250 Image-Content of the Day 2018/10/31 of-by patrick wey https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
Don moved into my neighbourhood when i was in grade eight. We became the best of friends until he died at 40. Don, as many in this world had a drinking problem that eventually let him to his death. I remember one autumn afternoon sitting under a huge weeping willow in a school yard near his home. We talked about life and death slipped into the air as it tends to do. He talked about suicide a few times but i paid it little as we had talked about so much so many times. I think it was the day after christmas that he chose that tree to dangle from, dead.
An addictive high can often take you much lower then one can possibly imagine.
I remember just beginning to do sweats down at Verns lodge in Guelph. I had only done a few and was having a terrible time when things got tough and super hot that i would get unbearably paralyzed in my hands and arms. I had asked to get out for a breather between rounds which was the custom for the weaker ones.
It was my first new years eve sweat that year and i vowed to stay in no matter how hard it became in honour of my true friend Don Tucker. Between the third and fourth round i couldn’t handle it any longer and i asked to get out. I crawled out paralyzed and on my elbows into the cold blizzard hot as hell. I sat by the fire for a few minutes feeling somewhat defeated when a message strong cleared my head with the understanding that i had absolutely no right to judge Don for what he had done, that nobody does. Vern called me back in knowing something was going on, as he often acknowledged, and i finished the rest of the sweat with a new strength embedded in my heart.
I have felt guilty at times knowing there was more that i could have done for Don in those last years when he was struggling, but life is that way.
That is about thirty years ago now and today halloween, is his birthday.
Don was the only one, ever, in my life that could have a twist in his eye when he could sense any bullshit i was throwing out to the world and with that same twist i would without any hesitation observe my fraudulent attitude and get right back into the scene, clear and honest. We learned that ‘trust’ on long nights with alternative medicines swimming in and around our brains as we travelled around the countryside between town to towns in the late sixties.
Don was a great artist, he had it in his soul. He didn’t fake anything.
Once, we were best friends.
Don loved me reciting a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, titled ‘Past One O’Clock.
I recited it at his funeral….
This poem was found among Mayakovsky’s papers after his suicide on April 14, 1930. He had used the middle section, with slight changes, as an epilogue to his suicide note found in his coat pocket.

Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

Mayakovsky was about to be sent to Siberia, for ever, and his love was in Paris whom he would never see again.
We all have our limits, that was his and Don had his.
Some of us are much too sensitive and delicate to survive in this abrasive and often cruel world.
Image circa 80’s