Paul Frischknecht, my best friend in our youth, died on Mai 9th, in Sydney. I had visited him there, two years ago, for the last time. That’s when I wrote the following little story about this man, who made out of his many years of deadly illness more than what most of us make out of a lifetime.
The Saint of the Suburbs of Sydney.
I met Paul for the first time when he was sixteen or seventeen years old. He was looking over my shoulder, at art school, when I tried to draw a stuffed animal. Two years younger than myself he had the nerve to criticize my drawing. Then I looked up to the most radiant smile I ever saw from a man. Tall, handsome, a young man to win the hearts of all the girls, he stood behind me, and we began to talk. That was the beginning of a deep friendship for some of the most important years of our lives. Together we discovered whatever would move our hearts in literature, in philosophy, in music, in long walks through the woods. An ex-student of the Steiner school he told me about Anthroposophy. I shared my first readings about Buddhism with him.
Some years passed, we both got married, he soon went away to live in Sydney, and to work there as an architect. That distance in space became a distance (weiterlesen…)
