“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I always travel with a book. Sometimes several.
But this trip I decided to load e-books on my kindle, as well as a few audio books, and bring just a journal instead, to save space.
It worked for a while.
And then suddenly it didn’t.
In a bookshop in Manila I found the English Language section. They stocked a broad and eclectic range, and the books were mostly cheap paperbacks with impossibly thin pages and thin covers and several of every copy, impenetrable in their plastic wrapping.
I excavated a thin poetry book that was hidden behind new editions of recent best-sellers. The protective cover was gone; the small book was so well read that the cover was creased almost in two and every page was soiled and marked. Like all of the travellers before me I stopped and dipped between its pages for a moment. The world stood still as words fell around me like rain.
I dug around the shelves some more and then I found it. A volume of Charles Bukowski’s poetry. The cover was soft with wear. It was well read and loved already. It felt good in my hand, like I belonged to it, and it to me. I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I just held it tight, and stood in front of the shelves a little longer, pretending that I might choose something else. Wondering if I could take it home.
I couldn’t see for tears.
Once, long ago, I took a journey to another far-away place and forgot to take a book with me. I was living in the Kimberley then. The remote Australian outback. A terrible place to be without a book.
Not long after I arrived a group of American tourists camped at the station. It was their last adventure before they caught a plane to Darwin and then home. On the morning of their departure they dumped whatever they didn’t need, to lighten their luggage.
Later that morning I watched a cleaner empty the trash from the men’s toilet. Among the papers and bottles and debris I saw a book fly into the bin. Before I could stop myself I ran from the office and snatched it up. I didn’t even stop to read the cover. It was a book, and I was a junky starved of words.
I wiped it clean with a corner of my shirt and carried it home triumphant.
This same book.
For days back in that wilderness place I couldn’t even open it. I just read the cover over and over. The title said ‘You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense – Charles Bukowski.’
I felt like Bukowski was talking to me. I knew and he knew.
And as I chose and read a single poem, rationing them to every other day, I came to know that poets exist to sing breath back into our bodies when we can no longer breathe for ourselves.
I lost that precious book when we moved from the Kimberley. But now we have found each other again.
I read one randomly selected poem aloud each day, to entertain Ben and to nurture myself. It’s like travelling with an old friend.
It’s like coming home.
I’ve recently fallen in love with Bukowski’s words, this is a great post 🙂
So good, aren’t they? Glad to know another Bukowski fan 🙂
I love Bukowski, great reading…..jen
Awww lovely ❤️
Cherryx
I haven’t read him, now I must. <3
What a brilliant travelling companion to have, and of all his or anyone else’s books, the same one. I love this story.
When I’m out and bookless and it’s a quiet night with those same, strange travelling energies, or I’m up late and thinking, I read Tarmac Meditations by Michael Lebowitz. He has his own website and writes for Lifeasahuman online magazine. Little, beautiful outpourings of soul. ❤️
Nothing feels as good as reading a real book over an ebook,
I love this so much. Thanks for the reminder, Nicole.
So beautifully written…welcome home !
How beautiful, how blessed – the universe really does cradle us in it’s hands. 🙂
Love that ….wondrous synchronicity
wonderful