Look, it's a video I took of absolutely terrible quality of you playing a song at Celia's coffee house!
Oh wait, no it's not. Lie. I can't get it to embed. It's just a picture of you at the only open mic I will allow myself to attend at this point in my life, solely because you play there on occasion.
You are one of my favorite people, someone from whom I've learned a lot about the measure of my words and a little bit about boundaries too.
I've been proud to play a tiny part in encouraging your musical efforts, because as you know I've spent a lot of time listening to dudes play guitar and it is the measure of your talent and of my healing ears that I can say very honestly that I would choose to listen to yours even if you weren't my friend.
And I'll go to an open mic night. On purpose. I just wanted to reinforce that point.
Selfishly, you give me hope that some good ones are still out there. I admire your family and the way you embrace your life and your home, your personal integrity and your spirit.
And although I will never, ever, EVER root for the Philadelphia Flyers or stop short of wishing them anything but a crushing loss against any team but the Pittsburgh Penguins, it is in your honor that I really usually hope the Eagles and the Phillies win even though I don't really care so much about football or baseball. I may even pull for them mentally a little bit. I figure it's the least I can do. Because it's a real friend from Philly who feels genuinely bad for you when the Capitals flame out in the playoffs, even if it is at the hands of that jackass Sidney Crosby (but if that shared loathing doesn't bond us I don't really know what could.)
Happy birthday, dude. I hope this year finds you living the dream even more clearly. You deserve everything good.
On the day you were born I was threeish years old and I like to think that somehow I was rambling around in my toddler state and all of a sudden my little baby hands went like this towards Ohio.
\m/ \m/
Because I would find it very strange that I didn't have some kind of telepathy where you were concerned even then.
I think sometimes when you get older you think that you won't find friends like you found when you were younger. This is not to say that you will not find friends, because surely most of us will at all places along the path. But what is unusual is finding a friend who you feel like, if there were ever a place where you had met that person that they would have fit right into your life right into that spot, wherever it was or what was going on.
Like say you were drinking in a parking lot before a really dumb show, if you were ever inclined to do that kind of thing? Like that person would have been the person you'd most want there to do that stupid shit with you. Like that person would have been there anyway and if she had it would have been better.
And maybe even for some of the smart things too.
Exactly.
Ha!
The day I met you for real in person I sliced my finger almost in half in a door and then we ate prime rib sandwiches that we should go have again because they were very good. And I think you felt more sorry for me than you were inclined to laugh at me because I didn't feel stupid and that was very nice. I also recall feeling like I'd talked to you before although I hadn't and that pretty much sums the whole thing up.
So I could really stop this there. But why, when I don't have to?
Oh, and I took this a couple of weeks later. This is the first one I have of you besides the giantess/Melissa/Devra picture. I totally forgot about it. Nice one. You see this?
And it turns out it can feel a little weird for some reason, when you're reasonably used to being cool and collected and stuff and just down with the enjoying of the people in general when all of a sudden you're thinking wow, who the hell are you? Because you're kind of teh awesome in tiny letters?
It can feel a little weird while it also doesn't feel weird at all.
Bloggers are weird.
Admit it - it was disorienting at first, like we'd been in some of the very same places although there was obviously no way that could have been true, and at the very least had come to some of the very same conclusions, wherever it was we'd been. Mirrors. Parallels. Echoes. Poetic crap like that.
I recall a lull in the BlogHer madness between the Shutter Sisters party and whatever drunk lobbyfest came after it (not that BlogHer is a drunk lobbyfest, if anyone else is actually reading this. I mean, there is wine and there are generally lobbies and sometimes the twain do meet, but BlogHer has changed my life in a very profound way that has nothing to do with alcohol. Case in point: I would not be writing this very thing I'm writing without it. I'd be writing about something entirely different and it would probably not be half as good. So the wine is just a big, fat bonus that I consider my prize for the rest of the year where I stare at the little white square of death and die of writer's block and feel inadequate as a blogger all by myself with my own wine and without a thousand of my closest friends. You think this is easy? Try it.)
