A Strange Homecoming

On Friday, my friend Trajan Martin was killed in an accident on the Vancouver public train system. It's weird to write about this to an ostensibly public audience, or at least, an audience of people who didn't know him, because as my friend said to me, if you never knew him, you just aren't going to get it.

But I'm going to try and help you, world, get it, because I want you to know what it is that we all lost on Friday. That may sound a little overdramatic, but to people that knew him it won't.

Trajan is a difficult person to describe. He was extrodinarily charismatic, but also shy, admired by kids from the smoke hole and teachers alike, eccentric, very funny, and weird. He had pet fascinations with squirrels and craigmont soda and manipulating vowels. He wore bow-ties and sweater vests to youth parliament sessions.

He was also the most popular person in my class in high school. I don't think a single person in my grad class would disagree with that. And he wasn't popular in the typical way, in the king-of-the-hill, standing on top of the dog-pile kind of way. He would just talk to everyone. And not in a condescending, precious, oh-aren't-I-magnanimous kind of way either. He just wanted to know what other people had to say and he wanted to tell them what he had to say. I think he gave my class the permission for us to realise that smart and cool are not mutually exclusive concepts, and that it's fine, and even great, to be your own strange self. His persona had mythic proportions.

I had the good fortune of acting opposite him, of working on youth parliament projects with him and sitting next to him during alphabetically-arranged-seating grad events. I remember making smart-ass quips under my breath that he would then hear and amplify for the enjoyment of all. I remember him falling out of his chair laughing at our co-actor Kevin's performance of a crusty old Brit out on a date. I remember some backbencher scornfully asking him, during a North Shore Youth Parliament Question Period, whether he thought he had the power to change the world, and Trajan answering in the most serious and assured way, that yes, he did.

When I was in Japan for a year, he was on a similar exchange in Turkey and we wrote letters back and forth that consisted of a constant one-up-manship of outlandish tales and convoluted return addresses. His final letter was written in incredibly small handwriting on the back of a chocolate bar wrapper and included a wad of tiny paper artifacts from Ankara: bus tickets, bubble gum jokes, a packet of sugar from the Hilton, parts of a box of Kraft Dinner. Although hinted at, he never did tell me the full story of "the night [he] ate shit". Any leads on this anyone?

He was the kind of human being who was very good at digging past bullshit and I think he always tried to encounter the world on his own terms. To be in your late teens and have someone your age around to model this kind of living was quite something.

In short, he is the very last person you could imagine dying in a chaotic and meaningless way at the age of twenty-seven.

And now, he has fulfilled his obligation as valedictorian and organized the reunion of our class, albeit a year early and in the most terribly sad way possible.

In his valedictory address, he urged us to strive to be real with others and ourselves. From his model, I would add that we should also strive to stride big through the world, engage with people around us, and take joy when joy is to be had.

His model would also urge us to drink cheap-ass grapefruit pop and eat Kraft Dinner and watch really terrible B horror movies until passing out, but that one I think you can take or leave.