Day 116: Relational reunion

Don was kind enough to pose for this photo in March of 2007

Yesterday we went by the Georgia O'Keeffe museum to find Don, where we first met him over a year ago. He wasn't working, but we were informed that he worked the night shift and if we came by after 7pm and knocked on the gate we could find him. We did tonight and had the opportunity to personally gift him a pack of our Limit Case postcards, one of which he is the subject. He seemed surprised and flattered to be included in the pack, and that we had come back to find him. We were relieved that he seemed to be okay with us mass reproducing an image of him without asking first. When we met him at the museum last year he truly was a limit case in the way that he reached out to us across the badge that he was wearing. At that point in time we were at the start of our 28 day trip. Don was the first person we gifted one of our "relational aesthetics" cards and starting with him made it much easier to extend them to strangers over the rest of the journey. I don't know if Don is an artist, but tonight as the three of us stood in the dark street talking through the museum gate, he reminded me of my grandfather Robert in the way that he spoke so thoughtfully about artists and the importance of their work. I was also reminded again what a gift it is to encounter strangers who are open to such spontaneous exchanges, and how rare they actually are. Thank you Don.