either. But all those years of writing weren’t wasted, and I’ve evolved as a writer. My writing has improved, and there is so much more of it now. So this blog became my new writing destination and the main reason to keep writing and posting regularly. In the “About” section of my blog, I wrote this, which pretty much defines the primary purpose of this blog and its identity: “This blog is a place for me to practice and share my writing, go crazy, pour out my inspirations into something, and primarily post shit that would never be published anywhere else by anybody. You might find typos, grammar mistakes, incoherent sentences, and random thoughts jumping from one topic to another, and that’s alright. Nobody’s perfect, and neither am I. The point is to share my personal experiences, struggles, hardships, thoughts, ideas, and whatever else comes to mind.”
Since the start, I have shared some stories that shaped me into who I am today. There is a three-stories series called “My shit’s out of luck,” where I describe some real-life events and my struggles with writing and life in general. These stories were to shape the theme of my blog, and they are very close to my heart, and they made me who I am today. The first story, or rather a rant, which I wrote and submitted online back in 2018, has been accepted by a lady from England from the New London Writers organization. She decided to post it on her literate website. That has been my main writing breakthrough moment. That fucking moment changed my life. At that time, I felt that I was being discovered and would be a public writer, so to speak. I felt super fucking hyped and excited after receiving an acceptance email from the lady in England. Then I started to freak out. I thought, fuck, this piece is such a crazy fucking thing to go public. How would people respond? How should I feel about this now being in the public eye? Should I change my name? I was out of the two corporate jobs around that time, driving for Uber for a living, and I surely didn’t want to fuck up my job searching process. So I decided to call myself John Loraine instead of my real name. The lady from the New London Writers didn’t mind me using a nickname for this publication. John is a prevalent name, and it also belongs to so many great people and writers. In my mind, I dedicated this name to John Fante. The Loraine part came from the one historic building I have been obsessed with since I first saw it, the Divine Lorraine Hotel in Philadelphia. I removed the second “r” to make it easier to spell. This is how my pen name came to be.
So this is how it all began for me. We had another conversation with New London Writers about posting regularly on their platform and becoming a member of their organization, but the conversation dropped off at some point. I am trying to remember exactly why and when. I think I blew it off. I guess I was too damned occupied, busy driving for Uber, and scared to get my work out into the free world. I needed more material to be published, and I already felt too much pressure from my future regular submissions. It was a mistake on my end. This fucking publication was off the hook. They would publish my stories with all my profanity as long as it was not “borderline illegal.” Where could you find a platform like that anymore? I felt like Bukowski for a moment. I felt like, fuck, this is it. Almost 100% of publications I was trying to submit and have been 99.9% rejected were super woke and polite and very fucking flamboyant platforms publishing flamboyant writers. In comparison, this place in England seemed to be groundbreaking. The New London Writers doesn’t exist anymore. I think they ceased to exist shortly after our partnership. Not because of me. I assume because there was no gas in the tank. They ran out of resources, and whatever they had going there probably didn’t monetize.
But I have survived. I’ve learned my lesson. In 2018, I had 0 experience with blog writing, writing, publishing, and creating anything on WordPress. A year later, I matured, and I figured out I could do this independently. I could create my website and blog and start writing and posting whatever I want there. I’ve learned from online videos how to create a blog and then looked up some other technical shit to make it what it is today. It was quite an undertaking for me at the time, but somehow it all worked out. JohnLoraineBlog was born in October 2019 and is still alive and kicking.
Since the beginning, I have been trying to post regularly, at least three to four times per month. I combined the prose with poetry to keep it more interesting for the readers and myself. My goal wasn’t to reach many people. My goal was to publish something as if many people were expecting something from me every month. That mentality kept me going through the last few years. I wrote a lot. I wrote consistently. I have the material. I wasn’t afraid anymore of sharing my writing with the world. It was OK. It felt great. I felt accomplished. And now, I’ve become a true working and published writer, an independent writer who wrote his mind and soul. I hated the idea of writing to support an agenda or try to fit into some establishment. I didn’t give two fucks about any establishment. It was me, myself, and my writing. Free as a bird in the sky.
Toward the end of 2019, I decided to publish my poems as a poetry collection book, of which I had over 200 in total. I knew that it would take forever and more to try to get some publication involved. So I’ve decided to self-publish my first book. With today’s resources, it is easy as anything. I’ve found a designer for a book cover who did a great fucking job. I reviewed, rewrote, and edited all of my poems. It took me a while to go through everything and put my manuscript in order, but I did it. In mid-2020, when the pandemic was roaming the world, I locked myself out and finished the book. In early July, “My Poems My Soul” was up on Amazon. I cannot describe how happy I was then. What an accomplishment for a struggling writer this moment has been. What an achievement for somebody who just a few years back started to write poetry, imitating Charles Bukowski and dreaming about becoming a published author one day.
At the time of this writing, I’ve already finished collecting material for my second self-published book. This upcoming book will include my blog posts for the last three years. The idea came about last year. I originally planned to publish this book in 2021 to celebrate two years of JohnLoraineBlog, but somehow I was never able to find time for it. This year I took it seriously, and I did the work. I went through everything I wrote and posted on my blog, edited and rewrote, and organized it all, so it is now ready to be published. Why did I decide to publish what was already posted on my blog? I felt bad for all the work I’d done over the years, and it would be an injustice to leave everything up there like that. It would make me a more accomplished writer if it all became a book. I needed to have it collected in a book to keep it alive. This blog might cease to exist at some point, but the book will live forever.
So what does the future hold? Fuck, if I know. One thing I know for sure is that I am not planning to stop writing. It will go on. I am increasingly convinced that I should be writing and trying different things and getting better at it. I know that this is a journey. I realize that life will come back at me kicking and screaming and fucking me over like it usually does. But I know something else. The more complicated my life is, the better my writing becomes. I have two drafts of two novels and three great ideas for three more books. All it takes is to sit the fuck down and start writing them all out. I will accomplish something someday. I want to become a famous writer. It is a crazy idea, but all the greats have started somewhere. I want to dedicate more and more time to my writing, regardless of anything else going on.
I also have a screenwriting project idea, which could become something great one day. As far as my blog goes, I’ve renewed my domain license for another three years, so that fucking thing has some more life in it, and I will be taking advantage of it. Depending on the circumstances, I’ll continue posting here at least a couple of times per month. I also joined Substack, where I haven’t done much, but that fucking platform seems to be something I wanted to create with my blog three years ago. It has it all in one place. I need to do some more work there as well. Maybe, at some point, I’ll move to Substack entirely to keep things simple and all in one place. Will see. Time will tell.
The sad thing is that I have yet to have a single subscriber from my website. I don’t know if there is one person that reads my blog regularly. Probably not. Even though I see around a hundred visits to the blog every month from around the world. Social media sharing did not prove to be any fucking useful at all. I keep posting on both Instagram and Twitter about every single fucking post, and I have no idea how many people that channel brought over. I get a few likes here and there but doesn’t mean shit. People like the picture for the most part, which is not even pictures I took. I get them all from Pexels. My point is that it is tough to break through even though there are so many fucking channels and all this technology available to make it so easy and quick. However, this does not discourage me. This only makes me work even more and work harder.
I do it all for myself first. I want to keep track and a trail of my writing and my progress somewhere where it is visible. At one point in time, I can say, damn, I wrote so fucking much, and it all can be found here on my blog. Joe Rogan once said about his podcast that it was never about getting millions of listeners; it was always consistent and honest work and real honest conversations. In the end, he has the number-one podcast in the entire fucking world. That idea was on my mind when I started writing this blog. It only has been three years. The world is changing every day, and nobody knows what the future holds. Maybe, at one point, this thing will come to fruition and become a go-to blog for many people.
In conclusion, I would like to say thank you to all who visited my blog, all who read anything on my blog, and the few people who bought my poetry book. I don’t give a fuck about popularity, although it would indicate that I have achieved something in my life as a writer. Again, this is my battleground and my practice field, and it makes me happy to post anything every so often. So I will continue writing and posting on my blog in the same spirit for the next few years. And even if this writing passion takes me nowhere, I will have a pretty damn good amount of material and evidence that I am a true writer with a solid book of work. Writing is all that matters here. Writing is all that makes me feel happy and accomplished, and I will move forward in that direction. Happy third-anniversary, JohnLoraineBlog! I raise my glass today to so many more productive and creative years and for a bright and free future for contemporary writing and blogging. Cheers!
Sometimes it rains through the clear sky Like the sky is cleansing itself and getting it all out. Sometimes I sit and wonder about the sky through The whiskey mind and the clouds of smoke. There is something in that smoke that makes a man wonder. There is something in the sky that does the same. The whiskey is cold, and it tastes like freedom, The only thing that one cares about always. The only thing that one gets less of every day. The only thing that is being taken away slowly. You can’t take the words out of the song. It’s been written this way. It is meant to be this way. It wouldn’t be the same song otherwise. There is music in the air, and there is smoke. There is a brave heart, and there are bluebirds in the sky. There is a strong mind and a weak soul And there are so many books meant to be read But most of them will be forgotten. There is so much in life that it takes several lives To live honestly and fully and experience everything. Some men never lived, and some never died. When it rains, the world stops, and everyone is waiting for it to stop. When it rains, the soul wants to get out there and be free, And wash itself out in that warm summer rain. Some things will never be the same as people Would never be the same. There are songs that never will be played again. Like the song of freedom.
The watch is ticking on my wrist I can see the handles move in circles And I can hear the tiny gears And springs in motion. They move the time, They change my life, The watch remains the same.
