Old Ways

All the books I had as a kid, except for the motherfucking bible, got worn something terrible. I read them all many times. I did not know what I was doing. I read them all so many times I ought to have known them by heart but I did not. So I read them again and again.

I still read books a second, third, fourth time. If you have not read Orwell's 1984 recently, crack a copy and read it in front of your giant Chinese television.

I have been reading Bukowski's Women at work on my breaks for just the second time. I lent out my first copy and never got it back. It is buried in a box of stained pornography in Jimi's basement.

"You're so full of shit!"

I laughed. "That's why I write."

When I am reading the book I often laugh out loud, cry even. There is not a lot of laughing in sawmill lunchrooms like there used to be.