Chapter 10-“Being here, the reason we’re here, it’s all been making me think.”

PART I – Hot Springs Island, BC, Canada
Chapter 10 iNovel Link

“Being here, the reason we’re here, it’s all been making me think.”

The Chapter 10 iNovel Link is a written one, about perspective, about how one person’s view differs from the rest and puts things in a different light – the Rashomon phenomenon. Go below for excerpts from Angel’s diary.

ANGEL'S DIARY
ANGEL, Cristine’s daugher, has run away for the second time, this time with ultimately disastrous results. But, unbeknownst to almost everyone, Angel keeps a diary. In it, she demonstrates not only teenage angst but also that she's a poetess. This iNovel Link consists of excerpts of Angel’s diary, from the first time she escaped home (which is how she still thinks of it) for that long, three-month exodus.

Monday

Dear Diary,
So here I am. Alone. Again. I’m out of the house. Another huge fight with my mother. So I left. I ran. I had to escape. I had to! I felt like I had no other choice. I couldn’t last another second. I can’t stand her. She thinks she’s so cool and together but what she really is controlling and frustrated and angry with herself and at life but she doesn’t realize it so she takes it out on me... so I become her target. And her hopes. Bullseye on me for both. Well, all I can say is bullshit on her for both. She wants to live her life through me and I hate it. Vicariously, I think that's the word. Every mistake she made she thinks ?I’m going to make too and I hate it beyond belief when she drags me down to her level, as if I’m going to become her. I hate it I hate it I hate it. I’m writing this at Carol’s. Her parents are away. I’ve made her promise not to tell where I am. I can’t stay here long though. Her folks get back the day after tomorrow.

HATE
My mother’s voice is like a dog that won’t stop barking
Or the saw that continues to buzz and scream
I put on my headphones but I can still hear her yelping, squealing,
Almost like she’s injured through the trance beat that I wear like a tiara
Or those ear mufflers you see on guys at construction sites trying to keep out
The roar of the drill or the saw or other loud power equipment.
Maybe somebody or something is beating her, it’s that bad, but I can’t think of the dog
Because the power of my hatred, the sucking venom, is just too loud.

Tuesday
I walked all the way into Troy today although, when I got there, I had to make sure nobody saw me. Kept my hoody up and watched real carefully. Got to figure out where I’m going to go so I checked the ferry schedule. I’ve got so many things to figure out, not all of them about where I’m going (literally, that is). I also mean philosophical things. About life. Even, I suppose, about death, because that’s the other side of the life coin, isn’t it? Anyway, I can’t stay here. I can’t stay with Carol beyond tonight, like I wrote yesterday. And I can’t stay on Hot Springs. The Bitch’ll find me too easily, if I do. I need supplies. I need money. I need so much of so many different things. I’m not sure I’ll have enough to see me through.

THE THINGS I NEED
I imagine going into a store that has everything.
And by everything I don’t mean just tools or food or candy or clothes.
A place where I can lay down a few coins or bills and pick up
Where I left off and acquire confidence and popularity and
The key to success which the old guy behind the counter would grind
So it would fit the lock that doesn’t let me into this store in the first place.

Wednesday
So, I’ve set out. I’ve started. At least it’s a start. I’m heading to Vancouver and I’m writing this on the early morning ferry and I’m wearing a ball cap and thank goodness no one recognizes me. I’ll be harder to find there. It’ll be easier for me to blend in. I was thinking that when I was little I always wanted to be older. I thought 18 was when you became a real adult. And now that I’m almost there, in some ways I wish I was a kid again. Either that or I wish I could be in my late twenties or thirties. Established, you know. I thought that getting older would solve all my problems but now I know it’s just the start of them. I look at my mother and my even more screwed-up father and their lives seem even more of a disaster than my own, in some ways. In many ways. Maybe that’s what getting older is. A piling on of troubles. Problems finding you like extra layers of paint applied over the other one. And then all the cracks start appearing.

LAYERS OF PAINT
I remember my bedroom in the first house we ever lived.
My bed was in the corner and I would stare up at the walls and ceilings.
The paint was flaking and I would pull off little pieces to see what was underneath.
But all I found was more paint, of different colors and ages, applied in an attempt
To cover things up, to paste things over, even when the walls themselves never changed.
And then I would keep peeling, seeking bare wall, or something that would surprise me
Or please me, as long as it just wasn’t more old, dirty, yellow paint.

