losing richard brautigan
when I was younger one of my closest friends introduced me to richard brautigan almost by mistake. I have no idea how it happened, but she directed me to this website called something like "brautigan archives", which was just a simple google site with all his works available for download.
of course, silly me, I didn't download any of it and I can't remember for the love of me what the name of the site was. I tried looking in my old computer's archive, my google drive, my downloads, my disk drive: nothing. I can't find the pdf of june 30th, june 30th and I really need it.
I have no idea what the book was about, I didn't really even care to look. I just remember I first read brautigan on a very crowded subway, a weekday afternoon, at least seven years ago. and I remember the contents vaguely, I just remember how it made me feel - like there was nobody else in that train.
there was a false sense of home that his short poems gave me. I feel like I am always looking for that sense of disconnection when I'm reading someone else's poetry. mine reminds me of me, of course; of my life, my failures and my wins. yet everybody else's poetry is just a sensation, a caress, a noise coming from another room. a smell I thought I had forgotten.
that's what brautigan felt like to me: like a memory from my childhood. he made me feel safe, right then and there, in that train. it is a memory I hold dear only when I feel like something around me is threatening or I am too stressed. so I forget the name of the author, the name of the book, and I always have to go back and text my friend, "what's the name of the poet who wrote a book about his time in Japan?"
almost always, I've been able to find him. today, I can only remember. I've lost brautigan to the decay of google sites and the internet I once fostered, the places that felt like empty park benches under the winter sunlight: a time and a place to sit and breathe.