I am in mourning, my friend; one of my great friends was lost to us. Each winter, he prepared assiduously for a summer sojourn in a foreign land: Tibet, Peru, China, Thailand, Great Britian, Russia.
This year he selected Chile, and as a surprise to me, he departed early. I knew that he always celebrated the 4th of July with his friends in Royal Oak, Michigan, but he departed too early it seemed to me. A friend let me know about his departure, and then the same friend wrote to me again, entitling his email with the traveler's first and last name. I opened the email with premonitory dread, and learned the worst had happed. Barry passed from this life on the 5th of July, at the outset of his journey. I have not heard the results of his autopsy, and the same prominitory dread informs me that foul play touched his charmed life.
I knew him as long as I lived in Royal Oak, yet I engaged his friendship when he began displaying his photography around town. I was granted two interviews with him, and I enjoyed tracking down the information and writing an article about his frantic emergence as a photographer. He had taken thousands of pictures of people who had befriended him on his way, from Tibetan Buddhist monks to jolly Brits climbing mountains in a British Isle tradition, the Three Peaks challenge. I enjoyed amplifying each and every detail.
The Brits with the van saw he was a stout lad, and he was free to move where he chose, and he climbed Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowden with them, and they drove together in the van over 450 miles in a single day, mastering the challenge. As we converse by letters, teams of men and women are waiting for Friday's daybreak, and their midsummer's night dream envisions mountain peaks and rocky trails. I looked it up: Greenwich Mean Time is now approaching 3 in the morning.
Why do I keen so in the company of your reading? Sadly, I am trifling with friendship. Twice this spring, after returning from California, I passed an overnight in Berrien County. I saw all the people who are always at the Livery, including your friend who once managed the State Theatre. I wished I hadn't lost the chance to add two more days to our friendship. When I'm coursing through Benton Harbor next, I shall not be so foolish again.
Tonight I was meeting and greeting in the Huber Hall of Norfolk's Chrysler Museum of the Arts, a classical four story atrium with rathskeller rafters and glass panels to keep out the rain. I was hungry for new friendship because I am keenly aware of my bittersweet experience as a partner in genuine human lives, and I am keenly aware that only engagement with human faces and mortal voices borders on the real. I am certain that I conversed with fifty men and women tonight, generous Southerners who gave me conversation, who gave me the pleasure of their eyes (a line I remember from Sappho, who I read first in the aisles of Michigan State's fourth floor literature section, the research tower).
I met thirty-two beautiful women, learning their names, discovering their graces. One teaches Latin. A second is bound for Sicily. A third sang cranking rock vocals but admitted to me that she prefers to sing musicals. A fourth began her career as an architect this month, and she delivered her first animation in Maya to her managers, a walk through a public building that only exists in imagination. It pleases me that I can still throw myself into a swirl of people and create conversation with each one who has a moment. I wrote about each one in my journal, where I am imagining a cast of characters for my Midsummer's Night Dream.
In my dream, I see you rising at dawn and finding my message. Kindly, you print the words out, and place the page in a book with my other letters to you. Then, you return to your northern plot and fill a vaseful with summer blossoming.
Best,
Wilbo
Baubles & Goddesses
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