I started drinking when I was seventeen. I can't remember a specific time, date or place but that's where it started. I remember vaguely: bottles of malt beer thick as syrup and cold as the snow we kept them in, laughter strange and loud escaping in long ribbons, a deep warmth in the belly that spread to the body, nursing myself with chaos and finding peace in the desperation. Laughing the whole way through, I fell from the path I had been put on and gave everything to the demons. I decided that to attempt success and normality was far worse than to choose depravity.

I had a good head on my shoulders and could have easily done everything asked of me in school. Instead I slipped through the crack between righteousness and apathy - I rebelled but quickly forgot what against. It was winter, I was in my eleventh year of school and my third year of deep melancholy. I had a best friend named Luke, and he was willing to die again and again by my side. We loved each other fiercely then. It was nothing to spend a frozen day with him so long as we drank. It was everything, too. It was almost innocent then; we were just playing, after all.

I quickly began to realize that it was a viable way to live. Essays were returned to me labeled perfect and I laughed and complained about it with breath stinking of strong beer. The winter was a good one, I felt free and life was easier than it ever had been. We began to influence other people, they enjoyed our company and couldn't believe the things we did. They wanted more. We always wanted more.

There is one day I do not remember, but it is a memorable one. I shared a couple bottles with three of my friends in the morning, and then three bottles with one of my friends in the afternoon. Our poison of choice was a malt liquor called Axehead, (1.4 L of 11% strong for $5) a bottle of it left you violently bloated and entirely belligerent. It was cold still but spring was coming in sighs. I swindled and stole from a shop where I could have anything so long as I asked. I finally fell into slumber after whirling around downtown in a strange fit. My mother found me and took me home where I was sick all through the night... I am glad that I don't really remember it all that well.

These days I am relatively sober, but not really. When I drink I drink too much and end up in bed sleeping all splayed out.

“What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” - Ernest Hemingway

I spent three nights in Victoria and two on Saltspring island. I slept at the Ocean Island backpackers' hostel on Thursday night, Wednesday and Friday were spent in Beacon Hill Park. Carlos met me at Big Bad John's my first night in the city (bras on the walls, little fake rats and bats that big bad john controlled with string, PEANUTS).
Phil, Nick, Jimmy, Ethan, Steve ... stories, each one of them. Remember the feeling when Steve came by the harbour this morning with Dubliners. Remember the water last night, clear and smooth. "Think about it, think about it." Eye contact is soul to soul, not eye to eye. shining eyes and clear smiles, my trip was amazing. He told me that by putting a hand on a rock, he could feel the energies. He told me that one day he was walking on Mount Maxwell (on Saltspring, he lived there for a while) and he thought that finding the skull of a bald eagle would be the holiest thing, The Holiest Thing. He found one later, not far from where he had been. It's up on Mount Maxwell somewhere now, of course it is. Of course it is.