The captain is out to lunch and the sailors have taken over the ship by Charles Bukowski

 This is a short book. It is non-fiction as it is taken from Bukowski's journal that he wrote on his new Macintosh IIfx.  Entries are taken from mid 1991 to February 1993, and as we all know, he dies of leukemia March 1994.  These are the last few years of his life.  Did he know they were the last? He writes in several entries about his own death, as if he felt it creeping in.  He is surprised that he is still alive, after all the things he has done to his body in his life.  He wonders how it would be when the milkman comes, and he cannot greet him because he's dead, or he cannot pick up the newspaper from his porch because he has died.  He finds the thought "Impossible!" 

Imagining our own death and how things would go on after we die, but without us, is such a waste of time and emotion.  It cannot be helped.  And, when the time comes, you'd be dead, so you won't be able to imagine or feel anything anyway.  It is a waste of good, given alive time.  Death will come to everyone.  No matter who.  Nobody has ever escaped death and nobody ever will.  Everything that has been born has to die.  It is the only immutable law.  Being afraid of it, freaking out about the inevitability of it, is just a waste of good, given alive time.  Being dead is like being stupid - it is only difficult for those around you (I stole that). 

Again this book contains way too many pages about horse racing.  I like his novels because they contain next to nothing about horse racing.  And the humor.  He writes in his journal entries about how much he detests people, finds them appalling, violent, stupid, basic, crazy, but also he admits that he needs them as otherwise who would change his car tires, pull out his tooth, or operate on him when he needs it.  I find his honesty refreshing.  My wife believes in reincarnation.  But why would we even reincarnate here on this tiny little speck of dust, in a side street of our galaxy, which is among trillions of other galaxies that we know about?  One Buddhist said that being incarnated as a human is so rare and such a great reward that it is like having a life saver (ring buoy) being thrown around on a surface of a stormy ocean and a turtle coming up for air once in a 100 years and the chance of the turtle having its head through the life saver.  Maybe it is true.  But also, maybe there is a joke in there.  

The people across from my apartment are fucking on the window.  Good for them.  It is dark in their apartment so I can see only shadows.  The woman is pressed against the windows with her arms up and the man is taking her from behind.  Now he threw her on the bed.  Good for them.

South of No North by Charles Bukowski

 Continuing to read all prose Bukowski wrote, I finished "South of No North" from my reading list.  As I said before, I prefer his novels as there is a continuity in the story and a clear sequence and structure.  Not so much in the short stories.  This book seems to be a collection of previous "chapbook" editions which usually contained one story and were cheap to publish (not by Bukowski, but by the actual publishers who took a chance on him).  

I like the best "All the Assholes in World and Mine" story which describes Bukowski's hemorrhoid operation and is enough to scare anybody away from having their hemorrhoids surgically removed.  I know your doctor told you there will be 1 week in bed recovery, but Bukowski found out that is more like 6-8 weeks, i.e. two months.  Good luck with that and not being able to pee or shit because of the spinal tap.

I don't like his rape fantasies, like the Penthouse story, and variations on the guy who bangs cars on the highway and then rapes the girls in them.  Rape fantasies are too vulgar, cheap and obvious - nothing much art about them.  I also dislike his "pure fiction" stories, i.e. the ones that are not based on some parts of his life as they sound hollow and fake, much like any other fiction out there, unlike the raw reality of his own life.

The last story in the book is pretty much the base for one of his later novels, and much of the material here is in a more raw and extensive form which was later reworked into parts of his novels in a much more polished and humorous way.  And enough with the horse racing instruction manuals already for God's sake - now I can go on the track and bet myself with all the instructions on horse betting I had to read from Bukowski - something I really never wanted to do, and still don't.

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

 This book collects further columns by Bukowski that he published in various underground newspapers, mostly Open City and LA Free Press.  Unlike the first "Notes" volume, this volume collects columns from the later life of Bukowski, after he already became famous, but he still published in underground newspapers, to honor where he came from and the decades he lived as a bum, a skid-row nobody.  

There are less autobiographical stories/columns from his early years, as he already used that material for his "Ham and Rye" and "Factotum", but there are stories and columns, especially the last one in the book, that will form the basis of parts of his later novel "Hollywood."  The cheap philosophy columns are also largely absent, as by this time Bukowski is already in his late 50s and early 60s, so he has no need of the angry philosophical lashing at the world and society, but is getting ready for his late years and his eventual departure from life.  He is more mellow and less angry than in previous columns.

I liked most his column where he talks about people diminishing him.  He talks about his liking solitude and being alone, and that when he is around people, in crowds, he talks about how being around people makes him feel diminished.  This is not to be interpreted as him being an extreme introvert, as Bukowski could be an extrovert with the best of them, but that he prefers solitude to being around people.  He says that men especially diminish him and he doesn't like hanging out with men, while women have their uses (i.e. fucking them). 

