Sunday, March 4, 2012

Telling stories On this Sunday Afternoon... Memories Of A Street Rat

Well it's sunday and I'm sitting here on a cloudy day after watching the waves roll in wondering how to waste this day away. My cash flow limited to the fact I am not one for making cash. The more I have, the burden it becomes. I use to get a good job with large amounts of paper thrown at me then buy garbage I knew I never wanted but bought anyways for the fact that I had nothing else to with this new found wealth. Then after a year the more I bought the tighter the strings were wound within my mind an I usually popped. I would lose a little of my mind and return to traveling while giving everything away while leaving Highways full of given cd's and clothes.

I remember a time I returned to Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) on one of my society is driving me crazy losses of sanity and started giving everything I owned away. I had two backpacks full of materialism, one a little smaller so it was easier to carry. I gave the first of my toys away, music and player, boots and jacket (it was a winter one as I just left early spring from Lethbridge Alberta after telling my Christian brother and landlord during a night of drinking to Fuck your God, your lord, your christ...) (I blame this for that moment - Judith A Perfect Circle  I tend to stray.




Well after giving away my personal belongings I sat in the park and watched the sun go down behind the hotel as the people gathered around to talk with me.


We started talking about police interference and the gripping control of the world around us (This was in 2001) and a guy sitting on a pony wall asks if I would like to do some acid. Well I admit I did give this a minutes worth of thought before agreeing on it and then proceeded to take four hits of paper lsd. We all sat back watching the clouds pass and the seagulls dancing above us in the windy sky. As like walleye vision these birds started to expanding and shrink within the sky, the more I sat watching these innocent looking birds the images of them taking my eyes became a thought within my mind, I stood up and said I wanted to take a walk, so the four of us who indulged in the free acid all started walking down the heavily packed streets full of tourists, spilling our rainbow colored minds to the unsuspecting multitude of camera armed bright eyed visitors. We played within the crowd as we weaved and wobbled laughing at the matching outfits of the happy couples and the children eating maple syrup lollypops until we made it to a park just off of the mob that gathered to take pictures of stuffed bears in windows. We sat on a hill and all talked about dreams and wishes while we fell in the grass laughing at the stupidest thoughts. We shared much between four complete strangers and became instant friends, as we parted our ways as soe had lives of their own to tend to. Then there was three and my mind was just hitting the peak of the hight I was climbing and decided to escape from the small group and get lost in the crowd of drunks waiting to pay to much for a watered down drink. I sat with an old timer who was playing a guitar and started singing a song that I made on the spot to match the off key rhythm of the guitar. After the song was ended and a few minutes talking to a police officer about the shine of his shoes I stumbled down the street some more.

The people started getting to be too much, the crowds closing in the smell of cheap perfumes and cheaper liquor on the breath of every soul around me I started to push my way out of the herd. The cheers strarted to turn to short bursts of Hey! as I fought my way through the sea of endless faces. After breaking through and stumbling against a wall to hold my mind up a homeless man walks up to me and gives me a crack pipe loaded and walked away. I didn't know what it was at that moment and stuffed it in my pocket as I attempted to close my eyes to stop the world from showing me the basic of molecular biology and the visions of a world I can't obtain I sit right there and think.

I watched my past as a dying man would watch the mistakes he made before his judgement unfolds and became aware that even if my heart was believed to me to be pure it was still corrupted by a monster that lives within me. That this person who speaks of love held great anger, and this person who spoke of god had never had a god within me in the first place. That I've spent my life trying to get the forgiveness of a deity that had never wanted me, as vain pursuit to feel better for my man created sins. The damage I made to the people I love with my endless running and never calling. Mind creeping hitting destruction (Imagine this song playing within the mind as everything you know shatters at your feet)

Then...




