See, the object of the game is we don't see it as one.

So the Facebook world has been in a bit of an uproar lately over this Kony business. When I first watched the viral video, I took it at face value. I was unaware of much of Africa's issues and political goings-on and what I saw was an average white American spotlighting the issue of child slavery and translating said issues to not only the rest of the world, but struggling to translate them to his own young son. The video did an excellent job of stirring my emotions and I was often torn between shedding thick-throated tears and managing a broiling, uncomfortable anger. I also, however felt a slight uneasiness while watching it and couldn't decide whether it was brought on by the almost-sleazy eagerness of the presenter or the niggling feeling that the whole thing may not be 100% accurate. I considered watching it and moving on, but the entire point of the video was to share it; spread the message, bring the war criminal to justice, tiptoe into the murky waters of solving world peace. I felt a twinge of guilt when considering not posting it and as I look back I am mildly ashamed at the amount of emotional control and degree of blackmail I felt whilst watching passively. After posting it I also felt a slight satisfaction, a glimmer of a sense of purpose; a feeling that, however small the effort, I had done my part. I was under no illusion that clicking 'share' constituted any sort of effort in the fight for issues far above my head, but I was avoiding the guilt, see, of not simply clicking a button. I'm astounded by the degree of influence it had on me and can't decide whether it's because of my own emotional weakness or the strength of powerful imagery paired with a heart-wrenching social message. Mere hours after the video made it's first croppings-up around the Facebook garden, the backlash began. 'Anti-' videos shot up like sharp, neon weeds, begging for the same level of attention. They sprouted and spread with the same ferocity as the original video and I immediately felt sheepish. Wasn't I more careful than this? Didn't I know to read/view with a watchful eye and a critical mind? I usually take the cop-out route, if I am to be completely honest, when it comes to political issues. I don't understand politics enough to voice my opinions on a soapbox, but I rely on my gut feelings when it comes to voting or choosing where I spend my money. I used to be much more of an activist when I was younger and I still have all the books from my 'rebellious' phase. I still feel that hot, searing hate when I perceive a social injustice or if I'm just plain feeling helpless in a governmental/political sense. I suppose I miss the time when I had the feistiness and courage to speak out although I'm sure I spewed my fair share of uneducated bullshit back then. This is where anyone could step in and say, "There's no excuse for not educating yourself," and I would have to wholeheartedly agree. However, I know that if I started getting into 'it' again, it would take me over and I would end up becoming very cynical and untrustworthy. I suppose I'm a bit one-side-or-the-other. I'm either fire-bellied and balls-deep into the thick of activism, or I'm completely passive to the point of seeming ignorant. I've become very wary of any forms of media, even the seemingly-subversive ones. I'm starting to think that 'truth' is a dream of the optimist. I'm afraid of spouting off on any political topic that fires me up for fear of getting ripped to shreds over social media. I know that a huge part of awareness is debate and discussion but I'd rather sit back, watch it unfold and form my own opinion once the dust settles. I guess I'm pretty notorious for expressing myself as meekly and passively as possible. I prefer to hide behind written words, paintbrush strokes and guitar chords.

Further proof of my lacksadaisical attitude towards the fierce protection of my values is my choice of job. To be fair, employment is hard to come by in this day and age. I was lucky enough to be employed at all over here, let alone this quickly, at a decent wage, and with reasonable hours. My job involves an obscene amount of organization and multitasking and, without sounding too cocky, I'm pretty damn good at it considering I've only been there for three weeks. Problem is, for those who don't know already, I'm working at a pharmacy. I'm working for an industry I abhor. Granted, I'm on the logistics end of things and am not directly responsible for hard-selling medication to the over-medicated, but it is still part of my job to not only reach sales levels, but to reach sales levels for an industry I do not personally support. I can't really go recommending bed rest and positive thinking to a pill-hungry population eagerly upholding the mindset of 'fighting' their ailments as opposed to coping with them. I have, first- and second-handedly, experienced the power of alternative medicine but I also recognize the power of your own mind, and if your mind tells you that such-and-such medication actually helps you, then it probably will. That's not to say that the little ethical voice in my head doesn't constantly nag me every time I entertain the idea of a future with this company. It does. Softly, but firmly. In typical Hillary fashion, the concern lies less with the fact of whether I enjoy the job and more with what my fellow hippie-leaning friends will think. Despite the fact that I'm proud of myself for securing reliable employment in a job that highlights my logistic talents, I sometimes think I would be much happier stuck at home writing all day. Queue the 'grass is always greener' paradox. When I did have time to sit at home and create all day, I didn't. I moped about lamenting my lack of job and becoming ever-less enchanted by the housewife lifestyle.

I work with a very intelligent locus pharmacist who asks me lots of uncomfortable questions when we close together and business is slow. He has drilled me about Canadian business practices, education options whilst raising children, post-secondary responsibility and working for money vs. working for passion. He challenges me to think differently, much as working a new job or watching a viral video does. Strangely enough, after only a few days of working with me, he asked why I wasn't in school and told me what my options were as far as learning from home.

"You know what one of the most financially rewarding jobs is?"

"What?"

"Being a banker. You become a banker; you will make lots of money."

"Ha! I could never be a banker. You can't become an ethical banker."

I just want a goddamn popsicle!

Lately I've been a bit bored. I haven't had a job in over three months so I've been taking out my frustration by ruthlessly comparing the country that has graciously accepted me into it's arms with my ever-faithful and frequently-abandoned Canadian homeland. My good friend and fellow country-deserter Amanda has shared my frustrations with the petty differences between England and Canada, notably the lack of dill pickles here. I finally caved and purchased an unnecessarily large jar of pickles from the 'ethnic' aisle. The text on the jar was all in Scandi-Frenchi-Slavian but I saw comforting crescent moons slices of garlic within the jar and I thought, 'Surely, surely they wouldn't put garlic in these unless they were proper dills.' I brought them home, let them marinate in the chill of our midget-sized (aka Standard English Size) fridge, and dreamt of savouring the crisp snap, the mouth-watering tang, the serious satisfaction of a gift from vinegar-soaked heaven: the dill pickle. Well, unfortunately the result was another fail, another limp, weakly-sour, mostly-sickly-sweet finger-width abomination, and basically the nail in the coffin of my search. I give up. The first thing I'm doing when I get home in August is going to Maclean's and buying the biggest damn kosher dill I can find and I am taking it into the alley behind the shop and making sweet love to it with my mouth.

To deal with the sadness and heartbreak that comes with being separated from my favourite snack food, I have taken to wandering the footpaths around my neighbourhood and uncovering the absolute beauty that surrounds our modest seaside flat. My favourite path starts at the end of our block of flats which means I get to walk past the 'crackheads' that starred in the recent episode of Hayling Island Cops that played out on a Tuesday evening beneath my balcony. The crackheads are not very friendly. They like to sit out front of their houses on jagged cuts of old carpet while their random pit-bull mutts sniff out bits of garbage and lick the oddly shaped tumours protruding from their sides. I'm not kidding. Just outside the crackhead palace is a haphazard collection of old furniture and random cast-off household waste including a 10-ft fiberglass tuna fish that has been cut in half, obviously for ease of transport and dumping. This sorry excuse for a thrift store is the last frontier before the path starts winding towards the beach through patches of shrub and the ever-present, infamous Scotch broom. The trail follows the coast of West Beach, the sandiest and warmest part of the Hayling coast. Despite protection from the West Winner sand bar, the waves can be very rough and often catch people off guard by barrelling over the barriers meant to shelter and protect walkers. The Hayling Island Golf Club stands stark and white, like a small airport, and marks the transition from sandy beach to mainly shingle and shell. Continuing on towards Gunner Point gives beautiful views of Langstone Harbour and suddenly the terrain transforms into soft sloping sand dunes which are part of a protected nature reserve. I am always taken back to the beaches of Nova Scotia in this area, the off-white sand and pebbled beach transport me to the East Coast of Canada, the scenery is so similar it's almost eerie. The sand dunes eventually fade away back into the shingle beach again and the path follows the fence surrounding the golf course, eventually leading to the Hayling Island Sailing Club. A colourful collection of shining sailboats nestle together, their halyards and rigging twanging in the wind creating spooky, metallic harmonies. Thick bushes surround the sailing club and obscure the shoreline providing shelter and privacy. Julian and I happened upon an impromptu rave in this area one Sunday afternoon and the bass from the party's shoddy set-up could be heard for miles. Shortly after the sailing club and rave area is the Hayling Ferry Launch. A small boat connects the south-west coast of Hayling with Eastney, Portsmouth. The ferry costs approximately six dollars Canadian for a 720 foot journey. I'm pretty sure that's a rip-off, but there is a pub and an ice-cream shop right next to the boat launch so you can either get booze-drunk or sugar-drunk, depending on your taste or age, and the price won't really matter. Rounding the SW tip of the Island takes you past a quaint gathering of houseboats stuck in the mud flats and salt marshes. These were surplus military boats purchased in the 1950's during the housing crisis and they nest in their cradles overlooking the Kench. The Kench is an inter-tidal inlet owned and protected by the local council. Brent geese are the main occupants of the muddy shoreline although Canada geese are also known to pop by. The Kench also offers access to a large parcel of land housing three creepy abandoned buildings which have been thoroughly explored by Julian and I. Further up the road from the Kench is Sinah Common, where remnants of World War II gun placement lay. Because of Hayling Island's similarity to nearby Portsea Island it was used as a decoy during the war to detract German enemies from important military targets. Part of the remaining structure has been converted into a rest area and a memorial to six gunners who died during a heavy raid in 1941. Oddly, with it's green rolling hills and sunken hidey-holes made of stone, the whole scene looks like the set of the Teletubbies, if Tinky Winky et al. were gun-toting war heroes. Sinah Common is basically the last sightseeing area on the trail and afterwards, it's a calming walk through English oak groves and along muddy footpaths until it breaks out into the wide fields in front of our apartment building. The whole walk takes about an hour and a half and offers more than enough of a reminder that I live in a heart-wrenchingly beautiful place and I am unbelievably lucky to have moved from one gorgeous island to another!