There are some stories that are developed in other places, especially the one with Robert, the ex-con, who knocks people's cars out of the highway and rapes a girl, which could be an exaggeration of another similar story in his novel "Hollywood."  Of course, there are entire stories dedicated to horse races, which are probably the most boring parts of the book, unless you're into horse races and gambling (not me).  Not too many stories here about various women, as in his later life Bukowski was settling down from his whore-chasing, and eventually married his wife who stayed with him until the end of his life, when he died of leukemia.  He says in various stories that he had sex with 2,000 or 2,500 women over the course of his life, but he immediately becomes humble and admits that most of them were whores, fat and ugly.  His longtime friend and directory of "Barfly" said that he wouldn't be inclined to sleep with any of the women he saw Bukowski gallivanting with.

This one, and the previous "Notes" volume, are good books to read after one has finished his novels (minus "Pulp", which is garbage), to see where the polished material in the novels originated from, just like reading Raymond Chandler's short stories, after reading his novels.

A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda

This is the second book, right after the Teachings of Don Juan, and is a continuation of the same story line, with Carlos returning to see Don Juan after he got defeated by the first enemy on the Path to Knowledge, Fear, at the end of the previous volume.  The emphasis in this book is on learning "Seeing" which in Don Juan's system is seeing the world and humans as they really are, consisting of energy lines, which form egg-shapes around humans and a cocoon around the planet.  Do not confuse these with the "Lay Lines" which are used for dowsing, if you believe in that. 

Don Juan uses the "Little Smoke" ally to teach Carlito about "Seeing" and also to let him see "The Guardian" at the gates of the Other World.  Don Genaro also tries to teach Carlito to see by displaying feats accomplished by the tentacles of his luminous egg, but it doesn't help.  Don Juan says that Don Genaro almost killed Carlito by trying to make him see, because he liked him a lot and wanted to help him.

At the end of the book, Don Juan tells Carlos that he doesn't really change by acquiring all this sorcerer knowledge and that he is still a luminous egg like every other human being and that he will die and disappear forever, just like everyone else.  Don Juan also demonstrates to Carlos that his belief that every moment in life is unique and unrepeatable is false.  He makes a leaf fall from a tree in the exact same way as a previous one, touching on the exact same branches, which Carlos says was like watching an instant replay on television.

This time around, I started reading the 10 books from the third, but I went back to the second before I got to the fourth because I realized I forgot many things, even though I've read it before.  I am still amazed at how Castaneda's critics take unimportant parts of his work and make them the arbiters of success or failure.  Like for example Clement Meighan and Stephen C. Thomas are amazed how Catholicism is not an important part of Don Juan's repertoire and call him decisively anti-Catholic, which is not typical of Yaqui Indians, which are fervent Catholics.  But these anthropologists are only looking at the outer, the exoteric, of which neither Don Juan nor Castaneda were interested much, but instead they cared about the inner, the esoteric knowledge, which has been passed on for thousands of years, before any of the current Indian tribes existed, and way before the white man came over the sea with his convenient religion that justifies oppression.

At one point Don Juan asks Carlos why does he assume that he is really a Yaqui Indian?  Maybe he is a Mezotec Indian, or some other tribe?  Don Juan had a very low opinion of the Indians in the Americas, and often regretted that he was born as an Indian.  He was absolutely not interested in Yaqui "group life" and similar traditions which he considered primitive superstitions,  These are the outer forms that other anthropologists and missionaries would usually see when living among these tribes.  The secrets that Don Juan was party to and which he tried to convey and teach to Carlos were infinitely older and more powerful, the true supernatural powers of the sorcerers of the dawn of time. 

Don Juan mentions that the teachings came through the Toltecs, which taught pyramid building to the Maya and inspired the space ship designs on the inner pyramid walls, but at another time he mentioned that this Secret Knowledge predates even the Toltecs, going back to the mist of the earliest times of humanity.  Basically, trying to learn the Yaqui way of life from Don Juan's and Castaneda's teachings would be like trying to learn outward Tibetan Buddhism from Gurgjieff's writings.  Both men were completely uninterested in the current superstitions and empty rituals that the common folk were wasting their time with, but instead wanted to learn the primeval secret knowledge that has been passed only to the rare ones who were chosen by "The Spirit" in an uninterrupted line from teacher to student, without anything being written down until very recently. 

Similar critics of Castaneda ask about how come Don Juan is not hostile to the Mexican state, and Mexicans in general, which massacred the Indians.  However, Don Juan, in this very volume, tells Carlos that his mother and father were brutally murdered by Mexican soldiers, while he watched, as a little boy, and then he was viciously beaten by the same soldiers, breaking several of his bones.  However, while for a long time he plotted revenge, eventually when he started advancing on the Path of Knowledge, he realized that the biggest punishment for those soldiers is that they will die and disappear into nothingness, like phantoms who never really existed, while those chosen by the Spirit, who became true warriors on the Path of Knowledge, never died in this world and moved consciously to another plane of existence.

Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda

Long time ago, when I was just entering my teen years, my uncle, once removed, who later died of Multiple Sclerosis, gave me the book "The Teachings of Don Juan" with the task to read everything else by the author.  I was mesmerized by the story inside, and also by the addendum describing the hierarchy of the spiritual beings encountered.  I wolfed down the book, and then got the next one "Separate Reality" and wolfed down that one too.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find the rest of the books, although these were the early 90s already, so Castaneda has already published 8 of the total 10 books.  My English was not that great at the time, so I had to read the first two books in Serbian/Croatian translations, where they were published in small batches, and were difficult to find.  Of course, there were none in a Macedonian translation, the domestic publishing industry being pretty much a joke.

Soon after, life took over and I forgot about my promise and Castaneda.  Some years later, when I was a sophomore in university, I remembered Castaneda again and read the third and fourth books, "Journey to Ixtlan" and "Tales of Power", however at the same time I got access (through the nascent internet) to the writings of Richard de Mille and other Castaneda critics, which resonated with me as initially I truly believed these to be works of scientific anthropology.  Also, when I found out that the last two books have to do with "Tensegrity" which critics say Castaneda lifted from some traveling Chinese teacher - I got even more disappointed, as most of the moves in "Tensegrity" seemed to be modifications of Tai Chi moves, which I was practicing at the time. So, I decided to forget about Castaneda and considered my time spent reading his books (and practicing the exercises!) to be a complete waste.  For many years.

Then, one day in the far future, after I got several degrees and moved to half a dozen different countries, older and fatter and balder, walking through a nearby neighborhood I saw "The Teachings of Don Juan" lying by the sidewalk.  It was like meeting a long-forgotten friend.  No, I didn't immediately go back to believing in everything Castaneda wrote, but it was more like nostalgia trip into my long gone past.  I did make a note to get my Castaneda books when I go back to my parents house in Europe.  And so I did last summer, but did not start reading them until this summer.  This summer I decided to actually read all ten books, but since I've already read the first one several times, and the second twice, I decided to start with the third one.  This time I was not under the belief that these books are anthropological fact, but saw them as a mixture of mysticism, biography and instruction, alike the books of Swedenborg and Gurdjieff. When you look at them through that prism, they become much more valuable, especially if you find a way to apply some techniques to your everyday life.

The third book "Journey to Ixtlan" deals with "Stopping the World", a major step in a sorcerer's life when they become separated from the delusional and unreal world around us, but make a breakthrough to the "other world" which is the only real one.  Hallucinogenic plants and drugs are completely de-emphasized, and emphasis is put on sorcerer's (Carlos') training in a different perception using his default five senses, but in a different way than normal.  Don Juan also explains the further path of the sorcerer, when one chooses whether they will be a hunter or a warrior, which is the root of the much more fine distinctions built upon in the later books.  Acquiring an Ally from the Other World and being constantly conscious of one's own impending, unavoidable death, which should serve as an advisor, not a threat, are also some of the main points discussed in this volume.  The books ends with Don Juan (Matus) and Don Genaro (Flores) leaving young Carlito to meet his ally face to face, after he succeeded in stopping the world, as they think he is ready.  But Carlito decides to leave the assigned place and go back to LA, feeling himself not ready for face to face meeting with the Ally. The journey to Ixtlan, Don Genaro's home, is a metaphor on how when the sorcerer succeeds in "Stopping the World" (which might have parallels in Gurdjieff's teachings), then the person is never the same anymore, and cannot really go back to what he thought as home before, as that place doesn't really exists for him, and all the people in his life, except sorcerers, become like phantoms, with ephemeral, unimportant existence.  The journey to Ixtlan is a journey that can never be completed, Don Juan says, and what is Ixtlan for Don Genaro, is LA for Carlos. 

Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

This book is a collection of columns that Bukowski wrote for LA underground newspapers, mostly Open City, where the editors would allow him to write whatever he wants, and that's exactly what he did. Most of the columns/chapters, separated only by short vertical lines, are stream of consciousness writing with no regards to punctuation or grammar rules.  Pretty much every sentence is run-on.

The prose is dense, full of memories or musings about the nature of the world.  I prefer the stories about his past, that he actually lived through, rather than his opinions on philosophical issues, which are neither very original nor very entertaining.  Some of the columns/chapter are precursors to chapters in his later novels "Ham and Rye" and "Factotum", but in a very rudimentary form, and without much humor, which one can find in the novels, but with pure anger and frustration, with some very strong and disturbing language spread throughout (obviously not edited by an editor).  One especially memorable sentence starts with "All women are animals ..." which is a disturbing statement, though it becomes clear later what he meant and that he has a similar opinion about men as well, and the entirety of the human race.  Not sure if that makes it much better, though.

It is much more difficult to read than his novels or even short stories, even though some short stories are interspersed among the columns.  He universally refuses to use a capital letter at the beginning of sentences and there are almost no paragraph breaks or other punctuation rules that help with reading, so it is a bit of an effort to go through, but eventually it is worth it if you enjoy Bukowski sharp sarcasm, observations and rawness.