Ray

Yesterday morning while cleaning out my desk I found a very nice letter from a former student telling me how his conversations with me had influenced his perspective on life.

Yesterday evening I learned that he had "died suddenly" just over a week ago.

Still feeling shocked and bewildered.

Strange Tales of Old Davis: Unicorns in the Mist

My brother and I ended up at the same college, but after a few years I worried that we were drifting apart. I studied math and philosophy; he studied history and politics. I read sci-fi and fantasy; he read biographies and manifestos. I played folk music; he played, well, rather different folk music.

One evening the two of us were walking home together after some event on campus--maybe a movie or a concert; I don't remember. It was very foggy that night, with visibility less than a block in any direction. As we crossed the Richards Overpass, my brother paused, looked out into gray oblivion, and said "What I like about this kind of weather is that it feels like at any moment a unicorn could walk out of the mist."

For a brief moment, if a unicorn had walked out of the mist, it would not have seemed at all unusual. And at that moment I realized that perhaps we weren't so different after all.