The watch is ticking on my wrist But when it stops, I feel relieved. It feels like I’ve captured the moment I own it. It is all mine. The watch might stop as Life might stop But time never stops And the watch is always the same, The same twenty-four hours, The same markers for twelve, three, six, and nine.
The watch is ticking on my wrist I can hear it in the quiet room. It will stop when my heart stops Beating, living, exhausted from pumping The blood. One day it will be the end for me The end to all of us, But there will be somebody To wind that watch of life To make it tick again, To make the movement go, As time goes on, As life goes on. Time never stops It always moves.
Life? What is life? What is there about it? Why is it always have to go the wrong way? Why, every so often, does life take you to some weird fucking places and knocks you down? Where the fuck am I going? And all of us? You, me, and everybody? It is bizarre to figure out your own life. You only learn this as you go along the way and stumble and fall, down deep into the shit of it all. It always has been this way. I always thought that when I grew up and reached my current age, I would know all the tricks and have all the answers. How naive of me was that? The longer I live, the more questions and doubts I have and the more confused and puzzled I become. It is not easy to make the right decision or any fucking decision because now, as an adult, there are no small decisions. Everything has consequences, and I have to take full responsibility. Not because I have to, I could surely fuck around, but because it is the right thing to do, and this is what grown men do. They take responsibility for all their actions and decisions and fight every day to ensure that they do all they can today to make their lives better tomorrow.
I am no longer the young and careless lad I once was. I am not an old fuck either. But these are the times right now when I establish myself as a real man, my character and my personality and my lifestyle, to help me get through this fucking crazy life. I know I’ve made many bad decisions, and many things could be different today. I am not even complaining about anything I’ve done. I love my life the way it is, and knowing how others struggle everywhere in the world, I feel so fucking fortunate. And honestly, even if I fucked up a few times here and there, I wouldn’t mind it too much because I wouldn’t be the person I am today. This is all about learning that shit as you go and keep moving forward. One should never stop moving forward unless you’re not breathing anymore. That’s the only allowed permanent stop. All other times, you have no excuses. Whether you want it or not, you have to get out there and fight every day and be who you are, become a better version of yourself, and find your true passion or your calling or whatever it is you are looking for.
I remember waiting when I was younger. I remember that there always has been a lot of waiting involved all the time. Waiting until I finish high school, finish college, or university, waiting for the job, waiting for the pay, waiting to reach a certain age, a particular moment, waiting for my opportunity. There is still a lot of waiting involved today, but it is called work in progress. I am kind of waiting for a better life, easy living, more fun, less pain, and less struggle, but also I am buried in my life with my daily chores and responsibilities. I know that just by waiting, I will not achieve shit. I have to do something about it. I have to work hard. I have to work smart. I have to keep my eyes open and not miss the opportunity coming my way, sideways, or wherever direction that bitch is coming from. I have to be ready. I have to be prepared for anything.
One never knows what life will put you through until it does. One never knows what tomorrow will bring. So, the game is to be ready for anything and be strong whatever comes your way. We are all here temporarily, people you know today, your friends, relatives, co-workers, and neighbors. One day you might wake up to a phone call about somebody’s death. Somebody you wouldn’t even question living for a long time might pass away. Are you ready for this? No. Nobody is. I don’t care who you are and how tough you are. Life will keep throwing punches and curve balls at you all the fucking time, and you have to be strong enough to manage all that shit. There are battles at war, and also, there are battles in peace. The winner might not take everything, but the winner better be you. Otherwise, there comes another defeat, misery, depression, wasted years of life, and so many wasted lives. People can be kind or seem kind at first. You always find out too late about all the pitfalls and shit that come from others. Sometimes it even feels like you have nobody to lean on, nobody to have your back. You are here, all alone, on your own, with all the bullshit to deal with. Modern society is strange these days, super sensitive and very easily manipulated. You could be too. You have to be mindful and aware and have your eyes and ears open all the time.
I often sit in total despair and wonder, how could shit get more brutal than this? And guess what? Next time around, sure as fuck, it becomes next-level insane. I am learning to become kind of immune to that. I never expect things and life to go easy and smooth. I know it never will be. But I also know that I have to be stronger to stand against it, whatever it is. Something does hurt you a lot. I mean, some things will damage you profoundly and permanently, and you might stay this way for a very long time. Even if you recover, you must never forget your past struggles. They will make you tougher. They will make you smarter. They will make you more resilient. “To be alive at all is to have scars” – an excellent quote from John Steinback. That is what I am talking about. This is another way of saying, “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” However, as cliche, as it might sound, it is true as anything.
We all grow up. We all get older with time. We age differently and interestingly, and that is the fact. We get fucking old. All of us. Even if you have that plastic surgery, everyone, including you, knows you’re fucking old. With age, there comes wisdom. Some get it more and some less. I am not judging. The more I get older, the more stupid I think I become but also, the more I learn and see that I know nothing. There is just so much shit to learn and discover, so many questions, and even more questions without answers. We try to answer them all, but often we fail. It is okay to fail. It is not okay to give up trying. Plastic surgery won’t give you all the answers, either. It won’t give you any wisdom except a good understanding that eventually, we fail to be young and beautiful and full of energy as we once were back in our innocent and glorious youth. The thing is to keep up the good fight, whatever it means to you. To be as good as you can be today and try for the same tomorrow. It is hard. Nobody said it would be easy. But, if you want to get and achieve something in this life, you have to do it.
Love is there also for us. Love does not always have big boobs or a nice, round big ass. Love is a feeling. Love is the air. Love is an ocean. Love is the motivation, and love should be in our lives to help us get through everything. Many people fail at love or love somebody they shouldn’t. You can’t always tell your heart what to do, but you can make the right decision. There is always the right person somewhere out there for all of us. I’ve been fortunate to have found my love. She is always near and dear to me, my heart, and my soul. There is no price tag or expiration date. There should not be one, to begin with. Things do happen, and it might seem like the love has evaporated. It might be gone, for that matter, but also, it could be the wrong love. The wrong choice you’ve made somewhere along the way, and as time went by, it became more apparent. It is sad but true. I don’t know how to find the right one. I guess time will tell. I think you have to make a move and use the proper judgment, and then you’ll see if you were right or not.
Life wouldn’t be interesting if it wouldn’t fuck with us from time to time. That’s life. I don’t think one can be fully ready for all shitstorms that could come your way. One doesn’t know what to expect the next minute, which makes it all very unpredictable and very mysterious, in a way. I guess this fight never stops. It’s always on as long as you live, as long as you breathe, and if you want to take another breath, you should fight for it. So, it just makes perfect sense to sit back and enjoy life and every little moment. One day it is rough; another is a blast. So, what the fuck?
I do want to go back. I want to return to my emotional and spiritual home, the warm beach in South West Florida. I thought about it recently. I reminisced about the good old days and the time when my mind and soul were in total peace and harmony. There was no anxiety, depression, stress, or any fucking worry whatsoever. There is something in that sunshine that makes you feel more alive. The minute you get out of the car or a plane and look around and look up, you feel free and happy. There is no better way to get all the fucking vitamin D you can get out there. That is a secret ingredient to happiness. It does make me happy. It does make me genuinely happy like nothing else in the world. That climate is just perfect. It’s warm and consistent, and there are no significant ups and downs and fucking sideways with temperatures or anything else. Yes, it rains and storms like fucking hell at certain times, but most of the time, it’s fucking perfect. It is 85 on average every day. It could be plus or minus two, three, or four degrees. Who gives a shit? It’s still great. It makes one want to live and love this life.
The ocean. The ocean is magnificent by its nature, and it heals. It heals all the wounds that we get from the day-to-day bullshit. You know what heaven feels like when you sit on the beach watching waves, lying in the sand, or swimming in the warm ocean water. I loved to wake up early and drive to the beach for my morning runs. I ran barefoot slowly, listening to some music while still hearing the ocean and the birds. I ran with the early morning sun in my face, the beach to my side, and my bare feet feeling the wet sand on the shore like nothing else. It felt so liberating. It felt like freedom. It was not physical exercise for me. It was a joy and pure mental and spiritual joy. When my day started like that every morning, there was nothing that could upset me anymore or have any fucking negative impact on me whatsoever. I just didn’t give a fuck. I was in heaven. I knew I had it better than most. I was devouring every second of my time there on the beach every time, and I started to appreciate little moments like that more. I began to see life from a new perspective. I knew that there was a reason why I was alive and why I should love this life. I knew that I was so fucking fortunate to be there. I was so grateful for my life, what I have, and the people around me.
Sunsets. Oh, these magnificent sunsets can cure cancer, and they are perfect each time you see one. I cannot tell you how happy I have been to witness all the sunsets I did, how many thoughts ran through my mind, how much joy I had, and how much more alive I felt. There is something about sunsets that always intrigues me and makes me want to watch them more and more and more, and there are never enough sunsets. On the one hand, I could witness how the perfect day ended, how every day ended. How yet another day of my life ended but wasn’t wasted. That is the key to watching sunsets. You see them, and you realize that they will happen with or without you, and the day will become the night, the night will become a day, and life will move on, and so should we. There is the right time to start and the right time to finish. There is this time in the day to let go of all the shit that happened before and get ready for a new beginning.
On the other hand, it makes you think and wonder how insignificant we are and how much natural beauty there is in this world, and it is there for you every fucking evening for free. It is a shame that so many people take these great events for granted and ignore them or miss them even when they really can, take twenty minutes off their evening and see that magnificent and perfect scenery. I always took my time to be there, watch yet another sunset, say goodbye to the past, and welcome new and better life.
