The western wind blows and it whispers to me. In my minds eye I can see the ocean and the landscape of the seaside city. I look past it into the open water and I feel as though I am looking into a part of myself - the vast mysteries, the future that is yet to come.

On this morning as the sun rises slowly in the east, I feel close to my past, so close that I can almost taste that same tobacco I smoked a year ago. The world shifted then and I could no longer ignore the cry inside of myself. Go it said, you must go. Go into the world and walk your own path where no one else can dictate who you are and what you must become.

Lately, I have thought much of what it means to become a man. Paul Monette's words echo deeply and though I no longer remember the intricacies of his writing, the essence of his voice stirs inside of me. It's something about rising above yourself and the pettiness of others; something of accepting destiny and flowing with the river of the world and going where the heart leads. It's about love, opening yourself up to it and having the courage to not run away. Come to think of it, it is all about love.

Sometimes I love the world so much I feel like I'm going to dissolve into a million little pieces. Sometimes I want to die so that I can meld with the life that breathes around me. And at these times the world makes a certain stone sense, heavy with the weight of the body as the soul soars forth. The soul whispers "this is it, this is what I want to become, this is what I need to become." And the body, slow and ancient replies "not yet, I'm not ready yet. Give me time. There is time..."

I realize yes, of course, there is time. Do we not have an eternity still to grow? Do we not have years? Hundreds, thousands, millions of years still to go...

And it suddenly makes sense again. That this life is simply a blip in our great history, so much of which, is still to be written. Our lives are like electrons, flashing into and out of existence. We will go, and we will always come again. We are angels flying on ethereal wings and we wil always be here; we can never be forgotten. And so go forth and become what you need to become. Just remember that it will take longer than you expect, many many lives, and when you finally understand this, that is when all of life becomes clear.

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth...the hour of new clarity.

THE ABSENT-MINDED ARTIST

Hey Steve,

Yeah god Damien Rice is so frickin amazing...it just feels like, for me, he got the emotions all right. I first listened to him in Cargo and James Teahouse in Edmonton on their open mic night. This guy went up there to sing "Cannonball" and at the end of the song he added his own lyrics and proposed to his girlfriend. It was such a magical moment, his girlfriend at the back of the room burst into tears...

About two weeks after I travelled to Vancouver and met a man named Maxime. He had just arrived in Vancouver from France a day before I did and we ended up in the same hostel room. The first time I saw him he was lying face down on the bed sleeping in mid-afternoon. I couldn't see his face, but I instantaneously felt a sense of intimidation, somehow I knew that I would be attracted to him. I remember the actual moment my heart opened up. I was sitting on the floor reading his palm and up to this point I had no feelings for him. When I looked up from his hands he was gazing at me very intently. It was so wierd, I could feel his eyes look straight past mine and into me and I felt this physical reaction in my heart, I felt it turning and shifting. After that there was a sense of complete understanding. We spent a week more or less together everyday, laughing and exploring. Sitting over coffee and catching up on each other's lives (that's what it seemed we were doing, catching up). Man, it was such magical times, especially after the rough year I had had. It was the first time in a long time I completley let go.

It was shortly after I met Maxime that I bought Damien Rice's album "O". When I wasn't with him, I felt this great depression sweep over me. I knew that the time, the 2 short weeks I would spend on the coast would pass, and thinking about it destroyed me. The music gave me relief; it allowed me to feel those sweeping emotions and let them flow through me.

I feel as though being in Vancouver for the past 6 months was a large part about the magic I felt with him, and in reflection the magic of the landscape of the beautiful city, and also the Island, where I also spent a few days a year ago. Those were such painful times, tragic yes, I felt like I was living in a Wong Kar-Wai movie. But also like his movies, there was this palpable underlying emotion of hope, and the belief that I would fall in love once again.

It's funny that you've just discovered Damien Rice, as I have been listening to him non-stop for the last week (I started the night before I left for Edmonton). I hadn't listened to him since the beginning of my stay in Van. But now it has come back again, full circle it seems. Perhaps this time around I am finally letting him go; I am letting a part of myself go. Despite all the beauty I saw in Maxime, I know he was a tortured man, full of self-hatred and sarcastic bitterness (very very french). He said above all things he hated pigeons, Australians and fat people. He always said it in a joking fashion of course, but the hint of truth was always there. Perhaps this random collection of hated things reflected his chaotic and confused perspective on the world. Maxime was once my mirror, a man who presented me to myself - now that I have laid him to rest in my past, I feel that I can finally let my own chaos and confusion go.

QC

Timing is everything. If the moment I had fallen in love with you had been different, my life would have gone down a different path. It has been almost a year, but somehow last night and on this beautiful morning, you have filled my mind again. Maybe it's the weather here that is bringing me back to you. The sunny days with the cool winds, the scatters of rain, the smell of spring and something new in the air.

...Still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
Still a little bit of you laced with my doubt
Still a little hard to say, what's going on...

...Still a little bit of your song in my ear
Still a little bit of your words I long to hear
You step a little closer to me, so close i can't see what's going on...

Damien's music will always remind me of you. His music and this landscape of mountains and water hold the key to the days of April and May when we laughed so hard we cried. Those days and nights, those moments stood so still they were silent The voices of the past shut their mouths for once and we were young again. In those hours it seemed that all we ever worried about was the alcohol, the smoke and the food we ate. In between was the hostel room and the water lapping against the shore and the sleep that claimed us each night.

Of course it was never meant to last. We were both just transient souls moving through the world like ghosts. We were both still trapped as ever in our own pasts, prisoners like the characters of Wong Kar-wai movies, which we both loved dearly.

You were my mirror, my solace, my peace in all that calamity, and that is why I still hold on to you so tightly. You made me feel safe when no one else in this world did. I never told you this, but I think you did to me, over a coffee and cigarette while we pondered where our lives would go...