I have been looking for other ways to fill my time since daytime tv is just as shitty here as in Canada and I can only read for so long before I fall asleep. I decided to try my hand at volunteering, something I haven't done since high school, ashamedly. I knew I wanted to do something with the elderly or with children and by some stroke of luck, I got in touch with a coordinator for the Hayling Island Girl Guides. An older leader is meant to retire this year and they were looking for a once-a-week leader for Rainbows, their group for 5-7-yr-olds. I decided to check it out on a Friday evening and I now go twice a week. Part of 'initiation' into the Rainbows group as a leader is having a name chosen for you. We all got into a circle and I was introduced as having come from Canada. The children were then prompted to come up with the types of animals that are associated with Canada. These animals were to form the inspiration for my Guide Leader Name. The options ended up being: Moose, Beaver, Goose and Deer. I was equally rooting for and cringing at the possibility of Beaver, mostly for the comedic value, but thought it might be a bit inappropriate for me to giggle salaciously every time I heard it. The girls ended up making an association between the animal 'Deer' and the name 'Bambi', and a majority vote cemented the moniker normally reserved for porn stars and trailer park wives, onto myself. I'm actually quite happy training to become the new Rainbow Leader. I hope there is an outfit involved. I hope I get to wear glitter. All jokes aside, it's nice to be around little girls to even out all the wonderful (?) gifts that come with hanging around a little boy.

Speaking of little boy... thanks to the literary genius that is Beatrix Potter, I was awoken at 6:30 in the morning last week to read 'Jeremy Fisher' in bed.... Welcome to my life.

The Girlfriend

To date, life in Jolly Ole has been a pleasant change from the ordinary. It has been an entire shift in life experience for me and I have been dealing with my 'role' and how to define how I fit into a family. The label of step-mom has been perched on my shoulder, cackling, pecking for attention. The thing is, I'm not a step-mom, I'm an entire level below step-mom, I am the lowly Girlfriend. I know, it's completely ridiculous and self-absorbed to worry so much about it but it's difficult to come into and already-established family unit let alone dealing with the intricacies of just two people shacking up. Sometimes I feel like the third wheel. Certain outings tend to bring up more emotional issues than others and the outing taking the cake, so to speak, right now is the Kiddy Birthday Party. This weekend we went to a party for twin boys at the Heron's Leisure Centre in Haslemere. To begin with, being surrounded by twenty-plus children under the age of five is enough to make anyone at least nervous, if not mildly insane. Added to this assault of the senses is the fact that Julian and I are at least ten years younger than the majority of other parents. I have no problem socializing with people older than myself, in fact, I normally prefer it. I do, however, have a bit of trouble finding common conversational topics between myself and a group of parents. I am not a parent; nor am I, as we established earlier, a step-parent. I am The Girlfriend. The people at this party were, of course, beyond lovely and friendly and I, of course, feel like a complete dick saying anything negative about them, but I couldn't help feeling like everyone was judging me. All eyes bored into me from all angles and suddenly I'm the new girl in school again. I can hear whispers in my head, I can see the sideways-up-and-down glances picking me to pieces, measuring me against the Mum. How is it possible to feel so small again? So it was with this awkward self-consciousness that I tried to make normal conversation and act responsible and look respectable while wanting, the whole time, to chuck my heels across the room and get balls-deep in that bouncy castle. One very nice woman approached us and asked me, "So, how is your son enjoying the Royal School?" Let's look at some of the responses and their respective rejections which ran through my head in the agonizing seconds of silence before Jules saved me.

"Oh, he's not my son." Top of the awkward list. Guaranteed to evoke pity and embarrassment in the asking party and will likely end in a termination of an almost-lovely conversation.

"Oh, I'm just Julian's girlfriend." See that 'just' in there? Excuse me while I wallow in the self-pity corner sewing this large G onto my jacket so I can easily be identified as the 'Girlfriend' and subsequently avoided.

"Oh, it's great! He loves it!" I frequently, desperately, terribly wanted to lie. It's so much easier. But then I thought.... Somewhere down the line I will be found out and I will probably be forever excluded from the elite Parents' Club and become a social outcast and be the source of all heinous gossip at every child's birthday UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

So instead I said nothing. I looked away and then, through fitful glances, deferred the question to Julian, making me feel like one of those subservient wives that doesn't speak until her husband ok's it. Ugh. You can't fucking win. Upon further investigation, I found out this lovely woman was American. She had lost most of her accent and had fully settled into England with a husband and two kids.

"I met my husband in America and three months later he moved back to England. He wanted me to come over and get married but I wanted to do it my own way, so I got a visa myself and worked towards my dual citizenship when I came over."

Oh thank Jesus, I felt normal! Another foreigner! Even better, a foreigner who was as fiercely protective of her independence as I was! I started to breathe a little easier, began to loosen up and warm to the idea of a conversation I could relate to.

"Oh, sorry, please excuse me, I have to grab a place in line for the loo." Connection terminated. Back to jealously eyeing how much fun the kids in the soft-play were having. I would have felt a hell of a lot more comfortable somersaulting through a rope maze and being spat on in the ball pit. This ugly self-pity started to cling a little closer to my bones once snack time began. I sat at the back of the room on a row of chairs and watched all the parents dole out finger food, clean up spills, wipe mouths, encourage the eating of vegetables, socialize with other parents about their child's hatred of said vegetables..... I sat at the back like some weirdo in the bleachers of a kids' softball game. I, who have been the favourite babysitter of about a million kids, felt like the awkward perv that doesn't interact with anyone, just stares. What was I supposed to do? I didn't feel like one of the group, so I was reluctant to jump in on the snack-time orgy and start talking to other people's kids. Would that be weird? I remember at the last birthday party when another group of sugar-and-preservative-drugged children were stampeding around the middle of a dance floor and a very young boy got knocked over and started crying. Ever single cell in my body lit up and began firing. I desperately wanted, needed, with all my undeveloped mothering instinct to pick that baby up and comfort him. And I couldn't. I didn't. I looked about feverishly for the parents, pleading with my eyes, all but standing up and windmilling my arms screaming, "Someone pick up this baby!!!" I just thought it would be weird if I did. I thought the parents would think I was out of line. I though maybe the child would scream even harder and then I'd really feel like a shit. It was only later on that I realized how utterly stupid I had been. I saw how sensitive I had become because the whole experience of feeling like the odd one out, the outcast, had brought me right back to grade school. It was like a time machine had wrenched me from my semi-self-assured 26-yr-old body and poured me into the body of a shy, self-critical, weak little girl. I couldn't pick up that baby because I was too small. I shouldn't pick up that baby because someone more capable will come and do it. Silly isn't it?!?!?

Unfortunately, the shame and sensitivity kind of stuck with me. Another weekend, another birthday, another awkward round of explaining who I am, where/how I fit in. Because I've been knocked down a peg, suddenly even the little things are getting to me. The fact that I can't comfort Thomas when he's upset. The fact that Julian is the ultimate authority in that little man's eyes. I want to hug him and for that hug to be enough to make him feel ok. I want to show him that I can tie shoes, too! I can re-transform that transformer as well as Daddy can! Well, let's be honest, Transformers look like the inner workings of an aircraft to me and I have about the same odds of fixing either of them. Still, nothing re-affirms my place as The Girlfriend more than being brushed aside by a pre-schooler. How can someone so small make me feel so utterly sad? We dropped him off at his Mum's at the end of my big confidence-destroying weekend and to add insult to injury he wouldn't hug me goodbye.

Heart. Broken.

4-Yr-Old: 1 Hillary's Self-Esteem: Somewhere in the negatives.

Julian took me out for a lovely dinner afterwards for some desperately-needed couple time. I did feel a bit silly looking back on it after all. It's easy to take things personally and forget how even a smile from a kid can brighten up my whole world. It's hard to remember how blissfully unaware they are that your every emotion and hope and feeling are hopelessly tied to their every word. I know I'm just The Girlfriend right now, but goddamn it's hard even being that. As Ju and I sat in the tacky italian restaurant stuffing ourselves un-guiltily with creamy tortellini and smoked-salmon fettucinni we couldn't stop laughing. We laughed at the horrid salmon-hued decor, laughed at the questionable music, laughed at the other stuffy, sombre diners, laughed at each other. I thought for sure we would be asked to quiet down at any moment. After a weekend of being the responsible ones, it was wonderful to just be kids again.

Don't knock it, don't knock it, you've been here before....

This is a copy of the email I sent to my family, it's easier than writing everything again!

Ok so I figure I will fill everyone in via a big long group email because it's much easier than writing the same thing a bunch of times over! I will try very hard to keep this a regular thing, the reason it's been so long already is I have been mentally busy setting everything up here on Hayling and, of course, life with a four-year old is understandably non-stop! For those of you on Facebook, there are some pictures up from New Years if you're interested. Ok, so I'll just start from the beginning. I had a lot of waiting time in the airport so I finished an entire book and made friends with a little boy who ate all of my pre-flight snacks, talked about poop, and raided the bag of gifts Glenna had given to Thomas (don't worry, they all arrived safely). When I went to check in my bags they were over the health and safety limit, ha ha, so I had to leave a bunch of books and shoes in the airport it was tragic! I still ended up paying almost $300 for over-weight. One last financial gouge from Canada before I said farewell! The flight was relatively un-eventful. Decent veg curry for supper and I actually managed to get some sleep despite that fact that half the airplane were hacking their lungs out. The flight was 9 hours and when we touched down three police men cam onboard to escort two men from the plane. Turns out some guys drank a bit too much on the flight and were being belligerent! A nice welcome to England! Julian picked me up and it was so nice to see him, such a change from seeing him on Skype only. We drove into Hayling Island which is beautiful. Over a short bridge and through the village we came to our lovely apartment in front of the sea. We went for dinner that night at a local pub but I was so jet lagged and running off adrenaline and I couldn't finish my lovely seafood risotto and had to take it home. Julian had to work the next day so it was a 6am wake-up which started my sleeping habit that has persisted to this day: asleep before 10, awake at 6. I'm sure you all know how completely unlikely that is for me, but it's been nice to get into a proper sleeping routine and my God, you sure can get a lot done in a day if you're up before noon! Our flat is really nice, it's on the second floor of an historic building overlooking the sea and it has very high ceilings and tall windows that let the sun shine in, (on days when there actually is sun). Thomas came over on my second night and he was so excited to see me, it was really cute. He got undressed for his bath, shook his bum at me and said, 'I did a fart.' What an introduction.