There is enough suffering and bullshit in life, but there are also many really great things here. If you focus on the wrong things, that’s what you’ll be getting, a shitty fucking, miserable life. If you choose to seek out great things, you will be happy. Truly happy as people can be. You are what you think you are. Choose to be somebody better than that person you were yesterday and see how things will start to change. There might not be a perfect life in your daily existence. There might not be an ideal woman next to you. There might not be a beach where you live, but it doesn’t mean these things do not exist and that, if you want and seek them out, you’ll be in a better place with everything you need that makes you happy. And honestly, there isn’t much the man needs to be truly happy. It is always the little things.
Today I have turned 35 years old. I am halfway there, as they say. If I somehow reach 65-70, I will be retired. An old, rusty, angry retired asshole. 35 doesn’t seem as old as I would think when I was younger. I am certainly not a fucking teenager anymore, but I am young at heart, and I kept myself pretty damn well. Honestly, I feel much fucking better physically and mentally than I did at 25. Fuck 25 and 20, anything. That was the most confusing, weird, challenging, and one hell-on-a-bender experience I assume most youngsters have to go through. I am glad I lived through that shit and didn’t have to worry about it anymore. At 35, life just begins. I am now starting to think straight, getting shit done, reaching new levels, and securing a decent life for my family and me. There is a bunch of shit I’ve learned over the years, and that is what I want to share with you. I’d like to look back at these 35 pearls of wisdom and see if any of them hold up to my older age. Who knows.
There is no time like the present. As cliche as it sounds, it is fucking true. Do not wait for fucking anything or anybody. Do it now. If you fail, fuck it. At least you’ll know. If you succeed. Great, well done, motherfucker.
Time is the most valuable asset anyone has. Time flies; the older you become, the faster the time goes. Wasting time means wasting your life. Do not spend your time on stupid shit. Today you’re a child; tomorrow, you are on your deathbed. Think about all the time you had in life and what you did with it. Do you have any regrets?
Always rely on yourself and your own abilities, no matter what. It is great if there is someone to give you a hand. This point might not be much required for you then. But in most cases, if you learn to be independent and rely on yourself, you will be better off.
True friends are always with you in the worst situations. There will always be too many people to have fun with, but there will be very few or just one who will stick with you and be around and sacrifice anything to help you out. That is a true friend. Others should not be invited to any of your BBQs.
Always be in great physical shape. Workouts are not just to slim down or become the next greatest fucking bodybuilder. Exercises train your body, discipline your mind, and make the real fucking man out of you.
Sleep is essential. Do not fuck up your sleep schedule for anything. It is as important as your overall health. If you are sleep deprived, you are fucked, nothing feels great, life is shit, and your health will decline. It is just not worth it.
Intermittent fasting should be part of the daily ritual. There is more science to that than just simply losing weight. Intermittent fasting will help burn extra fat, clear your bloodstream, clear and sharpen your mind, give you more energy, and lower your fucking sugar, cholesterol, and all other shit roaming in your body, making you feel like shit.
Marry the right woman. Anything else before or after this point will be accomplished if you have the right woman to share your life with. The right woman is not the one that has the most enormous boobs or won the beauty contest. The right woman is the one that will let you be you, a better you than you have ever been.
There is no more extensive and stronger love you can experience than the love towards your child. You can love your mother a lot. You can love your wife or girlfriend a lot, but when you become a parent, your love for your child will overwhelm you unless you’re a fucking robot.
Always learn from your mistakes and others. Analyze your life, decisions, and misbehavior, and fix that shit moving forward. Nobody’s perfect, but the less dumb shit you’d do, the better your life will become.
Being a parent is fucking cool. People who never became a parent will not understand. There is nothing to be afraid of for people who are not yet parents. You will enter a new level of your life. And it will be a better life. A life worth living and struggling for.
If you want to have a great time, you have to have a great watch. Be a true gentleman and always wear a decent quality watch on your wrist. I don’t mean the expensive thousands-dollar brand, just a good mechanical, automatic, or even quartz watch. Yes, you have your phone with you all the time, and you have your fucking Apple watch or some other shit. Wear something with a soul in it, some mechanics that help you go through your life and show you the good and tough times. There is no better sound than the ticking of a watch mechanism.
Clean your room, clean your house, clean your desk, clean your life. This will help you to get organized and know where your shit is at all times. Also, you will look like a professional and a responsible person instead of a constantly distracted asshole who spends half a day trying to find his socks.
Read books, always. Books are the best friends, the best companions, the best source of knowledge, the best therapy, and the best inspiration. It is always hard to find time, but if you try, you will enjoy every second of reading a great book and always look out and dedicate time to reading.
If the book you are reading sucks, put it away. Not every book should fit your soul and mind at the time, and some might never fit your preferences. There are so many great books to read and discover, so if the one you are reading is not keeping you engaged, fuck it. Pick another one that might open a brand new world for you.
Meditations are essential. There is no more and simpler way to clear up your brain and calm down your horses than as little as five minutes of meditation. Just sit back, close your eyes, and listen to your breath. That’s it. You got it. Do that whenever you feel like you’re about to lose your shit.
Most people are assholes, and you will have to deal with them all your life. That’s it, just remember that.
Never be afraid of asking questions regardless of how stupid they might seem to you. If you don’t ask, you might never know for sure. You might do something stupid. You might make a big mistake. Just ask. What that fuck is wrong with you? Asking cost nothing.
Always be friendly and courageous to other people. Even if people around you are indeed assholes, there are too many of them anyway. Be nice, smile, greet, talk, and acknowledge their presence. They might not be completed morans. You might find a new friend that way.
Always stick for and help those in need, those who are weaker, smaller, older, or unable to help themselves. You might go to heaven for that. Why not pick up somebody else’s slack?
If you don’t like your job, don’t stick around, leave. Fuck those jobs that suck the living soul out of you. There is always another job out there somewhere. You’ll get it. And if that one will not work out for you, you’ll find another one, and another one, until you retire or die before retirement.
Do not buy into the job family bullshit. This is a corporate trick to make you more loyal and stick around, depend on that paycheck, while they fucking you in the ass, taking away your health, your precious time, your sanity, your personal life, and then once you are no longer needed, they’ll fire your ass.
Family should always be first. If you prioritize your job or anything else, chances are high you are an asshole, you will lose your family, and you will never know what it is like to have a great family, to begin with.
Forgive and be forgiven. There is no happy ending in always holding a grudge against anybody. If possible, face that shit straight, face-to-face, figure it out, talk it out. If you are willing to forgive, you will also be forgotten, no matter what you did.
Enjoy every little moment. You cannot live this life twice. You cannot take anything with you once you are gone. Life is tough and unpredictable; what you have right now is not guaranteed tomorrow. You might gain everything in one day or lose everything overnight. Enjoy the little moments and remember how great they are.
Music is fucking great. Great music is even better. Always listen to some great music, whatever your mood is at the time, whatever music genre you prefer, it is all good. Just listen to some beats and sounds and take it fucking easy.
People don’t always say what they mean and don’t always mean what they say. Know how to separate honest talk from bullshit. Learn how to read people, and read between the lines. It is a critical skill that will definitely help you in life, whatever you do.
Sunsets and sunrises are fucking awesome. Try to see as many of them in your life as you can. Whether it is the beginning of the day’s end, the sky turning colors as the sun moves up or down, making a new beginning, or finalizing yet another day, it is so powerful and beautiful to see that missing or ignoring them is stupid. It is also a very inspirational and thought-provoking moment you will never be tired of experiencing.
Enjoy a good whiskey or bourbon with ice like a real man. What can be better than that?
Spend more time at the ocean on the beach. It is always a relaxing and therapeutic experience, and all the bullshit in your life will go the fuck away shortly.
Do not follow the masses. Have your own opinion always. Masses are dumb for the most part, and it is getting old trying to catch up with Joneses. Fuck them all. Live your life.
Always dedicate time to yourself to be alone. If you are not comfortable being alone, you have problems, pal. Everyone has to get away, even a little bit, to be in their own mind and thoughts and recharge before jumping into another social, family, or job chaos.
Politics is shit. Always has been and always will be. There is nobody to trust and nobody to rely on.
Always put yourself in somebody else shoes. Be compassionate. It is easy to see things with your eyes from your perspective, but everyone is different, and if you want to better feel or understand another person, you’ve got to see the world from their standpoint.
Life is too short to wait for retirement. Live now. Enjoy life while it lasts. We all have a one-way ticket and never know when this will end. Fuck it all. It is not all that bad, after all.
No matter how hard your shit is right now, we can be heroes just for one day.
Somehow these “socially-accepted norms” were developed that should potentially set you up for the future and on the right path. First, they send you to kindergarten, then pre-school, then high school, then college, the two-year institution first, followed by a four-year institution, and then you’ll have to find an internship followed by a job. Then life kicks you in the balls regularly until you retire, if you are lucky. That’s already so much fucking agenda through the formative years and into your early adult life. Damn, I feel fortunate to survive. I feel sorry for my kid, who hasn’t even gone to childcare yet. In his Working Class Hero song, John Lennon sang, “As soon as you’re born they make you feel small by giving you no time instead of it all … and then they expect you to pick a career …” John Lennon coming out of one of the most successful, famous, and influential bands in the world, in his post-Beatles life, was clearly not out of touch with reality when he wrote these lyrics. This song sounds like a pain, raw, honest, the real deal, the real shit. John Lennon felt it in his heart even though he was lucky not to deal with those social routines and principles. This song is as relevant today as it was fifty or so years ago because certain things never change.
