The rain finally arrives, real Vancouver summer rain. It is cheque day but the wetness lulls the street into a quiet deserted place. I feel compassion rolling over me, so genuine, my heart opens uncontrollably and I know I am lucky. If I let it all go; it will all come back again. I will be alright.
He is afraid so I will not speak his name. He is simply F. Handsome, gentle, and standing against the edge of loss. Perhaps no one has ever told him that he is loved or that his presence in this world is valuable, that his history has yet been written. We spent the morning spreading a blanket of honesty between us . He is ashamed to tell me that he is living in a shelter, it is as if he believes poverty and homelessness is somehow a shameful act. I am worried that he will end up in the alley, dead eyed, and untrustworthy. I make him promise that he will stay away from the crack, that I can not bare to see him fall. I tell him he is too gentle, and too valuable, these streets are a dangerous place and the softness will kill us both.

我爱你...I love you

Elvis Nelson

Learning about trust and love in the hardest ways possible. Buffy and I hang out, go to a dodge bar, let women fall in love with us, it is all a distraction because we are tired. poor, and just feeling lucky. Sitting friendly, we are understanding something, the music is nostalgic, Hotel California, and for five seconds we are feeling it, girls are dancing cause they feel it too. I keep thinking I am somewhere else.

Elvis Nelson has a green guitar, it is child sized and covered in black felt pen scrawl. We are sitting in the cage listening to him play Bob Marley songs, he is doing it well, but the heart is out of it. I know it will cost at least a dollar, I also know it is a small price to pay. He is letting me take pictures and we all know they are worth more than any words than I can say.

A rat or mouse has fallen dead between the walls, why does this only happen when the heat of summer will make the smell unbearable? I will sleep with everything wide open. I can not bear the scent of death right now.

I lent a man five dollars eight months ago, an event I have forgotten or filed away as useless. He has taken the train from Surrey to find me and pay me back. Calling me blue eyes, he wants so badly for me to remember the exchange. I can't recall, I lie, it is bit like faking an orgasm. Wanting to make amends, seems like so much trouble, but is obviously important. I tell him he is the first one, to return money that I have given. He wants to return my faith in humanity, I tell him it was never lost.

Events

* a shirtless man, moves across the street, a collection of skin pulled tight across bones.
* wheelchairs can be transformed. A variety of bike parts become a recumbant bicycle.
* Alex is pleased to find thirty discarded cassette tapes
* Man like a woman walks by talking to himself.
* Tiny Asian woman in a see thru black and white skirt gives me a handful of green grapes. I
thank her with the few Chinese words I know.
* There is a straw broom that looks brand new leaning againest the buss stop.
* A woman in long black boots and six stitches above her eye is pacing in circles. She reminds me
of a cat that is ready to kill something.

Bill Wong sees me sewing from the sidewalk and comes in, wanting to look around, he is really just curious. I think he is just another dirty pervert. He wants me to fix the torn bits on his bag, he has been looking for a woman who can sew. I am busy but, the afternoon is dreamy, and I know he is full of stories. He removes every item from his bag, carefully, a folded newspaper, bottled water, a pastry take out box from New Town Bakery, two Coffee Crisp chocolate bars, a handful of miscellaneous candies, a small mountain of personal effects. I am positive his hair is artificial, glued to his head. He came to Canada in nineteen fifty one, before I was born, he asserts, when Chinatown was so small it was only four men suntanning. Bill repeats my name over and over while I sew the torn corner of his bag. His head he says has been cracked open four or five times to fix what is wrong, my name is almost the same as his wife's. We negotiate a price for my labour, one apple bun, sixty cents, and the promise of homemade chow mien. His wife's name is Susie Wong.

sharing joys and sorrows

We are buoyant with light and warmth, sitting in the cage smoking cigarettes and drinking beer late into a large beautiful night. What is emerging between us all is fragile, we are pulling the fresh memories and friendships close to our chest, we are all just hanging on. There is history happening all around us, a history that we are manifesting, and for a few hours the wheelchairs, missing limbs, scars and scabs of these streets are forgotten.

A man using crutches runs through the traffic to cross the street. Russell calls his voice filled with joy, he has found a rusted child's firetruck, it reminds him of me. When he arrives the beauty of it all lifts the sadness I was swimming in. It is so amazingly pretty and perfect. It was that moment of magic I was looking for in the day, the one thing that makes that almost imperceptible shift happen.

