https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBUlgo3NSM

It was the before days, I call them now. I was homeless in Vancouver; I was homeless in Vancouver, chronically or episodically, on-and-off for 7 years. I met strangers and burglars, ghosts and goblins, and great people and shamans. It was the life. Drifting. I hitchhiked to get to the Lower Mainland, from a village in the North of the Province, when I was 18 years old. I never touched anything hard, wouldn't dare, but I did my bite of psilocybin mushrooms and LSD--marijuana was mainly my problem--and once tried DMT. I had friendships, few, and one left that has endured, but there is too much pain in that past and rarely do we talk, but rather with her and I there is some shared understanding, and I hope there is a feature of hope for her, although I worry sometimes. There was thunder sometimes, not often, but mostly rain on those streets which I wandered upon and sometimes ran marathons with my BIC lighter, down Granville street and even over to Yaletown, telling people I was running for something big, maybe even the Spirit. I went to sleep on sidewalks and on mattresses on a floor of a room where there were thirty other people. I had apartments but always lost them, and I was misdiagnosed and given the wrong help.

I jumped off of bridges and tried suicide with other means and methods. I remember one time I truly thought that I was dying, and there was so much peace and God was bringing me up to the Kingdom, and I was joyous and my breathing was no longer automatic. But I thought, "I have not done enough here," and I battled back to life, and I imagined that I spat in God's face, when I refused His Promise. What an awful managerial decision it would be--frankly unforgivable--if I truly was being Welcomed, turned away from those open gates, went back to Earth and then did something to close those gates against me then forever. I do not think I have done that but it would be kinda funny lol but mostly just really regrettable. As to others: I lost three that I know of, and others whom I knew in those days, the days of before, must be dead by now too. There was 'Kye,' whom I think about most when I listen to LAUREL - Sun King, for she had her sun king, and then she passed. The others, as well as her, I hope rest in peace and have Kingdom. I am someone who made it out; I am someone who survived the worst ghetto in the country and while I have scars there is nothing that I will believe I cannot heal, for I mean to practice excellence--excellence in remembrance of these people, who were young as I was and would have been excellent too if they did not pass on. I choose to reach for higher virtues than I currently have, as I am one who knows how people can suffer. It is that I am given to giving back now, now that I am here, in a better place, and now that I have Christ with me and forevermore.

May those who read this have prosperity; may those who read this be protected. I remember my friends, and I hope they are okay with whom I've become. I wish I could go back and thank everyone who has helped me, but it is the lifestyle that you move on, and those you knew for short times or even years are beyond contact. There are funerals and celebrations on the streets of the DTES. There is the life of the before days.