"You make me feel safe, like I'm worth something..."

God I was so fucked up then. My chest was a watershed reading to burst and I was ready to drown. Shortly after I returned to Edmonton, my life lost most of its purpose and meaning. I walked, once again, on the edges of oblivion, in that space between life and death. But alas here I am, safe, strong and better than ever before.

So where do I go from here? Where is there to go except forward with your reflection in my mind and all this emotion and beauty swelling up inside of me? Don't forget me and stay young Maxime, stay young.

On this beautiful sunny morning, a sense of nostalgia fills me. If I am to leave this place, what will I be leaving behind? In Edmonton I have deep connections with a number amazing people. Here I have a good connections, some of them bordering on the depths of something true and lasting, but here I also have a love for the landscape. When I am alone the moutains, the oceans and the forests and this swirling city are my greatest friends. Could I leave that behind?

I will be very sad to leave this place. Vancouver holds nothing except the best memories. Even though I have been through some really tough times here, I feel as though it is this city that has allowed me to go into the darkest nights while keeping me safe. My mind and heart are torn...

But there are lives, there are worlds in Edmonton that I can no longer live without. There are things there that are calling to my heart. Come back to me, it says, face me and believe in me, I will not let you down. Perhaps this voice of the city is simply my own voice that I have left behind. Perhaps it's a part of me that I must allow to grow again.

I feel the call of destiny. It tugs at me and I know now what I must do. The path in front of me is foggy, but what I know is that I must step forward into the world, unafraid and unhesitant. The decisions that I have made are solid, though they cannot be rationally explained. They are guided by intuition and come from the place neither here or there. The space in between, where time stops and all becomes clear and present. They come from the silence in the universe, from where the voice of god, my own voice, can be heard.

I sit my room, in the dark, under the blue lamp's glow. I think about the future and what may come. A pain runs smoothly under my chest, softly pulsing, softly moving through the veins of my heart and talking to me. It moves into my arms, into my soul, or maybe the soul is where it comes from. And so it cycles through the fabric of my being, dancing with me, telling me that I am alive.

Where do I go from here? How do I face this pain, this loneliness that is becoming too strong to ignore? I tried hard to suppress it, to cover it with dreams of grandeur and worldy things. But it is the heavens that I so long to reach for, the infiniteness of unleashed love, the beauty, the power of it. How healing it can be, how strong it's currents that drag you under, surrounding you. The warmth of its fleeting caress.

There are still many distances to walk, to climb until I can rest. I feel that from the center of my being. I feel the path that stretches out in front of me and know that I have yet to take the second step.

In the dream the black man and the black woman tell me that I must leave this place, this island of life in the middle of a harsh reality. The African desert spreads out in front of me, grand in its vastness. They tell me that I must head into the desert and back into the world. The journey is long, and very lonely. A sadness fills me but I know that I must leave, that I must leave everything behind.

I am unsure of where my life will take me next, but whatever decision I will make it will come soon. I am sure of that. Wherever I choose to go, wherever I choose to be will begin my journey for the next few years. The first phase of Vancouver was my base camp to climbing Everest. Now I am moving on.

I live my life, choosing to believe that one day all this confusion will pass, that one day my questions will be answered. Or perhaps I will come to be at peace with the fact that these questions simply bear no answers.

Until then all I can do is just ride it out. Keep pushing along the worlds inside of ourselves and, in reflection, we will move through the world outside of ourselves. Discover new fragments of our souls, and we will discover new landscapes in the world. With each piece comes greater unity, and greater clarity. And as we look deeper perhaps we will one day find what we are looking for, piece by piece, like constructing a puzzle to a pattern we don't quite know yet.

"All men and women who are born, live, suffer, and die. What distinguishes us from moths is our dreams. Whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldy things, and what we do to make them come about...we do not choose to be born, we do not choose our parents, we do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; Nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within the realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live." - Joseph Epstein.

The anger is rising again these days. I dont know, I dont know what this means exactly.

...in the dream, I am with friends. We are preparing to meet the beast, a child with a monsters face...

I dont know quite how to explain it, but it is as if my past is layering with my present. Something is surfacing, something from the deep.

When the anger comes, it vibrates from the caves of my humanity. Something so fundamental, so real, so undeniably present. It is alive with a voice of it's own. Let me out it screams to me, let me go, let me be, let me fly out into the world and turn into something beautiful, into something worth more than what I am.

...every one of us has a dragon inside of oursevles...

What is this dragon, this beast? What does it look like, how does it speak? How does it change who you are and make you into something more? How do you learn to ride it? How do you keep it from devouring you, to stop it from turning you into ashes?

...from the ashes, the phoenix will fly...

These are confusing times. The world will never be the same for me again and sometimes that is a hard thing to understand. It's so easy to become a prisoner of the past, to relive moments over and over again in your life, each time a little different but always ending up with the same result. Always the same fear, the same failure to move on into something more. I guess the anger comes from that, it is the soul yearning for life, being ignored over and over again. It is the heart that wants to cry or laugh or love, yet you hold back and keep it in a box.

I can't live in a box anymore. I can't do this anymore. I can't I can't I can't. I hate being so frickin scared all the time, all the time it's like a smothering hand that doesn't allow me to breathe. A mask hiding the stars, the stars that burn through so brightly, so beautiful, so beyond reach. I am struggling hard to break these chains, to fly. to go up and up. to be who i want to be. I need to do that, I can't wait anymore...I just can't.

These changes are so beyond me, so powerful like god's hand pushing me, pulling me, slapping me saying wake up!!! I say slap me more, pull me more, throw me so hard that I fly into the universe. Let my heart beat out into your ears, into mine, into the place from where we came. Let me live.