I am at that age and presence of mind where I start to analyze what my life has been, and there it is going, and this analysis never fucking stops. I’m halfway through my best young adult years of life, and if I am lucky to live the whole second half of it, I’ll be right there on the edge of the retirement age, fingers crossed. If there ever will be such a thing as retirement when I grow old. Who the fuck knows? I like to look back at my life quite often and dwell on the past, comparing different phases I went through and the times when I struggled or succeeded. It is fascinating to see how things have changed over the years. I am not the man I had been two years ago, and sure, not the same person I was five or even ten years ago. If he were still alive today, I’m guessing John Lennon wouldn’t be the same person he was fifty years ago either. We all change with time. Small or significant changes are always happening. That is the fact. That’s life. Life changes. We have to change. But the kick is that whatever bullshit you went through before if that didn’t kill you, could potentially make you much stronger and wiser and make you who you are today.
One thing that annoys me is realizing that my life is full of things that don’t bring me much pleasure but are required to have or to do. Like jobs, for example. Like mortgage payments. Like job security. Like regular meals for the family. These fucking things don’t come from thin air, and somebody has to go out there and hustle. That’s what I do. I go out there and hustle. I can provide for my family for the time being, but on the other side, that imposed routine slowly eats me alive from the inside. I know that majority of my time is spent on the job and job-related bullshit, and that takes my physical time and mental capacity and fucking chips away at my young creative soul. It gets to the point where I can no longer live the life I used to and do things I love because there is always so much other work to do. There are all those needs and wants that I want to make sure my family has so we have a little chance to live without counting every fucking penny. However, there are consequences and sacrifices that one should be taking into consideration.
Will my son love me the same if I lose my job and all those perks? Would I be a better father if I became unemployed and just spend all my time with him while I can, while he’s still small, while everything is fun and games? He might love the stay-at-home dad option, but I know better. I know that I would never be able to focus on happiness, and I would never be able to be fully happy if I knew that I didn’t have any fucking money behind my poor little soul. I do try to spend a reasonable amount of time with my family regardless. I love spending time with my kid. I also hate when I have to work late and catch up on work at home while he’s knocking at my door asking me to let him in because he just wants to play. He’s a two-year-old child, the pure thing. He doesn’t know yet what life is about. He doesn’t know yet what it takes to manage this adult life. How many times did I hear him crying in the other room while I was working from home, and I couldn’t do shit because I was on some stupid fucking meeting, working, fucking listening to some douchebags about shit that doesn’t even matter to me anymore. It tears my heart and breaks my soul. Somehow this life keeps taking these weird turns and twists, and I feel like if not this, then there will be something else that will eat away my life. There will always be the next pain in the ass to follow, whether you want it or not. Why in the fuck, in this free and independent world, do I have to sacrifice the most valuable things in my life for the sake of some sort of security which supposedly helps us ensure a better and worry-less life? This social norm has been fucked up for a while now. The more you try to achieve to be more independent, the more you are enslaving yourself into your job or what have you, and that shit slowly occupies all your brain and soul and takes away all your free and precious personal time. This is the modern developed world we are living in today.
You probably wake up early in the morning because most jobs start early. If you have children, that’s even earlier for you. It doesn’t matter that you are tired, and the few hours you just slept did not help much at all. It doesn’t matter that you worked until late night or late evening, and there is still so much shit you need to finish by tomorrow. You want it or not, but you have to get up yet again and hustle one more fucking day. Your eyes are shot and red and tired. Your face has only one emotion, tiredness. You get older by the minute. The breathing is hard. There is this internal pain and discomfort that you have to drag with you around all day and into the night. Shit never goes right. There are always issues and problems at work. There are always problems at home too. You keep all that shit inside, and the more there is of it, the more it hurts. You hurt so often and so much that it becomes part of you now. You are the walking pain. You wish you could just walk the fuck away. Just quit that motherfucking job. Walk outside, breathe in the warm summer air, jump into your car and go. Go somewhere. It doesn’t matter as long as it is far away. Get out, get outside, enjoy the free blue sky and the birds, and the time you should have to enjoy always, but you never do. Go to the nearest bar and have a drink. Celebrate yourself. Fuck them all. Fuck those jobs! Your job has been a drag, and it always will be. And it always takes more and more of your life until you become a fucking slave. But then you realize that the bills are due, the bank account is running low, and the birthday of a loved one or a child is coming up. Your friends invited you to go out somewhere, and you just can’t afford to have your family going through the fucking government assistance program just because you don’t want to ruin your life with your job. You reminisced the good old and young days when shit was easy. Back then, you still could fuck off and walk out and change this around easily. Now, there is baggage. Now there is a family and responsibilities. By now, you are tired of fucking living with nothing and for nothing, and you want just a little bit of joy in this fucking life. I mean, how long can a person live in such misery? How do we get to live, period? Not much, as you will realize. There is just a little bit of life hidden somewhere behind all these fucking hustles and struggles and misery and depression.
Most people live this miserable “working-class” existence their entire lives. Somehow that becomes normal. That becomes your pride as a working man, your family, your fridge, your mortgage, your financed car, and all that other shit that people cannot live without. To have it, you must own it or at least go to work to pay for it. There is always a payment in our lives. Nothing’s free, pal. Everything costs money, stupid, ugly, dirty fucking money which we all are eager to earn and spend our lives making, collecting, investing, planning, spending, and dying for. I mean, not everyone can become a millionaire who doesn’t give a fuck about making daily life possible. There are so many hedge-fund babies the world can handle, and the rest have to be fucking peasants and physically work their asses off until they die, proudly like true working-class heroes. Somebody has to work to support all those rich fucks and everybody else. Somebody must work at the gas station, restaurant, bar, school, post office, construction, garbage company, etc. Today, we can clearly see that the great and powerful developed world as we knew it is not all that fucking great, and powerful, and invincible, and fucking A, not so much secure from pandemics and wars and shortages on so many things. And this is just the beginning, and this is looking to go only a downward spiral from here. Naturally, I am mentally well prepared for the worst, but I don’t know what to prepare for exactly and do not have the slightest idea about what the next day will bring. Sadly, I do not see the future at all of the bullshit going on in the world right now. It just seems like darkness all around.
I struggled a lot throughout the years with and without a job, and I know that I complain about the job while I have one, but I also know that if I lose this job, I will be fucked badly. Like probably half of the country, I am about two missing paychecks away from living on the street. All the things that now come for granted will be at risk or disappear quickly. The beauty of waking up and not worrying about paying your bills, rents, mortgages, and cars is very liberating. I think I can write much better when I am stressed about life, and the job is eating is fucking driving me bunkers, but if I didn’t have a job, my creativity would be evaporated, and all my thoughts would be about going and making some money. This is how this society is set up. You always have to work, and you always have to have that fear that will make you compliant. The fear of losing everything by sacrificing the most valuable in your life, your life. Somehow I need to and am still trying to figure out how to make it all work. How do I ensure that I can provide for my family, that we all can afford to live and do things we love, and that the fucking job is not taking away too much of my time, focus, health, and creative soul out of me?
The system was built so some will always live well, and some should always struggle. So many of these fucking mentors and entrepreneurs have made it in life, and now they are willing to share their secrets with anyone for a sum of money, providing lessons, books, podcasts, and all that other shit. One thing they all say that is the same is that you have to sacrifice everything, all your time, friends, family time, sleep, health, but you have to push through all the hardship, and eventually, you will fucking make it. Great fucking plan! Here I am sitting and wondering, how could I have all those things without killing my fucking life and soul? I guess that is the million-dollar question to be answered someday. The sacrifice has to come from somewhere.
Usually, the sacrifice has to be on your side. There is always an opportunity cost for anything. You have to decide which opportunity cost you are willing to take. What matters most to you right now that you should be going after, and what can be pushed to the side. I haven’t found a solution for that yet. I am still struggling. The more time passes, the harder the struggle becomes. The only light I can see is to enjoy this fucking crazy journey along the way, live for now, and be simply happy. There is no fucking reason to save all those millions for your retirement. I honestly think that once I am retired, I will not need anything, or not much would be necessary. I will be just like another constantly annoyed, grumpy old man complaining about life, the younger generation, and politics. If I am to miss any of these important life events just because I had a lot of “work” to do, I’d be fucking damned. If I had to bankrupt myself of every little joy in life just so I can live longer, what’s the fucking point of living longer without joy? You can’t take anything with you to the other side. The opportunity missed is the opportunity lost. Somebody once said, think, if you were on your deathbed; what missing opportunities will you regret more? It is always better to try and fail than not to try and regret forever. There will always be some work to do. There will always be somebody else in your place. There will always be the daily bullshit troubles. But there will only be a short period in this life when my son is two years old, and he is young and cute and funny and playful as he is right now, and he will be with me most of the time, and we can play and enjoy our time together. If I ever miss any of that, I wouldn’t be able to get that back at no cost. At retirement age or any other, all those precious things saved for later would be fucking useless waste of time and life. Life is too short to wait for retirement.
To all the working-class heroes out there, whatever you do, whatever makes you a few bucks today, remember one thing, it will not be like this forever, and anything will not last forever. The system that is banding you over will always be this way. Life will give you chances; you should be able to see them and take advantage. There will always be Uncle Sam, watching you closely and ensuring you have paid all your dues, but your life was not meant to be fifteen dollars an hour-for-ever. There are opportunities, other jobs, hobbies, solutions, and alternative ways of making a living. If you just keep looking out and thinking and voicing your troubles honestly to yourself, you will be able to notice the changes and see the opportunity for every problem. Life never goes in a straight line. There are ups and downs. We all should be aware of them. You must be honest with yourself first. Even if you are a restaurant worker, that can be your happy place in life too. You can make good money in a restaurant business, construction, office job, writing, painting, dancing, or something else. It is never too late to try new other things. It is never too late to ask yourself, what the fuck is making me happy? What matters to me most? How can I move along in life and make sure I stay afloat? There are so many sunrises to see.
