Flowers, a poem, and a fresh start

I am touched and pleased by another kind gesture in response to Hank's recent death: when I got home yesterday, I discovered that Barb had sent flowers! They are now a part of Hank's memorial corner:
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Thank you so much, Barb! They're beautiful.

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Hank was named after the pseudonym used by Charles Bukowski in his novels, Hank Chinaski. Today, Zac e-mailed me a poem I'd forgotten about: Bukowski's "The History of One Tough Motherfucker," about a horribly abused, "cross-eyed, tailless cat" that he had nursed back from the brink of certain death, a cat that had come to represent everything that refuses to lie down and surrender:

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and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about

life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,

shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look

at this!"

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but they don't understand, they say something like,"you

say you've been influenced by Celine?"

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"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by

things like this, by this, by this!"

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Read the whole thing here. It's terrific. Zac, thank you for that.

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I'm feeling a little better today. Hank is well-represented by his memorial, and I have satisfied my need to look constantly at pictures of him - at least for now. I dug dozens of pictures out of an old box of photos, and at the same time I found all kinds of fun non-Hank photos as well, which I have been scanning and throwing at people on Facebook today. It was fun. And I'm feeling better.

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Tonight I'll be gathering with some of my favorite people in the world to ring in the new year, and I can't wait.

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See you in 2009!