Jonathan Corrie was one of my best friends when I was a boy – A letter by Luke Murphy

Nobody is just one dimension, just one thing. A man who was homeless died on the streets of Dublin, just a few hundred metres from the Dail. Luke Murphy knew him well when they were younger, “Jonathan Corrie was one of my best friends when I was a boy“:

Don’t scorn him for having chosen his life of heroin and homelessness. There were choices along the way, but I think his brain was made so that he couldn’t say no, any more than he could say no to climbing the highest tree.
His crayon artwork took a bird’s-eye view of the river, but he never managed that in life: there was just a series of moments and impulses as he plunged along with the flow, and for a while I joined him, and the journey was exciting, but I was able to swim back to shore before the day turned cold and the current became treacherous and brought him out to sea.
He was a boy who could make anything, climb anything, and run like the wind.
Somewhere, he still is.