Sketchy memories

I've been stoned in three cities in three days! Haven't done that since I was 23 or something, and never done that in Canada. Have I? No.

Let alone in the three biggest cities. Today I'm in Montreal. In Lady's head I think this place is a sketch factory, and she's probably right, but from now on any and all sketch I see will be compared to Vancouver's downtown east, where Elvis's girlfriend works at a kind of shelter. The particular corner in my mind was two users to the square metre, yelling things like "when you die I'll dance on your grave," suggesting just enough hateful, frenetic energy to dance macabre but not enough to kill the person being yelled at. Sketch factor actually exceeded the front grounds of the central train station in Milan after 22 hundred hours, and that's saying a gracious fuckload.

I wasn't scared in Vancouver's downtown east, probably not because of any astonishing powers of optimistic empathy overwhelming my class prejudices and paranoias but because I was with Elvis, who I still worship as a near god. Nonetheless it was very strange and sad indeed, and very sad when Elvis told me I shouldn't have locked the car door when we parked - better to just let the users in without breaking any windows, have a look around at what there was to steal, and leave again when they saw all the nothing.

Follow the white crocheting hook

So I'm in Vancouver and having a lovely time. If I wasn't moving to Europe I'd move here, and if Europe craps out I'm moving here. Elvis and Co. are being fantastic and it's breathtakingly beautiful. Also learning to crochet by making a pink hat. At first it was frustrating and I had no idea what I was doing, but after hours of counting ones and twos and ones and ones and ones, I looked at my handiwork and realized I could see the Matrix.