The journey metaphor makes more sense than anything because you only live once. When this is over, there is nothing else and no second chance. Enjoying every little moment is the key. It’s the only thing you can control and must take full advantage of. Remember one thing, this is a one-way ticket ride, and once it’s over, it is over. There are no sequels. What would you be sorry for if today was your last day? What would you change? How would you live your life differently? “A working-class hero is something to be.”
He looked all mean and tough With all that massive beard on his face And all the piercings, tattoos With all that rebel look and all, But on the inside, he was a kind man. He had a tender heart like a bluebird And when he smiled, The world stopped, and the sun came out. You would be wrong If you’d judged the book by its cover.
We all, at some point, grow up and go on with and into our lives. Nobody is an exception. At one point, we are newborn babies, and we know nothing, and we cannot do anything but find and suck on our mother’s tit. Then we grow up and develop as a person and learn the language and how to talk. We sound funny and cute early on, then with time, we master communication skills, behavior, and ethics, and we become a part of society. I never thought about this too much until I became a parent myself. I look at that kid, and I see a younger version of myself, and I often remember what my parents used to do and, what they told me, how they raised me. I looked at them, and I thought they were adults; they knew everything, could do anything, and knew how to handle any problem. Now, at this point in my life, I’ve realized that they didn’t, and neither do I. I am learning as I go to be a parent. I am trying to be a great father, and knowing my upbringing; I want to make some improvements for my child. Like any other parent out there, I want a better childhood for my children, and I want them to have a better life than I had. I don’t know how it will play out long-term, but I hope for the best. As much as you try as a parent to bring up a child and raise a great person, I know that there is only so much parents can do. There is also life outside the sweet home that is unpredictable and unfair in many cases. My son will be growing up with other children. He will have caretakers at the kinder garden, teachers at the school, friends outside school, and the family circle, and they will be part of his life as his parents. The fear of any parent is to let our child go into this mean, unfair, rough, and crazy world we’re living in and watch them struggle, knowing of all the dangers out there that the little young mind is unaware of yet.
My son was born in September of 2019. Oh, it’s been just recently, and yet it seems so far away now. That was the last year when life was still normal. It was the last time the world has been as I remember it my whole life. Six months later, the world entered the global pandemic, and everything went to shit. Everyone’s lives changed during the pandemic, but the best thing for me was that I got to stay home with my family and my newborn child and be close to them all the time. I was lucky to get a great chance to watch him grow up, see him becoming a person, make his first steps, say his first word, and all other great things that came along. We decided we would not be sending him to childcare because everyone was freaking out about the virus. So we all had some great family quality time from his birth. He’s been home his first two years and nine months with his mother manly while his father was going to work and providing. There were great times. There were challenging moments, of course, but for the most part, we all were home, safe, and together under one roof. That’s what matters the most, staying together as a family. We all knew that the day would come, and we would have to send him to daycare, school, college, and his independent adult life. The only thought about sending my son to daycare scared us. Deep in my heart, I felt like I was giving up on my child. It felt unfair. I never wanted to do it. I wished he could stay home forever. Thinking about that moment, he would be away for a day felt strange and painful. My heart was tearing apart, and I felt the pressure in my chest. We both did. This is the feeling you get to go through when you love your child.
This child, in his two years of life, has lived through so much already: covid, recession, seasonal allergy, viruses, economy collapse, elections from Trump to Biden, housing boom, four round trip airplane travels, presidential elections, black lives movement, country division, his dead’s first self-published book, dad changing jobs, the war in Ukraine, national gasoline prices at an all-time high, what the fuck else am I missing here? There were some great moments in his little life as well. He’s got recently a newly born cousin-sister, we bought a house and moved out of our parent’s place, he’s been to Florida four times, he’s seen many exotic fishes and animals in zoos, aquariums and in the nature, survived covid without even knowing he’s got it, painlessly, he’s a bright, good-looking kid with the most loving parents in the world. Why am I bringing all of this up? This should explain how well-oiled and a tight family we are and how much time we love to spend together. We never get bored of one another and love each other dearly. When you have a family like that, you don’t give two fucks about the world outside, even if everything around is falling apart. Together we all always stand strong. We hate to separate, even for half a day or a few hours. Sometimes my wife and I go shopping or out for dinner, and it feels strange to be without the little one after a while. Shortly after living in the house, we both start missing our son. This is the kind of relationship we have going on here. It is painful to stay apart, and it is an abundance of activities, noise, and fun when we are all in one room. I am beyond fortunate to have a family like this.
When I was growing up, my family wasn’t the best but wasn’t the worst either. It is hard to criticize my parent now when I am a grown man with a child of my own and having the same issues my parents went through when they were younger. I remember my upbringing pretty well, especially when my younger brother was born. My parents grew up in a different country, a different world. I mean, it has been a different universe back then. Post-Societ-Union Ukraine wasn’t the top destination for most people, and the economic and social environment wasn’t what you would call promising. They both had to work. They both worked hard to make some money to provide for us, two boys, two crazy fucking boys who would beat the shit out of each other for no reason except that we were living under one roof. My parents bought a house, something that looked like a condo; we had a garage and a car. Not a fancy car, but it was brand-fucking-new when they bought it, and it was one of those classic Russian-made cars that half of the country was cruising around. There was no internet, gadgets, computers, home deliveries, yoga studios, or therapy practices. People had to get around however they could. People had to eat their own shit to survive. People had to be assholes to one another because somebody would fuck you over if you were too kind. And trust me, you never want to be fucked over in that country in those days or ever. My parents never knew about a healthy lifestyle, traveling, meditations, couples therapy, yoga, or gym workouts. They had to carry all that madness inside of them. It wasn’t even a norm to express yourself openly like it is popular to do today. And then, once the patience was running out, the alcohol came into the mix, the fighting, the cursing, the screams, and long nights when I was in bed wondering how in the fuck this would end?
My parents weren’t horrible parents or bad people. We had all the necessities, everything a child might need to grow up healthy and not a spoiled brat. We always had decent clothes, a lovely clean house, plenty to eat, a decent amount of toys, and proper discipline. We knew when we should be quiet and when it was better to hide away or calm down and stop doing stupid things. Otherwise, my father’s temper would not last long before he’d start beating the shit out of us. My mother was beating him and driving him mad. In return, he would transition all his anger at us, primarily myself, just because I was older. So, I know what it is like to be a responsible person from an early age because no matter what if my father wasn’t in the mood, I’d catch the fucking swing. Sometimes beatings were so hard that I often thought if he ever was concerned that I could get seriously damaged? I thought, how in the fuck am I going to survive this beating? What was my fault in his anger management or mismanagement towards the world and myself? One thing I learned early on in my life was the following. I knew that if I ever had any children, I would never raise them as my parents raised me. I’d rather not have any children at all than have them and have them suffering as I did through all of the bullshit and fury between two completely opposite and not compatible in any fucking way individuals.
Today, looking back at my own life, I cannot complain. Others had it much worst than I. What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. I believe it did. I survived. I grew up a decent human being. I know the wrong from right, and I know what kind of parent I will never be for my children. I know what kind of family I always wanted growing up, and I am doing my best right now to raise my family in the best possible way. I am a father myself and have great relationships with both parents. They have no relationships, but I stay close to both of them, and we see each other at least every week. They love their grandson, and I genuinely believe that that little child didn’t just change me into a better version of me but also changed them, the old dinosaurs, which I thought would never change. I guess people do mellow out with age, and now watching them laugh and smile watching the little one, I can see the pure love and happiness in their eyes I wish I could remember them showing to me when I was two years old. I do understand their strict position in raising my brother and myself. I know how important it is to keep your offspring in check and ensure they know what’s good and bad and how they should act.
With all that said, I want to continue with my point of raising children and letting them go into their own life. The world we are living in isn’t the best, safest place to be. Honestly, it wasn’t the best and safest place when I was growing up, and, as it seems, nothing fucking changed in the last thirty-five years. We all have to make it somehow. We must ensure our children are safe, fed, and secure and have everything they need. It is a complicated and critical job to be a parent. It is even harder to be a great parent. We are all people, and we all have our flaws. We all must deal with emotions, jobs, family, health, economics, etc. A lot of times, that socioeconomic pressure is just too much to carry around with you, and you start bending, getting angry, anxious, and depressed.
On the one hand, we are lucky to live in a day and age where it is very easy to get the products and services you need with a few clicks on your phone. It is relatively easy to make money, and you can achieve anything you want if you are a driven individual. We have all kinds of meditation apps, gyms at every corner, yoga studios, healthy organic food everywhere and everything is pretty much extensible to anyone everywhere. This makes the burden my parents went through so much easier. If I had been raised in America, our lives would be much better and more manageable, and my parents would still be together. People don’t need much to be happy. People think they need a lot, but it isn’t much after all. Somehow life gets complicated, and people go crazy, trying to live up to some standards, making all the money in the world, and hustling and sacrificing their precious time and health for nothing. There are too many sacrifices people make for fucking stupid possessions, for a fucking status, better neighborhood, better newer car, larger house with more useless shit if that house. This constant dissatisfaction with what you have and never have enough is fucking driving people insane; it breaks families apart and brings a lot of anger, sadness, and depression. Who needs all that shit? I’d rather stay poor all my life, but I want to make sure I am close with my family, and we are all as one, and we are all healthy and happy and love each other.
It was a typical weekend day, and my wife, my two-year-old son, and I went to a farm nearby to do strawberry picking. This place brings me back to my childhood, growing up in the country, growing ourselves fruits, berries, and vegetables. Many families with children come over to a farm playground where many parents like us bring their children to pick the strawberries, hang outside, play with other children, and have a great family quality time. There is a barn with a stage and a local band playing classic rock tribute songs. There is a fast-food joint making the best cheeseburgers and organic real-potatoes fries. There is a bar serving adult beverages and an ice cream place with some great homemade ice cream. There is a lot of fun and games and always something to do for the whole family.
