Shipping Containers

The harbor air always carries a heavy mix of salt, diesel, and industrial grit, blurring the lines between my hometown of Wilmington and neighboring San Pedro. I think about Charles Bukowski sometimes. He worked for over a decade at the post office, enduring the crushing monotony of the federal bureaucracy while saving his rawest energy for the typewriter at night.

Charles Bukowski wrote about the raw, unglamorous underbelly of American life, refusing to romanticize it. He wrote gritty minimalist prose or poetry to follow a style I would compare to Ernest Hemingway. I have my own civil service day job. Walking through Wilmington, past the marina, berths, and the shipping containers, I feel that same stubborn urge to write narratives about this corner of California.

There is a strange comfort in knowing that decades before I sat down with my laptop, a weary clerk was looking out at this same hazy skyline and writing in the unglamorous spaces of the South Bay, punching keys in the dark long after his shifts ended.