Emily Dickinson

ME:
I’m very grateful to have been given this opportunity to “speak “ to you Miss Dickinson, I pondered a while on how to make an approach to you knowing you were a very private person, and did not like to venture too far from your home. So I gave this a great deal of thought and my friend Hugh gave me a poetic nudge.

EMILY:
“How do most people live without any thought? There are many people in the world,--you must have noticed them in the street,--how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning? I felt it shelter to speak to you.”

ME:
Well, thank you very much, I’m very grateful that you have. I promise not to be too long but based on your life’s writings I’m sure you have a few opinions and truths to share.

EMILY:
“Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun - if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.”

ME:
Hmmm, that certainly makes sense to me.You were known as a very private poet, it is said you wrote nearly 1800 poems but fewer than a dozen were published during your lifetime…tell me why those pieces that were published were usually significantly altered by the publishers?

EMILY:
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate; behaviour is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes. I don't profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense. Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it.

ME:
I find your poetry quite beautiful but only reached that conclusion after reading it several times – I think it’s because of the era and how people spoke in those times – but once I’d reasonably mastered that I really settled down to read you – I was totally won over and have become another huge fan of your poetry.

EMILY:
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon - poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these. If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

ME:
When you put it like that I have to agree. The one thing I’ve come to learn and be grateful for is to be touched by the wisdom of brilliant writer/poets whose lives I have obsessively researched for no other reason than to feel what it’s like to bask forever in the sweet glow of their greatness.

EMILY:
Forever is composed of nows, I dwell in possibility - saying nothing sometimes says the most - My best acquaintances are those with whom I spoke no word.

ME:
May I ask you to leave me with just one, small gem to hold close to remember this short time we have spent together please?

EMILY:
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--

The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;

For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!”

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

ME:
Goodbye sweet poetess, I’ll never forget this, ever!!.

EMILYy:
I must go in, the fog is rising.

Charles Bukowski

ME: 
I feel compelled to address you as Mr Bukowski, don’t ask me why, I don’t know myself but I just do. I think I’d rather hear you talk about your life rather than read it as written by others. ….but I want to thank you first and foremost for giving me this time to have this chat with you…I promise I’ll keep it brief.

BUKOWSKI:
“I suppose like others I have come through fire and sword, love gone wrong, head-on crashes, drunk at sea, and I have listened to the simple sound of water running in tubs and wished to drown - I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”

ME:
Yes I noticed in a lot of the stuff written about you or by you there’s a lot of this solitude, loneliness thing – and yet you had several relationships throughout your life - I don’t really see you as someone who was ever lonely for long.

BUKOWSKI:
“I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores.”

ME:
And yet you had several relationships with women over the years.

BUKOWSKI:
“In the old days, before I was married, or knew a lot of women, I would just pull down all the shades and go to bed for three or four days. I'd get up to shit. I'd eat a can of beans, go back to bed, just stay there for three or four days. Then I'd put on my clothes and I'd walk outside, and the sunlight was brilliant, and the sounds were great. I felt powerful, like a recharged battery. But you know the first bring-down? The first human face I saw on the sidewalk, I lost half my charge right there.”
“Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other.

ME:
Well I’m still sort of researching into and sorting through lots of amazing geniuses (is that a word?) like yourself and learning some amazing things that have added to my own creative growth – some have incredible wit and senses of humour that make me laugh. I find it very exciting and extremely interesting.

BUKOWSKI
“What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing; and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the whole thing is so ridiculous that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bank robbers, the poets ... are interesting?”
“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

ME:
I know time is running out but tell me a little of your thoughts on writing – I’d love to hear it.

BUKOWSKI:
“I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.”
“Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”
“When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.”

ME:
Every time I look through and read up on the lives of wonderful legends like yourself I often wonder if we could ever be friends – I know you are all out of my league but….I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than hanging out with my muses and just listening to what they say.

BUKOWSKI:
“That's what friendship is, sharing the prejudice of experience.”
“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them.”

ME:
Only in my dreams

BUKOWSKI:
“Baby, in a couple of minutes I'm going to rip off your god damned panties and show you some turkey neck you'll remember all the way to the graveside. I have a vast and curved penis, like a sickle, and many a gutted pussy has gasped come upon my callous and roach-smeared rug. First let me finish this drink.”

ME:
Hahahaha!, only in YOUR dreams….any last words before I head for the hills?? *smiles*

BUKOWSKI:
“In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.”

ME:
See ya!