What am I doing in a library on my day off when it's really sunny outside on the last day of June 1998 you may ask yourself, as I often do. Well, I reply to myself, I am killing time until I take the acid that is burning a hole through my knapsack as we speak (or e-mail as the case may be). Figure I want to be high for Geoff Hewitt's "Book Launch/Art Show/Caberet/Riot" (his words) this evening and maybe even zoned enough for FEAR & LOATHING-the late show @ the Roxy tonight.

Slightly pissed off because I found out Friday that I don't get tomorrow off work. I was looking forward to it. Guess I will have my revenge by coming to work with an acid hangover and getting paid time and a half. That's the thing about acid, you never know how strong it is or how long it will last. Luckily I have 3 hits. Shrooms would have been nicer but you gotta work with what you got, right?

Nepenthe Journal looks real good by the way. Maybe I'll try to figure out how to use the Web stuff downstairs or something. I think I told you that I saw some of the page(s) over @ the home of the guy who I work with who gave me a bike he found in the bushes @ the Empress five years ago. Great score, I've painted it up and stuff. It's strange because we are in many ways kind of mirrors of each other. He's my age and one of the few people working @ the Hotel that I've met that I can relate to- a real thinker that went just the opposite of my route somewhere along the line-ie; married/house (we live about five minutes from each other) and steady job (he's been at the Empress for something like 20 years) and here we are working together and I find him pretty interesting in the way he thinks. He's all plugged in with Stereo/Vids/Web etc. so I asked him to check out your site while I was over @ his place.

Ian and I are working on the busking material but some days I wonder if we'll ever get this puppy off the ground since we need to conect in time and space to practise. We were going to have all last week to do it, I set time aside and the fucker got sick on me. I'm getting frustrated, plus the fact that we have two different ideas about what to do with the piece and how to present it. I dunno. Time's a wastin'. Gotta strike while the tourists are hot. Which is right now and I know becauseI have to keeping looking up from my weeding job to check up the skirts of the babes as they walk by -yikes!

PART II

So, Tuesday I went down to the water and dropped a hit and a half of the acid I had... it had been awhile. Acid-ya gotta love it! Wandered aimlessly on the beach (it was a hot sunny day) went to my favorite spot on the beach where I always find stuff and sure enough there was this long tubular piece of grey cloth (about five feet long) kinda like a big dress. So I decided to make a woman. driftwood for legs & arms. Rocks for breasts. Piece of square board for a head. three rocks for eyes & nose-big piece of bark for her mouth... She looked liked a cartoon. As I left some old English Ladies sitting on a bench said-are you going to leave your girlfriend behind? Sure, I said, I've got a girl in every port. What if the tide comes in? they asked. She's a good swimmer, I replied, she was born on a beach.

Off on the bike (Rick at work gave me a bike-I've painted it all up & decorated it with stickers) Yee-ha. Watched one of those para-glider guys hover a few dozen feet in the air over the cliffs,ducked into the woods and spilled through the park where I was astounded to see the purple pinecones. I must go back and check if they really were purple.

Back downtown to run into Mark just as he was riding away. Hello goodbye then down on the causeway to listen to the busker and watch the parade of people then time to go home as was feeling a little TENSE! Bad more man- it was rush hour. Made it home in time for shut down. Still really high.

Go for swim @ the pool. Cool Birds wizzing by @ light speed over the sky light. Sink in water and float around sweat in sauna. Missed the water slide -alas. Head downtown to write you some e-mail while stoned, come to library to find the whole system shut down. You can imagine what paranoia that brought on. Took out two books and they had to do all the stuff by hand. they only thing that was working was the security gates.

Bike to Andy's where he and Sax Dave are waiting to head up island soon as Toby gets home from Vancouver. I have red wine and feel my face glow. My speech is babble. I can't stick around. Toby returns. I gotta go bye.

Over to Art's place where I give him back keys I've had forever then pop next door to see Ariel who wants to show me all the art she's done @ school. I'm totally impressed, even more so when she tells me that this is the first painting/drawing stuff she's ever done. It's really good. But I gotta go.

Back home then eventually out to see Geoff Hewiit's "Book Launch Art Show Caberet Riot" (his words) lottsa fun with David P. Smith doing his stuff then Geoff as weird as ever with guitar and another guy playing drums Geoff launching his amazing new book HYPERVOLT, inviting me up to do something and all I can think of is a line from THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK which goes

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
scuttling across the floors of silent seas"

which I say as " I ...I ..I..I should...I shoulda...I shoulda been.... I shoulda been a....I shoulda been a pair...." well you get the idea.

Geoff and drummer ended up doing a jazz riff which worked well and continued after I sat down and Mark Dunlop got up and did some stuff. There was a TYCo Video camera (made for kids) there that I got to play with then time to go. Geoof outside with a strange device-a skateboard but not really, more like a single long ski with wheels and a steer stick that you held and turned with. It was fun. Walked to the Roxy to catch the last half of the late show- what else but FEAR & LOATHING. Being on acid helped me relate to the character. I think everyone else in the the theatre must have been straight.

On walk home a hooker asked me if I wanted some company. It was a block from my house. Why was she so far from downtown. I decline. Came home and crashed. Shoulda taken the drugs earlier in the day, no idea it was going to be a twelve hour tour. Parts of it seemed like forever. It had been awhile. Still got a hit & a half left. Maybe I should wait until that IMAX show on The Grande Canyon comes to town. It wouldn't be as good the time I took acid @ the Grande Canyon (Birthday 1991), but that's another story.

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