Joe is one of my new friends in Seattle. His day time job is managing a project of Public Health for Seattle and King County, mainly for drug users in Seattle. They are, for example, providing clean needles for drug users, in order to prevent HIV infections, as well as social advice for those in need.

It is an important job, but for me, Joe is foremost a painter.

He has a unique style, painting almost comic-like reductions of persons.

It is eerie how he manages to capture the person, and their personality while reducing their outlines and faces to their basic features.

Over a few days I saw a series of pictures evolve, that he prepared as a gift to one of his best friend’s weddings.

I saw the outline take shape, the colors, the expression…

And yet, even as I had never seen his friend in person or on a photo, I felt like I could single her out in a crowd of people.

And indeed, once I saw the wedding party pictures, I felt like I knew her already.

I’m no art critique, I go along with what I like, what touches or moves me, regardless of style, technique or form of media. I’m fascinated how he brings life to the canvas.

It was inspirational to meet him, and to hang out, either in Volunteer Park in the sun, or having after-work drinks, or sharing a great Ramen soup in a new Japanese Restaurant.

It’s meeting people like Joe that make this trip so incredibly rich. As I move along from city to city, and I sometimes get lost in knowing where I actually am, making these connections is probably the most rewarding.

Even if it is just for a fun evening in a bar with people I just met and won’t see again.

Though I hope to take many of them along, while I move on and further and further from where I met them, I hope to stay in touch, with email, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or any other means, and see them again when I’m back the next time.

I feel like, as I move along across the planet, I start so many stories, and each time I leave a place, I leave so many open, unfinished stories behind, loose threads that I feel like having to reconnect again, one day.

It reminds me of the last moments in Michael Ende’s Neverending Story, one of the greatest books ever written, when Bastian wants to cross over from Phantásien into our world.

The Water of Life wants to know if Bastian has finished all the stories he began in his journey, but he has not. Only after his friend Atrejú vouches for Bastian and promises to complete all the stories for him, the Water lets him pass.