Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men

Go to Tibet

Ride a camel.

Read the bible.

Dye your shoes blue.

Grow a beard.

Circle the world in a paper canoe.

Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.

Chew on the left side of your mouth only.

Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.

And carve your name in her arm.

Brush your teeth with gasoline.

Sleep all day and climb trees at night.

Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.

Hold your head under water and play the violin.

Do a belly dance before pink candles.

Kill your dog.

Run for mayor.

Live in a barrel.

Break your head with a hatchet.

Plant tulips in the rain.

But don’t write poetry

- Charles Bukowski 

Sketches - 1

Written more than six months ago:


I could never truly comprehend the different faces of her, the different phases of her, the different facets of her personality. Writers are those who  have been scarred by life. She was no exception. Life had dealt her many blows ,many many blows, some downright cruel. She found the courage to face them , to look life in the eye. She found the courage to get back on her feet every single time, to not be beaten, to not cower down, to never surrender. She found the courage to come out in the open , to express her individuality, to not hide who she was behind a veil of appearances. She wore her  scars proudly on her face. It gave her a rugged, enduring beauty much like a weather beaten rock that proudly faces the onslaught of the ocean.

Those eyes. Volcanic rock that protrudes from white sand, leaving red cracks in its wake. Those think strands of black interspersed by a few strokes of grey and white - an unfinished painting. The sharp line of her nose with a ringlet marking its end. The crimson amidst her brows the golden orbs on her ears the thin wisp of platinum on her neck. Her face. Battered yet proud. It was not a face you could easily forget. She was not a person you could easily understand.

Tiny Beautiful Things

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.
When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t ‘mean anything’ because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.
Say thank you.

                                     - Cheryl Strayed


        Courtesy : http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/13/tiny-beautiful-things-dear-sugar/