A fan letter

 Dear Bukoswki,

I know you’re dead. It’s okay, so many people are dead: my father is dead, my grandma is dead, my uncle-in-law is dead. Even Lemmy is dead! I’ll be dead in 60 years, at most. But still, it doesn’t matter. I’ve read all your novels and stories, many of your poems, and I’ve even listened to your readings. That’s why I wanted to write to you: I take you as a friend.

Excuse my English; I’m not a native speaker. I use technology to help, but I still make mistakes. I’m working on it, but the problem is that I don’t have any native-speaker friends—well, I don’t have that many friends in general. The ones I do have, I talk to seldom, and their English is even worse than mine. But dead people don’t mind grammar mistakes, right?

Anyhow, I’m writing this letter to ask for some advice. I’m feeling confused, Charles. I don’t know what the hell is going on with me—or with the world itself. I don’t have any answers, and probably not even the right questions, but with all your wisdom maybe you can enlighten me.

Here’s how I feel, dear Mr. Bukowski: I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen. Something big—something that would give meaning to my life. No one ever promised, or even said, that anything important would happen to me, but I still wait anyway. Something that would put some joy in the air, some excitement, some gamble. Something that would make me feel like I’m the main actor in life.

When I was 17 or 18, I developed a habit of walking home from school after classes instead of taking the bus. I’m not sure how long the walk was, but I used to think about what I would do in this world in the future during those walks. I even had stories about myself.

In those stories, I usually had a lady. And I’d kill dragons (metaphorically), or die for that lady (sometimes literally). As the years passed, that hero died before any fight, and I lost myself with him. I got lost in the crowd. I became something I don’t understand, and never wanted to be.

Those stories that never happened were the real me. I just couldn’t make them come true. I guess it’s my fault, but I’m not sure it’s completely mine. There are so many untold stories and lost heroes. But for some reason we forget them—or ignore them. If I’m one of them, is that really a shame on me?

So, dear Chinaski, my question for you is: how did you come to terms with the fact that you are not special, that your life is not a movie? Because after 20 years, I still feel like I’m waiting. But I’m scared to die while waiting. I’m scared that nothing will unfold, that there’s no big ending. I’m scared that I’ll swing between pain and boredom—until I finally have some real pain, some real problems in my life. Then I won’t be able to get bored anymore. Then I’ll just realize it’s time to die.

How did you survive all those shitty jobs and places? You had an awful life: no money, no place to live most of the time, terrible health—yet you still managed to finish it with some style. What was your trick? In one of your interviews you said you didn’t know you could make it, that you had that talent. “A shot in the dark,” you said. Was that really true? Did you really not believe it would end like this? Then how did you endure your life? How did you hold on that long?

I know you must be very busy, and a great artist needs time and solitude for his work. But you would make me really happy if you could answer this letter. You can just send it to Dublin with my name—the whole town knows me. They’ll deliver it to me somehow.

Yours,

Ali the greatest