Words from friends-Guang

My dear friend,
A shien (although they all called you eatbeef, I still like to call you this way)

Please understand that it’s just too hard for me to write these things down. It’s been almost a year since you’re not around and I still can’t get used to it. I know you would never read this letter, as you would never know we’re working on your photography gallery.

We’ve known each other for 10 years and we had shared lots of memories: Remember the night we hid in your room to smoke together in the toilet in Kaoshung while travelling around Taiwan? And those crazy ideas, like using the flash to shoot each other’s image so frequently that we can get blind?

Who can imagine that you have such passion under your tender look? Your blurry, shaking, and restless images, and the mostly-desolated words; your insistence on using toy cameras only; and your waking up at 6 am every morning just for proceeding the cyanotype printing with the great sunshine during the summer we stayed in Nanshijao.

For one time, I thought after you completed all the treatment in Taipei, came back to Kaoshung, everything would just go back to normal like cancer never came to you. And we can pretend nothing ever happens. You could get back to your ordinary life again. But everything happened so fast and violent. I’m really sorry, my friend. If we could start it over, I would spend more time with you to do anything you want to do.

It’s always lonesome for me in photography. I never know other good friends in this area except for you. Until this year, I met some of yours when we get together to work on your photography gallery. I’m glad to meet them, those friends you hang out and took photos together. It’d be even better if I could meet them in other circumstances.

My dear friend, thank you for your accompany in the past 10 years. I will always miss the good days we spent smoking, drinking, having coffee, listening music together, as well as every shot we took. And I would like to say this again, even though I don’t believe in god: Tonight, I will still pray for you.

Wang chi-guang, Pin-shien’s roommate.