Don't Try.

I've been reading the third and final book of letters written by my favorite writer, Henry Charles Bukowski (published after his death, of course). I know the year he died, I see that the pages are quickly diminishing; he knew that Death was coming too, despite all the weary years when part of him yearned for it via gas stove, bridge, or butcher knife. He survived the Depression, talked his way out of being drafted in World War II, starved and went mad in roominghouses, didn't overdose in the 60s or 70s, drank his liver into submission for the duration of his seventy-four years, laughed off tuberculosis without even knowing he had it for months, avoided the AIDS epidemic when it came out towards the end of the century...and then there were the women. Surviving them was undoubtedly his greatest feat, other than that of failing to destroy himself successfully. Leukemia, however, is about to take its toll. The letters consist of chemotherapy stories now, friends and long-time publishers being on the receiving end of his final punch-drunk witticisms in the face of the inevitable. These last ten pages will be tough to read. It's like watching the end of a tragic movie when you already know the unfortunate ending.

Ben Gibbard said that "Love is watching someone die." I didn't get that at first, but I think he meant that if you love someone you won't give up on them by turning your head away in their last moments to spare yourself the grief. I know my old friend Hank better than that, though, and for his sake I hope he was alone since being laid up in a hospital bed didn't allow him to be drunk and at the typer like he would've had it if given the option. That's not to say that he lived a loveless life, but his form of love was mostly to be found in the bottle and Word that allowed him to escape this world for a few hours at a time.

He always said he respected plumbers more than politicians and the like, I have those sentences highlighted. More specifically, the blue-collar bums who came home from their back-breaking jobs to try to make sense of it all in front of a keyboard hit harder for him. They, not the snobs of the publishing world, were the true bearers of the flag. Reading statements like that made by my literary (he'd curse me for using that word) hero have encouraged me to continue trudging through the toils tied to this passion. Writing, to people like us, was and is a need much like defecating. Some people won't ever understand that. Those who do prefer it that way.

I'm writing this now before reading the final archived piece of correspondence for a reason: I don't want to be biased by that last shotgun blast from the hip. From one lover of the precious Line to another, I hope that your last one hit home, Hank, though something tells me it didn't. That, as you know it, is Life.