Sunday
I’m here in Vancouver. The big city. The Big Smoke, as I heard some guy on TV call it. I stayed with a girl, Amanda, who I met last summer when she came out to visit her parents. She’s going to school here and she’s letting me crash in her dorm room here for a couple of days here because her roommate’s away. Thank you Amanda! It was amazing to connect with her. When I met her last year I could never have guessed that she’d be so important to me now. That one chance meeting and now she’s become a mini-savior.

THE CHANCE OF MEETING
On a street, at a party, a friend’s friend.
Everyone I meet, you meet, they meet, we all meet,
Could be your best friend forever, or your lover, or an enemy
Or they might just mean nothing
And you might never see them again.
How can you ever know?

Monday
Today I was walking around the street, all over downtown Vancouver. I didn’t have anything to do. It struck me how rare it was lately to be without a plan, a duty, an appointment, an agenda - mine or someone’s else’s that I’d either agreed to or become part of or pressured into. When I left I never figured that finding a way to spend my time would be my biggest problem - well, one of them, anyway. I suppose I could have gone to the university library or the city library or hung around some mall. Some place inside. I will later. But for now, for today at least, I guess I just wanted to feel anonymous among all the people, to feel the strangers around me and take solace from that and from them and from the little force fields and fences of silence and distance that we put up and erect. There were too many people in the house with just my mother and Layla and me but here there aren’t enough.

CROWDS
From a distance, from above, we’re a mass, dots of color seen from the traffic helicopter,
Like a painting by an Impressionists.
But up close, each dot has a history and color and complications beyond belief.
We interact to blend, to form shapes, and color groupings that, from afar, on high,
Seem to imply coherence when there’s none
At all.

Thursday
Today it was raining so I did go to the library like I mentioned and I stayed there all day, except when Amanda (who is so cool and so nice!) and I met up for lunch and coffee. She even paid, she’s so generous. And then I went back and walked through the stacks some more and picked out books to browse and some to look at in greater depth. Wow. There were so many books. By dead people. By obscure writers. In different languages. Even the range of subjects was mind-boggling, way more than back in high school or anywhere on Hot Springs, really. Which of these will I become, I wondered? Am I like another language or am I just obscure and will remain that way before I join the authors of the dead? Which subject will I be and where among all these stacks will you be able to find me?

THE BOOK SH(ELVES)
As I passed the hardcovers and the softcovers and the magazines
And the journals and periodicals, I felt the weight of the paper
Pressing down on the floors and the racks bearing such a heaviness.
From the words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, sections, parts, and volumes.
And in other libraries and bookstores and homes, the same items might
Be resting on other dissimilar shelves, separated from their twins, their siblings,
Feeling all alone now, knowing that they had been separated, never to reunite
Except maybe at the second-hand bookshop where they would be re-sold
Into slavery at discount prices and broken up for good.

Sunday
I did something really weird today. Even I think so. I surprised even myself. Something that I’ve never done before. Ever ever. I went to church by myself. I don’t know why. I hate church and I hate god and I hate religion and generally I hate everyone who gets caught up in this big, what I see as, charade. This game like the Emperor’s New Clothes. The facade of respectability. Like how people can be soooo absolutely dumb as to believe this crap that’s spewed by all the old white guys who are just perverts anyway. But I went anyway. I was walking by, in this ritzy part of Vancouver, Point Grey, near the university, and I saw people walking into this service, most of them dolled up pretty good, and I just decided to go. I don’t know what it was, but maybe they try and hypnotize you or use some giant spiritual magnet hidden in the bell tower to pull you in but, whatever, in I went. Maybe it’s cause I just had time to kill. I don’t know. Anyway, once I got in there, I didn’t listen to the words. I just joined in the communal dance steps as they stood up, sat down, kneeled, sang, and gave money on command like the sheep that they use as their mascot - “the son of god.” Talk about sexist, too… Anyway, I just absorbed the atmosphere and then realized that I fit in and belong there for one reason and one reason only. Despite their best efforts at good cheer and optimism, I could smell the one thing that everyone shared: desperation.