On the 30th, Julian and I drove up to Lochgoilhead in Scotland where his parents have a holiday home. I can't even describe how beautiful the scenery was. The rolling hills splashed in green and sienna; squat little trees blown ragged by the wind; endless fields specked with scraggly, weathered sheep. The roads are all narrow and winding and we rally raced through the dark to the little village of Lochgoilhead, getting to the house around 11pm. Everyone waited up for us which was nice and we sat around for a bit talking. The Christies had brought their four cats up from Petersfield, a 9 hour drive, and they slinked around our feet in proper Siamese fashion. In the morning we went for a drive around the village and visited a small castle that is now privately owned so we couldn't go into it. We had lunch at the house and had some friends over around 4 to start the celebrations. The New Years party was at the local pub and we went down early which was a good plan as it filled up very fast. I couldn't believe how busy it was! There was a man doing karaoke for the music and although it sounds cheesy, he was actually quite good. The countdown (or 'the bells' as they say in Scotland) was so special and they played a Proclaimers song shortly afterwards which brought tears to my eyes. It was so typically Scottish and everyone was so friendly, I really felt at home. The next morning was the traditional Loch Swim. I wasn't feeling up to a dip considering the weather was awful and I was cold enough just standing on the shore. Julian, who still had bronchitis at the time, decided he would go for a swim and stripped down to boxers and his sister's bear hat to take a swim in the baltic water. Crazy. A couple hours later was the traditional grousee shoot in the mountains but we didn't go. I was still feeling a bit jet-lagged and was wiped out from the late night before, plus it turned out to be another big drinking party and neither me nor Julian was up for any more festivities. Apparently in Scotland, New Years lasts for about 5 days, who knows how people handle it. Must be that Scottish endurance. I really wasn't feeling well when we got back to the house and I ended up sleeping from the afternoon straight through to the next morning. I definitely learned my lesson as far as messing with my biological clock! The next morning Julian and I drove to Logiealmond where Granddad Jim was born. The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful although we couldn't find a church or anywhere to look for records. It was a very small village, mostly lovely countryside and huge old houses. Later that night the weather was so bad it woke us up multiple times. The wind was insane and has been like that for weeks, the weather system has been dubbed 'Hurricane Bawbag' in Scotland and has actually done a lot of damage. I remember seeing bits of it on the news back in Canada but seeing it first hand really brought the reality home. The next day we drove to Helensburgh to see Mandy and Moira (Great Aunt Mary Taylor's daughters) and the roads were absolutely awful, covered in trees and debris. We met Moira and Malcolm at their house and had a cup of tea and played with their lovely spaniel Kiera. Mandy and Scott came over shortly after and we sat talking for a long long time while the wind whipped around outside the 'sun' room and we nervously watched it from the safety of indoors. It was really eerie to talk about family and the past and what Moira and Mandy went through as children. For those that don't know, Aunty Mary had them both out of wedlock and was sent away to give birth in Glasgow, then was made to give them both up for adoption. By some twist of luck and fate both girls were adopted out to the same family. It was never spoke of again for years and years. I can't imagine having to give up your child and then to not be able to talk about it??? Those were different times I suppose. We all decided to have a pub meal and ended up talking for hours over lots of deep-fried grub. Unfortunately we had to get back on the road because we were meant to clean the big house in preparation for leaving the next day. We ended up doing the cleaning in the morning anyway and enjoyed our last evening alone in the 'mansion' as I call it. We had a long drive the next day but we stopped in Liverpool to see my Canadian friend Amanda and her boyfriend. We were a bit early and spent some time walking around Shefton Pond and feeding the geese and swans. We then went to Amanda and Saif's flat for some lunch and tea. Again we talked for much too long and had to regrettably say goodbye as we still had a four-hour drive ahead of us. We got home late but thankful to be back in our own little home! The next few days were spent shopping for food and sorting out my bank account and library card (a must!). We have had some really good days visiting Thomas' school and doing lots of driving around, I haven't quite got my bearings yet but at least the jet lag is a thing of the past. This evening Julian cooked a lovely meal of fish and veg and he is playing a Star Wars video game while I struggle to finish writing as it's nearing my bed time (it's 9pm, haha). Thomas really should be asleep but I can hear him singing to himself in the next room. He knows loads of songs, he's quite clever. His favourite is Tracy Chapman, believe it or not, and he always asks for her in the car. Well that's about it for now, if I think of anything else I will shoot an email off. I'll try to send an update every couple weeks or so, I'll have to start writing things down. My days are so busy I haven't had much time to record the daily goings-on. All I can say is life is really really good and now that I'm here, I'm so happy I made the decision to go. I know to everyone else it seemed spontaneous and maybe a little naive, but I am so happy that I hope those doubts have left everyone's mind. They certainly have left mine. I can't wait to see everyone in August and can't wait to introduce you to Julian. Unfortunately Thomas won't be there, it's a big trip for a little guy, but I'll be sure to keep you all filled in with his antics. I love you all and hope everyone had a lovely new year. Xoxoxoxooxxooxo.

Think of all the ways, momentary phase, just like yesterday I told you I would stay.

In the pocket of God....

Aug 22/ 2011

The bus ride began as usual, winding through the jagged city and pulling onto the unrolled black tongue of highway stretching north. Just past Campbell River, the texture changed, buildings were replaced with thick choppy branches. The forest was like liquid, verdant liquor for my eyes, the trees kissed with patches of cloud. I just soaked it all in and revelled in the slowly-diminishing civilization. Got into Port Hardy around 5:30pm and Annie picked me up in the skiff. I donned a red survival suit and we steered the little boat through the water, heading north. Found out Annie's ex-mother-in-law is my Mom's landlord on Hornby. A stray porpoise leaped in front of us, slicing back through the cold water as we pushed through the ocean between fog-smoked islands. Then, the resort.....it's just beautiful. Rustic. Away from it all. I'm in love. We had a wonderful dinner of roast chicken, yam, caesar salad and turnip, then Claire showed me around the kitchen and how to do some of the work. Later, we all retired with a beer on the deck and watched the phosphorescence. They were so active we didn't even have to touch the water, they twinkled like stars beneath the surface. Of course, we took sticks and stirred them into a giant boiling cosmos and Trevor pissed off the dick making a thin line of them in the water.

I am in heaven on Earth and I'm going to soak up every minute of it.

August 23/ 2011

Another day in paradise! Had a call from Julian today. I asked him how he found the place and he said, "I listen." Well that's refreshing! Got up at 6:30 after a restless sleep and read on the dock while the sun tickled the sky into pastel shades. Breakfast was hard boiled eggs; sausages; fruit; granola; oatmeal; yogurt; and fresh-baked, still-warm muffins. Afterwards, the group went out on their first dive. I've been speaking minute bits of what's left of my high-school french to these lads. They are all the way from France, the real thing.

After lunch we went for a sail around Hurst Island. Saw some porpoise and big fishing trollers. The Netherlands-run fish farms were tucked into bays on surrounding islands and they looked artificial, out of place. Swells from the Pacific Ocean rolled under the boat, lifting us to the sky and gently letting us fall back down. I'm resting in bed now, listening to the cackling of gulls and the purr of the wind turbines. Tomorrow is my first day working alone.

August 24th/ 2011

Outside, the milky way is like a trail of sweat across the brow of the sky. The stars remind me of Hornby: cold-lit and packed thick and dense into the womb-like sky. Today started off busy and I was a tad overtired. Up at 6:30 to prepare the dining room for a breakfast of frittata and potatoes. The Hurst Isle went out for two dives so I had time for dishes, tidying, cleaning the rooms and setting up for a lunch of sushi and miso soup. There is lots to do here but none of it is hard work. I danced and sang around the big table while folding sheets today. We had a group of kayakers come in and I served them coffee and tea and we all had a good chat. More guests arrived after lunch, a slightly-high-maintenance couple and their dog, Tuti. Tuti is aloof and unaffectionate as the dog of filthy-rich owners should be. There is also a group of researchers from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans staying here and tracking Orcas throughout the day. Dinner tonight was magnificent: pork shoulder on the bbq; orzo salad; green salad; green beans; peppers; spaghetti squash and crepe du banane for dessert. The table was a bit crowded with nineteen people so I didn't sit down to eat. Saw a kingfisher today and watched loads of eagles and seagulls attacking bait balls out on the water. Going fishing tomorrow.

August 25th/ 2011

Mmmm, I smell like fish! After breakfast, Trevor and I took Bossy (the smaller boat) out to fish. Saw some sea lions bobbing around the kelp beds and snorting into the air. We went around the point evading the fog bank and cast our lines into the water with herring for bait. It took a short while to get any bites, Trevor was out for salmon but we caught a rock fish instead. T killed it, I couldn't bear to. Held it afterwards though, feeling it's heart beat and nerves twitch beneath the taught, wet skin. It was a bit weird catching something from the ocean and ending it's life within seconds... I couldn't think too hard about it. I thanked the fish and the ocean, knowing we would use it for food. Travelling back, the fog caught up to us, surrounding the boat, wrapping us in it's wet smoke. Sea spray sparkled on my arms and sat on my eyelashes casting prisms into my line of sight. Back at the dock I carried the fish in and Trevor showed me how to gut it. I was fascinated with the insides and spent ages looking at them before tossing them in the bay for the rat fish. I also removed it's eyeball and was messing around with it. Got vitreous fluid all over myself trying to get at the lens inside. Eventually hauled it out, sparkling like a marble, and rolled it around in my palm before returning it to the sea. Trevor filleted the fish and fried it with salt and pepper and it was absolutely delicious, soft and slightly crisp around the edges. Tasted slightly like halibut, the delicate freshness of flavour was unreal. Afterwards we climbed up 'Lil' Mountain' behind our cabins and watched a lovely big sail boat cruise past. We hiked back down so Trevor could start dinner while I caught up on some emails. Whilst in the dining room, a small bird flew in from outside and we had to chase it around as it shat everywhere. We got it in a tea towel and it sat in my hand, panting in terror before flying off. Poor little guy.