I was lost, my mind reinvented within itself and a child crawled back out. A wakening of new wonder and fear to this unknown view that was before me. Sitting on the cold pavement with newly found child's eyes I gripped the wall to lift myself up. My mind swam with faces of depression and anger, A world running from itself in confronted facial features. I walked past the bar scene and the music blaring from the kabuki Kabs with there promises of a better ride then just walking. I stumbled and fell as I made my way from the downtown noise into the slumber of the morning and rested my weary ass on the nearest park bench. I again was lost. I reached into my pocket and found the pipe that was given to me by the unknown stranger and smelled the poison that it was filled with and took a pull. Now with a sense of wonder and a polluted mind of paranoia I stumbled back to the original place that I first had taken the initial 4 hits. The morning dews sparkled off the morning grass as the junkies hovered over the city streets seeking dropped promises of highs or lost profits. I looked at my backpack and started walking down the street giving everything away. I took my boots and gave them to a young man sitting and rubbing his feet at the shelter as he enjoyed his morning cup of coffee. I handed my clothes to a kid who was less then warm and left myself with a thin blanket that I wrapped as a skirt a brown sweater that I still have in the closet and a pair of sandals and shorts. I spent the majority of the day hiding and walking in shadows to escape the eyes that we looking at me, judging me, picking on me and sat alone in an abandoned parkade to feel the cool shade from such a hot day.

I couldn't sleep my mind started inventing creatures within the darkened areas and the noise from the city street echoing off the cold concrete gave an eerie howl with short bursts of laughter. I walked out again as the night was approaching an a woman came up to me out of nowhere and proceeds to tell me I need to be on the 72 bus. She smiled and walked away while I sat there chewing on this random piece of knowledge and decided to break this fear and ask someone what a number 72 bus was and where I could find one. The gentleman held my elbow as he looked in my eyes and seen them stained with a constant stream of tears and asked if I was ok. I smiled and asked again. He told me to go up one block and wait there, I walked along until a sign pointed out to me to wait there for the 72 when within seconds the bus pulled up in front of me. I stood on the platform staring at the driver when he just told me to sit down. Trusting a person of authority I went to the back and stared out the windows while we traveled past the city and into the farmers fields on my way to a destination I had not even the slightest clue on.

I arrived near the setting day unto another structure of concrete while vessels that had no need of sails loaded cars and people to drop them off on another side of this pacific. I still lost step off the bus in stilled fear and wide eyes to a road of many paths. Feeling more lost then before I walk into the middle of the crowd hoping someone will give a clue to my next destination when a woman and her handicapped son stumbled upon me. She looked at me and then smiled at her son and told her boy that she has never seen anyone more deserving then the healing island of salt spring and proceeded to give me the money to get on board. I thanked her and walked into the building now with a destination to a small booth where I held up my given money and said "To salt spring please!"

As we skipped across the water, the world of which I knew was slowly fading with my frightened ego and the sun relfected the beauty of the sky onto the ocean waves a clam was trying to overtake me. The boat arrived in the harbor at night and the stores were closing as the last of the tourists gathered their belongings and take the last ferry back to the ordinary that was their lives. I alone on the pier started walking down the darkened streets lost in the sound of the forest calls. I walked until I hit a ditch and stumbled forward landing in a pile of blackberry thorns and sharp foliage. Scared I scrambled to regain my hold and lost a sandal. So in this ditch and darkness I decided to wrap that little blanket around me and clothes my eyes until the sun can help me find my missing support. The sounds of breaking branches and a deer that walked around me sounded like the hooves of hell breathing down upon my broken heel and embedded thorns in my thigh and laughing a sinister laugh.

I awoke wrapped in the morning fog, I walked down to the pier that I got lost nine hours before on and was approached by a woman with a slight beard and a cigar. She looked at me and told me she had a dream about me the night before and to make my way into a town called Ganges and seek a flower named Tameko who will help you get what you seek. Cold and confused I walked into the restaurant and went up to the cashier and asked for a cup of hot water to replenish the heat lost from the dew of the fog. She being kind told me to meet her outside and gave me a muffin a hot coffee a smoke and a joint and a smile. She told me to look for her sometime but that was the last I ever saw of her, in truth I was not seeing straight and my mind was a soap that held no broth.

I made my way into town as the streets were crowded with the throng of the saturday market. Making my way through the park I sat under the shade of a cherry tree as the pink peddles flowed and dropped around me. Within an hour I was surrounded by a crowd of twelve kind hearts all seeking to know who the new person was in town. Me still under the influence of a shattered reality I smiled and cried a little and asked for a person named Tameko, a young man with an afro that touched the sky shook my hand and helped me find this person.

I stood on the shore of an unknown island when I noticed a footstep behind me, I turned and told the person that I just saw the finger print of God on the waters before me, and this is why the place is so magical is because he put more time on this one then the rest... My mind still gently floats...

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