Another post. Another loss.
I am up early this morning. Later today instead of protesting I will be with community to celebrate a soul who is no longer with us.
I met him when I was in 11th grade. He was friends with one of my friends and we became hi in the hallway acquaintances. By the end of my senior year there was a Mad Dog Brotherhood with a core group of people that would play tag in the middle of the night in a park. A driving game was created (not sure who made it up) where you would have to turn right at a stop sign, left at a green light, and so on. I think to win you would have to pass Tommy’s. Tommy’s was/is a place where you will need to have a Pepcid after you eat there. A bunch of us played music so there was lots of support for each other’s creative endeavors. The summer after my senior year was a whirlwind of constant hang outs, adventures and shenanigans.
A few years after graduating high school, relationship changes, and general restlessness me, him, and another friend (who unfortunately has a post on my blog when he died) decided to move to San Francisco. We had no money and no idea what we were doing. But we did it. My mom took a photo of us in the Sentra, U-Haul attached as we drove away. I found it the other day and a picture never felt so heavy.
He only lived in SF a short time before his journey continued to Seattle, Sebastopol, and eventually Santa Cruz.
Looking back at letters he wrote me, texts we had sent each other, and general sad face memory lane I realized something about the both of us. We both value the connections and relationships we have with people. The interactions are not just transactional. The ebbing and flowing that is life is just part of the grand scheme how people come and go in your personal parking spot. The connections you make can have impact that one may never really come to realize. There are different kinds of connections. Too many to go into this silly blog, that help the emotional ice sculptor that you are trying to keep from melting. Caring about people is a full time job especially if you are trying to care about yourself. My friend thought time was a construct and though I didn’t find that charming when he was 2 hours late to my wedding, I understood that the music he was dancing to was his own. He also knew that I loved him for him.
I would go months sometimes years without seeing him in person and the minute we were in each other’s space it was like no time had passed. There wasn’t a sense of having to “catch up” because we were connecting on a spiritual plane during our REM cycle.
On a trip to Arizona to see the Dead, he conveniently fell asleep at dawn, so I had to drive into the sunrise the entire way there. On the way back since I was driving (again) I decided that we could only listen to the best of Janis Joplin for 5 hours. He embraced it and 6 months later a biography of Janis Joplin with a thoughtful note appeared in my mailbox.
I will miss your snake oil salesman, mobius strip surfer, ridiculous historian aura and the joke you aren't sharing behind your smile. You had so many nicknames and lived in many dimensions on this planet we call Earth. I know you will always be in the ether.
