I first met Mei at a dim sum restaurant in Portland, Maine.

She came dressed in a funky Tibetan wool hat and handed me a photograph of one of her artworks, Tao Seeker (below). ​I was struck by this work, its searching, its journeying. 

It was October 2013 and Suzanne Fox and I had put on an event with the curator and translator Valerie Doran. A quiet legend, Valerie has worked alongside the likes of Johnson Chang Tsong-zung and played a seminal role in the emergence of the Chinese avant garde to the world in the early 90s. I had lured her up to this New England sea port to speak about 5,000 years of Chinese art history. 

At this lunch event, Mei Selvage appeared, her eyes wide with inspiration, telling me that she was an artist based here in Portland. It was almost like we had generated the entire event for her - so intensely did she respond to the themes of the talk. The two of us exchanged phone numbers and met up again the following month.

I heard the news tonight as I stood in the kitchen of our tiny apartment in the West End of Portland, cleaning pots.

Terry Gross's voice cutting through the din of aluminum pans clanging, through the ceaseless flow of thoughts. She caught me mid-air as I moved to grab another one off the counter: "... Peter Matthiessen, who died this weekend." 

Time freezes. Like a bell cutting through the forest.

That feeling when you're out in the woods and you sense a great being in your midst. You sense his passing footsteps.

And because of this, you must stop. 

I pull up a stool at the kitchen table, slowly sink down and hold my face to the speakers. And the obituary plays out.