There’s this proverb, attributed to Ben Franklin, about how going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up early is a sure formula for ending up healthy and rich, and even wise.

I got up around eight. It probably wasn’t early enough. I fired up the pushbutton stove and curled back up in the warm covers for an hour and I dreamed while the house was warming. I dreamed about Bukowski.

If you don’t know Charles Bukowski I’ll get you started on knowing, because I would like you to.

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

In the video today I’m going to read that for you and give you an interpretive version of a letter the poet once wrote to a friend.

He drank too much and I abstain too much. He started late; I started later. Plenty of smart people know his name and almost no one knows the name Vairtere, and maybe it will always be so: it may not be much light and that warning is real.

But we both know that ““Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.” He puts things more succinctly and I ramble on.

I need wood pellets aflame just as he needed a drink. The addictions look very different but at their core they are more similar than not.

I need very much to listen to his words from the other side of the grave. I need to keep doing the brave thing instead of the smart thing, to keep following the example he laid down in my clean well-lighted way. That is the message of the dream and I need to hear it through this hastily named Awakening.

I have much work to do.