Air and Light and Time and Space
By: Charles Bukowki
"you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something has always been in the way but now I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this place, a large studio, you should see the space and the light. for the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and the time to create.” no baby, if you’re going to create you’re going to create whether you work 16 hours a day in a coal mine or you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children while you’re on welfare, you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown away, you’re going to create blind crippled demented, you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your back while the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, flood and fire. baby, air and light and time and space have nothing to do with it and don’t create anything except maybe a longer life to find new excuses for.
You can find this poem in Charles Bukowski’s — The Last Night of the Earth Poems
A lot of my writer pals say they're saving money to take a year off the rat race to write their novels. I ask them what their writing practice is like now, while they work. Oh, no time, no time, they say. I tell them to not pull the trigger on their sabbatical from the working world until they figure out how to write while working their jobs and being dads and moms and husbands boyfriends girlfriends wives whatever. Every time someone I know has tried without doing that they fizzle out and waste most of the time they've carefully put aside.
I feel personally attacked by this haha. Good stuff!