No place like home

I came across a bunch of old journals from tours over the years including my very first Euro tour journal from 1997, I was 18. I found another marble notebook titled "After Vancouver". Some years ago we were on tour in Vancouver and our van got robbed. We caught the dudes in progress and they didn't get away with very much except some priceless "personal affects" as they say. All our guitars and gear were untouched but our backpacks and music, most of it was gone and rummaged through by Canadian crackheads. For some strange reason I had 2 or 3 old journals with me on that tour that were lost to the fleury of thieves. Shit I'll never get back. It still bums me out to think about it. I'm sure it wasn't poetry but still... that was the first time I really dealt with a frustrating material loss like that. I had to learn transcendence and patience and I did, but only after we roamed the streets of Hastings with baseball bats for two days looking in Salvation Armies for the dudes who robbed us. Finally the cops told us to get the F out of Canada or else. I think thats why in the years that followed I became such a pack rat. Now I'm trying to reverse that and be a Buddhist and shed my material possessions. That's what basements are for right? "Shed" as in "store my material possessions" so I'll still have them when I decide to give up Buddhism. Anyway, I was thumbing through some of the journals and decided someday I really need to sit down and transcribe all this ish. Yeah, that'll happen. But those few days in Vancouver I really grew up quick. Being robbed and feeling so helpless and outnumbered by, well, the world. Looking down alleys for some guy who stole my little red Jansport and seeing girls shooting up in their backs, in between their toes, it was awful. Right out in the open, no shame, shooting up in the streets. The cops didn't care either; they all rolled in threes, never alone, they knew they were outnumbered, too. Bloodshot eyed strung out homeless dudes lunging at us with needles clutched in their fists; it was like a zombie movie. The cops just let them all kill each other, made their job easier. It was totally wild. Ok, I gotta go.