I become what I consume. Obviously I’m only referring to the mind, not the physical, for if this were true for the body, I would have turned into a bowl of breakfast cereal by now. But over years of reading and watching movies, with the gift of hindsight, I realize that I do merge with what I read, which isn’t anything new. The old saying rings true: “Where your treasure is, there also your heart will be” - even when the treasure is a destructive one. While throwing around proverbs, I’ll just add another: “Be careful of the company you keep.” I’d apply that same statement to the books or movies or media you keep.

Charles Bukowski, the alcoholic poet that I loved to read in my early twenties, is the subject. Yes, Bukowski, the carnal, rejectionist, drunken, insane, brutally honest, self-destructive societal outsider. Who doesn’t love that kind of guy? He’s the guy that follow no rules whatsoever and yet is a virtuoso of victimhood. But then he also wrote from the heart and could spin sentences into gold. He reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Bukowski did look at the stars, but just as often he would lie face down and describe the gutter itself, in great detail.

In my own days of drinking, I knew there was a problem around control, a dysfunction that I couldn’t manage. I knew it from the very first time the buzz spun me around, that this was my drug, what I had been looking for. But I also knew there was something not right about this affinity but I didn’t want to face the problem. However, when I stumbled onto Charles Bukowski, I found a kindred spirit where I didn’t have to care about the problem. I just let the problem be. I could let it exist. I just wanted to allow myself to not feel lost and empty, which meant letting the desire live unfettered. Not wanting to deal with the problem, I found Bukowski giving me a fist bump and saying, “Just go with it. Embrace it.” One quote that sticks in my mind was this one:

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

There is no question that Bukowski was a deep addict that could speak profoundly, often striking deep at the paradoxes written in our souls. Honesty and raw pessimism makes his writing hit readers hard. His gutter-style of writing, from the dark places, made him famous. He compared himself to a Roman writer named Catullus, another poet of the alleyways who lived on the hidden streets of society. The humor in Bukowski’s stories made me laugh out loud, as he crossed every line and broke every taboo. This appealed to me because, like a court jester, he stood outside of society and mocked all of our facades. The masks that we wear and our modern rituals meant nothing to him. Throughout history, outsiders like the comedian and the bum on the street both hold special privilege to mock us “normies,” and Bukowski played both bum and comedian. He didn’t fit the mold of expected society, so he flung himself far from it and laughed at the absurdity, like a failing student slinging mud from the back row of class. Or he at least appeared to be unbothered by his flaws.

But then he would write something that let his own mask slip from his persona, like a poem called “Bluebird” that, when I first read it, struck me like a shovel to my forehead. A flicker of light remained within him. He knew something deep about his spirit, admitting that he recognized something like hope within.

there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too tough for him,I say, stay in there, I'm not goingto let anybody seeyou.there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I pour whiskey on him and inhalecigarette smokeand the w****s and the bartendersand the grocery clerksnever know thathe'sin there.

That poems sits in great contrast to his more common themes of nihilism, insanity, and pessimism, which fired on all cylinders through most of his writing. He touches on something very far down, very deep, in his spirit, and his Bluebird is like the last refuge of his hope, and it reminds me of a teaching of the Catechism that states the same thing, but without the references to whiskey and smoke:

In the depths of his conscience…always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. (GS 16 & CCC 1776)

Bukowski, even in full rejection mode, taps into the center of something that cannot be drowned with booze or smoked out.

What fascinated me in his writing is that he avoids all political correctness, which was already a thing in his era, and goes straight to the bottom, to the blind alleys, and just says the things that few would say or write. He was a prophet of the “Big Empty” where nothing matters, and where nothing is important. In his world, everything is a waste of time. I recall reading this quote and nodding along, as so many mornings you would wonder why the day needed to happen:

“I don’t know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?”

Or darker still, Bukowski could enter a contest against Sylvia Plath for the saddest sentence ever written. There was always a yearning for suicide in the writing of both of their works. Here was a writer that could articulate depression. An example from Bukowksi:

“If I hadn’t been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.”

Similar to Hemingway’s quote, “Drinking is a way of ending the day,” Bukowski had a devastating idea about drinking as a way of killing hisself each day:

I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.

When I was reading Bukowski, the sentiments confirmed ideas that I held. The rejection of society and self I felt, even while I was going through the motions of proper society externally. The mask I wore in society, Bukowski just discarded it. He had no need of approval, or so he said - which is funny, because he actually did need approval. He wrote for approval and constantly sent out his art for publication. But like the person today who posts on Facebook, “I don’t care what anyone thinks about me, I am who I am,” it’s the same plea for approval. Declaring that you don’t care about approval is always a cry for support from others to approve of you. I know quite a few people who need to be seen in a big pickup and drinking beer and talking sports who say, “I don’t care what people think of me.” It always make me laugh, as this is like a very lite beer version of Bukowski, who took that sentiment and no parachute and jumped all the way to the bottom of that lie.

