yesterday today tomorrow red green blue black

[whiteandwood]

Though I had known since yesterday in the car ride across the other bridge on our way home, today we were filed into a room with rows of red padded chairs arranged in an arc facing forward towards our director's grim frown making the announcement that yesterday Bob Miller had cast himself off the span on the Golden Gate Bridge through fog to water and thus ending his life in an ambiguous region -- did he die in the San Francisco Bay or the Pacific Ocean? In many ways, Bob Miller was at the start of this museum Frank Oppenheimer's creative accomplice. Obsessed with with the natural phenomenon of light, his visionary influence here is profound, his impact is immeasurable. I did not know the man well. He had left after Frank had died, long before I came to work here. I did meet him earlier this year. He took me outside and showed me that you could project images of the sun through your hands. He showed me how to reverse shadows. I became obsessed with light. On my right forearm is a tattoo representing the primary colors of light. People were crying. I felt like a tourist. Stories of his life were told. I felt like a tourist. He had ghosts. And it was obvious even to me in the few short hours I spent with him. Haunted by episodes similar to mine. I felt like a tourist. When it was over we all stood up, I had expected people to clap as if it were any other gathering, but people don't clap for the dead; my boss who sat behind me picked up his chair and put it in the stack, and so - so did I, and so did everyone else.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/light_walk/