I was inspired by OmbudsBen’s great post, Woof Woof and pulled some shots I took a couple of weeks back at a local park. I love dogs. It was a joy to see, a) a dog that weighed more than one pound, and b) one playing in happily in Fairy Lake.

I miss my big, sometimes dumb, Golden Retriever. I hope she is living the life of Reilly in Canada.

Chairman Mao has been gone for 26 years but his visage fills markets
across China. Postcards, coins, busts, and the well-known little red book
are all for sale. He is immortal. Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong SAR.

Hollywood Road is an interesting street. High-end galleries and artisans line the street. Behind the scenes, you can find bobbles in an alley. Central, Hong Kong SAR.

Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong SAR.

A lot of meat. Open-air market, Central, Hong Kong.

The sun setting behind the mountain was fitting. It was over, for now. I readjusted my sunglasses; the beggars didn’t need to see a grown foreigner with tears in his eyes.

I walked a block to the restaurant that had been a favorite. I remembered the first time with you and your boyfriend. As a wavering vegetarian you tried the barbecued chicken. We drank cold draft beer and laughed about a life you were just beginning, one I had lived for half a year.

I ordered a double and drank to your mother, whom I had never met, but whose passing had tattooed your tears onto my flesh. She was worth a double of Irish. The pair of you must have been two in a million.

The second drink was to you: Your past in my new country, and the laughter we had shared inside the office and at outside cafes. The third was to your present and the trial that lay ahead. The fourth was to a new future and the cavalcade of successes you deserved.

The fifth drink, in a new bar, was to your impish smile, now on a ferry to the airport, headed home. The sixth was self-indulgent, a little something to kill the dead feeling inside.

The seventh was to re-hydrate, to reload my tear ducts. I hadn’t cried, really cried, in recent memory. It felt like we were breaking up, I told you, there was no other way to describe the feeling, like part of me had been amputated. We were breaking up, lovers of a profession, not each other.

Irish was once a crutch. I am no longer lame, but that day it whispered like a long-lost lover. When one good friend leaves another is needed, temporarily.

The eighth drink was from a bottle I bought in a corner store. I drank to loss, yours and mine. I drank to the good fight we fought, hand in hand. Comrades. Colleagues. Co-habitants of the Middle Kingdom.

What power you have, to reduce a bitter man to tears, a man who loved you platonically as he has few. It is that power that will see you through the pain, and heal those around you.

The setting sun rose the next morning. The world had not ended as I felt it would. I saw you in the faces you taught. You were not gone. My glass was empty, and the tears had been wiped away.

I share your pain, my friend. We are family. The piece of me I felt was missing is with you. I will never be far away.

Farewell, for now.