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FAYE CHAN

Because Faye is the person I have lived with the longest she has had the biggest and most

profound effect on my life and my arts. I have also learned more from her about more things than

from anybody else too.

When we met we each knew things the other one didn't. She was a beginning photographer and

quickly graduated from 35mm camera to 2 ¼ square and later to 4 x 5. She learned some technical

things about printing and developing from me but from the very beginning she had her own views of

composition and what it took to make a good picture.

Because she was a photographer she understood my need to take her picture, often. When you

take a portrait of a photographer they understand that when you say, “Don't move!” it means that. Non

photographers think that means do not leave the room.

In our time together there are things she learned from me and things I learned from her but

many many more things we learned together. We were a Manhattan couple who had many friends in

the arts, painters, musicians, photographers, writers, actors and so on. Some of them were physical and

they took us hiking and back packing.

Faye transplanting blewits.

Together we entered the worlds of the running, cooking farming, baking, travel, gardening,

running a Bed and Breakfast and more. We did some teaching, her cooking, me mushrooms.

Faye at our Bed and Breakfast with the eggs that our Chickens and Ducks produced.

We sold what we didn't use in our baking and had the best eggs at the market.

Our life together has been one of adventure. Encountering the unknown like bears in the

Adirondacks to getting lost in the Allegheny State Forest to getting lost in the Stone Forest in China to

getting bewildered in Chiang Mai Thailand.

Separately she learned sewing (she made her own clothes for work), jewelry making, wood

working, plants (she had about 200 lithops in our apartment), and vastly expanded her knowledge and

appreciation of the worlds foods, and bee keeping.

I learned writing (I had some stuff published), radio (I was at times a jazz D.J.), mushrooms,

carpentry (I was an unskilled helper), and more.

Love enters through the eyes. At least for men. At least for me.

Faye had the use of an apartment on Ridge Street, lower east side, New York City. I had several

friends in the building , we met there. She had been a gymnast in high school and had that trim supple

way about her. And she was sturdy. And remained that way for the next forty years, and is still that

way. Flexible and strong. Carrying her back pack up mountains on our hikes and as we would shovel

shit in the chicken yard.

So along with her carriage she had, and has, a beautiful face. In Puerto Rico young guys would

yell out from moving cars, “I love you!” in a Budapest cafe a tipsy man gave faye a 100 forint note!

It was in appreciation of her beauty. And she has a universal face. In Nepal they thought she was

Tibetan, in Thailand they thought she was tribal. In Mexico they thought she was an Indian. In New

York they speak to her in Japanese.

She has a great laugh. It is an unrestrained laugh. She laughs with abandon, if it is funny. If not,

no laugh. And with that laugh, beauty and creativity she has been the most important person in my life

for forty years. Faye also has a great sense of humor. On speculating about them, would they go to

work to spite King?

We have grown together and grown old together.

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