It is summer and the air smells like a woman's breast, sweet and full of promises. We shed our clothing like shrouds, become friendly when we can feel the wind through fabric as thin as bandages. The ladies from upstairs believe I am a renegade, some sort of woman that they admire but, are a little confused by, they think that I speak Chinese, and behave unconventionally. They are wrong on both counts, conventional is only what we know rarely what we are. The police are everywhere these days, breaking things down, shuffling things around, I can tell when they do a walk through the alley, people emerge like some strange biblical story about a desert or a sea. There is resentment and relief.
The summer makes everyone want to be in love, it is the gentleness that is gliding on air, I am terrified by the joy that can be stripped away. I felt the surrender of love once, I am shy now. I have sat on the stoop, god I love that word, and drank two and half beer, this is building nostalgia in my heart. Tonight there is no one I miss. I do not want to become too comfortable in this place, this place that is lost halfway between everything and nothing. Anger and happiness fly around here like spoiled children all screaming or kisses. There was anger today, which I rarely feel anymore, but I let the night scoop it up and carry it away.

Yesterday I learned to never overlook the gifts we are given by believing, that time is a commodity in our lives that stretches in front of us past the horizon. Renu arrived into my life on these small streets, passionate, beautiful, grateful. She is leaving, moving to the other side of the country, a distance that seems for me un-bridgeable. Her disappearance will resonate through out my day, a reminder that we have a finite number of days to share with the people we love. I was neither generous nor grateful enough. Her arrival at my door was the gift I was given one summer day, her accent a beautiful exotic music that filled my room and I miss her before she is even gone. She cooked for me last night, food too beautiful to eat, explaining how in India, "a guest is god", and no matter how rich or poor the breaking of bread is a ritual of karma. We sat smoking cigarettes and drinking wine, the scent of the sea carried through the breeze, making promises imposed by distance. Her daughter Guari is beautiful and alive in the ways only a thirteen year old can be all energy and Coca Cola. We felt rocks together our hands slippery with soap, neither of us will ever forget this tiny night. I love them both as deeply as family and will regret any days when they do not slip with their gentleness into my memories. I will keep their names, as smooth and permanent as pebbles, on my tongue.

I want to write something that is beautiful and eloquent but it is too damn hot and the streets stink like urine. No one is stopping to talk or tell stories because the wall of heat is so deflating that we are pulled inside our bodies and confused. Russ and I drink beer on the step and try to solve all the turmoil that is in us and in the street and in the world. We realize that although we may not have any answers we are suffering from a form of contentness that is spilling out of us both. We are happy with our choices even though at times they are self defeating and un-recognized.

Some Days

There are days when it is too hard to say anything, and then there are days when you just need to keep walking till you reach the sea. I would like to be consistent but, yesterday was just too damn hard. Jess is crying and confessing everything that he thinks makes him a horrible human being and all I can do is be a witness to such a tremendous pain. He really only needed one person to hear his song. I have this moment in time just for you. I want him to be safe in this world.

I see Yuen again on Main Street, she is crying and unfocused, looking into her eyes is like falling into an abandoned well endless and empty. She could fall either way and the safety net is gone. Today I let the ocean make me clean.

Saturday Morning

Paper cranes appear on Hasting Street, a little loveliness. I am wandering with a lamb and a few stray cowboys, hung-over from beers and karaoke at Pub. Feeling as dull as cigarette butts and tattered coffee cups. On Cordova I find my name written in pink lipstick on a shiny black wall. There are signs everywhere.

Small Days

A young man carrying the scent of Listerene fills the room, he is twenty eight and at least a full foot taller than me. Handsome but slightly bewildered. His name he says is "JR", as he grips my hand tighter than death, "I was going to write you a letter, if that isn't too forward". He has seen me before, passed me silently on the street, but half drunk and about to leave town, gives him the courage to tell me that he likes my eyes. I am afraid, and trying to shuffle through these unexpected confessions without letting my fear emerge bird like and frail. He could break my hand as easily as tossing a coin into the air and calling heads. Recognizing that my body is small and fragile rarely happens and when it does I feel as though I have been smashed against a wall and the truth is spilling out of me thick and slippery.
Some of the older Chinese men think I am a prostitute. There are sly sideways glances, and suggestive attempts to catch my attention. At times they will be brave enough to point curled fingers at baggy crotches, an action that is difficult to ignore or pretend innocence. In those moments I feel as though I am trapped in a Tom Waits song, something tragic, perverse, gritty, beautifully written, and haunting.

I can't remember every name. I agree to let one of the ladies help me out in the shop. She is frustrated because she needs to do volunteer work and no one will let her. She thinks it is because her two front teeth have rotted into small sharp nubs. She is probably right. Her attempts at starting some form of church in the alley have failed, the reception she tells me was not favorable. There are too many people trying to sell God, when everyone else seems to just be able to find him. Today I feel as though God has most certainly abandoned this place.

