W. A. Chan T. G. or, "Tachi," as he was affectionately known by his artist friends, was in his 80's. I was barely 21. We met one night in San Francisco's North Beach, in the Coffee Gallery bar where I sat drawing in a sketchbook. Chan loved artists and invited himself to sit at my table. And during that first meeting, as would be our custom for countless nights over the next 2 years, the old man spoke to me with great sincerity for more than an hour, and no matter how hard I tried --- and believe me I tried --- I simply could not grasp one single word he said. For instance, Harold Lavighe told me later, that "firecracker," for Tachi was, "file-clackle". You see the problem. Embarrassed, and bluffing to cover it, I thought I should at least, be able to "get" some of what he was saying. Mostly, I sensed he was attempting to convey important information, and I longed to know what it was. Now, I do not mean to suggest that Tachi was in any way joyless. He was in fact, just the opposite, and in spite of what I took to be serious content in his message, fairly chirped with what I took to be genuine enthusiasm for life.

Medium weight, around five and a half feet tall, he always wore in an impeccable three piece suit and tie, topped off with an improbable billed cap of the type that have fur ear flaps tied on top with a string and a sun visor beneath the bill, that can be pulled down on sunny days. Thick glasses made Tachi's eyes appear three times normal size, like enormous black pitted olives. Over the next eight years I never discovered what the "W. A." or for that matter, the "T. G." in his name actually stood for.

Tachi was a true bohemian, and a fine friend --- in every sense of the word. He used his hands when talking, laughing frequently. And he had a particularly fine way of laughing, intentionally comical, with silly faces, but always, beneath all, something deeper I wished to know. I also sensed that he had "chosen" me for some reason. As though he had walked into my life with an important message, and was trying to break through my young veneer with some difficulty, therefore, trying all sorts of ways to reach me. Or perhaps he was speaking this way intentionally as a test of my patience, unwilling to cast his pearls, or even "forcing" me to learn to listen in a new way. We saw each other many times a week, usually at night in the Coffee Gallery where he engaged me in long conversations, some lasting hours. And for two years I listened, while drawing in my sketchbooks, unable to penetrate his message.

Tachi would jump up from his chair at times, and do a sort of Chinese Zorba dance by our table, expressing joy. At least I assumed he was expressing joy. Either that, or he was completely nuts and either way, I liked him immensely. Then, after each laughing jig, it was back to stern pronouncements in hushed tones, every word, totally unintelligible to me, delivered like a spy passing on information to his contact. To which I would nod "yes" somehow knowing he knew I didn't have the slightest idea what he just said. And it is not quite correct to say that I did not understand a "single" word he said. Early on I did get my name, which Chan pronounced, "Daby".

In all the years I knew him, unless ordering noodles in Chinatown, I never saw Tachi speak to anyone except artists. He would often play chess in the window of the Coffee Gallery and did play with non-artists, but that was his one exception. Of course, in chess there isn't a lot of conversation.

Mr. W.A. Chan T.G. ©1966 Harold La Vigne

His impenetrable speech was always punctuated with hoots, flashes of teeth and gold, glistening aquarium eyes, bursts of mock anger, or sweet bird whistles and other sound effects, always leading to a high moment, a grand summation of his lesson for the night, of which alas, I had no clue. I remember reaching a time in our friendship when I figured I would never understand him, and really didn't care anymore. He was my friend. So what.

Chan had one trait that every artist who knew him spoke of. That is, when he was through for the night, he never left, never said goodbye. Tachi would somehow, simply, be gone. Sometimes, walking down the street with him I would feel an absence, glance around and, poof. This ghost trick could be unsettling as hell. Also, in eight years Chan never said, "hello". He simply appeared. One night, several friends including Tachi were over to my studio for dinner. We all sat around, talking, drinking wine and making pork won ton. We sat in a semicircle of chairs, folding won ton skins over spiced meat and sealing the pastry with water. About a half hour into this, someone commented, "Where's Chan?" This could be downright spooky. He did this with everyone. And no one ever caught him. We all had a list of personal Tachi disappearance stories, all of them strangely funny. I haven't a clue how my Canton coyote was able to do this.