August 26th/ 2011

Slept in til 8 today, thought I'd never say that! Did the usual brekkie routine then walked to Duck Bay. It was so peaceful passing through the forest by myself, following deer trails between skinny rough-limbed trees, almost bouncing on the impossibly soft soil cradling my feet. I wound through the woods, coming out at a clearing above a midden where a fire pit lay forgotten and scarred by soggy ashes. The midden overlooked a small bay and I sat for a while, singing out loud knowing not a soul could hear me and no one in the world knew exactly where I was. On the way back I found a geological survey marker and pulled it out of the soil to look at it. Put it back after reading "Imprisonment up to 7 years upon removal'. Carried on back to the docks. Annie and I had done some grout work around the fire pit earlier and two women were huddled over it cleaning up our disaster when I got back. I had a two hour Skype date with Julian before a dinner of halibut caught fresh by the DFO. After supper I had to run up to the laundry room and on my way back my favourite Frenchman pointed to Tuti, said 'dog', then pointed off the dock and said, 'water' and made the motion of tossing the former into the latter. I nearly pissed myself. Annie and I took Bossy out this evening over to Balaclava Isl. to say goodbye to her friends who were leaving their summer cabin. We then went down the island a bit to see her son Crey who is staying on Annie and Bill's newly-bought property. The property is amazing, I want to move in. There are a couple cabins, a woodshed, and a platform for tents being built overlooking the pass. Connecting all the buildings and winding amongst the spongy land and dense forest is a erased wooden walkway, like a forest boardwalk. Like something out of an ewok village. I fell in love all over again and have basically decided I want to spend the rest of my life outdoors.

August 29th/ 2011

Holy hell what a busy day. I should really be sleeping but I have too much to write and it can't wait another day. Yesterday was the last day with the Frenchies and it was the night before changeover so everyone was drinking the last of their liquor and having a good time. Trevor and I went kayaking earlier, just around the bay, scaring seagulls and ramming ourselves through beds of kelp. Crey and his friends came over from Balaclava for dinner and Crey and I smoked a bit... I kicked myself for not bringing Catherine's cookies. I got pleasantly high and drunk in time for the Frenchies to put on a slide-show of their photos from two weeks of diving. I was utterly blown away. I have never seen such surreal beauty in my life. The pictures were out of this world, I can't even begin to describe the range of colour, the depth of texture and the array of seemingly-alien creatures these divers had seen. After the show, some of us hung around in the clubhouse drinking until eventually it was just Trevor, Crey and I. Some Appleton's was busted out and by wish we were all knackered. I walked up to my room and crawled into bed hearing the rain start up. Staccato patterns on the tin roof make an acoustic background to the beauty I observed outside my window. As the waves licked the shoreline, veins of phosphorescence bloomed along the rocks.

August 31st/ 2011

Disadvantages to 'feeling' your way back to your cabin after work: walking knee-first into a goddamned ladder and if I find who left it there I'll drown them!

Today while doing laundry, Annie called up to me from the lower deck. I walked down to find her holding a Puget Sound King Crab which looks like some sort of hairy warrior of the sea. Salmon-tinged with dirty-yellow highlights, it's body and legs were of such odd angular proportions it looked as if it's pieces snapped together like a child's mechanical toy. It was both ugly and beautiful, claws churning the air and antennae swirling. Annie dropped it gently back into the water and it sank slowly, smoothly, it's awkward for finding ease of movement in the buoyant ocean. After lunch today a sail boat drifted into the bay and nobody seemed to know who it was. Turns out to be two gentleman, Robin and Bob. Robin Percival Smith is the inventor of the morning-after pill and a large contributor to early birth control development. He has also been published and Volker from the DFO crew happened to be reading one of his books at the time. More coincidence. After dinner, Bill and I went on a slop run to dump all the organics into the water for the crabs and gulls. I actually got to drive the boat, steering out into the open ocean and even manoeuvring it back into place beside the dock. Apparantly I'm a natural.

September 2nd/ 2011

Was just woken up at 6:45 am by Annie knocking at my door and saying, 'Orcas in the pass!' I rushed around looking for my glasses then popped outside in my pi's and saw the most incredibly breathtaking sight in my whole life. Tons of orcas, over fifty of them slicing through the water heading south. Groups of all sizes of fins arcing gracefully, some even breaching out of the ocean and slapping their tails producing a hearty, wet crack that short across the bay and resounded along the decks as we all watched in awe. I felt like a small child, exclaiming aloud in utter wonder, I was so moved I was in tears. What an absolute gift, a privilege and a blessing to see such a rare glimpse of nature's beauty. I'm the literary form of speechless right now, partly from the early hour but mostly from the effort needed to process what is surely one of the most incredible sights I've ever laid eyes on. It's sure hard to remember that these great mammals are endangered when a massive pod swims by your window heaving themselves out between the waves and puffing air into the sky. It inspires me to want to do something to preserve such opportunities as this. I can't, nor do I wish to imagine a time when what I saw is not a possibility. The Roller Bay (DFO) crew is positively ecstatic. The emerged from their rooms beaming, eyes still half-closed but shining with excitement, and practically skipped down the ramps and out to their boat.

The rest of the day went splendidly. Once the Hurst Isle left, Annie and I got down to cleaning up but took a break to crank music and dance on the deck. At first, I tensed up at the thought of dancing completely sober. Silly, I know. I loosened up though and joined Annie, throwing my arms into the air, spinning in circles. It was so freeing to just not give one single shit about what you were doing. Liberation at it's finest. After the group went out for the second dives, I took a kayak out and paddled around the edge of the island. The water in the pass looked rough so I kept to the coast. I saw a big jellyfish, looking like an intricate, tendriled ball of snot. I tried to take a picture of it but it kept bobbing away. I went to put my camera back and saw a deer swimming between a smaller island and the shore of Hurst. A young male, he came out of the sea rumpled-looking and I paddled right up to him and took his picture as he eyed me passively, looking almost bored with my presence. I paddled back and got in just as Annie arrived with our temporary chef, Sam. She is lovely and I had a feeling I would like her before I even met her. I lifted myself from the kayak as they pulled in and I saw a buzz of dark curls sprouting from the head of a girl my height and I got an immediate feeling of familiarity, of fate. A common feeling in God's Pocket.

September 6th/ 2011

Here we are with a new group all of whom are pretty wonderful. Over the last little while I've learned how to drive a boat; I did a six-hour record changeover; saw a small red octopus uncurling itself in the shallow waters below our dock; and fallen ever deeper in love with life and this extraordinary place. Today, Sam and I hiked up Meeson Cone, it was breathtaking. Views of the pass and small islands freckling the azure waters. Cruise ships dwarfing their surroundings like behemoths in a bathtub. It was so exhilarating to stand on the peak, 167 meters above sea level and look upon the sky with gratefulness and adoration. Clouds clung like spiderwebs to the dome of blue above me and as I stared at the mountains they changed colour the farther I looked, each bathed in a watery green. Climbing down I was pretty pumped from the card, something that's a little difficult to come by here, and I jogged most of the way, slipping once into thigh-deep mud and hurting myself yet again. There's an angry red scrape down my calf, a war-wound from battling the mountain. Back at GP I was so sweaty and invigorated I though there would be nothing better than a dip in the ocean. Twice in for thirty seconds was more than enough; it was fucking COLD. Refreshing, though, hence join in twice. Annie's cousins are here from Austria, they're quite lovely, Monica and Marion. Marion looks like a typical Swiss-German, all legs and blond hair. Quite cute! I say cute instead of handsome as he's only eighteen. They are sleeping in my room so I'm bunking with Sam. It's nice to have the extra body warmth but not so nice when her alarm goes off at ten to five.

September 10th/ 2011

Yet another awe-inspiring day in GP. The other day I saw a humpback whale cruise through the pass: incredible, does no justice for it's true size when you only see a small crest of grey poking out of the water, but it was amazing nonetheless. Last night Sam and I sat on the dock drinking wine and talking and we saw a few orcas swim by. They were making the usual noises, bursts of water and air from their blowholes, but also there was a sort of whine, almost like the sounds of air blown over the top of a bottle. It was very eerie and I later learned they make this noise when in distress.

Today as I was cleaning a kayaker came up and I really wasn't in the mood for another holier-than-thou rich leisure-ist so I ignored them for a while. Then, poking my head out the door of a cabin I saw a young man dressed only in shorts, with long dreads hanging past his shoulders. I had a good vibe just looking at him so I went down to the dock. I waved and said hello as I approached and he seemed a little distressed. I asked him if he was looking for a cup of tea or anything and he said, "Actually I just wanted someone to talk to," and became quite emotional. I could see a strain in his voice, tension bulging at his shoulders. Turns out, he's from the States where he is studying a major of his own invention, something to do with wilderness survival and traditional survival methods. He is being sponsored to go on this solo kayak trip and write a book about it. He had no tent, no sleeping bag, no tarp and only deer-skin clothes. He had made his own kayak, all of his tools, and carried his water in hollowed-out gourds. I immediately went into caregiver mode and stuffed him full of muffins, baclava and rice kris pie squares. I poured him a pot of tea and sat chatting until Sam woke up and joined us. His name is Phoxx and he's only twenty years old. Unfortunately I had ass-loads of work to do and left him with a care package of baked goods and Sam to keep him company. Later, I offered him my shower and showed him to my room. He saw my guitar and pleaded with me to sing him a song, which after much apprehension I did. He then showered me in praise and asked that I write the lyrics down for him to take on his journey. He was such an amazing character and as I later watched him paddle out of the bay, tanned and pulsing in energy, I said a little prayer for his safety. He's apparently going to swing back through in another month so hopefully I'll have another story about the fantastic Phoxx!

