It’s been nearly a week when a large part of my life shattered in my mind. I received an unexpected phone call from one of my closest friends while at work, and am, in a way, wishing I never picked up the phone. My friend Phil called me because he noticed I hadn’t gone online that morning, to tell me Keith Alexander had passed away the night before. It didn’t even clue in at first. I heard “Keith died last night.” over the phone. And my response was “Keith who?” Because Keith Alexander was my Superman, and Superman isn’t supposed to die, so why would I think he was who Phil was talking about?
We talked for a few minutes. I was at the time in a very un-airconditioned warehouse in the middle of a heatwave packing and wrapping skids of envelopes while dripping in sweat all over my phone. And I was very glad it was a big skid I had already nearly finished, because I would have fell over from the shock. But there wasn’t much to say, so we parted off the phone. And I spent the rest of the day working in a haze, not really thinking, and trying to imagine how this could have happened.
At lunch, sitting by myself I cried a little. Thinking of how in such a short amount of time of knowing this “Keith Alexander” character existed, how much he influenced my life, from making me interested in Japanese culture (and not hating them for the sake that they’re Japanese,) to the beauty of martial arts involving tools (previously I had only considered open hand combat,) to reading and listening to music, the joys of research and technology, man-powered vehicles such as bikes (him) and unicycles (me), a variety of school projects I had him look over for his opinion (and strong opinions were definately given,) to the fact I was sitting in my car, at my job, because he more than helped me with my resume and interviewing skills.
I never realized one could feel so close to a person I’d never met before, in such a short amount of time, through words and phrases. I was excited with him when he first seriously became a snobby roadie with a way-too-expensive bike that could likely have been a downpayment on my first house. I argued with him ad-naseum of the fact that unicycles were a more effecient vehicle because of direct drive. I even challenged him to a race, uphill, both ways, with me on a unicycle just so he would stop calling me a clown on IRC. Other than prerecorded interviews, or very infrequent audioblog posts, I’ve heard his voice twice, through a VoIP program he introduced me to.
I recently checked my visitors log, to see who’s been coming to this page and where they were coming from. I was shocked to see 32 hits this past Tuesday, with another 20 on the Wednesday. Curious I checked where they were all coming from. Different pages, but landslide majority were from Keith’s Blog (nootrope.net/blog) and realized my blog is linked under “Buddy” in his. I’m proud to call Keith Alexander a buddy. And am extremely honoured he did the same.
My last conversation with Keith was regarding pictures he had posted by Jerome, a Montreal based photographer who visited New York almost exactly a week prior. There was one action photo of him sprinting on his newest bike in a blur of speed. I immediately IM’ed him after seeing it, to say “All that black spandex makes you go faster, huh?” And his reply, simple as always. “Yes. KA” His last post to his IAM page was exactly a week ago today.
Other than “Keith, I’ll miss you, you jackass.” There really isn’t much left to say.
