Original Roots Man Dem

Passion. 80 million people are gathering along the Ganges to take a spiritual dip. We do not have anything in our Western society that resembles this spectacle. We are so fractured into political affiliations, religions, cultural backgrounds, race, class, and then myriad subcultures. Mix all of that with a healthy dose of individualism and you are left with a society full of depressed lonely people. Who knows why we abandoned mysticism. Who knows why we’ve learned to avoid each other’s gazes on the street or in the elevator. When we see homeless men on the street with a paper cup asking for money we often look straight ahead and pretend like they aren’t there.

The old gambling drunk Bukowski knew passion. He knew passion better than most know their asses. He lived with an eternal hangover, constantly broke, with bloodied nose from bar room brawls, and spent all his money on cigarettes, booze and the horses. Occasionally he spent money on his women too. But if he knew anything it was to recognize when someone led their lives with passion, instead of some base need to carry on, clocking in and clocking out like he did many times at jobs he detested.

He almost cried when he walked out of that restaurant in Germany, wife and publisher in tow, and saw all those German women holding placards in the cold rainy night protesting their hearts out. They were protesting against his misogynist writing his publisher said. Bukowski held his tears in silence while he admired the passion it took those women to go out of their way and in such horrible weather to give an old dying crummy writer hell for what he wrote and got paid for.

If you get a chance to see the documentary titled Naked in Ashes about Hindu holly men I highly recommend it.

goodnight