Day: April 28, 2021

I like Bukowski
He wrote from life
Knew it top to bottom
Inside out and outside in
He has been down
Has been up
Liquor and women
Were always a part of
His amazing existence
He had a God
Whom he never mocked
Understood depression
Wrote every noun
Verb and adjective
Also throw in adverb

Respected the losers
He had been one himself
Received notes from those
Who read his stuff
Their compliments were good
But his chest didn’t puff
He knew the way down
Was faster than the way up
He typed at night
When booze had effect
Loved his women
Until they made him sick
Or the wine was gone

He had his way
Wrote every day
He grew older
But critics still raved
Because of a simple thing
He was better than ever

Stanski
April 28, 2021 ^

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A Man Who Found His Peace

Su Shi was one of China’s greatest renaissance men, known for his poems, essays, art, calligraphy, public policy, and recipes, among other things. 
 
He was also famously exiled twice for his opposition to the Wang Anshi faction in the Song Dynasty court, spending many of his prime years in China’s hinterlands as a result. 
 
Once, Su was visiting one of his good friends and fellow court official, Wang Gong. Wang had been banished to the remote region of Lingnan (present-day Guangdong and Guangxi) and had only recently returned to the North. 
 
While there, Su was chatting with one of the songstresses in Wang’s employ, Rounu, who had made the trip down to Lingnan with Wang’s entourage. 
 
 
“The climate in Lingnan is rather unpleasant, isn’t it?” he asked her. 
 
Calmly, she replied, “As long as my heart is at peace, I am home.” 
 
Rounu’s offhand remark had impressed Su Shi with its profundity, so much so that he recorded the encounter in one of his poems. Much of his own thinking in his later years included aspects of learning to make peace in this way. 
 
He is remembered not just for his great talent, but for his acceptance of all the challenges that life threw at him—and his persistence in continuing to do the work that he ought to do. 
 
This acceptance of his wasn’t a resigned passivity, but a quiet realism that kept him moving in the right direction. (It also armed him with a nice sense of humor.) 
 
In fact, Su passed away en route to Chengdu after receiving orders to return from his second exile. So even when he passed away, he was still marching along his path—setting an example for generations upon generations of Chinese people to come.