September 15th/ 2011

Lots to tell, so I'll just ramble it all off incoherently and likely with improper punctuation. One morning I came down and found a small brown bird laying outside the dining-room door. Annie said, "He's ok, just wait," but I couldn't see any movement and was sure he was dead. Sure enough, I went back to check and he bobbed his little head as if waking from a nap. Then he looked around a bit, took a couple hops and flew off.

The new group is amazing, a bunch of laid-back Albertans and they're all hard partiers. I've had a couple late nights and too much mixing of alcohol. Brian Thomas the group leader is an absolute riot, like a jolly alcoholic Santa Claus. He brought with him, amongst a shit-load of other liquor, a bottle of vodka that looked exactly like a fire extinguisher. That did me in one night, they were all shooting it straight. Sam and I went for a kayak today. We've been pretty good with our exercise quota although today is a lazy day because I'm fucked from tequila last night. I can't really avoid it, I tried to go up to bed and they all stopped me at the fire. Even if I make it past the fire there are a couple of guys on the upper deck with a chest freezer full of beer and they usually don't let me into my room without having a drink with them. I think it's taking it's toll because I had my first mini-breakdown the other day. It's hard to keep in touch with yourself with so much external beauty crowding your senses. The isolation creeps up on you when you least expect it, like when I stood folding fitted sheets in the dining hall and felt this heavy sadness float down over me like dust. Tears stung my eyes and my face cramped to resist letting them fall. It was odd. Regardless, it's all sorted now. Yesterday was the most fun I've ever had in my life. I finally had a chance to go on the dive boat and I wanted to snorkel. The only wetsuit Annie had was a small, but it looked closer to child-sized and honestly took a good half-hour to cram myself into. I had to wear nylons so my legs would apparently 'slide right in' but it was more liked cramming two nude sausages through holes the width of drinking straws. I was sweaty and bothered just getting into it and then once I was in, I felt like I was suffocating. My legs actually tingled it was so tight and I couldn't walk properly because the crotch was halfway down my thighs. But, Lord, I was determined to go on that boat and I made it work. We rode out past the lighthouse on Scarlett Point to Cardigan Rocks where the wreck of the Themis awaited the divers below. Once they were out I got suited up in a hood, gloves, socks, boots, flippers, mask and snorkel and they lowered me into the water on this elevator thing to test my weights. I was giggling like a child I was so excited. Once I was in the water I swam through a kelp bed to a clearing above a rock beneath the waves. I was in absolute awe. The young kelp was being tossed about by the tide, flipping back and forth revealing life hidden beneath. I saw rat fish, lots of rock fish; koolaid-blue anemones; abalone; HUGE starfish and lots of jellies and random floating creatures. I could have stayed in the water for ages and all I wanted to do was dive down. The majority of time I was pretty warm, but near the end my hands started getting cold so I figured I should get out. I had been in the water longer than some of the divers! On the ride back we all had a beer and I just had this huge goofy smile on my face for the rest of the day. I was probably a little too high on life because I decided to drink tequila with one of the guests and when I came back to the dining room I couldn't even manage to finish folding laundry I was so messy.

September 20/ 2011

New group here again, not nearly as fun as the last but with an added bonus of a dog and a baby! I was so happy when they got off of the boat. Dogs are exciting enough out here, but a baby! I am beyond happy. Especially because baby Claire apparently loves me, always laughing and smiling when I look at her. The day before this group arrived, I got to see a Lion's Mane Jellyfish hanging out in the bay, looking like floating brains. I watched it all day while doing changeover; it bobbed up, spread it's star-shaped body then turning and flipping over to display the tangled noodles of tentacles beneath. It's colours reminded me of a sunset.

Along with this group came a young lad, Tyler and his friend, Kimberly. They were chopping wood in return for staying the weekend. They hung out on Sam's second-to-last night where we all, me especially, got really messy-drunk. I don't remember going to bed and Sam puked for five hours straight. I woke up and was unable to get out of bed until noon. ROUGH. Before this gourd of divers arrived we had 'family time' when Kristen, John, Watson the dog, Claire the baby, Tyler, Kim, Sam, Annie, Bill and I all rode over to Balaclava to show everyone the property I'm in love with. We walked along the boardwalks and Sam and I found a big swing consisting of a large bouy attached to a rope that arced down an embankment and out over a small stream. It was pretty high up and Bill told us he hadn't exactly checked the stability of it in quite a while. Sam chickened out but I totally swung on that death-trap-rickety thing and it was fun as hell. We all went down to the beach after checking out the cabins and I threw sticks for Watson in between beach combing. Some other highlights from the last few days: Bill and Annie climbing the wind turbine to install Bill's new weather station. Trippy as hell watching them so far up, attached with climbing gear. One day Watson was chasing his tail around the deck and knocked my glasses into the water. I was reading at the time, stretched out on the bench with Brian sitting next to me. We both just kind of watched them sink down into the water, then looked at each other and laughed. Brian suggested getting them with a fishing rod and after repeated attempts to latch the hook onto some part of the glasses from twelve feet above, I finally succeeded! Thank God, I'm pretty useless without them.

I'm at one month here and the hairline fractures are beginning to show. It's so hard to speak negatively about a place like this as it's any person's dream to be here, but most people only stay a week or two, it's different when you're living here. However, whenever I get feelings like this I try to think of Phoxx, try to wish him well and realize that he must have it so much harder than me. We all need to find ways of dealing with our surroundings, no matter how over- or under-whelming.

September 26th/ 2011

Laying here in bed listening to thunder rumble across the sky and watching fits of rain fall outside my door. It's funny, i wished for thunder and lightning when I got here and was told it never happened. Here's my wish coming true; that last roll nearly shook the cabin. Loving this. It's been raining for nearly a week straight but I've managed to keep the sun shining inside, I've gotten over that little blip I ran into and am carrying on past it, reminding myself of why I'm here and remembering to use the time as it flies past me. Wow, almost October. I almost slept in today but my faithful little internal clock urged me to turn over and check the clock and sure enough, I had set my alarm for pm. It amazes me that while you sleep some part of you is still aware that it's time to get up. Strong winds blew through the pass today and the divers were unable to get out until the afternoon, missing their first dive. Instead, after breakfast some of us decided to hike Lil' Mountain. It was intense. The wind almost blew us off the cliff. The wind was probably close to 50 knots and we watched it teasing the trees into an elaborate dance below us. We followed the trail back down to the upper decks, then cut across to a small island that you can reach at low tide. Another small journey through the woods took us to the shoreline facing the pass, overlooking the lighthouse on Scarlett Point. The rain fell in sheets and the sky churned almost as nastily as the sea. Waves were capped in froth and smashed into the rocks at our feet. I picked across the beach looking through cracks in the granite for shells. The shells here are gorgeous, untouched by hoards of beach combers. I used to take them back to my cabin but now I tuck the best ones in trees or on a bit of moss, leaving them for others to see. I found a bunch of hollow urchin shells, scattered along the shore by otters. We decided to head back but ultimately left it too late as our land-bridge was beneath a foot of water. We all trudged through in our boots except for George, who's ancient, he stripped his boots and socks off and went in bare feet. He's crazy and my favourite 'Grandpa'. Some of the others are creepy.

I think the thunder has moved on down the coast now, the only sounds are the patter of rain; the gush of spring water, stained red by the pine needle tannins, falling from the mountain into the sea; and the occasional cackle of a gull.

September 29th/ 2011

Phoxx is back! Woke up with a godawful hangover and laid in bed until 10 finishing a book. I was really in no mood to do changeover and grudgingly slumped down to the dining hall with my headphones in. I opened the sliding glass door and was hit with a smile so large it completely changed the colour of my day. I practically screamed and ran to wrap him in a big hug. He looked good, but insisted he had been through absolute hell. He almost died of hypothermia; the weather had been awful while he was gone and I had often looked out at the lashing waves and bitter, driving rain and said a little prayer for him. However, he made it and is richer from the experience, despite insisting he never wants to fucking kayak again. We sat in the dining hall and he took a break to call his Mom. I could hear her bawling from the other side of the room. It was so hard to hear, I can't imagine what it was like for her and what it was like to hear her sobs of anger and relief. Annie and Bill were in town and we asked Phoxx if there was anything they could bring back for him. All he asked for were smokes, and he's nearly finished the pack as we're all heading to bed. Today I found a small opalescent nudibranch clinging to the side of the docks. It was like a slug with wild orang-tipped 'hair' growing from it's back and strips lit up in blue along it's 'skirt'. It was beautiful. Later on, in the dining hall Phoxx said he had something for me. He unrolled some leather pouches he had tanned himself and out tumbled what looked like shards of black glass. Obsidian, he explained, that he had dug out of the ground in Oregon. Then he held up a collection of fish hooks he had carved from antler and gave me one. The fish hooks take hours to make and the obsidian is beautiful, when I hold it I can't help but think it's commercial glass. I would recognize it as such if I saw it on the ground; instead, it's from a volcano. After dinner we all watched tv, my first time since I got here, it was a little surreal. Didn't take me long to lose interest and pick up a dive magazine.

October 8th/ 2011

Another week or so has drifted by, a new group has been and gone. The group here now has some interesting characters. Dave is snooty and condescending but his much-younger wife is like a constant acid trip. Her eyes usually hang at half-mast and her laugh is composed of such a variety of noise you would think she was part exotic bird. I have seen the strangest couples here, sometimes I wonder if the money has anything to do with the awkward pairings.

The wildlife on Hurst has been beautiful and surprising lately. A family of about ten river otters has been frequenting the set of logs tethered near the end of the dock. They are hilarious, slick, fat brown things that make a huff-chuff sound when you approach them and noiselessly slip into the water like furry eels. On one of the last days of the last charter a Eurasian ringed dove flew into the bay and bobbed around our deck checking everything out. They are apparently very rare to see out here. Things are also coming inside from the cold now that Fall's chill has descended on us. We have a humane mouse trap in the kitchen and snagged a little friend the other evening. Bill took him to join his brethren on Nigei Island, or what I like to call, 'Mouse Island'. The spiders are also starting to move in. A large, shiny, red one has been perched in the claw foot tub in the staff bathroom all day. These are strange critters; large heads attached to awkwardly-small bottoms and legs sprung out and polished. They are roughly the size of wolf spiders but look somewhat more menacing.