STAINED GLASS
The stained glass highlighted, I suppose, scenes from the Bible
And there was lots of blood and even dragons and much suffering.
It reminded me of the television of an earlier age, where the saints
Were detectives, or lawyers, or crime scene investigators who
Were the stars of the show and earned the big bucks as celebrities who
Were idolized by the masses who wished
They could be like these glass posters although everyone knew,
Deep deep down, that it all wasn’t real.

Monday
I went to the library again but this time not to read but to use the computers. Amanda showed me the ropes. I had a lot of e-mail waiting. From my friends, of course, worried about me, and even one from mom and even Layla. Of course they want me to come back but I have no intention to. No way! I hate being controlled, being treated like a child or a puppet. They have to understand that. That’s the only way I’d even consider thinking about returning and even then, I doubt it. Who knew that an umbilical cord would turn into a marionette’s (is that you call them?) string. The best mail was from Cassidy, mom’s friend. I know she probably put him up to writing it but his letter moved me (I have to admit) and he said if I needed help he would give it, no conditions, no questions asked. All he wanted to know was that I was alright and he promised on the soul of his dead dog (who he loved, I know) that he would keep any pact of secrecy that I wanted. He sounded very caring and considerate. Amazing that my mom could have a friend like that… He told me he'd been coming to Vancouver to do some food donation thing.

MAIL
Mail used to come in different forms.
On paper laced with ink,
Written in hands that you sometimes couldn’t decipher
But were always unique.
Now it arrives with a little audio flourish
But the letters are the exactly the same
And the font unchanging no matter who.

Wednesday
Amanda’s roommate is coming back later today and I have to find somewhere else to stay. I’m trying not spend too much money because I can’t. I don’t have very much and, every day, I am amazed at how it dribbles, how it runs and pours through my hands. It’s like trying to cup your hands and keep in water. Herding the cats of cash. I don’t really have any place to sleep tonight yet so I’ve got to put on my thinking cap. For the first time I thought about calling home but I put that thought out of my head. Quickly. It would be too weak and I can’t stand being weak (even though I know maybe I am). I would break and I don’t want to break, even though I know I’m just the worst of wimps sometimes deep down inside but if I went back it would be more of the same, that I can count on for sure. Maybe the only thing I can count on. My mother (and I guess me too if I’m really being honest) is as spineless as a gummy bear and I guess that’s where I get it. When I see things of her that I hate inside me, I want to take a flaming torch and burn them out and just extinguish myself with a little puff of smoke.

SMOKE
I light a cigarette and watch the smoke curl up and up
Heading for some unknown place in the air.
Maybe it thinks it’s heading for heaven now that it has
Escaped the burning ash and end of its hell on earth
Trapped here by paper, white and silver, and all the packaging.
I light a joint and, even more carefully, watch the smoke curl up and up
Until it disappears like the thought I had when I was watching it.
I watch the smoke from a car exhaust or a distant chimney go to the same place
And I wonder about the place where all this smoke must come together and
Hold some big party, celebrating their wispy past and cloudy memories.

Friday
Well, that was a first. I spent my first night ever out on the street last night. I guess I’m now officially homeless, a street kid, whatever you want to call it. But I guess I’m being a drama queen and exaggerating a little because I wasn’t actually on the street. Instead I stayed in a park that Cassidy told me about and I was kind of lucky because the weather was warm and I have my sleeping bag and a ground sheet with me. Also, I wasn’t alone (which was both kind of scary and good at the same time) because there’s a protest going on here about squatting and there was a huge camp of people. I got some food and talked to a zillion people and seeing all this and chatting with and hearing all these people made me realize how truly innocent and super-naive I am and just how small and insulated Hot Springs is. Some of these people are ultra political and totally committed to their cause about more free and low-cost housing while others are just kind of outta it while others have drug and drinking and other problems that, if I tell the truth, scared me. But I don’t know where else to go right now and at least I don’t feel alone. It’s strange how you can feel a measure of safety and fear at the same time.

PROTEST
As they line up to shout and brandish their signs like weapons from a literate past
It is their eyes that stand out.
Whether they have fire in them, or brimstone, or hate like I know has been in my own
At the one who bore me and her rules.
Sometimes I see madness there, whether from drugs or drink or the other chemicals
Pushed by god and given through their mothers.
The noise is terrible and the other side, full of different uniforms, carries fear too
In the same places.