One night the old gentleman --- kazaped! --- in front of me on the street, a few inches from my face, looking deeply into my eyes. To my extreme discomfort actually, since at the moment I was peaking on Sandoz Laboratory LSD --- glass ampule stuff, direct from Albert Hoffman's lab in Switzerland.

Chan moved closer, looking deeper, and with grave concern whispered, "Oh no Daby, too Got-damned much'a fluckin' dopey!"

And from that moment on, for the next six years, I understood every word W.A. Chan T.G. ever said to me. What a relief that was. And I'll never know if it was the LSD, or he just decided to let me hear him at last. In the next moment, Chan stepped back, and reaching into the side pocket of his jacket, with great ceremony, produced a flat object carefully wrapped in Chinese newspaper, which he presented to me, and which I received in full lysergic ritual, on upraised palms, as if he was handing me the ancient Asian secrets of life.

"Open ...", he insisted, "... sure, go'head!"

And so, in one of those freaking eternal acid moments I carefully folded back this mystic newspaper of timeless wonder trying to imagine what this treasure could possibly be. Tachi had never given me a gift before. This was a truly special. An artwork? A special I Ching?  And finally, there on the paper, lying fully exposed under the light of a street lamp, glowing like a square flying saucer, lay a perfectly made sandwich consisting of two pristine slices of white bread, and one thin slice of baloney. No mustard, no mayo.

"Oh ...  thank you Tachi, ah ... a ... baloney sandwich ..."

The mad monk leaned toward me, looked deeply into my eyes once again and carefully mouthed the word:

"Ba - looooon - ey".

And we laughed until we cried. I will never forget his globe eyes in those lenses and connecting as one being for an eternity of ridiculous fun only angels must usually know. Just staring at that stupid sandwich. Understanding everything about the world and our silly roles in it. And it was the I Ching. And we did cross the Great Water. And we did know propriety in thought and action. And the sandwich was Confucius. And Confucius say, "Ba -looooon - ey!"

My god how I loved Tachi.

I was utterly amazed to finally understood him too, of course. He was happier than I was and got right on with his teaching. Chiefly, in the days and weeks to follow, he would point out window displays, neon lights and signs on the side of busses saying, "See Daby, how the artist doooo! Oh yea, the artist he doooo Daby. The artist, he got to be dooooing allatime, oh yea!"

Among other things he had strong opinions on health, herbs, longevity, sex, art and business.

Concerning art business: "Oh da trooou-ble nowadays? ... too got-damned fluckin' mucha' monkey beesnezzzz".

On sex: "Oh yea Daby, woman, she good too you know. Oh got-damnnn right! Got to get the juicy flowin' Daby. Oh Got-damned right!" Then Chan would hold his elbows to his sides and do a sort of Chubby Checker twist, very fast, while forming his lips into a small square, and trumpeting like an elephant, then he would sing out the words, "Juicy, juicy, juicy!"

On health: "E - ver - y - ting in moderation Daby".

Chan said, "Everything in moderation," to me at least ten thousand times in the following six years. A wise man ate anything. A wise man did anything. Fat, candy, cigarettes and even dope, wine, have sex with women, or men, but only a little bit, just right, sometimes. That living life to the fullest was all a matter of balance. A little of this and little of that. "Little" being the key. And that he had devoted a lifetime in the study of small balances, something he considered of utmost importance for healthy longevity. And no one could argue that Chan was not his own best example of spry longevity. In his eighties, he was not only fit, walking miles every day, but he was filled with great humor about the predicament of living in a nutty world, overflowing with life in fact.

Another thing he said often was this: "Life is hard Daby ... gotdamned hard, oh yea, but life is to enjoy you know. And da artist, he enjoy life!".