My son is a bit shy. He’s shier than most kids are, and he’s careful amongst others, but he’s a child, a two-year-old. After picking some strawberries, we ate local fast food, followed by some ice cream. My son was running around, discovering the new place, bumping into people and other kids. Then he saw the playground. He looked at it and smiled with the most innocent smile. He looked at me and said he wanted to go there. He spends most of his time at home under his mother’s supervision while I work. He doesn’t have many friends and is not often when playing with other kids. He’s too domesticated and lived his first two years and eight months in a pretty safe and protected home environment. We went up there to the playground, and he climbed onto the slider, and there were a bunch of other kids. There were way too many kids for that reasonably small place, and everyone ran around chaotically and maniacally like a bunch of little ants. They all wanted to play, go down the slider, and do some climbing and jumping. They bumped into each other and pushed each other not maliciously, just mindlessly like children always do. My son was one of the youngest there, and he was being cautious as he usually is. He climbed up the stairs slowly, then over the wooden block, and climbed onto the little deck. There was a tube that kids would crawl into, come back, and go inside again. My son did the same. He smiled, looking around, watching other kids do things, and he tried to follow them as I was watching him from the ground.
At one moment, I lost sight of him. I looked around and couldn’t find him. I walked around and shouted his name as I couldn’t see him up there. Then he came up and just stood there smiling. The other kids were running around, pushing through, screaming, and shouting. He stood there quietly, and I called his name again. He couldn’t hear me, but I got relieved that at least I could see him now, and he was fine. He’s having his fun with other kids. He stood there watching others, turned around, and leaned onto the wooded fence, looking down. He did not see me, and I was closely watching him and getting worried more and more about him not getting pushed over by other kids. I felt like a ghost watching him from the side. He probably wasn’t even thinking about me at the moment. It was his life, and he was enjoying it among other kids. I felt something strange then. I felt the feeling of losing him. I feared that if something happened, I could be there and could not help him. I know he needs my support, I know he needs my help, and also, he’s out there on his own, living his life. I felt that this is what happens in life when your children grow up and become independent, and they go on in their lives. My son stood there smiling and curiously watching everything around him as my heart was bleeding because I just wanted to snatch him out of there and hug and never let him out into this chaotic and manic world of ours.
“The Catcher in the Rye” and Holden’s philosophy on children entering adult life came to my mind. It all made perfect sense to me there. I felt like Holden, trying to catch my child from jumping into adulthood or his little independent life without me. I wanted to protect him from the outside world. I want him to grow up a great, intelligent, respectful person, which will happen someday. But now, I only wanted to keep my child close to me and have full control and provide complete protection over him. I realized that this is what “letting your child into the world” actually feels like. He was up there, not realizing that I was watching. He probably even forgot that his father was nearby. He was living these moments on his own, at his discretion. I felt it all in my heart. I remembered how my father was furious at me for going out and doing things with my friends when I was a child. He was always so overprotective that he eventually became a tyrant in my childhood. I wasn’t allowed to do anything because everything was some sort of danger to me. I felt his pain in my young father’s chest watching my son standing there alone with no support from me.
I know he will grow up eventually and become an adult, a real man, and a father someday. But also, he will always be my child, my son, and always will be his father. Today he is two and change, and his life is all fun and games. His parents do their best to provide and support him and ensure he gets the best childhood possible. At one point, he’ll mature and this fun will turn to anxiety, and the games will become survival. I have time before that to prepare him for life and all the ins and outs. I will not always be there all the time. I will not always be near or available, and he might not even let me know about everything that is going on in his life. I will be then like I have been at the playground, just another observer, a father ghost. I would just be looking out and hoping for the best while life will decide what turn to make and what challenge to bring up for him. I will be useless and helpless, and that thought is tearing my heart. I cannot keep him as this innocent little boy who is always protected and has his parents next to him twenty-four-seven.
We all have to grow up, and we all have to deal with life. Not all of us get a fair share, and not all of us will be able to enjoy the life ahead of us entirely. But we all have to strive for a better life. We all, as adults, have to be able to set our children up for a better childhood and better life than we once had. Times are changing but usually not for the best. There are more and more issues and threats, and the future is always unpredictable and mysterious. Somehow we all have to deal with it. At some point, we all have to let our children go on and start their own life. There will be a lot of unpredictable and hopefully more fortunate moments in their lives, but they have to take that ownership of their own lives and live it. My son will start kindergarten soon, the first step into his independent life without parents nearby. He will have to make it on his own. He will have to grow up, become smarter, stronger, and more independent. I believe that one day he will become a great father and have the same worries I have for him today. Until then and always, I will be his loving father, my wife will be his loving mother, and we will never stop worrying about him because we live our lives for him, and we live him more than life itself. Parents will get it. They know how it feels.
I walked toward the sunset I did not want to wait until it came to me. It was up there shining in my face While going down, Setting behind the horizon Like it usually does. The ocean roamed with waves coming back and forth It wasn’t calm, but it made my heart at peace. I’m peaceful here. I’ve arrived To the place, I can call home. I belong here. I am happy here. It is all mine, all that ocean, And all that sand and sun up there in the sky, Shining in my face, hiding behind the clouds, Hiding behind the horizon Shining in my face its last To let me know the day is over, And tomorrow will be another one. And nothing matters anymore before or after. I am here, and I’m alive.
Listening to the grand old jazz at the beach on The lovely sunny afternoon is better than anything. Watching the sun up in the sky go down Behind the horizon is the magic of nature. It will happen with or without jazz music It will happen with or without anybody watching. Ocean waves speak volumes, And the sea birds run around trying to find something They can eat in the sand. The sand is pure white, the purest cleanest white powder all around The comfort and the pleasure for both sea birds and my people walking around. There is the sky, the birds, the ocean, the waves, the wind, the fish in the water, And the women in bikinis. What else is there that you need? The sun will rise, and the sun will dawn And the day will change the night Life has its direction, and it follows that. Jazz music is a pleasure for my ears Beer is a pleasure for my soul, A cigarette is a pleasure for my mind, And the beach is where I want to be forever. The trumpet is whistling; the drums are drumming, The ocean moves with all its power. The sun shines brightly like there is no tomorrow. There is no reason to be hopeless after all. There is hope, and there is life, and there will be another day, Life goes on; the jazz will live forever, and the ocean, and the beach, And the sand, and the birds, and the sun, It’s only us that have an expiration date, Sooner or later, we’ll all be gone, Leaving this magic for somebody else.
It is hard to be angry when you are in a gorgeous place with great company. Everything seems to make sense, and things don’t seem too bad either. Somehow you get a feeling that, shit, this life isn’t too bad at all. They say you can’t run away from your problems, and the new location is not a solution. I could partially disagree with that statement for sure. I ran away from my “normal” day-to-day life, and now I am here, in North West Florida, enjoying the sunshine, the beach, and the perfect climate. My problems did not go away, but the way I think about them changed. They don’t stress me out anymore. They are not as important as I thought they were. They all will get some fucking solution at some point, and I will forget about them as soon as possible. A new setting makes you feel different, and the better your surroundings are, the more appealing it is for you and the better your entire experience becomes. Presently, I am in the best place on Earth, and I love it. It doesn’t mean that nothing else matters, but instead that I have so much pleasure in my life right now that all that stressful bullshit has no place in my heart anymore. Life goes on. Life is beautiful, and we always have to remember that no matter how fucked up it might get.
It is a beautiful sunny morning in Sarasota, Florida. At seven-thirty in the morning, the sun goes up, and you can feel its nice and warm presence. I woke up early even though I was on my brief vacation. I wanted to see and experience more of this place and its beauty. I want to be full of this new life experience that will not last forever, but I want to make sure its impact will. I go into my car around seven in the morning and drive off to the beach. Siesta Key beach is about seventeen minutes away from Palmer Ranch, where I rent. The traffic is very light in the morning, and driving through Midnight Pass Road feels liberating when just a few cars are driving on it. As I drive closer to the beach, I see people walking or running. I see people on bicycles and walking their dogs.
You can easily spot somebody who’s a professional runner. These experienced runners are always very much tanned, and they always wear a running uniform, black sunglasses, and sweat dripping all over them. They run consistently, with a very measured tempo and pace. They have earbuds in their ears and a phone strapped to one of their arms, and they breathe deeply and systematically. You cannot miss the professional runners out here. I am not an experienced runner myself, but I do that for fun and to trigger some new experiences in my life and train my body. It is also a great mental escape from everything. Whatever the situation is, I feel satisfied and happy, and that’s all I need.
There are very few cars in the beach parking lot, and you can easily park in the first raw parking space in the morning. People who park there usually are either early risers who want to enjoy the beach in peace or runners like myself who want to be healthier and fit and satisfy their physical needs by running a few miles in the morning by the ocean. I park my car, get my earbuds in and play some upbeat rock music. It has to be something energetic, something to give me a boost since I am still half asleep in my mind. I stretch my legs right there next to my car. I am always barefoot when I run on the beach. I love to feel the white, powder-like sand under my feet. It is the best feeling ever. It brings me closer to this environment and makes me feel more present. Also, I hate to get sand into my sneakers, which ruins them. And since I don’t like to go out and buy a new pair of sneakers often, in general, I am annoyed by shopping, I run barefoot, and I am happy like that.
