How Is Your Heart?

"How Is Your Heart?" 

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) 

During my worst times on the park benches, in the jails, or living with whores, I always had this certain contentment— I wouldn't call it happiness— it was more of an inner balance that settled for whatever was occurring and it helped in the factories and when relationships went wrong with the girls. It helped through the wars, and the hangovers, the back alley fights, the hospitals. To awaken in a cheap room in a strange city and pull up the shade— this was the craziest kind of contentment. And to walk across the floor to an old dresser with a cracked mirror— see myself, ugly, grinning at it all. What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.