The night he found me on LSD, Chan led me by the elbow to a nightclub on Broadway where  a young Isaac Hayes must have been preforming. At least the black singer's head was shaved shiny bald, with a mass of silver big-link chains around his neck. The joint, called, "Mothers,"  was decorated to look like the interior of a womb. Parachute cloth hung from the ceiling and down the walls,  painted all over with branching blood vessels and veins. Chan thought the place was funny. Sitting inside this giant womb then, my teacher, like some museum docent at the Palace of the Legion of Organ Meats, indicated areas of special interest. He ordered us both a shot of what he called, "Black-belly blandy," and the whole time we were there he returned to the painted veins and arteries covering the walls, "See Daby, the artist, he got to be doooing all 'a time?"

I like to think Chan took me on as an eight year summer project. He knew I was eking by on too little money and too much wine. Tachi had occasionally found me on the street attending, "hard-knock wino classes". Once he saw me with two black eyes, after I'd been mugged and said, "Oh Daby, too bad. Betta' you have only one black-eye ... remember, every-ting, but in moderation'". My god how we used to laugh.

After I had known him for about three years he invited me to his apartment in Chinatown for a visit. The place was small. Three rooms with a bathroom down the hall. Chan had a canary. When we entered, as though calling, "Hi honey, I'm home", he twittered a bird call to the flitting animal, which it answered immediately. Then approaching the cage the old man whistled tenderly and I was treated to a beatific duo that went on for some minutes, the two of them chirping together like a mystic vaudeville act.

The place was set up for painting oils. One small room was his studio combination bedroom. Another contained at least fifty original oil paintings on canvas, many framed in ornate carved and gilded moldings. They were carefully stacked against the walls until they nearly filled the room. Chan mostly painted Chinese mystical scenes and personages. Story paintings including Emperors and Empresses, saints and mythological figures, all done in a wonderfully rich, yet naive style.

One work was remarkable. It ranks even today as the only sports related item I have ever wished I owned. Tachi had painted a football game, a sort of Grandpa Moses football game. The painting had no perspective whatever, with players positioned evenly over the entire field, resulting in the most improbable play in NFL history. The view was from the goal post. To lend scale Tachi painted the players different sizes, from specks of color at the far end of the field, to larger and larger as they got closer. The largest player was a beefy center, bent over in the extreme foreground of the picture, as though he had just hiked the ball to the viewer. There was no football in the painting I could see.

"So, I'm the quarterback, right?"

"Oh yea, got-damn right!", Chan said, happy I'd "gotten it", roaring with laughter.

The chief feature of the painting was the center's ass. Tachi thumped the oil with an unlit cigar and said, "Only one ting maka' betta' painting ... painta' big footprint here, on ass!", and we were off roaring again.

Chan always held a cigar and matches ready but never actually smoked. Frequently during conversations he would use the cigar as a prop. He had a favorite saying about artists. Whenever he recited it, Tachi would slash his cigar through the air, pretending to make a bold painted stroke.

"The artist, he make a baby. Whan! Ban! Dat baby born! An da artist, he lovin' dat baby. He talk to dat baby".

Then pretending to make small brush strokes with the cigar, "he talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to da baby".

Then adding a comic shrug, "He don't know what he sayin'... he jus keep on talkin'".

My friend used to "arrive" on Saturday nights at the door of Big Al's when I was doorman. I would hear his "music" and look and there he'd be in the large crowd milling around the door. Chan had one of those huge harmonicas called an Echo Harp which he played like an enchanted gnome, from low to high, pushing the little lever on the end of the instrument to make ethereal tones. He always did this when the club was the craziest,  during full moon when everyone was nuts and I was trying to handle three things at once. I could always hear his music no matter how many taxis were honking or how much noise was coming from the club behind me. The band could be blasting "Midnight Hour", trumpets blaring through the door, and there would be Tachi in his immaculate three piece suit and tie and his improbable cap with fur flaps, blowing a simple scale in the most comical way imaginable. Cheeks bulging, eyes popping, elbows up and always, dancing a little jig. His Zorba ode to the moon, his Jules Fiffer dance to the season. He did this year round. And he "got me" every single time. Sometimes I'd laugh until I cried, leaving all the customers wondering what had just happened.

