meager violence

We kept watching the numbers and we drove higher and higher into the hills and the houses got richer and richer and I got more nervous. It’s true that the richer people became the less human they became, and so I began to get unhappy. Nervous and unhappy.

For remember, in any movement there are opportunists, power-grabbers, wolves in Revolutionary clothing. These are the men who bring down a Cause. I am for a better world, for my child, for myself, for you, but be careful. A change of power is not a cure. Power to the people is not a cure. Power is not a cure. The whole accent of your thinking must not be how to destroy a government, but how to create a better one. Don’t be trapped and fooled again. And if you win, beware of a very Authoritarian government with rules that might bind you worse than ever before.

— Charles Bukowski

…I always felt emotionally strangled in art museums, I preferred bad movies, I felt much less confronted, I never liked to conform to a so-called greatness that just didn’t feel and look great to me. There just weren’t that many good artists but they had to fill the walls and halls with something; I got the same feeling in a library, all those books wasted, sitting there in the shelves and saying very little.

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. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.