4/16/92 12:39 a.m.

...Anyway, a particularly bad day. The system that usually worked didn't work. The gods shuffle the deck.Time is mutilated and you are a fool. But time is made to be wasted. What are you going to do about it? You can't always be roaring full steam. You stop and you go. You hit a high and then you fall into a black pit. Do you have a cat? Or cats? They sleep baby. They can sleep 20 hours a day and they look beautiful. They know there's nothing to get excited about. The next meal. And a little something to kill now and then. When I'm being torn by forces, I just look at one or more of my cats. There are 9 of them. I just look at one of them sleeping or half-sleeping and I relax. It chills me out. For a while anyhow. Then my wires get crossed and I have to do it all over again. I can't understand writers that stop writing. How do they chill out?

-- Written by Charles Bukowski, taken from his book The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship

More Bukowski here.