Plan A and plan B

Isn't it wonderful how empty things can be, and that you can fill the emptiness with whatever you want short of murder and mayhem?

And that there are those born with a greater art-making capability than others, and others born to tell the truth, and that rarely do the two come together.

Frank Sinatra took 12 showers a day, according to last wife Barbara, as reported in her book, Lady Blue Eyes, and smelled like lavendar with a hint of Jack Daniels and Camel cigarettes. The poet Charles Bukowski preferred baths;  there is also a book, Bukowski in the Bathtub, by his fellow poet and onetime roommate, John Thomas, and Thomas' wife, Philomene Long.

If Living is plan A and Literature is plan B, writing about the dead is one thing, and reading about them is another.