The Captain Is Out to Lunch by Charles Bukowski

now is more subtle, more invisible. It's a feeling in the air. Words spoken, words heard. Things seen. I still need a few drinks. But I am now into nuances and shadows. I am fed words by things that I am hardly aware of. This is good. I write a different kind of crap now. Some have noticed.
    "You have broken through,“ is mainly what they tell me.
    I am aware of what they sense. I feel it too. The words have gotten simpler yet warmer, darker. I am being fed from new sources. Being near death is energizing. I have all the advantages. I can see and feel things that are hidden from the young. I have gone from the power of youth to the power of age. There will be no decline. Uh uh. Now, pardon me, I must got to be, it's 12:55 a.m. Talking the night off. Have your laugh while you can...

8/24/92 12:28 AM

    Well, I've been 72 years old for 8 days and nights now and I'll never be able to say that again.
    It's been a bad couple of months. Weary. Physically and spiritually. Death means nothing. It's walking around with your ass dragging, it's when the words don't come flying form the machine, there's the gyp.
    Now in my lower lip and under the lower lip, there is a large puffiness. And I have no energy. I didn't go to the track today. I just stayed in bed. Tired, tired. The Sunday crowds at the track are the worst. I have problems with the human face. I find it very difficult to look at. I find the sum total of each person's life written there and it is a horrible sight. When one sees thousands of faces in one day, it's tiring from the top of the head to the toes. And all through the gut. Sundays are so crowded. It's amateur day. They scream and curse. They rage. Then they go limp and leave, broke. What did they expect?
    I had a cataract operation on my right eye a few months ago. The operation was not nearly as simple as the misinformation I gathered from people who claimed to have had eye operations. I heard my wife talking to ther mother on the telephone: "You say it was over in a few minutes? And that you drove your car home afterwards?“ Another old guy told me, "Oh it's nothing, it's over in a flash and you just go about your business as normal.“ Others spoke about the operation in an off-hand manner. It was a walk in the park. Now, I didn't ask for any of these people for information about the operation, they just came out with it. And after a while, I began to believe it. Although I still wonder how a thing as delicate as the eye could be treated more or less like cutting a toenail.
    On my first visit to the doctor, he examined the eye and said that I needed an operation.
    "O.k.,“ I said, "let's do it.“
    "What?“ he asked.
    "Let's do it now. Let's rock and roll!“
    "Wait,“ he said, "first we must make an appointment with a hospital. Then there are other preparations. First, we want to show you a movie about the operation. It's only about 15 minutes long.“
    "The operation?“
    "No, the movies.“
    What happens is that they take out the complete lens of the eye and replace it with an artifical lens. The lens is stitched in and the eye must adjust and recover. After about 3 weeks the stitches are removed. It's no walk in the park and the operation takes much longer than "a couple of minutes.“
    Anyhow, after it was all over, my wife's mother said it was probably an after-operational procedure she was thinking of. And the old guy? I asked him, "How long did it take for your sight to really get better after your eye operation?“ 
    "I'm not so sure I had an operation,“ he said.
    Maybe I got this fat lip from drinking from the cat's water bowl?
    I feel a little better tonight. Six days a week at the racetrack can burn anybody out. Try is some time. Then come in and work on your novel.
    Or maybe death is giving me some signs?
    The other day I was thinking about the world without me. There is the world going on doing what it does. And I'm not there. Very odd. Think