I am currently sitting at a table on Balaclava having decided to take myself off on a mini-retreat. Bill's nephew Russell is here while Annie is away in Vancouver so the three boys have been left to their own devices back on Hurst. Good luck. I love Balaclava. There's something very heavy and ghost-like about it. Just had a beautiful stroll through the woods chock full of giant stumps and crisp green fingers of new trees, then along the coast to the next property. The rocks along the shore are so stark and angular, there's no softness of sand or rocks polished smooth by the waves. It's as if someone came through with an axe and hacked the coastline into rough polygons. The tide was low and as I cut a path along the beach I heard the familiar snorting of the river otters. They didn't appear too pleased that I had disrupted their tranquil swim. As I walked on I couldn't help but see myself as an invader. Although chemically and biologically I'm as much a part of nature as the wildlife, rocks, and greenery, I can't help but feel like a clumsy, heavy-footed intruder. My curiosity bloomed into my fingertips as I upturned rocks and tickled the bellies of tide-stranded anemones. I love the isolation of this island, but does the seldom-touched wilderness appreciate my presence?

October 15th/ 2011

The week of Russell has come to an end. On his last night we all had a good lengthy jam by the fire. A guest named Ken, who had coke-fiend energy, busted a drawer from the set in his room and was using it as a drum while tapping a tambourine with his foot and shaking a tin full of rocks. The music played out over the water until well past midnight and I took myself off to bed in preparation of changeover the next day. In the morning I groggily plodded down the ramps to the boat and said goodbye to everyone. Annie is dealing with some things in Vancouver so Tom is coming back. Another sausage-fest staff week.

October 23rd/ 2011

Surely there is nothing more peaceful than walking through the woods in the rain with a couple of dogs. Enjoying such rambunctious yet non-verbal company allows peaceful reflection while endearing one to the amusing nature of domestic animals. With this recent group has come a pair of dogs with whom I have completely fallen in love. They are by no means well-mannered and one only shows passing interest in me unless I have food, but I love them. The sleek, grey Weimaraner is named Gromet and he is as aloof as he is beautiful. He only has an 'on' switch, I have yet to see him lie down or even hint at relaxation. His spooky amber almond-shaped eyes are in constant motion and his body, streamlined and sturdy, patrols the deck up and down for the hours that his pack is away. His brother in crime, Carter the Coonhound is a little less enthusiastic, due mostly to age, but is much more affectionate. He flanks me with his reassuring waddle, his cropped tail wriggling out the end of his spotted behind. Only whips of grey amongst the brown; a chapped nose; and the degree of difficulty with which he arises from a nap betray his age. When food is involved he is puppy all over. On the first day, after the divers had left, I let them out of their room which has had all the rugs, furniture and fancy linens removed and set about cleaning the cabins. I had finished one, only mildly aware of sounds of disruption from outside. Coming our onto a platform above the main deck I could clearly see an earlier attempt to protect the garbage pit was in an escalating state of failure. One brown spotted hound was intent on devouring the delicious jambalaya of used napkins, assorted plastic and bathroom waste contained in various black bags. Luckily I arrived in time to thwart his efforts and construct a particularly artistic barrier using two-by fours; a rain barrel; the barbecue; and an upturned wheelbarrow. I named the sculpture, 'No, Dog, No.' From there on I was able to work in relative peace and awarded the dogs' 'good behaviour' with a walk. Their Mum had left me vaguely baffling instructions on how to use their special collars and as I listened to her words and watched her hands manipulate a small remote control with far too many options and buttons, I had to keep my mouth from dropping. These were shock collars. I nodded dumbly knowing I may as well not listen at all as I had no intention of using them. However, if the dogs had been conditioned they would most likely behave better with them on, so it was with this intent of slight trickery that I went to fetch them for their hike. I only had to reach for the collars for them to go ballistic, not in fear but in that unbridles, kinetically haphazard fashion of dogs expecting a walk. I managed to calm them long enough to secure the instruments of torture around their necks and give them a stern look in the eyes.

"Now look," I lectured them in my best alpha-female voice of authority and reason, "I don't want to have to use these on you so I need you to behave, ok?" To which they responded by whining and barrelling past me out the door. I remembered to pocket some treats so that is sheer authority didn't work, I would have bribery on my side. To my relief, they behaved pretty well. I only lost one of them once and actually resorted to the 'collar'. I turned it to the lowest voltage and my thumb wavered over the button as my voice waver out through the trees, "Last chance, Carter! I've got the remote out!" I barely touched the button, merely depressed it once and saw a red light flash indicating he was out of range anyway. Jesus.

Eventually with both dogs back in sight I started on the trail returning home. Today's walk went even smoother. I still put the collars on but I'm not entirely sure they work anymore as I've been letting the dogs leap through puddles and swim for sticks in the ocean. Maybe they respect the freedom enough to come running back when I call, or maybe bribing them with sausages and old pancake has convinced them to stay close... either way, the only shock they'll ever get from me is having to inevitably turn around and head home.

November 8th/ 2011

Back at home now watching colour drain from the trees, feeling the nibble of late-fall chill, falling backward into old patterns and routines. I have been outside of myself for the last week and certain feeling are peeking through the haze and rush of homecoming. I wonder if I'm actually happier wile on vacation or if I'm just addicted to the novelty of it all. I want to write about my last few days in GP before I lose all the little details that time fogs over.

I took Carter and Gromet for one let walk, out to Harlequin Bay through the soggy woods. The tides were at their extreme highs and lows and when we got to the bay the water was so far out we could walk along beach I had never seen before. I started out along the shoreline to the right and over the rocky arm turning sharply into the next bay. The rough rock was suddenly painted with blots of smooth, wet grey. Clay flats reached out in sweaty, sea-weed covered arms to the ocean. I walked over to a clean-looking patch, intent on taking some for Mom. The clay was like quicksand, swallowing my boots and sucking on them like tips of fingers. I decided that, although lovely, the clay unfortunately reeked of low tide and I abandoned my idea of carrying it back in a bulb of kelp. I followed a stripe of clay to the water and waded out a bit. The water was stained the deep colour of wine from the tannins and in contrast with the slate clouds of mud kicked up by my boots, gave the illusion of alien terrain. I walked back along the opposite way towards a garbage-strewn indent in the shoreline. I found a perfectly-intact, slightly dirty step stool and hooked it in my arm to take back with me to camp. On the pathway out of the beach and back into the woods there was a steep incline complete with a rope for balance. Carter had a hard time with it and at one point Gromet ran down the slope, but gently at Carter's neck, then ran back up as if showing him how to do it. Very cute. Back at GP we all got ready for dinner and an octopus floated into the bay, stalling the prep work. Another Great Pacific Octopus, rust coloured and unfurling it's arms onto the rocks below the water.

The next morning, my last, while standing at the kitchen sink I saw a rainbow curve over the trees and dip right into the water, as if God's Pocket was truly the end of the rainbow.

The next morning was a hung-over rush to get the boat packed in the dark. We left at 8am and I choked back tears the whole ride in. The sun started to rise, hidden behind cloud so thick you could look directly at it's fiery centre. As it rose, bands of orange and pink shot across the sky, painting the morning amongst the clouds and fog. I held the breath of this sight in my lungs, letting the last of my vacation seep into my body, watching the wake behind us churn the stretch of ocean that had cradled me for the last two months.

I've savin' up for the day that she goes. The day that she stands up for everything that she chose.

This colour she shows you, the softness you see,
glints of light caught scampering; fleeting flickers
of fondness trapped in fractioned time,
All of it,
all of it a ruse.
All of it a mask, a map without compass,
A last ditch attempt to function,
A bandaged-up, writhing wound of consumption,
all of it.

She's smallest inside. Below the tar-pit stomach,
underneath all the sickness and black,
matchstick limbs punch holes,
small lips part in darkness and screams are filled in, choked off.
She flicks a switch and lets the light in, the glow in the glass bottle, the rum-bubble warmth.
The liquid slips in like a lover and burns her insides out.
The warmth.
The soothing swell of opening veins.
Edges of a smile bleeding into her cheeks,
she'll drown you in the milk of her eyes, drip honey from her tongue, lie with her fingertips.
All of it a trick.

She's the fool, you're the pawn.
She's the queen, you're the crook.
Enjoy the night, the anonymity of the sun-starved sky. Forget there is a promise of morning, the threat of clock-hands peeling your body like a label from the pavement. Time will delude you, drug you, eat through your insides and leave through your pores when you awake.
Forget her, she's all the bad parts of fairy tales. She'll eat herself alive. She'll never wake up.
All of it a dream.

So, if you want something and you call, call, then I'll come running to fight. And I'll be at your door when there's nothing worth running for.

I think I know why I never wrote for you. Many different states of being can tug my pen across paper, from elation to utter sadness, but ugliness is not one of them. Maybe my eyes fell right through your shallow surface and saw the blackness bubbling beneath, the tar sticking to your ribs, that soot-smeared heart pumping ash into your blood. You tried to hide those parts, tucking them behind masks of sensitivity, pacifism and denial. Glaringly evident as it is now, your ugliness was once fleeting and coy. It lined the beds of your fingernails, it flickered across your skin like an oily birthmark, you coughed up pieces of it on cold mornings, I had to look twice to catch it staining some corner of my eye. Ah, but that was what I saw all along, wasn't it? Hard to deny it now.

It all comes back to one night in your mind and it's amusing to reflect on how many layers you were unaware of. Could you see well enough through the smoke-strangled bar? You saw where my fingers tangled into another's but you couldn't see where my head was turned. You focused on an easily-defined betrayal and even after I let my tongue paint dull shades of truth over your eyelids you still only saw your own colourful fantasy. If you had lifted your head a little further out of the haze you were drowning in you may have figured it out. A fire was still boiling my bones and every word I wrote in that year and a half singed the tips of my fingers. I distilled my drunken conscience into script, open for all eyes to feast on. You pulled and pried at me to get the truth while it lay right in front of you. Sadly, you only saw what wasn't.
You held my freedom in filthy hands, saw my body as something to possess and my mind as a threat to your manhood. You got more from me than I ever planned to give, but the only thing I never let you have were my words. He got every beautiful one.

