A young man sits on the library basement floor, tucked discreetly between the book stacks while pondering a novel in his hands. He sports a hat that appears to be homemade and wears jeans that are just a little too small for him. His leather messenger bag is open by his side and contains only a notepad, a pen, and a pair of fingerless gloves. He flips through the novel and lands on a random page. He reads, scrunches his face, and places the book back on the shelf next to him. His intentions at this moment are unclear, but one thing is certain: he needs a haircut so badly.
But what is this young man really doing? After rejecting the previous book, he picks up a new one and repeats the process. He rapidly thumbs through the book, all the while maintaining a searching gaze on the pages before him.
The sun rises and sets, and the moon begins shifting into place. He has not stepped outside in hours. He is intimately familiar with seclusion, but this time there’s no extensive folktronica CD collection at hand. Instead, he is reading. Scouring. The more books picked up, the more dissatisfied he becomes, his objective remaining unmet. Whatever his objective may be…
His hours of labor thus far have been painfully unfruitful.
Quickly his expression changes (He doesn’t smile, obviously, because smiling signals excitement and he never gets excited about anything, ever). It’s a quirk of his lip and a twinkle in his eye. In his hands, Love Is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski. One stanza reaches beyond the page…
“there is something wrong with me / besides / melancholia.”
He gasps.
He gets up and hurries to his dorm. He immediately puts on his Perils from the Sea CD, then picks up his book and opens it to the beginning. He paces around the room while he reads, nodding his head to the rhythm of the electronic music (although it has folk style song-writing, too. Really, there’s both. It’s actually a faithful blend of genres).
He finishes the book and sighs contentedly (though he still doesn’t smile). After all of his hard work, the many hours of searching and sitting and reading and laying down and walking sometimes, he finally knows that there is someone who understands him. He texts his friends Silas and Cyrus about his discovery.
“bro i finally found some shit that is like fucking for real. Like this one poem called numb your ass and your brain and your heart is the first thing i think that actually like gets me. you need to read this guy i dont know if youve heard of him but hes called bukowski…”
“Hes gonna change your lives.”