Then, with ridiculous ceremony he would reach into the inside pocket of his suit and take out a long box, then carefully open it with a gleam in his eye, replace the Echo Harp and put it back in his coat. Then I'd look again and Tachi would be gone. No wave, no goodbye --- just gone.

Tachi "almost" never quite smoked his cigars. He would occasionally place a Cigarillo in his mouth, grasping the wooden holder carefully in his front teeth, then strike a match as if to light it. Always then, abruptly, he would veer off, remembering some bit of essential herbal knowledge or other --- some bio balancing alchemy of say, clove spiced burgundy wine, and in that second, drop the burning match to the sidewalk and return to using the cigar as a pointer.

One day, after years of this, we were standing on the street visiting.

"Tachi, are you ever going to light that flucking ci-gar?"

"Dis?" he answered smiling, holding it up between us, as if realizing for the first time, he even had it.

Then using body language that clearly stated, "watch this buster", Chan placed the wooden holder firmly between his front teeth and struck a match. He let the sulfur burn from the match-head for a moment, then held the fire to the cigar and affected a series of dinky sips, squeaky little air-kisses, until perhaps, he got one thimble full of cigar smoke into his mouth. Then as though he were on stage at the Geary Theater Tachi dramatically puffed a tiny plume of smoke into the air saying, "Ahhhhhhh, berry good".

Then returned to our conversation.

I couldn't stand it, "Wait, wait , wait, wait, wait ... wait ... I mean, that's it? Now ... you let ... the cigar ... go out?".

"Oh yea Daby, e-ver-y-ting in moderation".

That evening at his apartment, after we'd enjoyed his paintings for sometime, I asked to use the restroom and was directed down the hall. Clicking on the light sent cockroaches running for cover and I couldn't help wondering why I hadn't seen any in Tachi's apartment, even when he had moved paintings in his storeroom. I certainly had them in my place six blocks away, everyone did. In North Beach, cockroaches were as common as pigeons in Union Square.

I asked Chan about it when I returned. Fairly glowing then, the man directed me back to the door I'd just come through, opening it once again, pointing out how he had carefully padded the edges of the door with folded newspaper, ingeniously folded newspaper, then glued and thumbtacked, top and bottom, as well as the sides. It was then I noticed how smoothly the door fit. Opening and closing it a couple of times produced a comforting "skoosh" equal to an airlock on the Starship Enterprise. A perfect seal assuring no cockroach, let alone flea, could possibly get in.

"Or out!", Chan said with pride.

For that was his secret. With great enthusiasm he explained how he had intentionally trapped the cockroaches inside --- so he could kill them at leisure. In fact, sealing every window, gap, space and crack in the room. Along the edges of the wainscotting, around pipe entrances and every other possible point of entryway, explaining how the work took weeks to accomplish. And, that even after all that, there had still been a nest in the kitchen he could not seem to block off.

"Cocakrooch he very smart", Chan said, tapping his head.

Then Tachi clinched his hands into fists and held them to his temples using his index fingers as simulated cockroach "feelers". He moved the fingers in tandem, like twin cannons on a destroyer. The transformation completed then, my friend became SUPER-ROACH, defender of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

In mock seriousness he said, "Cocakrooch know what you tinking. He even read your mind. Oh got-damn you betch'ca. He know. So you gotta be, huh ... not tinkin' 'bout killing him ... or he know, see. Gotta be foolin' him all'a time. If he know you killin' him, den he hidin' real good. Oh yea, got-damn cocakrooch very smart'!"

Then Chan proceeded to demonstrate for me how he had in fact, killed every roach family left in his apartment --- men, women and children, with no mercy. His third room was a microcosm kitchen with a mini-stove, sink and refrigerator, and one small table in the center with one chair. He demonstrated there, placing three half sheets of newspaper in the center of the table, then placing a cooking pot in the middle. Then he carefully bent up the edges of the newspapers, making small spaces all the way around small pot. See, after he ate his noodles, he washed everything except the pot. Bait! Tachi would turn out the lights and leave the room, shutting the door behind him, and go about his business, "not tinking about killing cocakrooch".