The door slammed loud and rose up a cloud of dust on us. Footsteps follow, down through the hollow sound, torn up.

Standing next to her, drink in hand, you let your guts fall out through your mouth, pink with guilt and wet with lust. The liquor oiled your words and they slipped like eels through your lips; you told her the mistakes you made and the grain of salt she took tumbled around in her head so much it shone like a diamond. Too scared to say it to my face you tried the next best thing, spitting slurred vowels into her ears while she stood, eyebrows arched, unimpressed. Across the world I read those words and they sucked all the weight from my chest, I deflated into the upholstery of a cheap chair and my eyes rolled into my skull, dreaming of your ever-absent limbs and my wordless confessions tangled like veins behind my eyelids. Now I remember another night, another bar, a darkness that pooled in our pupils and the smoke from endless cigarettes cobwebbed about our heads. "This just feels right." I'm surprised you could feel at all. Meanwhile, the words churned and broiled like fire ants in the bottom of my belly as I tried to drown them in beer. I fought with the liquid side of my instinct, the side with the soothing voice, the side strangled by fantasy. A syrup-swollen whisper lined my ears with cotton, it whispered, "Tell him." But science always wins with me. Logic and doubt swing in like fists on either side of my skull and knock the sense into it. Reason marbles the corners of my mind in a thin-lined patchwork, impulse is fenced in and desire is dehydrated until it's dust. I microscopically examine whatever we are until it becomes colourless, pressed between panes of glass, cold and unable to provoke emotion. Although tangible, the motes of unspoken want remain too thick to hold.

I woke up to my favourite song, a song about heaven and where we went wrong.

My limbs feel heavy, poured concrete, sap-sticky webs of thought crowding the corners of my mind. The fray of my shorts splays and separates on the pink flesh of my thigh and I absent-mindedly pick at it, pondering, wondering, pulsing with fullness. I am over-flowing, past full-capacity, swollen and drowning in you. You pull parts of me through the pores in my skin, suck my soul from me, leave me concave and wilted. I bristle, pinpricked with this love, it's a stranger to me and I'm unsure of what to do with it. I'm backed into a black hole, swallowed down into it's belly and digested in the dark. You are elusive and intermittent. Your brief flecks of presence stain my eyes with ice and I forever see in shades and shapes of you.

Woke up, toes stretched, eyes tasting near-afternoon light. Dressed and wandered into the park when suddenly the crinkled waxy-green was sliced through by borders of yellow police tape. White cars housed black-clad officers with stern lines for lips. My casual steps turned tentative and my eyes darted through the brush for clues. I was looking for drug dealers, specks of blood, smashed cars, anything to explain the stain of policemen on the otherwise bright surroundings. A female cop, sunglasses hiding her boredom explained that a body had been found naked, abandoned in a shopping cart.
"It's all over the news," she grunted, dismissing my curiosity with a flick of her wrist. My mind started sculpting fantasies of gangs and unpaid drug debts and the sex trade; I was taking the wet mass of scattered information and trying to create something terribly exciting from it.
Continuing on towards downtown, two names jumped from a gallery sign like twin flashes from my past. Barton and Leir. I was suddenly pulled back to their old studio out on farmland, my Mom had taken us there when we were young. Their art was like stepping into an antique store while dreaming. Everything was ethereal and poked-through with columns of colour. I touched everything, tasting textures with the tips of my fingers, drinking in shapes through swollen pupils. You picked up leather-bound books, running your palms over the covers, one by one. They were made in India by a generations-old family of leather workers. They had sacrificed their culture to make a living wrapping sheafs of recycled cotton paper in the skins of animals they were meant to regard as Gods. Just looking at them, I felt a flush of that ever-present Western guilt.

It's always the morning after around you, I can remember nothing but my body screams with some undefinable message. I fall apart into a multitude of pieces, each one telling me how it fits back together but I'm unable to listen to all of them at once. I just sit and deny the static snap between our eyes, blue on blue like warm sky meeting glazed ice, the atmosphere between us clouded and crackling.

There are some people in the world who have an insatiable urge to remove parts of themselves, whether it be a finger or a couple toes, or a whole limb. I wonder if they feel liberated once the alien flesh is removed, leaving only a ghostly, tingling reminder of what once was. I wonder if sometimes the wake from nightmares fighting invisible demons, only to realize they have no fingers to grasp collars, no way of making a fist, even, no means or reason to fight anymore. Are our bodies not built to cope with and resist feeling pain? By some fluke of evolution we are able to push memories of terror so far back in the mind they turn opaque and hard to decipher. The edges of rage soften until other emotions take over, weaker emotions like desire, longing, love. We construct means of escape, healthy and unhealthy. We exercise obsessively or drink ourselves to stupidity every weekend. We rely on escape much in the same way an addict relies on their fix. We aren't programmed to handle the reality we've created for ourselves. We are so quick to blame our imbalances on the hectic pace of life but we have no one to blame but ourselves. We created it all. Sometimes corruption, deceit and lies can be as organic as flesh and blood.
What is it about modern middle-class life that makes it so hard to get out of bed in the morning and get to sleep at night? Knowing we have the basics for survival, and then some, and still finding reason to complain?

It was real and I repent, all those messages you sent were clear as day, but in the night, oh I couldn't get it right.

This is for you, little one.

This is one of those stories without a fairy-tale ending. It's a story where not everyone ends up happy and smiling and content. It's a story about two little girls who didn't get to choose an ending, but who ended up ok nonetheless. This is what I remember from a time when we were both young, and I hope this helps you to remember, too.
We lived in a forest where the trees were bigger than anything we could imagine. Thick fingers of bark pushing up out of the earthy, ink-coloured belly of the Queen Charlotte Islands. When I hugged a tree my arms formed so shallow an arc it was almost a straight line. The skin of the tree felt like sharp rock but sounded hollow when stroked by my tiny hands. When I looked up the wet air shone like snow in the thin bands of sunlight bleeding through the cap of green needles. On this particular day, the forest was wet after a large downpour and the smell of cedar was dizzying. I picked a path through the undergrowth in bright yellow gumboots, fingers of ferns painting my wool sweater with beads of dew. Every so often I looked back through the mass of trees and weaved my head back and forth for a glimpse of the trailer. A flash of corrugated metal winked at me from a distance. If I could see the trailer then I wasn't lost. If Mom couldn't see me then I was in trouble, but Mom couldn't see me regardless because she was inside. Turning away, I spotted my rain coat making a sickly-looking blotch on the forest floor. I ran to it and put it on, flapping the arms like a bird until all the maple keys slid off. Satisfied in finding the motivation for my trek, I hopped back towards the clearing surrounding our home, a drooping clothesline, and a haphazard array of muddied toys. I was glad to be out of the woods, they always gave me an uneasy sense of unwelcome. Their density was suffocating. Mom's friend once told me the woods didn't belong to us, they belonged to the spirits. My fear was cast aside when I reached the side of the trailer. There, propped atop a mound of earth lay a large, bone-coloured chunk of driftwood. It was my Luck Dragon and I had decorated him with small shells; glossy, paper-thin feathers; and rocks like jewels massaged smooth by the ocean's hands. The driftwood was warped into tunnels and pockets where, when poked by my fingers, clusters of sow-bugs would waddle apart like tiny shields with centipede legs. Sockets in the head of my Dragon housed fiddleheads curled like snails, one on either side, as eyes. I swung a leg over my Dragon's back and pulled myself up using a sinewy knot of wood. I flung my arms around the beast's neck, squeezing my eyes shut and riding high.... up above the trailer, up above the trees, rising up through fog so thick you could drink it like a grey milkshake. If I was brave enough to look down I would see a stone-blue ocean, razor-sharp against the shore and bleeding white onto a lick of sand. Bleached rocks rimmed the edge of a waxed-green shoreline freckled sparsely by houses. I could ride my Luck Dragon for hours if I wanted, but Mom's voice always pulled me back to Earth and by the time my eyes opened I was in our back yard. I climbed down from my ride and landed in the spongy grass; my Dragon turned back into wood. I admired the spray of mud on my gumboots, stalling. I knew I had at least a few minute's leeway with Mom. I let her call twice more before running around to the front door.
"Dinner's ready," she smiled. She stood and watched me walk towards her, her hand braced in the door frame, her wild hair lit like gold from the light behind her. I walked up three steps to her and she cupped my damp hair against my cold, pink cheek.
"Have fun?" Her voice rolled out like honey and sparks. Smooth, viscous tones crackling with a smoker's rasp. I bobbed my head and fell forward into her hug. She was soft but her clothes were flecked with sharp bits of paint. I pushed her gently inside and let the screen door clatter shut behind us. Off came my rain jacket, collapsing on the linoleum like the skin of a sea creature. Mom pulled off my boots and I followed her into the living room in wet socks, rolling the damp cotton ends under my toes. The pull-out couch in the living room was as a bed and in the middle sat you, fingering a corner of a striped flannel blanket. I loved you. I adored your baby-soft skin and halo of brown curls. I also ignored you at time because, being nineteen months younger than me, you weren't aware of the world of Dragons, flying, and forest spirits. I hadn't thought to show you these things yet. I also liked knowing things that were only mine to know.
Mom brought us dinner. I balanced my bowl on a pillow nestled in my lap while you lay on your stomach, carefully spooning each morsel into your puckered baby-mouth. You turned to smile at me. As long as you were happy, the rest of my world was bright.

And if you could only see them, you would agree, agree that there is no romance around here.

