I am sitting here, seven stories above downtown Vancouver in the clothes I have been wearing for the past four or five days. The windows are open-full allowing me to air out the stink and, occasionally, to pour bottles of water down into the street onto passing cars. You should see how the water breaks into tiny droplets about three stories before it hits the ground. No matter how much water you drop it will break into those drops about four floors down, and spread out like rain just before it hits the ground.

I am typing in between shots of vodka and stale Pepsi. The vodka was given to me by our next door neighbor, Jimmy or Tony, or actually, I have no clue what his name is. He is old, and Kent tells me, Russian, and since I met him in the hallway twenty minutes ago he has offered me two joints and the vodka that I accepted, knowing full well that Back Home people that looked like this guy didn't drink actual liquor.

I have been boxed up here for days, reading mostly — Kent has a fine selection of HST books. On the off chance that I do leave, it is usually out of necessity. Quick trips to aquire food in order to sustain life; walking the shortest route to the eighty-five cent pizza place and then back upstairs to my lookout above the street to eat and pour things onto the people below.

Tonight is different though, as the bells of a nearby church carry loud across the street and down two blocks straight through my window as I type. Tonight I have been inspired by Tony's words, his philosophy on life that he shared with me, just before I stomped his toe and slammed the door in his face.

"Do whatever you can get away with," He said, "While you're young. Because some day, what you think is important will be.. will be.. history."

Granted the man is high, drunk and wearing a purple jumpsuit, but did Gary Simmons of the Los Angeles Kings hockey franchise not once wear a purple uniform? (Years '76-'78) And was he not from my hometown of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island? If this all isn't some sort of sign, some cosmic alliance, I don't know what is.

So it is with the Lord's bells ringing in my ears, and Tony's words in my heart that I dumped my last bottle of water onto an elderly couple unloading luggage from their car and the last of my vodka onto their small rat-like dog and headed for the door.

Mike Saturday needs you to pray for him. His wife is Italian.

+ + + + +

I didn't sleep again last night. The twisted inspiration I gained through a mess of weirdness kept me tossing and flipping all morning. And I knew I had to be up early to pick up the car downtown.

Last night the key broke off in the lock when Mike tried to get his clothes out of the trunk. We laughed.

Our failing Internet connections made updating Forget harder than usual and I did it while he looked over my shoulder; though frustrated and swearing, I felt a kind of special when I took the elevator downstairs. Like it was something we couldn't not do, no matter the obstacles. We had to.

It is morning now and out the window the birds are awake and if I turn a little to my right I can see the city opening its arms and the squeegy kids wetting their rags.

When I got here a little while ago the office was dark and Mike was asleep. I read the entire prototype for Jetplane, Mike's zine. It is issue two "Under Falling Skies" and I was moved in ways I couldn't put words to. Floored.

He is still here while I type this; wrestling the covers over himself, gold belt buckle sticking out. He looks a little like a wounded cowboy and if I imagine hard enough I can decide that his ear was injured riding some great bull through some dusty bowl, but the trumpets of bus and car make any kind of prolonged imagination hard. And Mike is alseep still and I don't want to wake him, and I type so loud; but now I am happy that we have this thing — whatever it is — that binds us together, and though we pull and fight — like him now with the massive blue blanket I got in Maine with my first love — we know we are in it together, and it is not just us.

Sleep.

Kent Bruyneel is trying to sleep on the floor, on the mat.