Homage to my friend Richard

I got caught smoking. It'd been a long LONG time since I was enslaved last to the demon weed, but alas...and again.

Having been caught, and then caught, I had to think...so I thought.

All the times, all the smokes...all the cigarettes, cigars, and pipes of my past.

They are numerous, and the number is vast.

And there's this box. It came from Richard.

Now I must say Richard and I knew each other when I was a kid, so he NEVER gave me anything to smoke. But I got this box, and later found my own things to fill it with.

What Richard did give me was a fearlessness about expression and visual art that has served me (rather well or poorly depending on whom you ask) for a lifetime. I don't know what I would have become had I not known Richard. He showed me how to be gleeful about colors.

I still have a wonderful broken briar-wood pipe that's almost as old as some of Richard's oldest paintings. I got lot of great and quiet time from that pipe before I broke it.

I still have the pieces...perhaps for another time.

Or not.

I might get caught.