Lost Boy, R.I.P.

There are souls who just never seem to fit into this world. Sometimes they can find a peace and sometimes you smash into them and wonder what happened. A free spirit tied down passed away yesterday. We met when I co-owned and ran a vegetarian restaurant a long time ago. In those days not many people were vegetarians and in Calgary our restaurant served freaks, n'erdo-wells, sot-pots, punks, hippies, and every vegetarian Alan-Watts-Bhagavad-Gita-reading and ufo-seeker within 2000 miles. Up from Montana and down from Alaska. Lost boy headed west to look for work and mountains. He was an incredibly gifted athlete who loved skiing and had shaggy hair and loved the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, The Band, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Costello and in fact, I seem to recall when we first met he had a ginormous poster of Keith Richards in his room. He lived with a bunch of crazy Hindu/Buddhist studying mad cap roommates. He and his friends dragged me out on the highway to visit gurus and musicians and swim on Miami Beach when it was a falling down dead resort town. He played guitar his whole life. He was one of the first people to use rollerblades like a poet. Did I say he was a brilliant skier? He was one of the first people to practice ski ballet and free-style skiing. For much of his life he fought emotional burdens and moved around North America often estranged from his family and the many friends he had made throughout his life. He was a well-recognized resident of Banff for years. I once found him by tracking him down at a pizza parlour and asking total strangers if they knew him. They almost always did. Almost everyone who met him knew him to be a funny storyteller who was the life of a party. He loved to talk! I can't write much more than this today. He was someone who massively influenced my life, in ways too difficult to articulate today. I know he wouldn't approve of me writing much about him...probably not anything...but I think he would approve these two songs as profoundly apt. Safe passage to a sensitive warrior. I hope you find home.

I watched you suffer a dull, aching pain
Now you decided to show me the same
No sweeping exits or offstage lines,
Can make me feel bitter or treat you unkind

Wild Horses,
Couldn't drag me away,Wild, wild horses,
Couldn't drag me away...

I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie,
I have my freedom but I don't have much time
Faith has been broken tears must be cried,
Let's do some living after we die

Wild Horses,
Couldn't drag me away,
Wild, wild horses,
We'll ride them someday

I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm 'til you discover how deep
I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along this stony pass

It's just a moment
This time will pass