A new year always feels very raw. Raw in a vulnerable sense, raw like an open wound. Raw like an overripe fruit split open and spilling seeds from it's wet belly. A new year slips in like it's not being watched and taunts you with it's inevitability, forces you to take stock of the year that has just washed it's hands of you. January is a dead month. Nothing grows in it's cold, it only masquerades as a fresh start, it doesn't let anything but the year begin. Parts of me are still stuck in 2009, rooted simbiotically amongst things that have become, gratefully, only bad memories. You aren't meant to remember the bad things, they fade over time leaving only the vaguest sense of who and where and what you were. I want to remember, I want to feel that boiling-soul, animalistic rage. That primitive, primal fear. I want to remember that a hot heart will cook your brain and blind eyes will lead to breaks in the pavement and gut instinct will only work if you're quiet enough to listen. I want to remember so that I will learn from it.
I want to feel in control again, which is a wish I'm sure Fate laughs in the face of. Freedom is a finely woven illusion because no matter how much we think we know, none of the knowledge is intrinsic. Most, if not all, is delicately sown by someone else. We aren't free from outside influence and we aren't free from ourselves. The human mind is kept quite cozy inside our bodies, almost to the point of sedation. Of course, this is all quite hypocritical coming from a girl with only a high-school education. What would I know about worldly knowledge, freedom, or the limitations of the human body? I, of course, won't begin to fool myself with the notion that I am in control. I am sated, but I am not nourished. Spiritually, that is. I'm happy, but in that empty Western way brought on by a lack of want or worry. In a developed country there is an underlying epidemic of guilt for feeling unhappy because, really, what have we to feel unhappy about? I don't think depression is caused by material or emotional unfullfillment, I think it's a realization that even thought we have everything, there is still capacity for dissatisfaction. This cultural cluster-fuck of banality, repressed guilt and navel-contemplation is made especially evident in the New Year. People crawl around with credit card hangovers and a self-hatred for their blind holiday overindulgence. You go back to work with a slimmer wallet and a fatter ass and start the cycle anew, except you're a tad more miserable because forced holiday cheer has sapped the lot of your seratonin.
I'm just glad it's all over. Call me Scrooge, but every year I get a little more disillusioned by it all. It's all sugar-free to me, I can taste the fake on the back of my tongue.
I'm going to start cultivating a clear head. I'm going to dust off some brain matter, scrub every crackling synapse until I can feel again. I want to see and not be seen.

The youth are starting to change, are you starting to change? Are you together?

Fuck, sometimes it feels like my brain belongs to two people. Like someone pinched the corpus callosum so hard it split in half and the sides can't communicate with eachother....and I can't make sense of either one. And sometimes happiness is so sticky and close, it's suffocating. The sky is dappled with clouds but there are too many to make any recognizable shapes and all I can do is stare and let sparks of thought jump from left brain to right brain to left. It's comfortable to think like that, to un-think and let my body blend with the dirt and wish biology would take over and everything was as simple as math and science. I'm not even making sense. Because love doesn't make sense. As soon as you think you know it, it changes. It's your best friend waiting until you're asleep with a blindfold behind it's back. It's like the North star in the city....you know it's there, but the lights and chaos just erase any of it's glow. It's like a really good book written in a foreign language.

You find such pretty girls, you do. Ones with eyes that match your darkened lungs, ones with faces better suited for the glossy pages of fashion magazines. You'll be famous some day, your lifestyle wouldn't allow anything less, god forbid you grow old and mediocre and I mean that in the most sincere way. I think all the words we said were true, but the lake water stole them and they were pulled underneath and drowned. They belong to another time, another life where they were shiny and meaningful. Here, they leave our mouth already stale and fate does not cater to repeat performances. You get one chance. Maybe we were young once, but we've been here a while......So let's just make the most of it. I'll see you again one day.

Death has returned and manifested in a great matriarch. Her defenses are solitude, stubbornness, and denial. She's been around long enough to make her own choices, and who knows how many years she wasn't able to do just that. Why is it so easy to keep all that life hidden? It's not as if anything would shock me. I've seen a lot. I wish I could peek through curtains of time and find out why we are the way we are. Three generations of women with too many secrets. Hers are deepest. Now I may go my entire life without knowing them.

Decisions to decisions are made and not bought and I thought this wouldn't hurt a lot, I guess not.

Another restless sleep. Noises on the roof, gurgling and rustling at four-thirty in the morning. I was still awake, not able to sleep through A Beautiful Mind, and not able to shut my own mind off once the movie was over. Sometimes I just can't fall under, I have to force myself to stare at the blackness behind my eyelids and think of nothing. Five hours later, I'm awake. Noisy house, noisy birds, noisy sunlight.

Riding the bus is always interesting. Watching the wind kick up rust-coloured papery leaves, listening to the hollow bass of someone's headphones, feeling the ground pulse through the thin tacky bus-seat apholstery. Bracing myself as we screech to a stop. Two boys get on, one asks politely to take the seat my feet are occupying. I swing my body toward the window and my head follows.
"What's your name?" Chocolate eyes and mocha skin, a tall glass of a boy, barely 17.
"Hillary."
"Hillary....oh." He rolls my name around in his mouth, tasting the syllables and pleased with the texture, says it again, "Hillary. I'm Jason." He offers a thick slab of palm in greeting.
"What are you up to today?" I ask to be polite, not because I want to make conversation.
"Oh, I'm taking a break-day," waits for a response, judging my eyes, "From treatment."
"Oh?"
"Crack," he clarifies.
"Oh."
His friend two seats ahead is flirting relentlessly with two Brazilian tourists. His eyes glint with hunger, like he can replace his want for rock with a few sentences in an exotic accent.
"My buddy, he's bad news. Always after the girls. I'm bad with girls, too. I have to keep my cool, stay cool. Under control."
He then snaps a small rubber band around the skin of his wrist and proceeds to tell me his life story, like he needs to say the words to believe him, like he wants to tell his past so it remains as such. Childhood on Pender Island. East Hastings at age 12. Victoria for a change of scenery. Nanaimo as a last resort.
"I just want to do right, you know? I've lived like this for too long. I need to ditch the lifestyle. Go back to the island, mellow out."
I nod, not knowing what to say. He's so young, so.....soft and undamaged. Still has a baby-face not yet aged by dope.
"How are you doing? Are you happy?"
"Happier than I've been in years and at the same time, still miserable. It's all fine when you're in treatment. It's structured, you're watched over, your days are planned. The real test is making sense out of the world outside." Snaps the rubber band. A thin halo of red circles his wrist.
"Well. This is my stop. I hope you do well, good luck."
He smirks, and his eyes flash with aged knowledge, "I don't believe in luck. Luck is for gamblers."

Two years is a long time to pretend...can we start again?

This disconnection is only providing a warm and damp ground for breeding hate. I could go on like this forever, betrayal digs deep enough to erase the little voice telling me to call you. If you choose to live in a household filled with ignorance and immaturity, that's fine, I know it's comfortable for you to have everyone turn a blind eye to the real problem and pretend everything is ok. I can't get hung up on mind games anymore. I can't breathe your negativity and lack of passion, I don't have enough oxygen in my lungs as it is.

The music fed that craving that nothing else has come close to satisfying. Notes and their harmonies pinpricked my skin like melodic acupuncture, releasing tension pent up in blood red musculature. It reminded me of sweaty dance floors, water poured on hard wood so we could slip-and-slide, his hand reaching out to my screaming face, ripped converse sneakers, mobs of adolescents clad in black hoodies, a feeling a brotherhood amongst lovers of music. It reminded me of a time when I took the bad with the good, when the depression blended well with teenage angst and belting out lyrics was the best and free-est form of therapy. Who knows if I was happier then, but I was younger and I wasn't afraid of what I was 'supposed' to be doing. And now the pressure just mounts year after year and I feel like I've gone nowhere because I've ignored what I wanted to do after all. Do I take the safe route? Follow the path that guarantees success and synthetic happiness? Or do I follow that elusiveness hidden inside the future I can't predict? Do I follow you across the sea and try my luck on unfamiliar ground?

It just that.....nothing comes close to that high. Every drink and drug in the world is not enough to even scratch the surface of that elation. I want to feel like that every day. I want to make sounds and sequences of words that grab hearts like they always grabbed mine. I really only have one true love, and I know it's everlasting, should I chase it?

I'm so tired, wired too, I'm a mess I guess, I'm turnin' on the screw.

And just like that, in a blink, he was gone. But he was gone long before that, I just didn't know it. I just went through the motions, like I'm doing now.

Water like the colour of wine. Jaded, timid steps to the looming building down the road. Lucky it was close. Waiting for hours. And hours. An old woman behind me, "I just don't understand why I have to wait." And I wanted to smack her because behind the walls people were dying and bleeding and falling unconscious. Baby's crying and being hauled out into the night air while their fathers stared at the purple, churning sky. The night before the sky birthed lightning and long bass rolls of thunder, but tonight it just mocked us, threatening without producing. The witching hour upon us, drunks began to flood the room. One with a face half-framed in caked blood. Another young girl slumped against her boyfriend, her eyes rolling back and his frozen with fear. Another still, collapsed in a wheelchair, manically flipping between laughter and agonized wails, bugging the nurses, being told to sit and.......wait.
Then, a bed. A room where paint had been chipped off and someone had scrawled initials inside a pencil heart. Nurses came. Needles. IV's. Poking and prodding. Invading space. Pushing through a bubble like they owned the space inside it. Machines gurgled and beeped. More needles. A new room, the psych room because the other beds were empty. It was cold and all the machines were locked behind stainless steel. No food or drink. Vitals taken. More needles. Then, in a blur that still hasn't become clear I was on my back. My arm roughly taken to the side by the gas man, his face stony and bored with the repetitive job of ushering people into dreamland. Long, deep breaths. A foreign taste, like nothing else, a creeping cold forced into the depths of my lungs. Cold shots in the arm, travelling over my shoulder, up over my forehead, tickling my cheek like a kiss goodnight. And then nothing.

I awoke in a room less formal and sterile than the others. Kind nurses stood over me and asked me how I felt. "Very tired." I turned my head away and heard another nurse drooling over hearing Gary's accent in the waiting room. Too tired to care. Too empty to care. I took a T3, some apple juice, and was coaxed out of bed. The nurses were anxious, it was closing time. Wanting to get home to their families. Groggy, drained, stained with iodine, I slumped over a nurses shoulder and met the waiting party. Doped up, I could actually talk, and the ride home was almost pleasant. Only now does the anger, frustration, and deep silence start to creep up. I can only write. Like every other time my voice retreats into my chest, refusing to peep.