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Julian Dare

I don't know if he's passed on yet. I got the email last week.

This could be it. He said.

How to say goodbye over an email?

Julian was a busker in Spain. The old breed. The old kind. Like a modern Johnny Depp Captain Sparrow traveling the world with his guitar.

We met in Lijiang, China. Stone streets. Herds of goldfish in the ice cold canals. Winding, twisting streets that led you to either a small urban field with a cabbage farmer or the city square where a bearded man on a horse posed with seas of black-suited Shanghai & Beijing Tourists.

Every day Julian and I would huddle around his laptop looking at his pictures, chainsmoking, slamming cheap rice-wine. Our glasses clopping on the old, wooden tables.

Photo of a girl picking up trash on the beach. The eyes. Wary. Old. The ratty hand-me-down soccer shirt down to her knees. Behind her, the bloated belly of a European sunbather. Blank sunglasses, two pinpricks of the sun.

The mutilated man who begs out by the water wheel. a close up. leather skin. the smile. you know the picture.

You could name a place. Anywhere. And Julian would launch into a story. I should have been taking notes. But at the time I was drunk.

He gave me a copy of his book. I'll see what I can do with it. Notes from an expert backpacker. How to do it the hard way. Photo of skinny Julian half-naked in front of a Bangkok Tailors wearing nothing but shorts and a sandwich board. "@#(*#& will Rob you BLIND! Don't go to $#@(*!!!"

"stop being such a fucking monk" he said, pressing a viagra into my hand. "the shops with the girls who cut hair. if you see a pink light, you're in business."

I am not good at not being a monk. I ended up giving the pill to someone in Vietnam. I think/hope they made good use of it.

The road can be long and lonely. I remember seeing it in Julian. I remember he seeing it in me. We didn't fit in with the other backpackers. Both of us cockeyed. A little off. Content to slug our shots of rice whiskey, chain smoke, talking craft of photography/writing/you-name-it. Last ones up, late into the night.

He was sick even back then. I remember. I would be up at six in the guesthouse and out & done with a photosafari by 11. He would just be getting up. Moving slow. Scarecrow with a cup of coffee coughing into the bushes in the courtyard under the cherry trees.

How do you say goodbye?

You just do. Honestly. To the point.

I will honor your memory. I will do what I can do with the book. Please stick around. Too many stories die with you.

I am going to get some more sake. Wander down to the bar where I don't fit in. Maybe have one beer. Watch them do what it is they do.

I gave Liza a copy of the book today.
Asked me what I remembered of kindergarten.
"I remember smearing boogers on the wall during story time. Getting caught. I'm still working on it."

She told me that when I was in kindergarten, I didn't fit in even then.

"We would be doing an assignment and you would be questioning the efficacy of the assignment."

wow

pimp 5 year old.

Anyway. tip of the glass to the misfits. when we're lucky our work gets called 'genius' but one way or the other- long road, tough road.

& when we go/
too many stories go with us.

Julian- I'll carry you with me always. I'll try to stop being such a monk.