ANYWAY we had gone back to your room so you could change your shoes, maybe, I don't know. And I said something and you said something like "No one thinks that usually except for me. Is that weird that we think the same thing about that?" And I said something like "Well, welcome to the new world order, bitches."
I'm curious to know what it was we were talking about, because it seemed like a profound thing in my memory, which maybe it wasn't.
And I really didn't say that thing about the new world order. I really didn't. He would though. Jerk. :
(Sorry to steal this from you. It's habit-forming, goodNESS.)
I probably just said "Yeah I usually think that too." And you said something like "Are you noticing that we think the same things a lot of the time. Are you sent here to toy with my brain?" (Not really. I made that last part up.) And then I really do recall saying "We'd probably just better get used to it."
And I think that's when we came to terms.
You understand this:
And this:
And this:
And other things also, too many to list. I think sometimes that we are the same person but then I really think that you're just the person I know who is most like me who isn't related to me, and in that I find a very real sense of comfort and relief that I never have to pretend to be interested in your stories. I am so happy that you were born and that I had a blog and that you finally had the good sense to locate it even if you didn't come to the community keynote and FIGURE IT OUT A YEAR EARLIER HELLO.
But then again I wasn't so sure what a goon squad was either until I really had a reason to find out.
That's all water under bridges now and the important thing to focus on now is that if I had a friend fantasy team you'd be my first round pick for countless reasons both silly and profound that somehow make perfect sense to me, even the giblet parts.
You are so much better than you know, even though I know you know you're fine.
I love you to pieces. A Hot Metal Street of badass pieces.
And I don't think any of it is weird anymore - just nice.
I don't remember when we connected exactly but I know when I lost my gig writing about photography that it was because of you and also really because I blew deadlines but of course I blamed you even before I knew you because really, this blaming myself thing? Tiresome, right?
So I was expecting greatness when you showed up, dammit.
And when I realized it was really you - that you were inherently great and it didn't matter what pictures you took or what you wrote about or why or where - then it was just that you were immediately my friend that mattered.
You were another amazing human being arisen from the beautiful mess of the Internet, the sort of person who, like all of the deepest friends I've found in this medium, I would have immediately liked in real life so really the fact that the computer was the initial matchmaker made no nevermind. It just made knowing you possible, whereas honestly, the odds of us meeting in real life otherwise, were slim to none.
Maybe. We both kinda get around.
Minutes after the above photo was taken (really, could someone have helped me to attend to my hair?) and hours after Obama accepted the nomination, we were walking through the streets of downtown Denver. And I, altitude-sick and exhausted, prat-falled straight off the curb, face-planted into the cement. Ugly. And that guy came out of the mist, literally, to help me up, and you were like, "Holy shit, you just conjured him up. You fall down, there's a dude stepping out of nowhere to pick you up."
That never happens, or maybe almost never. We both know that. But it put a little bit of fun and funny into the road rash, and as much as I miss my Nikon from that week and as much as my knees have never been the same since they hit the street that night, I'm glad you were there if it had to be anyone.
I'm sure I'd have met other cool people were it not for the computer, it's true, but they wouldn't be you.
We share something very specific, a similar experience that the very vast majority of people don't and that is a way of looking at the world because of the way people look at us and the lens through which we have always seen ourselves. We share the experience of people taking our faces in their hands from when we were babies, literally and ostensibly to heal them. And you know and I know what that does to you, what kind of a person that contributes to turning you into. You'd no doubt describe it in some different words, and it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to hear them at some point. But I think, empathetically, I understand, at least the broad brush outline.
When I think of you I think of long hair and a love of pictures and animals that I share, I think of a simultaneous constant engagement with and yet energetic search for a sense of origin and place that I relate to so deeply that it is occurring to me in this moment that it might be our deepest similarity, others notwithstanding. I I think of someone who knows California and loves Colorado and the Gulf Coast, a sharp contrast to this stubborn East Coaster. I think of someone who writes and shoots like a champ whose damn blog should be more widely read.
I think of someone who risks - for love, for life, for self, for sanity. I think of someone who knows how fucking funny this all really is - the bitter and the sweet, all mashed up together. And who not only knows this but lives it.
And that is why, beyond any other similarity, I think we connect so very very well. It's why I'm the most glad that you're my friend.
