Screams From the Balcony by Charles Bukowski Read Free Book Online

type of thing, but no people, just these Chinese signs, and I began to feel as if I were going mad and I swung around the village driveway and shot back down out of the hills the way I came.
    I must have driven an hour more, seeing no one, getting nowhere, backtracking, turning, going North, South, East, West. Then I saw a human being. He had one of these gas trucks and was running gas into a gas station. I asked him, “How do I get to L.A.?” “Whereabouts you want to get in L.A.?” he asked. “I don’t care where ,” I told him, “just show me the city hall.” “Well, buddy,” he said, “you are going in the wrong direction. Just turn around and follow this street straight on in.” That simple.
    But going back, I got found, I recognized some of the streets leading to Santa Anita racetrack and I was on my own route back home. I can get you to any racetrack from California to Mexico but don’t ask me where anything else is at.
    I got to my sweet room, full of empty beer-cans and bottles and I went to the refrigerator. Luck. There sat one chilled and lovely glass bottle of Miller’s. I drank that and went to bed.
    And that was the night of the photos. I hope something comes out of it because I don’t think I can go through with it again. Not this year, anyhow. I mean, other people can do these things easily. Me, I’m a frog on a dissection table. I guess that’s why I write. They keep cutting me open. It’s nothing profound, but so odd. And all these photos with this hunk of hair standing up on my head. I can’t even walk across a room with success. This morning I stepped on a can opener that was on the floor. No shoes on, of course. Another minor tragedy. Yet the spirit is not suicidal. I tend to linger just to see how many more odd turns the gods can throw on me. I suppose somebody will tell me I need the couch. Well, we all need the couch. Don’t tell me that with our Berlin walls and our stockpiles that our part of the universe is healthy and makes sense. If I need the couch they had better start building a lot of couches. I won’t deny that I might be somewhat off, don’t get me wrong But if you are going to try to show me a leader or a way out, I am going to ask a lot of questions.
    Anyhow Stevens is supposed to phone me about the pictures. He has them in Pasadena and is going to put them into the soup. And I guess I am supposed to—ha, ah ha, ha, ha!!!—drive over and pick them up!
    I will airmail them if I ever get to Pasadena and back again, and if you use any of them, I do wish you would give him a line: Photo or photos by John Stevens. Something like that.
    Well, Jon, that’s how it went. I tried. Only wish my hair had been combed. Do you figure this ever happened to Hem or Willie the Faulk? I guess not. Going out to mail this now, get some beer and some sleep. To hell with the world’s series. I couldn’t sleep last night—steaming about the cockscomb.
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    [To Jon Webb]
    Wednesday [?October 17, 1962]
     
    [* * *] Tired today, from horses and other things, but hope to have a prof. photog up here tomorrow or Friday, and chances are he’ll have a better camera and know-how. That is, if I don’t go mad, or just don’t fall through the floorboards. This picture-taking has some semblance of horror in it to me. I go through the same thing whenever I get a haircut. And sometimes the bastards will spin you in the chair and show you yourself in the mirror. God. [* * *]
    …I have all these letters Corrington has sent me, and I began to worry a while back when I was not feeling so good mentally and physically. I might have to get them off my hands and may ship them back through you and have Bill pick them up when he sees you. There is kind of an ivory-carved quality to most of these letters and they are much better than his poems. In the poem he still sometimes has this E.E. thing mixed with Auden plus a kind of hysterical abstract and fancy glibness. When the letters catch up to the poems