Why The Little Prince Steals My Heart Every Single Time

Reading Antoine de Saint Exupery's The Little Prince is living a life-time of Love, innocence and tenderness. It is to allow your heart to churn several times over, with a feeling that is so overwhelming, you can barely put a finger on it. 'It must be love' you think, and simply linger on.

The Little Prince is one of those stories, in the love and warmth of which you bask, a long time after you have turned the last page. You have this clear memory of the Prince's presence - his haughtiness, his tender frame, his golden locks. Above all, you really do look up to the stars and hear for a bell of laughter!

Tell me, did you ponder over whether the sheep ate the flower? I feel that it does not matter anymore. Either way, we will have known love and its tenderness - you and me and the Little Prince. 

Soul Money

Yeah we sell everything
Love, marriages
People, jobs

Work is worship!
Marriages are made in heaven!

We sell worship, heavens
Souls, about souls?
Do you sell them?

We buy them.
Sometimes for a good price!!
You sell them to us.
Yeah that's how it works.

That must hurt!

Oh but it doesn't!
Not once
You won't even know
When the barter happens
When love exchanges hands

We won't warn you either,
Of the side-effects -
Just a sharp longing maybe
For the rest of your life, maybe
But that's all right, we sell quick-fixes too

But that's unfair!

Oh come on, it's all part of life
You've got nothing to lose
Your game, your rules
We simply just sell and buy

How much?

You will have your due
We'll hand it on a platter
It'll look great, feel good
It'll solve your troubles,
Right after creating them

Troubles?

You bit the apple, didn't you?!

The Slate is Blank

The slate is blank

Because it is ready

For you

It has held your face of ignorance

It has read your ambition

It knows restraint

It has waited before

And will wait again

It is the companion

You always have sought

It has already accepted

What you have thought

It has reflected nothing

Only suggested,

'You may carve yourself on me.

I will not eat your words,

If you don't eat yours.'

Cracks

Photograph by  Chinmay Dave

No matter what you do or say

Or don’t do or don’t say

There will be cracks and breaks

We will not mend them

Or stop them

This brokenness

Will be our stories

And the light from within our soul

Will come out

Through the cracks

In our personalities

The Half Door

Half a door's a shadow 

Half the door is mine

Half a thought means nothing

But you can keep what you find

There are stories untold

Half written

Half lost in time

Scuttling through the hours

And doors

And many matters in the grind

Need they be seized or held?

Or waited upon so that 

They alight on your shoulders and palms

And be etched in another rhyme

Ready to walk the line

Ready to keep the time

Yours and mine

Worth every penny and dime

And a Retort

And then, while looking for some related  writings online, I discovered an interesting retort to Bukowski's spirited 'Don't Do It' -  On Writing. A valid argument eh?

Don't buy it. This is Charles Bukowski telling Charles Bukowski how to write like Charles Bukowski. He's guilty himself of all those sins he's admonishing you against as an aspiring writer. 

You might have a natural inborn talent as a writer - or, for that matter, as a plumber or a portrait painter - but that's not the way to bet. You can't rely on raw talent. It's nice to be a genius of course (did somebody else use that phrase?) but most people have to learn their trade or profession.

Thomas Gray spent a lifetime rewriting and polishing his poems. His "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" took him over 20 years. It is held by many to be the best poem in the language - not the most popular, a dubious honour held by Kipling's "If..." Anyway Gray's Elegy didn't just come bursting out of him: he ground it out over decades. He studied the poetry of the ancients, he wrote Horatian and Pindaric Odes, he learned his craft.

In fact, when you look at the lives of most poets closely, most of them learned their craft by studying other writers. There have been a few successful primitives, but most of their efforts are merely quaint. You can't just sit down and write, unless you're willing to judge what you've written harshly and compare your work with the work of others. 

Just as Science depends on the findings of previous scientists, on Newton and Faraday for instance, so poetry depends on the body of literature that has gone before it. You can't depart from the norm unless you understand thoroughly what the norm is. You can't be a rebel unless you know what you're rebelling against. 

Remember there is and was only one Charles Bukowki. Don't try to be him.

                                                                                                                         

Bukowski On Writing

I recently discovered this. Bukowsi on writing. I come back to it, every now and then. It provokes my creative impulse. Tells me to trust my instincts more. Also, it is beautifully narrated by Tom O' Bedlam. Enjoy!

So you want to be a writer

By Charles Bukowski

“

If it doesn’t come bursting out of you

In spite of everything,

don’t do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don’t do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don’t do it.

if you’re doing it for money or

fame,

don’t do it.

if you’re doing it because you want

women in your bed,

don’t do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don’t do it.

if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,

don’t do it.

if you’re trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of

you,

then wait patiently.

if it never does roar out of you,

do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend

or your parents or to anybody at all,

you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,

don’t be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don’t be dull and boring and

pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to sleep

over your kind.

don’t add to that.

don’t do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don’t do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don’t do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.”