I've been away from the forums for a while ( again due more illness problems, It Sucketh), and Carl Jacobsen just told me about an hour ago about Jim's death. I'm so shocked I'm incoherent...
It's like hearing that your favourite uncle died three weeks ago, and the funeral and everything's over with, and you missed it all.
Carl and I spoke for a long time tonight about Mr. Mattis and our memories of him. We'd met him at various knife shows, and had dealt with him many times over the phone and via email. (Between the two of us, I don't know how many knives we've bought from him. I think James got a kick out of selling me a knife to give to Carl for Christmas, and then turning around and selling Carl a knife to give to me for Christmas! And neither of us would know until we opened the packages and said, "Did you get this from Mr. Mattis?" and then we'd both laugh...)
And Jim's posts, both to newsgroups (in the Bad Ol' Days) and this forum were a delight and a joy to read--always a voice of respect and kindness, always a voice both humourous and wise, always a voice of wry reason in sometimes tumultuous threads.
How could such a voice be stilled?
My first knives came from Chai Cutlery a few years ago. My most recent knives were purchased from him only a few months ago. My very first introduction to Sharp Shiny Toys was reading the wonderful paragraphs on Chai's web site (which Carl had pointed me to in an effort to explain his obsession with SST). James has been like a mentor to me, as he has surely been to all of us.
As Carl put it: How could someone so full of life, so full of the joy and wonder of life, and so integeral to the lives of so many people, be so suddenly gone? It's just impossible to comprehend.
I do feel as though he was a favourite uncle of mine. He was always one of the first to answer my posts; and in his posts, his conversations at shows, and his phone calls, he always had a personal warmth, a connectedness to others that he showed in his words, his humour, and his manner. He liked to hear about my native heritage, and I remember a few times when he embarrassed the heck out of me on the forums by quoting from something I'd written and saying how cool it was--this, from a man I myself looked up to!
And one post, for some reason, is just choking me up at its very memory--the thread where we were talking about the kind of music we liked, and he listed some of his "odd tastes", and then I listed some of my own, and he wrote back to grumble that I'd now caused him to go and spend a bunch of money on native american music.
And in other threads, threads I did not even care much about, I would read things just because it had James's name on it. That's how much I respected his wisdom and his way of seeing things.
I learned so much from him, not just about the technical aspect of knives, but about the philosophy of carrying one, the history, the place of blades in our past and in our present lives...
I'm blithering, I'm sorry. Told you I was incoherent
Toni, as a woman, my heart goes out to you at the loss of your beloved partner and friend. As a Knife Knut, my heart goes out to all of us forum members who have lost such a wise and unique voice in our community.
James, if you can read this, I just burnt a bunch of sage from the Southern California desert near your home in your honour. I've got a candle lit in your memory. Next to it and the sage are a few of the many knives that came to my home from yours (not the least of which are my beloved Spyderco kitchen knives, which you and Carl chose personally for me).
I hope you're having a great time with all our bladewise ancestors, and I hope your spirit will continue to guide all of us who carry a blade, so that we will always carry wisely; so that we will learn to laugh when we cut ourselves because we were not respectful enough of the sharp edges; so that we will always pass on the knowledge of the usefulness of sharp-edged tools to those around us.
I'm honoured and privileged to have known you and to have learned my love of the blade in part from you.
yah tey, Jim Mattis. And Toni, may you know joy at your husband's memory, and peace at the knowledge of all the lives he has touched.
Count mine amongst them.
Sandi
aka silverwing
[This message has been edited by silverwing (edited 10-08-2000).]
