Let It Enfold You

Charles Bukowski

either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when i was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb,unsophisticated.
I had bad blood,a twisted
mind, a pecarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite,I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted,jailed,in and
out of fights,in and aout
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at,i had no male
freinds,

I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace an happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
an
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't diffrent

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
greivances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
emptey,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less i needed
the better i
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don't know when,
date,time,all
that
but the change
occured.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that i was a
man,

I did'nt have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffe cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, "i am going
to have to let you go"

"it's all right" i tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children.
expenses, most probably
a girlfreind.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporailiy,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
dissillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels,breasts,
singing,the
works.

(dont get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems justr for
the sake of
itself-
this is a sheild and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I did'nt fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
i luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw,almost
handsome,yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares,lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a babys
butt.

and finally I discovered
real feelings fo
others,
unhearleded,
like latley,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wif in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyarimids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the toteboard waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
i ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

i kissed her in the,
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and emptey
of
people,
i saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

It's cool to be green. Too cool

(newsarticle excerpt)
 
“We keep all the plastic bags over here under the sink.” She opened the cabinet and an inexorable wave of Type 2 high-density polyethylene came cascading onto the floor.

“My god, what are you doing with all of these?”

“It’s okay, I’ll recycle them. Eventually.”

A cupboard full of old grocery bags is nothing unusual, whether your in SAIC’s dorms, Chicago’s neighborhoods, or anywhere else in the country. What is unusual, however, is the way we have come to regard the environment, and the ways we think we are protecting it.

Enter, the Green Movement. By now, green has become brand. It has been repackaged and sold back to us so many times we hardly even notice it. Earth-friendly products are bought without so much as a second thought, and recycling is not as environmentally avent-garde as it once was.

There was once a time when an individual with his or her own private recycle bin was dubbed “hippie” or “tree-hugger.” Now, those friendly blue bins have become a standard public service, and even now, SAIC is in the throes of RecycleMania!

The problem is that “being green” has become well, easy. “I choose the green products, and recycle my plastic, therefore I’m doing my part.”

This is where delusion comes in.

In this day and age, ‘eco-friendly’ is a label that associates business with compassion. Just about every establishment recycles in one way or another – some restaurants, like Sultan’s Market in the Wicker Park area, even go as far as to compost any food waste that is generated.

Cause to worry exists in the fact that “recycle” (in our cultural context) has become synonymous with, say, Google — it’s become so widely accepted, consumed, and digested — we forgot why it all started in the first place. Like a logo, the term recycle has almost morphed into a newspeak phrase, lodged into our schema with associations of earth-friendliness, love, trees – maybe even a smiley face here and there.

To get at the essence of recycling, we must remember why it started. Just as Google sought “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,” recycling began as a way to solve one of the world’s many problems:

Waste. Lots of it. American style.

According to recent figures by the EPA, we are still dumping about 4.6 pounds per person, per day. Half of that ends up in landfills or incinerators. The other half (recyclable materials) is gallantly reused so we can continue to get our fix of those disposable plastic products we love.

This brings two problems to mind. Could recycling potentially prolong American dependency on disposable, petroleum based goods? We are recycling those plastic forks simply so we can give them a second life. And all those plastic bags that accumulate under our sinks are stamped with cute little “recycle me!” logos – yeah, recycle me so I can become another plastic bag, destined for the landfill.

To concede, at least we aren’t relying on new material to create more of those plastic baggies. But the larger problem is the issue of dependency on disposables. We’ve created an environmental stalemate.

The second issue is that recycling is often used as an excuse. “It’s okay that the cashier at Jewel double-bagged $150 dollars worth of groceries. I will just recycle all 20 of those bags.” Bottom line: we shouldn’t need them in the first place.

What we need is a way to phase out of dispose-mode. We need a method that kills the “Use now, recycle later” mindset, and reduces the need for new materials. Luckily, some clever folks are one step ahead.

Welcome, friends to the world of Zero-Waste (or, Pre-cycling, if you want to get clever.) In this world there, are no plastic grocery bags, forks, spoons, cups, plates, containers, hats, cozies, napkins, towels, or anything else. In this world, each person has a mug, some silver wear, and a cloth grocery bag. When they go to Cosi for lunch, they give the barista their travel mug for coffee, use their own silverware, and (if you’re really fancy) a cloth napkin.

Pre-cycling would almost eliminate the need to recycle at all. By selecting products with very little packaging, we would reduce waste production and save money. Imagine not buying any more paper towels, paper napkins, paper plates, or plastic cutlery. Wiping up a spill with a cloth towel? Now that’s eco-friendly.

These propositions may sound a bit outlandish, but the times are changing. Currently, Zero-Waste is already in implementation in many areas such as Yellowstone National Park and the town of Nantucket in Massachusetts. According to the Leslie Kaufman of The New York Times, “An antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.” And restaurants that still employ disposable utensils have switched over to plant-based plastics that dissolve in a matter of minutes when heated.

Bottom line, recycling is essentially a market. Recyclable materials are stored by contractors and sold to buyers – buyers that now dwindle due to the world’s recent economic downturn. Storehouses are overflowing with waste waiting to be re-used. Recycling is a business, and right now, business is bad. Just take a look at the American economy.

China has been buying the U.S.’ recyclable waste for decades, but this has greatly diminished due to its recent economic downturn.  In an article for the Guardian about US recycling, Dan Glaister states, “The US exported 11m tonnes of scrap paper to China last year with a value of $11.5bn… The Chinese typically use the paper from the US to make packaging material for the exports they send, typically, back to the US.”

On top of that, one must take into account the oil that is expended every time America ships it re-usable refuse across the Pacific Ocean. Cliff Kuang is a writer for Wired and Popular Science, in his article “The Total Package,” he states, “Every year, the shipping industry—including trucking, traveling on container ships, and air freight—emits six percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, including 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, twice as much as commercial aviation.”

SAIC recycles through Allied Waste Services, a company that collects, sorts, and compacts recyclables locally in 1 of 8 Chicago recycling centers. Kevin Kruis, the Recycling & Special Events Manager of Allied Waste Chicago, says that most commercial and residential recyclables are taken to an Allied sorting center on 43rd and Racine. Once sorted, the bales of ‘commodity’ are shipped nationwide and overseas for reuse.

This, combined with the petroleum we continue to circulate into our daily lives through the use of disposable plastic conveniences amounts to an awful lot for the planet to handle – all in the name of reuse.

So yes. Recycle all those baggies hiding beneath your sink. Recycle anything that can be recycled for that matter. The hook: next time you’re out – grocery shopping, eating out, or doing anything else that involves disposable waste – pass. Turn it down, or at least reduce it.

To recycle should be a last resort, not an excuse for excess consumption. The planet (and your wallet) will thank you.