Walking to the beach, I can see the light-blue sky on the horizon, with a slight pink reflection from the rising sun. The pale-white, super smooth sand is cold under my bare feet. This type of sand is always cold, but it feels even colder in the mornings. I don’t mind the sand. My mind is set on the sky and the contrast between white sand, light blue sky, and light-blue and green-ish ocean. There are no words to describe this beauty. This picture-perfect scenery takes away my mind and soul. I take some pictures on my phone, I want to always have this memory somewhere in my digital cloud, so I can always go back to it, share it with others, show them how great this place is, and make them a little jealous. I walk the morning-cold sand towards the ocean.
I see some people scattered around the beach this early in the morning. Everyone has a reason to be there. Some are getting ready for another beautiful sunny day, and they decided to set up their beach spot early. Some people are just walking at the shoreline, breathing the fresh ocean air, some are running, and some are on their bicycles. There are fishermen, cigar-smoking men, coffee drinkers, old, young, kids, and others. I don’t start running until I am on the shoreline, next to the water. I deeply inhale the fresh morning ocean air. It looks pretty light and easy on my lungs. I almost don’t feel any pressure inside. I feel easy and relaxed. I want to live. Once I reach the water, I start running.
There is something about running on the beach that is an entirely different kind of running and completely different physical training than, let’s say, running at the gym, or on the street, or running in nasty-cold Pennsylvania neighborhoods. I hardly feel tired from running, and I get to breathe the freshest, smoothest air. The green-blue water comes and goes and comes again, hitting the shore lightly and returning to where it came from. There is a light, easy breeze in the air, and it makes me breathe in fully. My music plays in my earbuds, but I can still hear the ocean, the wind, and the birds. It all adds up to this magical yet so natural scenery. I watch my way, and I run left and right, trying to bypass others on the beach. People constantly walk back and forth. There are always people on the beach, no matter the day and the weather. Some walk in small groups, some walk with strollers, and some are alone but not lonely out here. This is like an early-morning-beach club or something where everyone who decided to come out this time of the day belongs here and is happy to be part of this early-riser community. So am I, and I am not local, but I feel like I am. I feel like I belong here.
My run continues, and I watch people, I try not to look at their faces, but sometimes I do. I want to see who else is out here this morning. I want to see beautiful young girls running on the beach. I usually see very few or none of those. They all seem to be getting their beauty sleep. Elderly and middle-aged folks are the majority of walkers and runners. This whole town is predominantly elderly folks. Those folks made it in this life. Those folks have nothing else to do but enjoy their lives and this beautiful weather that holds most of the year. I don’t mind the elderly. I don’t mind anybody at all. I feel light jealousy towards them since they’ve accomplished something in this life and deserve to enjoy their retirement. I am still very early on this life journey. I still have to go through at least thirty-some more years of working until I can peacefully retire. But I love to get a chance and an early experience of what this life can be like. I want to get an early glimpse of what this life can feel like once there is nothing to worry about but go out for a walk or a run on the beach in the mornings or evenings. This place is the place. This town is the town. I love everything about it. I’ll take it with all the idiots, tourists, lizards, alligators, and turtles over anything in North-Eastern Pennsylvania. Sarasota is the only place where I genuinely feel like I belong here. I should be here. I am happy here at once. Nothing else matters here anymore as long as I have this sun, this warm ocean air, this beach, this white sand under my feet and all. Man needs so little to be truly happy. Somehow, we all take the long road towards our happiness and towards finding what it is that we want to live for.
The music in my ears plays loud, the ocean’s hum is still audible, and I run. I get this immense energy from the ocean. My run feels easy and relaxed. I almost feel no pressure running, and there is no struggle at all. I watched the ocean move back and forth. I ran into the water for a little while to get my bare feet wet, to feel this energy. It works. Getting my bare feet wet refreshes my body and mind, and I want to run faster. I want to run longer. I prefer this run never to end. I continue to move along the shoreline.
Under my feet, on my way, I see the white sand with all those footprints on it. I see all those muscles and the seaweed flushed over onto the shore. I watch the sky and the sun rising on my left as I run towards it, and I feel the wind brushing through my body and soul. To my left are all those buildings along the shoreline, hotels, rentals, private housing, and everything under the sun that keep people coming here and staying there. Some customers are so eager to get there early that they come down as early as seven in the morning. Most of them probably are here for the first time. Many visitors are here on their vacations, spending some time with family and children or even by themselves. I see young mothers carrying their children to the beach in the morning. I see the fathers following them with a little cart with everything they might need at the beach while here. Some people are lightly packed with just one bag and a thermos. There is always a thermos with some mysterious liquid that people would bring with them to the beach. I’m sure there are plenty with alcohol in it. Locals know they can drink freely here, and they don’t even try to hide it. The tourists will be shyer about it and still hide their beer and wine in those thermoses or plastic bottles. It all works. It’s funny how people behave at the beach.
People come here with their reasons and schedules. They sit lazily on those chairs or lay on their towels, watching, doing nothing but relaxing. They are finding their peace and calm here at the beach. Most visitors don’t and will not get up early to run. They love just to lay there and watch others do their thing. It’s very much entertaining that way. I don’t mind them at all. I love to watch them as well while I am running. I love observing other people all the time. I love seeing what they do, how they look like, who they are watching, what they are doing in general, and how they are spending their morning time. A great song came up, and I turned my volume louder on my phone. I have my car key in my back pocket zipped, and I hold my phone in my hand as I run. I control my music, my sound, and my channels. I want to hear only what I want to hear at the moment. I don’t want to suffer through another lazy, dull song. I want all the best tunes playing in my ears this morning. I want to have this music associated with this ocean, beach, palms, sun, tourists watching me running by them, and all those birds making so much noise. I run until the shoreline ends, or almost until it ends, and there is no way to go any further, then I turn around and run back.
My view is slightly different now on my way back, as I can see more of the water on my left and the shore which bends this way. I always want to capture these moments somewhere in my memory to bring them back to life when I’ve been out of here. I might seem like a local to most of these folks on the beach, but I am just like one of them. I am just another tourist here. It doesn’t matter. What matters most is how I feel, at my all-time best. This sunshine does something to me, I am sure of it. I feel like all my anxiety and depression, stress, and all that daily bullshit do not affect me anymore. I don’t even give a shit about my emails or work-related matters or anything. I just live. I just run. I am free as those birds in the sky. I am just enjoying every minute here in the lovely Sarasota. There is sure a reason why I’ve been coming back here year after year for over a decade.
Fifteen minutes into my adventure, I can feel the sweat coming onto my face. I wipe with my hand and continue to run. The light ocean breeze blows through me and makes it all feel alright. I feel fresh. I feel so alive. I can see the yellow beach guard’s booth, my starting point, and my finish line. With every minute, I get closer and closer to it. I don’t have a time or a distance goal for this run. I am doing it for fun. I am doing it from this point to that and back. That’s it. It’s simple. It’s almost too simple to call it an exercise. I enjoy it like I am enjoying my cold white wine with a nice dinner later in the day. I am already planning my next run tomorrow and the next day, and for the remaining of the week. I wish I could spend my entire life like that. I wish I could come to the beach every morning until my last day, run or walk, enjoy this beauty, breathe this air, and feel this sand under my bare feet. I am only here for a month. At least I can count on that. At least it is something. Something worth living for.
I slow down and get closer to the beach as I approach the finish line. My feet are warm and hot from running the fresh, not even cold, and ocean water refreshes me again. I stop, and I walk more into the water to get deeper, down to my knee level. I watch the blue-greenish water moving, the ocean breathing, the birds flying around making noise, and the boats far into the water doing something out there. It’s a perfect view. It’s the view that I want to enjoy all my life. This view takes away my breath and my mind. I stay there knee-deep in the water and watch it all. The horizon is clear, and I can see far, but I can’t see the end of the ocean. This ocean has no end. It doesn’t need to end anywhere. I stay there like that, motionless and thoughtful. I feel like I have to think about something important like the sense of life and the purpose and my goals and my career and family life, but nothing like that comes to my mind. I just want to be present and not distracted from this beauty by nothing else. My mind is blank, already up from my night’s sleep but still wondering, still processing in the quiet mode. I check my watch, It’s about eight-thirty. I look sideways. I look straight ahead into the ocean. There are more people now on the beach with every minute. I know I have to get back to my place. I know my child will wake up about any minute now, and I want to see my son’s beautiful sleepy face, hug him, kiss him, and start his breakfast for him. I turn around, and I walk back across the massive wide valley of sand towards the parking lot, towards my car. I am not looking back. I am just walking away. I know what’s behind me. I don’t need another sad reminder that I am leaving this place and might not ever come back. I know I will come back here at some point in time. I will be here again tomorrow morning, running again, enjoying it all. For now, I need to be with my family. I want to see them, hug them, kiss them, and have my morning coffee with them. They are all I have and all I love in this world. I am so fortunate that we are here together, living and enjoying this fantastic place, and we are happy here, like nowhere else. Life can be beautiful if you let it.