I am not in the place where my scanner is so it being your birthday and all I got some photos out of the albums and just used the iPhone and the ShakeIt app instead.
It occurs to me that the scanner you were obsessed with was of the police variety and the kind I use wouldn't have made any sense to you at all.
I like this image, though. You were overexposed in the bottom shot originally so there wasn't much to be done with that but that is the place and stance that I really remember you in most besides the front porch so it may as well stand.
You would have been 88 years old today, which seems very young to me when I do the math. You've been dead since 1987 and that feels like such a long time that it seems that you should be ancient by now. When I first thought about calculating it I thought, wow, he'd probably be almost 100. Wrong, but I can see why I thought that.
You were one of the most challenging people I've ever known but it was difficult not to appreciate some of the things that could be the most off-putting about you. One of the things I've inherited in a few different genetic ways is a struggle with the art of compromise and while I see how that can really bring me some problems what it also carries with it is a near-inability to back down from representing my own point of view when I know in my heart that I'm right not to do so. It's a trait that when flipped on its head and used for good is not such a terrible one to have, and I definitely try to flip it. You are a significant example of the fact that I do not come from wishy-washy people. I guess there are reasons why I usually speak my truth.
There are things about your life that I wish had been easier not only because no one really needs an especially difficult life but also because I think it would have made life easier for everyone else too. And I really wish that your body had not been ravaged by disease quite so young - 65 is still young to die, to me - because I can see now from my adult vantage point that you were growing into being a grandfather, mellowing out a little, and that would have been the best time by far to have you around. I think you could have made a positive difference. I think you were finally genuinely enjoying yourself.
But that is not what happened and it's only worth the few line of speculation and when I think about you I think about simple things for the most part, like food and the country and being a Marine and lottery tickets and a new car every two years.
I think about how when you were on oxygen all the time and nearly on your last legs you came to the play in my junior year that was really a defining experience in my life and you were obviously genuinely proud to be there. And I remember how in spite of my teenaged angst making me a little embarrassed - because, like I said, you weren't quiet or halfway or tactful about much of anything - I was really happy and proud that you appreciated it.
It's a good memory to have.
And I hope it's okay with you but I also use you as my cautionary tale to really try not to drink bad beer, and I'm especially grateful for that unintentional life lesson (because if you knew how much it costs to drink good beer you would die again and talk about it loudly for hours.) I did not have one for you today, because I was out with some of my friends consuming sangria which is definitely what you would have called a sissy drink. But I definitely will tomorrow.
I am so far behind, I can't even explain what's been keeping me away.
This was on the table at a media dinner I attended a few years ago. I entered it into a Flickr Advent Calendar group that I was pretty dedicated too in December, 2006 (2006 - wow, eons) because I thought it was pretty then and I still like it now.
I had no idea what bokeh meant then. It's been a long, informative three years.
I am just about there, just about caught up. December 5, yes? I promise this makes sense in my head.
I grew up in a household where "son of a biscuit eater' was an acceptable euphemism for the more profane iteration of that term. You know, like "fudge" and "mother of pearl" and the like.
What, you don't do that? You probably don't say "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" either. Whatever.
I am not a son at all, but I do eat biscuits. And also fudge, and I even bought some of that on this trip, too, but that's another story. This is about biscuits. This is one of the best ones I've ever had, perhaps the very best one. And whereas a very good friend of mine made me some in her own kitchen on my way home a few days later, I don't have a picture of it to share with you.
If you're going to have friends, it's nice to have the kinds of friends who will feed you biscuits they make from scratch in their very own kitchens, I'm serious.
This one was from Blackstone's in Beaufort, South Carolina, where the nice people let me sit down even though the kitchen was about to close and I had the most delicious shrimp & grits and this biscuit. And it occurred to me that I really ought to ask for one to stick in my pocket and take for the road, and I'm still really sorry I didn't. I had these insane thoughts like, "Oh, sometimes it's good to just eat one of something when it's really good, so you can remember it and savor it," and "Two would just make me really sick" and "There will be other biscuits."
Sometimes I am really not very smart. I am, however and in general, quite well fed. This is one of my favorite things about my life.
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