i went up to gabriola island the first time when i was 13. i ran into trouble with my uncle straight away, before we even made the island. then i took off, borrowed a canoe, and slept on a baby island. there was a dead tree and a skull and crossbones flag at the top, put there by my uncle. i made it through the summer somehow and when i got home mom was married again to the security guy she met when we crashed on the highway, the guy who stole my stash. seven years or so passed and i went to the island again, and stayed in a fish shack where i saw a hummingbird dead on my pillow, and our salish neighbor crashed and died. i escaped my uncle to a tiny trailer in a horse pasture. i tried many times to write about that hummingbird. i did the horse thing with renée, and that ended with me wandering the infinity loop in a cow field in the rain, and then i drove my sorry self to l.a. where i slept on the floor under the desk in the back room of a printing shop on pico boulevard eating ramen and listening to police helicopters chasing in the night. i could go on but i'm going to go back to reading mysticism and then a shower and some pasta diablo and a movie, i think cat daddies.