Love comes in and out suddenly It helps you live and helps you suffer It can punch you in the face. Love means holding hands together Love means to kiss Love means to smile, to hug, Love means watching each other grow old. Love means the wrinkles on your face And body changes, weather changes Everything changes. Love justifies it all. Love saves, love scars. Love is like the ocean, It could be endless And it can dry out. Love is like a highway It can last a while or end shortly. It’s a trip. It’s a trip that you take As long you move, loves moves. Love moves life. It can screw with your head It can screw with your life. Love can screw your head, your soul And your mind. You cannot live without it And sometimes it will make life more difficult with love. Love means loving somebody unconditionally Without receiving love back. It’s the hardest thing. It’s the hardest thing. Love is like a flower in the sand. It can grow through everything It can survive, but it might need some water in it. It needs passion, it needs the air, And it needs the purpose. What is the purpose of love? It’s your own thing. It is whatever makes you drive. It is what makes you take the highway. Jump through all the hoops, suffer, sacrifice, In the name of love. Love is lungs full of air, Love is a forest full of trees, Love is everything and nothing. You can keep love, you can hide it, You can avoid it, but it will always show up In your heart, in your face, in your smile, in your hair, In your teeth, in your bones. It can bite you, and it can bite others. Love has no limits. It can go on and on, rooflessly and endlessly, It can throw people off. It can mess with your dailiness, busyness, problemness, But it also can cure all of it. It all depends. Just like everything else in life, It all depends. Love is a free bird in the sky, Love is blue sky and ocean, and all the palms On the beach, All the cars on the highway, And all the trees up in the mountains. Love is old age, Love is young age, Love is sunset and sunrise. Love is a dark room with windows closed. Love is an empty closet. Love is running water in a shower. Love is a bed in the bedroom. Love is sex. Love is moving. Love helps us to leave, Love is here to stay. We all need a little bit of love For each of us in our lives. It’s easier this way, It’s better this way. It’s the best way out And the best way in.
I sit here at the famous hotel, top floor, overlooking Venice Beach, California. The balcony window is open, and the ocean breeze is coming inside. I can feel it, smell it, and I can breathe again fully I always wanted to be here. I always wanted to be in the City of Angels, create here, live here, and be part of it all. The smell of the beach and the ocean is always refreshing and alive. It makes me want to just be there, just lay there, watch, and breathe. It makes my soul tick. It brings in the Lada Del Ray melancholy with it. I can imagine Lana sitting next to me smoking cigarettes and singing sad songs. There are lights from the street reflected on the walls, and the noise of the boulevard below is heard. Cars are going back and forth at the night, the people roaming around the City that never sleeps. It is a dark and warm night tonight, and I always have my Red Hot Chili Peppers music on. They are California to me in sound. The fake beautiful people and the palms are California to me in actuality. Spiritually, I think it is a place for the lost to be found, find whatever is missing, create something new, grow, and achieve. It is the mecca for so many lost souls, many of whom really found themselves there. The first that comes to mind are all those actors who came over with nothing, and the minute they scored a successful movie, the big payday came around and then some more and they are never the same. This is a life that I believe too many are wishing for, but it is not an easy life to have, live, and maintain. It is a complicated and challenging task. Honestly, with all the time trying to become somebody else for money, one eventually becomes another version of themselves for life. People lose their own entity over time, and they just play the Hollywood game for the rest of their lives. They want to be part of it, be invited to the parties, get roles in the movies, get offers, make money, and spend money while selling their soul. That dirty fake acting soul is worth not more than any other man’s soul even less famous. Almost always thinking of California, I can imagine rich fucking movie stars with tons of money, huge houses, big fancy cars, and busty women with a shit ton of plastic surgeries. When I think about California, I think about John Fante, who came out there when it was fucking dark, and it was nothing around. When the wind would blow a ton of fucking desert sand into your room along with an ocean breeze. I imagine Fante sitting in that dirty, cheap hotel room on Bunker Hill, hungry, poor, with no money or prospects, but typing with a cheap fucking typewriter. Writing meant a different thing to him than it is now to 99.9% of douchebags with a laptop, just like myself, who blog or who are self-made-stupid-ass-fucking-reporters, etc. This used to be a place of nothing but the fucking desert. Many new-coming lunatics come over here to find and build their new life and build their American dream. Fante sat there in that chair hungry and desperate, writing letters to his mother in Colorado, asking for a few dollars so he could pay the rent or send the story out or buy himself something to eat. At the same time, he worked on his American dream. There was so much passion this guy had, and like so many others who came to California for the same reason, to make it out here. In life, it always takes too much of your soul, best years, and best health before you can actually achieve something. Before you can truly say, ok, I am fucking feeling pretty good about myself and my accomplishments today. Today’s idea of getting there and becoming the next best fucking actor or actress is very much a delusional thought process. Fante had to eat shit all his life to at least partially make it work for him, even if it meant writing movie scripts full-time instead of books. John Fante’s books will always be in my home library. I will cherish them always, remembering him as a writer who wrote so simply, so early on, with so much passion and authentic and true feelings that went almost unnoticed until his death. Charles Bukowski is my association with California in a poetic way. Charles Bukowski is the reason I write. Charles Bukowski is the reason I know who John Fante was. Nobody in the whole fucking California is more famous for his raw, authentic, graphic, and very realistic poetry of the time and place than Bukowski. People worldwide learn about California, skid raw, horse racing, drinking, and drunken shenanigans from reading Bukowski’s poetry and prose. His writing throughout his entire life was full of it. The never-ending drinking and drama with the women in question were the two major topics across his career and life that always played a key role everywhere Bukowski went. He wasn’t afraid to stay fucking hungry, drunk, jobless, hopeless. Still, with all that passion for writing and all that passion for becoming a famous writer, he kept writing and creating and eventually did become successful. Success felt like a tremendous reward to Bukowski even in the later years of his life. The man who had been one inch away from skid raw now had a wife, house, a new car, a movie based on his life, a bunch of new books, a great bottle of wine for dinner, and everything else the dirty old man can wish for. It wasn’t a shot or easy way out for him, but he still somehow did it. He made his American dream come true. The dozens of his books on my bookshelves represent my love and admiration for his writing. Drunk Bukowski roaming from bar to bar, from a hotel room to a hotel room, from one shitty job to another, trying to find the right place, trying to find the good life, the peace of mind, the right woman while always getting involved in some weird shit which came up with his poems or part of his prose. There was so much Bukowski in California that I don’t think it is possible to ever take him out of there. I am not even going to bring up the music bands taking their origins from California. It will take the whole fucking night and probably many books, not just a few pages to cover everything. California had it all and had it all great, too good. I am not sure that the good is still there, it could be, but we maybe don’t see or don’t know much about it. The good could’ve left that place a long time ago, as so many people did recently when the poor and the homeless started to run the town. The life changed, the dream was crushed for so many, and so many plans were deemed to never come true or be born in the first place. It is sad to see the beach with primarily lonely or homeless people. It is hard to see people angry at each other and only being pleased when they need to impress somebody to make their next move, get the part, win the role, the contract, you fucking name it. It is said to see the place of so many dreams coming true and so much talent and creativity going to hell faster than hell itself. California, where everything began for America, is now a place of survival for the fake egoistic people. On the other hand, a movement of homeless and poor, an invasion of the overpriced properties with those who didn’t make it or didn’t want to make anything… Everything so glamorous and lavish becomes sad, grey, and doomed. It does feel like I don’t have a partner and my only friend is in the City I live in, the City of Angeles, lonely and as fucked up as I am, and together we cry. Red Hot Chili Peppers got it all right in those lyrics. They are so California. There are a lot of illusions and bullshit in and about California for so many people. But there always is a real side to each story. The real side to the story is that not everything that glitters is gold. Not everything that has been portrayed to be so great and beautiful actually is so. The real side also is that I have never been to California, and there is no hotel, no ocean, and no breeze where I am hailing from. It is actually cold, dark, and gloomy in the suburbs of the East Coast. But that was my dream though for quite a while. I always wanted to come to California. I always wanted to californicate, whatever that means. I am writing about my dream and how I imagine and associate my California life. What would I feel like? What would I do there? I would’ve wanted to come over and be like Fante, a man without a dime behind his soul but so much to say through my writing. Still, there is a small room for rent, and there is a typewriter or a laptop these days. I sit and write like crazy for days and nights, and then I try to sell it somewhere so I can continue to do what I love and live off of my passion, my writing. There is a laptop that never goes to sleep, busy processing words. Like myself, there are cigarette butts all over the table and a half-empty bottle of whiskey. I am typing away, writing my thoughts and words as they all come to me. I create the writing that also creates something else for somebody. It creates a new made-up world that everyone can wander in and be part of. Welcome to my shindig, folks. This is the cycle that never ends. This is the life I wanted to have but no longer can. This would’ve been the story of the next greatest American novelist, poet, and writer, John Loraine, ladies and gentlemen. It feels great. It almost feels real for a moment. I can imagine myself living there, in the City of Angeles, and being part of that mess. The place is hardly changing a person. In most cases, the person changes depending on their surroundings, just like all those successful actors in Hollywood. They will never be the same regular folks they once were before they came over there. Maybe I will never be the same once I am relocated to California? Perhaps I would be stuck there and not be able to write anything? What if that City eats me alive and I am forever lost in its gloom? What if the writing does not require one to move anywhere? Why would you go anywhere else as long as you can get a quiet place to sit down and write? There are so many hours in the day, so many words to write, and so many writers and books to read. I think it is just the right time to sit down and write whatever you feel like and think about and whatever comes through. Bukowski once wrote, “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” Amen.
The poem like the sun that shines through everything, Shines through the darkness and blinds you. A sunny day is just a sunny day unless you Get a chance to enjoy it. Who needs all the trees in the world And who needs all the birds? We have jobs, we have beer, We have corporations and we have wars. You pick your battles sometimes but Most of the time they pick you And fucking beat you to the ground. The strongest man will survive, This is the game and somebody Is playing you all the time. It is too dark to see and yet There is just so much of it, So much of everything That with time it just doesn’t matter It becomes your new life. People change as they should Not always for their best, How can anybody be the best When we all are running on power reserve? The trees are blooming again And it is this time of the year When you just want all that shit Go to hell, and disappear. You just stare into the distance Thinking about nothing, With a cold beer in your hand, Not a worry about anything. Tomorrow will arrive As it usually does.