The sadness that could be discerned in his writing so often bordered on thoughts of suicide, which is unavoidably where this way of life leads. My own feelings were bolstered by Bukowski’s announcements about the cruel “truth” of the world. My suspicions were that the Big Empty was it, that life had no meaning, and here was the first author I found that wasn’t afraid to declare it without a bunch of “isms” like subjectivism or positivism or communism or existentialism or deconstructionism or just plain old atheism. Bukowski didn’t write happy endings or pretend the world was good. He saw the world as a mess and so he pushed the eject button.

After reading many of his poems, however, his notions of being at odds with everything start to seem self-congratulatory. Today, what I see so many years later in his quotes is an addict in full bloom, with no remorse or intention to change. The same celebration of alcohol and recognition of emptiness can be felt in the books of Hemingway and Fitzgerald as well, but they have more refined plots and complex characters. Bukowski’s dissatisfaction finds an outlet to pleasure through drinking, as the state of drunkenness removes what ails his heart, and so that becomes the center of his life. (This is not surprising to anyone that enjoys drinking or drugging, but differs none for those chasing other addictions like porn, gambling, cheating, food, work, shopping, plastic surgery, fitness, or internet and video games.) His rough youth and escapades are illustrated in his books via his alter ego Henry Chinaski. The path of his addiction is so well recorded that his life reads like a manual: this substance that gives pleasure initially becomes less satisfactory, but then you can’t stop doing it because you’re looking to get the high back again. Always repeating the same loop of events, he drinks to escape life. Then the isolation and self-pity infiltrates his life and everything else becomes pointless, stupid, a waste of time, and no one understands him. The reason he claims to love isolation so much is because of the grip alcohol had on him, not because he actually enjoyed isolation. The spiral of depression takes a person to a lonely place, and while the user feels like the vice lifts him up, it’s a trick of the mind, and it only took me about 20 years to realize that this is literally what the word “hell” means. Bukowski celebrates this error because his addiction wants him to stay there and be lonely with it. A false worldview has trapped him, so he claims to love his self-absorption and self-pity. For all the humor and deep thoughts in his writing, that’s what it is. He’s in a hell that he’s chosen and is too stubborn and addicted to ever leave.

As the saying goes, the devil won’t bother you while you are already doing what he wants; he only bothers you when you try to stop. If you don’t believe me, stop doing the thing that troubles you the most and report back in one year about how it went for you.

Repeatedly in his stories you can hear this bottoming out, this hopelessness, as he just wants to be left alone with writing and liquor because there no one can hurt him. No one but himself.

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. 

This is actually why I like Bukowski still today. He’s just so honest about the problem. I read it very differently now though having called closing time on my own pity party. As I was adrift in adulthood, despite having a good job and wanting for nothing, this gnawing sense of meaninglessness led me to seek and explore the emptiness, since if nothing was all there was, why not make the most of it? There are billions of people in this state today. I can sense it in conversations and see it in their faces. I have felt what Bukowski describes and if you attend recovery meetings, you will hear this sentiment over and over and over again. One thing that has always amazed me at recovery meetings is that people will admit things very much like Bukowski. They will utter these damaged and lonely ideas to strangers because they felt no one would understand, and then, to their surprise, everyone understands. If it were not so sad it would be comical, that we all carry this burden, asking ourselves, “What is the meaning of life?” but feeling inadequate to articulate the feeling, we just say “Screw it,” and dive back into our problem because we think others would find our ideas crazy. As I’ve said before, at recovery meetings, no one is going to be surprised at your darkest thoughts or what you have done in the past because you lack the uniqueness you imagine. Yes, it hurts to hear it. Bukowski was unique in his writing, but he was not unique in his drinking or his addiction. In fact, he would have still been a great writer without the booze.

As I’ve mentioned, I was a big fan of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Bradley Nowell of Sublime. Both died in their twenties. Both had drug and alcohol problems. I once referred to Kurt Cobain as my “hero” years before I had discovered Charles Bukowski. When someone pointed out that “hero” might not be the right label for a lead singer who was a drug addict that killed himself, I ignored them, believing that the rock star life of full-speed-unto-death was a more honest life than most (insert laugh-track here). So I was already primed for Bukowski and my discovery of his writing was far from accidental. In fact, I sought such corroboration of my worldview, just as we all do.