Saturday
It’s amazing. There was another rally (I’m still in the park) today and, who shows up but Cassidy and Ellery, the guy who works at the hotel. When I first saw the two of them, I thought they’d traced me somehow, that they’d come looking for me, but actually it turns out that they weren’t searching for me at all but just bringing food they’d collected to give to these people who are all camped out here. Actually Cassidy told me he was coming before in his e-mail but I forgot. That's paranoia for you. And that’s Cassidy for you. I saw them first and just watched them for a while, in the distance, to see if they were after me, if that’s why they were really here. But all they did was unload Cassidy’s funky truck/camper and starting handing stuff out. Cool. I was just being paranoid. After I watched this for a while, I figured it was okay so I went up to Cassidy and spoke to him. I guess I just felt that I had to trust him, that I could trust him, because he said all the right things in his e-mail and, you know what, when it comes down to it, I do trust him. And, if worst came to worst, I figured I could always run away and find somewhere else. Besides, I’d already made friends here who I know would protect me. Although these people fight among themselves, they band together against outsiders. But, when I talked to him, Cassidy, I mean, he was cool. Really cool, actually. He was really glad to see me and, as much as I hate to admit it, it was good to see someone from home. He gave me the biggest, warmest hug and asked my permission to tell my mother that he’d seen me and that I was alright, but that he wouldn’t say where. But I told him no. Then Cassidy had to go but Ellery stayed. I’ve never really talked to him before but he’s a cool guy too but in a much different way than Cassidy. He’s quieter and more thoughtful somehow. Cassidy is this kind of out there kind of guy but Ellery is more of a background person, if that makes any sense, someone who is happier in his own shadows than in someone else’s spotlight. A bit like me in that way, too. Anyway, we smoked some pot and talked and talked until really really late (or maybe it was really really early). I like his looks, too, with his little beard and shaved head and piercings and tattoos. He’s crashing at a ?friend’s pad and he said I could crash there if I wanted but I said no. He’s going to come around tomorrow again with food, but this time just for me, he said.

FOOD
What are all those expressions?
Food for thought, is one. You are what you eat. Feed a cold and starve a fever.
Although I do it three times a day (less lately), I hardly understand it.
How I swallow things and chew them over
Or how it is miraculously transformed into energy and protein
And fat I don’t need and even into farts and burps and stinky shit like
A miracle of degrees and necessities and hunger rolled into one.

Tuesday
Ellery kept his word and came back. I was glad he did and I was happy to see him. We spent all of Sunday together and, because he had a car, he took me all over Vancouver. We went up one of the mountains (I can’t remember which one, Grouse or Seymour, and saw the city from up high and I could even see across the strait to Hot Springs Island where my old life was, which is how I’m just beginning to start to think of it. We also went up to Capilano (sp?) Canyon and walked across that frightening rope bridge that swayed with the motion and I could almost visualize myself falling and falling although Ellery promised he would catch me if I did which made me laugh because it was so kind of sweet and cute. Then we went out for a vegetarian dinner (he’s been a veggie for 5 years) and then back to his place. Or his friend’s place, I should say, which was not far away on the East side and although it was a bit of a hole, it was good to be inside because tonight was colder than last night. Then we got high again and drank some more and then we started kissing and making out and he was getting me really hot so we went into the bedroom in the back and we made sweet love all night long. It wasn’t my first time (as Dear Diary knows) but I think it was the best. It’s also been a long time for me. Since my last time, I mean. He was a really great lover and really caring and he’s got tattoos everywhere all over his body and I was way turned on. Maybe it’s experience or something. He’s the oldest guy I’ve ever been with with and maybe that’s it - or maybe it’s him although I suppose it could also be be because of where I am right now. I don’t think it means anything, what happened I mean, beyond what it is and I don’t care if it does or not. I’m just trying to live in the moment (which is what he said he tries to do too) and what will be will be. I just felt warm and safe for one night and day and that’s enough for me for now. Warm and safe is enough.

BEDS
Like bodies, they’re hard and soft and there are kings and queens and twins.
In them, we are born and die and beds are where life gets recycled.
Also like us these places of sheets and pillows
Can be warm or cold and cheap or costly and stained
Although god said people were made in his image, I think it’s
More likely that beds mimic people. At least the ones I know.

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Chapter 10-“Being here, the reason we’re here, it’s all been making me think.”

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