James sent greetings from his new home in Ann Arbor. The card features a photograph of light coming into a dark room facing a brick wall.
He said Michigan is cold cold cold but reports he still has the alpaca gloves from the farm we visited outside Portland nearly 8, 9, 10 years ago….
It has actually been eleven years since he bought Maki an engagement ring and took photographs at my secret wedding. Eleven years since we stood on a dark windy sidewalk outside the Flying Saucer and I confronted him with the fact that after the accident he said my death would not make him cry. Eleven years since I did in fact make him cry.
We were impossibly young but twenty-five felt so old. It is a mystery how our friendship has survived so many reckless and misguided choices, but we’ve always offered each other shelter when running away from home.
For twenty years, even when not speaking to each other, even through moves to different states and countries, we have remained correspondents.
It is an honor and privilege to know him, as a person, as an artist, as a friend.