What drove me to anger in those years were Christians, who represented everything opposite of Charles Bukowski, who was so “free”. The Christians appeared fake and gullible and obnoxious, as they embodied a quote by Bukowski: “Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”

But those boring damned people were not damned, because while Bukowski was “free” to do whatever he wanted, he was miserable. His identity came from his writing, but he worshipped his image as a rebel. He loved his fame once he got a taste of it. In fact, he needed all those boring people to loathe, but he also needed them as readers, so that he could justify himself. What was valuable to him? He claimed it was nothing, but it was three things: writing, drinking, and insulting everything that wasn’t his own writing or drinking.

I suppose I should cut to the chase. In those Bukowski-admiring years, I had come to have faith in atheism, believing that nothing mattered. I say “faith” because to believe in nothing is as much a leap as believing in God. This conversion had taken place over years, but once I was finished with college and making my way in the world, living alone, I found no purpose whatsoever to anything. There was making money and moving up the ladder at work, but even then I knew something major was missing from those pursuits.

That march toward nihilism had begun in college. No, even before that, when I first started to lose faith as a teenager over questions around the Resurrection of Jesus and I couldn’t get any satisfactory answers. I was grasping at God in those years, trying to find God and getting hung up on literal readings from fundamentalists, which I could not accept. But once I hit these Bukowski years, I was now straight-up fleeing God. I wasn’t grasping at all, I was running.

What I did not understand is that while sprinting away from God, I was going to run in a full circle once I realized, years later, there is nothing in that void, that is has nothing to offer, and that a worldview aimed at the void is simply wrong. If I had been educated in the faith, so many questions would have been answered, but it seems that the idea of blind faith and not asking questions bumped me sideways to the point where I had to go searching for different answers. In observing bad behavior in Christians, I lumped them all together as one blob of humanity and ignored learning any actual doctrine.

What’s funny to me now is that the Church was well-aware of my entire experience long before I stumbled onto it, and as I mention often, it hurts to find out how unoriginal I am. In 1965, the Catholic Church published this:

For, taken as a whole, atheism is not a spontaneous development but stems from a variety of causes, including a critical reaction against religious beliefs, and in some places against the Christian religion in particular. Hence believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of God and religion. GS 19

I could tick all of those boxes, and tick them off about many Christians that I knew. Neglect of training or education? Check. Erroneous doctrine? Check. Deficiencies in moral and social life? Without a doubt.

Furthermore, in their explanations of modern atheism, the following description also stuck to me like flypaper:

For while God is expressly denied by some, others believe that man can assert absolutely nothing about Him. Still others use such a method to scrutinize the question of God as to make it seem devoid of meaning. Many…contend that everything can be explained by this kind of scientific reasoning alone…Moreover, atheism results not rarely from a violent protest against the evil in this world, or from the absolute character with which certain human values are unduly invested, and which thereby already accords them the stature of God. Modern civilization itself often complicates the approach to God not for any essential reason but because it is so heavily engrossed in earthly affairs. (GS 19)

Now when I consider that statement against a Bukowski quote about being his own god, he is like a case study of a lost sheep. Bukowski realizes that without God, he is a god, and with that arrangement, nothing has any meaning but that which he declares meaningful.

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god…”

In other words, there is no truth for Bukowski, and ultimately no meaning. He is “pliable” and “adjustable” which boils down to a pretty weak lower-case god.

The great realization that I had was two-fold: there is a God, but more importantly I am not God. That short sentence - I am not God - changes every single thing I see in the world. This is like standing in a room full of mirrors and then suddenly stepping outside, where before all I could see was myself and my expressions, my feelings, and suddenly I saw everyone else. The way of seeing the world radically differs between a believer and a non-believer, and it changes even further for Christians. When your life is no longer about you, nothing looks the same.

Bukowski even knew there was something good in the world, and in him. He actually reveals why he hides his beloved Bluebird in the second verse of his poem. Why does he keep this beautiful Bluebird hidden in his heart? Because he likes his rebellion. His status as a rebel feeds his ego. If he shows his Bluebird, he has to give up his outsider status, which helps him sell books.

there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too tough for him,I say,stay down, do you want to messme up?you want to screw up theworks?you want to blow my book sales inEurope?

The appeal of Bukowski to those adrift is his stubbornness to never let his light shine, even when he knows the little light is in there, deep in his heart. There’s even a parable about hiding a light under a bushel basket. As an artist, Bukowski was actually grasping at something higher, but he could not admit it to the world.

For those that do come to faith, the former life of standing in the room of mirrors comes to be seen as a false life, a different life - almost a life that didn’t exist because of the focus on the self. When Jesus cures the blind man and the blind man says, “All I know is I was blind, and now I see,” his life is changed in the literal sense of vision but also of his outlook on the world and his soul. The lives of many saints are remarkable in similarity when this change occurs, like Ignatius, Augustine, Paul, Dorothy Day, Elizabeth Anne Seton.