"Cocakrooch smellin' da noodle pot", he said, once more holding his index fingers as twin feelers.

"I leave little nooodle in bottom and he sniffin', sniffin', ummmm good, sniffin', sniffin', comin' up table leg lookin'... lookin'... sniffin' ... sniffin'. Get under table, go up 'round edge, get on top table, he try to get to nooodle pot. He go under newspaper. Den he say 'what?' Den he have to go on bottom of dat newspaper. He lookin' for noodle? Where? Where? Den up over da edge, den under another newspaper. Say 'what?' again but he keep goin' Five hours later I jump in door and turn on light and clap hands, yelling, Bam! Bam! ... an alla' cocarooch he run under paper because it dark in there".

Then W. A. Chan T. G. Would hold the pot handle, press down, and move it over the paper in an expanding spiral. "Pop, pop, pop!", Chan said, laughing.

I was stunned. And to clean up, he simply wadded up the newspapers and threw the roaches away with them, then washed the table. The roaches never got to the actual pot, they were too busy getting through the newspapers.

"You killed them all that way?", I asked, incredulous, "every one?"

"Oh yea, got-damn right I did!"

"And you came up with this? I mean, was this was all your idea?"

"Gotdamn right! Pretty good too, huh?"

"So how long did it take to get rid of all the cockroaches that way," I queried?

"Oh", he answered, "only twenty year ..."

And we laughed until we nearly choked to death.

Toward the end of the eighth year of our friendship, it became obvious that Tachi was losing his sight. He never spoke of it but I knew. My friend no longer painted, but contented himself with shooting color transparencies of shop window displays at night, especially high fashion mannequins. One night he treated me to an amazing slide show. Chan could still see the store windows glowing at night, as well as his own bright slides glowing on the screen in his small apartment, so he contented himself visually, by strolling the city making shots with an old, flat Kodak with an expanding bellows. He carried the camera in one of his inside suit pockets along with his Echo Harp and was never without either. The pictures were multiple exposures, very colorful. They were mostly of mannequin women's faces presented strangely, overlapping, dissolving, emerging.

Then Tachi did something no one expected and probably should have. He disappeared. Chan left San Francisco and the apartment he'd lived in for sixty years and moved to Los Angeles. And as far as I know, he only told one friend he was leaving. He gave artist Harold Lavigne his new address. I didn't know Chan was gone until Harold told me.

A few days before he left, Tachi came to my studio with a gift of two small blank linoleum blocks, for print-making. He knew I loved cutting linoleum blocks. At one point I excused myself to use the toilet and when I came out he was gone.

Harold visited Chan in LA and said he was living simply and seemed content. Rick Barton said that as a Taoist, Tachi was probably pulling away from all friends and obligations to focus on dying, correctly. And as odd as it might seem, Los Angeles was a logical choice for solitude. Because, for most of us, in terms of visiting, LA may as well have been Antarctica. Using the address Harold had, I did send Chan a lino-print on rice-paper pulled from one of the blocks he gave me. I did not hear back from him, nor did I expect to. I hoped he held the thin paper up to a strong light to view the picture, as I knew he would surely recognize the subject, my faithful Japanese paint pot, "Old Friend Yatate".

When I think of Chan, I like to think of my old friend playing chess in the window of some cloud hidden Coffee Gallery bar in North Beach Heaven. At times, when things have been most difficult, when life has threatened to overwhelm me, and I reach the pit, right then, out of "invisible cigar smoke" I sense Tachi's presence, even "glimpsing" my teacher in the street at times. There he'll be in his funny hat, playing the echo harp, doing a step or two of the ancient Asian jig and smiling with those most improbably wonderful eyes. And I'll smile back and feel better, knowing if Chan could live into old age dancing, indeed, if he is still alive in my heart, then damn it, I can to. And I'll  miss him, weep some too ... but only in moderation.

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