The Growing Years

I smell trouble!

 Ellyn when it was still spelled as "Ellen".

This must be a close friend. I have no idea.

As it turned out– as Ellyn pointed out– this was Bill. Truly a close friend of John's.

I have only seen pictures of Bill as a young boy with very short hair, and as an adult with very little hair. This picture threw me for a loop. Surely I should have known those big dreamy eyes, those sensitive lips, and the noble nose.

And I always thought Bill was "difficult". Difficult, because he held on to his dreams when he was a full grown man and never gave in to any of those "conventional wisdom" or "common sense". He never compromised on principles, all the way to the end.

This is the image I'd rather remember as Bil.

Daniel Kelly and Roy Graves became extremely important persons in his teen years. Daniel moved to Mexico for a few years and then moved back to Chicago. I guess that was the introduction John needed to Mexico.

Daniel made a few portraits of John and in 1991 he painted one for me.

Daniel killed himself in the mid-'90s when he was in his early 70s. Just did not want to get any older, any more disappointed with life. He had a point. It is very hard to deal with a life without meaning.

This seems to be the only photo of Roy that I could find.

Given that there were poinsettias and John did not have a sweater or jacket, it must be Florida. And the year must be in the late 60's or early 70's. And that young person, could it be Tom (who is now 52)?

Roy moved to Central Florida (first Winter Park then Maitland) in mid-late '60s and, forty years later, we did, too.



John went to New York to see Rum Dass. He slept on the fire escape outside of a friend's very small apartment for a number of nights.

John took this picture. They were talking about suffering– the universal human suffering. They picked up that again briefly in Chicago in late '80s when Rum Dass came to give a lecture in a theater on Lawrence Avenue east of Clark. "Are you still suffering?" Rum Dass asked John.

Was he then? Is he now?

How could it be that Rum Dass at 80-something and after a stroke is still alive and my Johnny is not?