☆ STARSAILOR ☆

My sister sent me these photos again today . . . they were taken last December in Friedrichshain by a 7-foot-tall (seriously) Dutchman who galloped through a throng of people on a crowded sidewalk to get to me. He asked if he could take my picture. This had only happened to me once or twice before so I was momentarily confused. I pointed toward my chest and said, “Me . . . ?”

And so I got my picture took by the Running Dutchman (while, unbeknownst to me, my sister documented it from a different angle). He gave me his card and told me to check his website in a few days, and then he hauled ass in the opposite direction.

I was in the throes of intense psychic pain when these were taken. I was emotionally and spiritually exhausted and was wandering around in a haze. I wish I could say it lifted my spirits for a street photographer to find me visually interesting, but it didn’t. I was barely present inside my own body here. I spent the next three months suffering in the outermost darkness where not even time exists. Exactly one month later, I very nearly died of an overdose in Tokyo. And yet I live.

So why am I posting these pictures again if the memory of that time reminds me of my own despair? Because I’m not afraid. Hah!

Remember what the fella said: the world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places . . . I hope that is true.