A man with his shirt unbuttoned and the dirtiest chest I have even seen gives me a plant that is almost clinging to this life. When he leaves I watch hundreds of tiny baby cockroaches move like a living carpet along the empty branches. It is I suppose the thought that counts and I am thinking this poor bastard is going straight into the alley. I feel a moment of regret and then a moment of self preservation. You do what you can. I am given gifts almost on a daily basis.

A man in handcuffs is laying, his face sidways, pressed againest the sidewalk, he tells me he likes my boots as I am walking past. I thank him because I am uncertain what else I should say, I stop myself from wishing him a nice day. The contents of his life is tumbled across the concrete; a collection of pennies, a tin sucrets box, a pyrex piece of pipe, three nickles and a dime. In my head I am gathering these things up, thinking it is not enough, placing everything back into the pocket of his jacket which lays forlorn and stripped a few feet away. The two police officers ignore the exchange, nothing is surprising or out of the ordinary, we are all used to the images the varying degrees of dignity and lack of it. I am trying to be harder, tough on the outside, while keeping something gentle wrapped around the soul, a pashima of some sort.

One can not avoid the Night Market. It shines just before the sun goes down and everyone understands that summer might just arrive.

Scratch the paint and there is a tenderness of human spirit that astounds me everyday. Yuen is breaking my heart. The sun is shining and I can feel two tears sitting tight in the inner corners of my eyes. We promise each other that we will travel safe, she is teaching me that friendship is a combination of trust, respect, passion, and longing. My desire to save her, pull her into my arms and hang on, is selfish.
I am given a bulb of garlic, the weak pale shoots sit fragile in my hands. He passes it to me as if it is a jewel, a promise, a small measure of hope. He wants me to care for it, to plant it, to make it reproduce and continue some endless cycle of living. I am reluctant to accept such tremendous responsibility, I am reluctant to make those kinds of promises, perhaps if I believed in a god I would be more willing. He tells me he knew my grandfather, although he has not asked my name, he says, "he was a rich casino owner". What he does not know is that my grandfather like him believed in the papery magic of garlic cloves, the aroma rising from his fingertips filled me with fondness.

the ten consistencies:
1. stolen bicycles
2. shopping carts
3. used needles
4. blue latex gloves
5. hello
6. sirens
7. take out pizza plates
8. black hoodies
9. wheelchairs
10. big red tourist buses

Found by the tracks this morning and yes it is nice to meat you.

Occasionally I get to house-sit in the most amazing place on Main Street. I call it heaven and every time I am there I am not sure if I will change the locks or not. I spent the May long week-end lounging in said heaven...fucking amazing. I am back in the back and those who know me, know what that means, the rest is guess work. I try to spend at least one hour a day sitting on my front step observing the lives that also circle these four small blocks. Sometimes an hour is filled with so much sorrow, but sometimes the joy is overwhelming. I am listening to Damien Jurado's "Bad Dreams"... and I could use a little saving from the fire right now. I am also hoping that no one is listening.

I am fighting my self imposed reclusive behaviour, a life contained in four blocks. I want to document my encounters with these streets, my place in them, my exclusion from them, my tenderness, and frustration. I would choose to be no where else. I am compulsive, I eavesdrop, I love language and I certainly love it's profanities. I must not forget to add I love my dog, her snoring is this last thing I remember every night before I fall asleep. She is fourteen and I fear her death more than my own, I am selfish I can't bear to suffer the loss. Once again it's nice to meat you.

meat meet

peek peak

male mail

horse hoarse

made maid

Eight Things That Happened Today:

1. Daniel hugged me on the corner of Hastings and Main. The sun was shining and it was a perfect moment.

2. Her mother owns a flower shop in Alberta. I remind her of home, I remind her of comfort.

3. A woman abandons a pair of sneakers. Even though I witnessed the action take place, I remain curious of the why. How long will they sit, one on the curb, and one in the gutter.

4. Dean comes to visit. He has five days left in re-hab then he is getting the hell out of here. I lend him ten dollars even though after three years here I know better. I remain hopeful.

5. For the first time in five years I am not in love or excited about the idea. I am satisfied.

6. Yuen walks by, in a baseball cap, white lighter held tight in her fist. She is beautiful despite hard choices. Her face enlightens my afternoon.

7. The bottle lady passes by she wishes me "Happy New Year" in Chinese even though it is May. She will still be wishing in October.

8.The shoes are gone, it took about forty-five minutes. Nothing lasts forever.

Plastic horses on the streets.