On Memorial Day of 2012 I was awoken by a call from Julian's father. Julian was dead. He had been killed on patrol in Helmand, with six days left in his second and final tour. Sitting in the sun-room in Portland, I observed the yawning light assume the leaves and asphalt. When friends arrived and were grilling out back, I announced that my best friend was dead. A single sentence escaped. - At the time I imagined his MRAP had hit a roadside bomb. And I recalled the moment in Anne Arundel County that he made an evasive maneuver. On an unlit road with nothing there. Mid-conversation the truck swerves left and corrects. At the stop sign his zippo won't catch. We don't speak. The truck door slams. Getting back in he says "I had a flashback." I don't ask. - Earlier that month I graduated from Reed. I decided to call on my former art professor before leaving for the funeral. Gerri asked me how I was. In her studio so salient were metal and glass. "Well, you should make art about it" she said. Improvised Explosive Device. - Two years prior, Julian had flown from Okinawa to Portland on leave before his first deployment. I was the only one stateside who knew. It was Renn Fayre weekend, Reed's big celebration. We bought a cooler and drank and yelled things. I tried to wrestle him on the lawn and lost handily. Still drunk we took the bus at eight AM to the tattoo parlor, Julian's first. He hooked up with a dormie and we all watched movies with her friends. To dubious thanks, he opened a wine bottle for some girls by smashing its neck against the backstop post. It was raucous, and we laughed. And at the end of the weekend, eating at the picnic tables on the quad, Julian told me that I should open myself up to this world. That my outlook was limiting my experience of others. That I should have joy. - We stood smoking outside the Portland airport before his departure. The fog dissipated into concrete shadows. "Here," he said, and handed me a one hundred dollar bill. For your artwork. If I die, he said, I want you to look after my mother, and I want you to keep making your art. Don't let my life get in the way of that. - My dearest friend and brother. The spirit proceeds. (at Portland, Oregon)
