[To Jon and Louise Webb]

August 6, 1963

[* * *] Then there’s the bush down there, the same bush with orange blossoms forever, and the old man down there poking in his wooden mailbox. He must be a writer or a madman; he keeps looking in there as if some long-limbed thing sheathed in nylon is going to take him back to the full bright dream. I’m hungry. It’s good to be hungry when you can afford to eat. Right now, I can afford. I like crab. You can get a big crab down at one of the stores for around 80 cents and it takes you all day to eat him and you don’t feel very sorry for the crab. That makes it nice. Although they say they boil them alive? But they boil me every time I walk out the door. Swosh. sure. I’m lucky to have a rented door to walk out of. haven’t read a book in ten years or seen a movie in fifteen and don’t give a damn. Airplanes and sirens now. Do you think it is going to rain this Winter? I’ve got to throw out the cans again. There’s the mailman. Hot damn, look at the ol’ man run!! [* * *]

[To Ann Bauman]

[August 14, 1963]

[* * *] I was jailed for common drunk 6 a.m. Monday morning, bailed out 8 p.m. Monday night. went to court this afternoon (Wednesday). judge gave me choice 3 days vs. $30. I figure easier to lose money than mind.

…I must be more careful. I am all right if I drink where I live. Good manager here, good people. But when I go out on the street, BANG.

Anyhow, I am alive yet. Maybe.

I do not even feel depressed. It is all so very odd. my god, what they’ll do to a man, over and over again, for nothing.

I never understood society. I understand that it works somehow and that it functions as a reality and that its realities are necessary to keep us from worse realities. But all I sense are that there are plenty of police and jails and judges and laws and that what is meant to protect me is breaking me down. I know that I am not much good in the network and the miracle is that I have remained around this long.

Now: off to work, if my terrible job is still there.

Bukowski contributed to the symposium on “Little Magazines in America” in Mainstream, June 1963. The editor was Walter Lowenfels.

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

August 22, 1963

[* * *] Wrote to Mainstream and sent a buck, they sent money back, and then mailed 2 copies. Said had mailed twice before to WRONG ADDRESS. The whole picture there has been jumbled from the start. It always is when Lowenfels gets a finger in anywhere. First I was contacted by Larsen who said Stream had written me but he had misplaced the letter in a bottom drawer for a couple of months, but here it is Buk. Meanwhile, Larsen’s article on the littles had already appeared. Not that it matters. But everything always works in a bugged-up fashion and I find more and more that there just aren’t any people around. Everybody’s clay or horse-shit or posing.