Dear Paul,

When we last spoke, a few weeks ago, we were saying goodbye because you were planning on going to Romania to visit your family for a couple of months. You also planned to attend a conference about your art and that of Constantin Brancusi at Tate Britain, which holds works made by each of you. Who would have thought that you were headed for Eternity instead?

One cold winter night, as we were walking through your neighborhood while people were preparing for Christmas, we discussed religion and you said you were an agnostic, who believed that “people must live with utmost intensity so when their bodies go to dust they don’t cry for the lost time.” As the year 2000 was giving way to 2001, you were teaching me, then a journalism student, about art history and your work. You put me in touch with some of your former colleagues and students, and you were also trying to answer my too many questions. You were not easy to interview, I remember you ordering me to stop interrupting, to just let you work (on the Wing Hyphen at that time) and say whatever you felt like expressing.

Later, when we were looking at the Catalytic Stations, your brainchildren with metal bodies that greeted you each morning from your backyard on London’s Jackson Road, you said, “Cosmos is an osmosis of substances that interact according to varied rhythms, just like love among humans. They are stops on the way toward becoming and death. You can reach transcendence when you see the continuous dynamics between life and death. The Catalytic Stations are vital sculptures that talk about how death can be embraced.”

Though you did not believe in afterlife, I think that as long as we remember you, there is still a link between us mortals and the Eternity that claimed you. I will remember your vibrant laughter, blasting through the phone lines, over thousands of miles, even during the most wretched moments of the past three years, when you could barely utter a few words. Those were the oddest conversations for me because it felt like being back in Eastern Europe during Communism and trying to listen to a scrambled Western radio station. When you just couldn’t find any other way to beat dysphasia, you’d burst into laughter.

Though the stroke from the summer of 2001 took your speech away, your brain seemed to be as active as before, and you continued to work, attended speech therapy, and tried to get healthy again, you said. You understood my updates on life in America and tried to make comments on what was happening in the world. You enjoyed keeping yourself informed and turned on the TV really loudly so I could hear over the phone that you followed the news. You used to say: “I can understand everything. But I cannot speak. If only people could talk to me very slowly, that would help.”

You even sent me notes, scribbled onto a copy of an old text of mine, whose words you underlined like a teacher trying to draw the attention of his student. Your comments resembled encrypted messages, made of dates and key words: “stroke, cancer, dysphasia, muscles-mouth-message-a word, tone of voice, to read Platon-Aristotel-Derrida, drawings, the Mind.” And others, which I guess I will understand sometime, many years into the future.

I could imagine you copying those words from medical reports and older texts of yours, like a painter copying a picture, because by then you had also lost the ability to spell or write independently. You did repeat though, over and over: “I work. I still work.” You were so proud of it. Your work was still your greatest joy.

You were also proud of each word that you could pronounce a little bit better after months of exercise. English went away first. You kept some of the French learned in your youth. But Romanian made the bedrock of your fragmented, halting speech. I tried to read your mind, based on your tone of voice and on some key words. After a long stream of options that I would offer, you’d say, “yes, yes, yes” when I managed to grasp a shadow of your thought.

I will miss those conversations, difficult as they were. I will miss your healthier days when you were urging me: you have to enjoy life, you have to dance, you have to swim, you have to run and ride a bike, you have to be patient, you have to read a lot, you have to write well. When I answered that I was too busy to have fun, you’d say: look at how I dance, despite my age and despite my leg pain, look at how I play with words. And you’d send me texts you wrote about your art or poems, whose wording was so complex and playful that I could never find their appropriate translation into English.

Art world people will keep your memory alive by showing your works and talking about your multi-faceted artistic and teaching careers. Your friends will also remember the details that made up your charisma: the bright colors and the fancy hats you used to wear; your exquisite culinary tastes and your appetite to explore new places and new people; how short-tempered and stubborn you could be in your arguments; how dreamy and generous you were in your good moments.

They might remember the musty but homey apartment, furnished with wooden fittings you made yourself, in which you lived for more than twenty years. It had a warehouse feel with its hundreds of paintings and drawings, dozens of wooden sculptures, stacked on top of shelves, under tables and makeshift beds. Its huge windows looked out on the quiet street and your small backyard filled with metal sculptures. The strong light of sunny days slashed through clouds of cigarette smoke, but you wouldn’t give up smoking and black coffee no matter what. All your life was stored in neat files of pictures, newspaper clips, letters and diary entries. Your books filled entire walls. Your kitchen table was covered with invitations to art events. Your old black radio poured out classical music all day long.

Now that you’re gone, your memory will stay alive as long as your art survives and as long as we’re telling your story.

Rest in peace, Paul.

Maria Stoian - San Francisco, June 24, 2004