This is it. The days, cool, rainy, the streets perpetually wet, the junkies, addicts, homeless, the rats, the hostel, a 5 day run of sobriety - and 8, 9 hour shifts with no cigarettes (and I've adapted to this surprisingly well, which goes to show how much of it is in your head).
Last night, sitting at the fountains in front of the CBC, a quartet of burly raccoons pass me by, wading through the water, nonplussed at my presence, so many of the people here are out of it, shooting up, preoccupied, they have no fear of people.
But - there is that feeling that this is all a bad dream. I'm unsettled - how can it be otherwise? The Hostel, itself temporary, the job - a great job that somehow I'm just not fitting in to, finances, as precarious as any junkie on the teetering brink before his big fall, EI - overdue and under review, books, reading - not enough, studying menu, wines, practicing writing out dockets, ...
I'm in a different world, completely, this city - I remember it from my childhood, pass places that cue dim childhood memories, Deja-Vu, but the wet and the rain and ...
Peculiar. I'm in a form of purgatory, a suspension between two worlds, and - this waiting that it might pass, that I might settle in and find time to evolve, it's breaking me.
Days off - explore, thrifting, every thrift shop here filled with abundant treasures that I can't afford to carry with me at the moment, can't afford period, merely upgrading my wardrobe, train to New Westminster, Seabus to North Vancouver, Bus to Kitsilano, I'm logging my steps, passing time, exploring places I've been once before a long, long time ago...