If you are a doubter, just consider the annoying people who are always talking about Jesus and seem to have a wellspring of happiness. Aren’t they annoying? Aren’t they boring?

But the sense of joy is honest in them. It’s real. The turning toward God changes people in ways that cannot be understood unless you experience it. This blindness-into-sight is what happens to people who experience conversion. Once it occurs, you realize that it’s not boring. Life is not boring. Faith makes every day worth living, so that you don’t wake up and put on your shoes, and like Bukowski say, “Oh, now what?” This way of seeing makes you wake up filled with hope instead of despair. You know the world has flaws, and so do you, but still there is hope.

This way of seeing flips everything on its head, just as you see with Matthew or those who “come to Jesus.” Nothing is the same for them ever again. They would not even recognize their former lives and would never want to go back to old ways. Like me and so many others, unfortunately, you almost have to arrive at this destination the hard way - by following things to their end, to realize that you were looking in the wrong place.

Now I think back to the influence of writers like Bukowski had on me, and how I allowed myself to celebrate my errors and flaws. That wasn’t a mistake so much as a guidepost along my way. We are raised today to believe that fulfilling our wants and desires is path to happiness, but the only times I’ve grew spiritually is when I don’t get what I want, when I deny myself. The many freedoms we have today to satisfy the self is actually what chains us to a life of misery. The self always wants more, whether it’s food or sex or comfort or honor or pleasure or wealth. Bukowski did what he wanted all the time and it’s pretty obvious he was miserable.

If anything I’m grateful for the entertainment of Bukowski’s books as it hustled me along to the end of the path, where I could realize that it is not better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. Turns out that serving myself creates a kind of living hell. Separating myself from belief in a loving God makes this life into a place of endless wants and desires. Elevating myself into a god - it’s just too much work! It’s too empty if I am the only decider of right and wrong, the lonely chooser of what is meaningful and meaningless.

I wouldn’t advise anyone to read Bukowski, not because I think he’s a bad writer. I think he’s amazing, and I still laugh just thinking of some of this quotes. Rather, I wouldn’t recommend him because the influence of reading can be strong on a mind and persuasive in tugging one toward blind alleys. If you are seeking that kind of writing, you will find it anyway. If you are already one of the “boring” people that Bukowski hated, who has faith and hope, I would strongly recommend remaining boring and full of hope.

I could give a drunkalogue on adventures undertaken under the influence of alcohol which might lead you to believe that pursuit of selfish pleasures is anything but boring, but I can assure you, if you go to any recovery meeting, you can watch people roll their eyes or fall asleep when a newcomer tries to wow ex-drinkers with his or her tales of debauchery. No one cares. Everyone has heard it. Moreover, no one wants to hear it, whether in a recovery meeting or regular life. Drunk stories only entertain the teller. All “wild” stories of intoxication are a dime a dozen. The aftermath of “wild” stories may be the only interesting part, since the epilogue is not about the teller, but about the people the story impacted and quite often hurt.

Once again, as the saying goes, “Where your treasure is, there also your heart will be.” If your treasure is nothing, your heart will find those who celebrate it, such as Bukowski or Camus or Marx or Dawkins or Foucault, or so many others who preach faith in nothing. They may not all be labelled as nihilists, but at the bottom, of you follow it to the end, that’s what the underlying doctrine really is.

A better recommendation would be to find a better treasure. For anyone looking for a reading recommendation, I would start with the Word on Fire Bible, and read all the side commentaries. Don’t just read the Gospels, read the explanations of why the parables and encounters of Jesus are so profound. Don’t just pick up any Bible, read a study Bible and start with the Gospels, since that is where the real treasure is. That was the book I needed. Had I read the Gospels with this kind of understanding instead of following Bukowski’s adventures, I may have never gone down those aimless paths. At the very least, I likely would not have got stinking drunk and bought a one-way ticket to…oh never mind. That alone would have been worth giving the Gospels a solid try.

Lastly, idolizing drunk writers and artists allows justification of bad behavior. When I fancied myself a writer, I fell for the cult of drinking in which Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald are lionized for their maladies. Creativity, as the hypothesis goes, is linked to drinking. But as anyone who is not a creative genius knows, there is a fine line between skills being sharpened by a buzz and falling off a cliff after drunkenness. For anyone that has been drinking while playing card games or pool or darts, or even backyard beanbag toss, or anything involving the brain - yes, the drink loosens you up and there’s a moment of genius and skill…right before it takes you downward into the abyss of stupidity and acting like an ass. If our heroes happened to write something great, and perhaps they got loosened up with a few drinks, that’s one thing. But to celebrate heroic drinking is a fool’s errand. And yes, I’m calling myself a fool for falling for this idea. I fell for it because I wanted to allow my flaws to flourish, rather than deny them and face my problems.

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