I have many fond memories of people I interacted with in Vancouver. I was fortunate to meet some of the finest people in my life there. I could say the same for many places I have lived all over the world, Perth, Port Douglas, Byron Bay and Wellington, but many of the most formative years …
Addiction has been a huge part of my life experience. In earnest, addiction was for me a form of coping with trauma, boredom and often subjugating unexpressed emotion. When I was at Otago University, in Dunedin, alcoholism (which has history on my father’s side of the family) became my coping mechanism as I began to …
It’s a cliche that you hear in movies, poems, and songs If I had known then, what I know now, would I have taken the job with Suzanne Castonguay when she said, “You’re going to work for me”, I am at a loss to say yes or no. Without being dramatic, there is so much about …
How often is the phrase in another life used when a situation doesn’t either manifest in our everyday life or, if it does, it doesn’t work out? There are so many occasions when I’ve heard these words spoken or used them myself. It would be in 2014 that I was able to see how this was a …
The use of the phrase welcome home is splashed around the phenomena called Burner culture, or Burning Man when you enter the playa or the paddock (if you’re going to Kiwiburn) but I feel that it is more appropriate for this festival for it changed the landscape of the festival culture in this country like no festival …
I remained glued on the spot where I stood until the women broke out into Waiata (a song used to commemorate a special occasion for the Mauri people), and then I slowly turned and walked away back through the forest and down the hill to the sound of the women singing echoing through the forest. …
I don’t remember the date that I first encountered the disembodied in 2785 West 10th and Macdonald. I do remember the first being that I saw there was a shadow being that strode out of Eryn’s room and went towards the wall that separated the downstairs flat from upstairs. Where there had once been a door (and …
I worked as a Personal Assistant for Suzanne Castonguay from August 1999 – May 2001. To her, I was an open book. She knew my life story the moment I walked through her door to build her the closet with Charlie. Her psychic abilities were extraordinary, and her insights into my downfall were relayed to …
The feeling of helplessness that filled the later part of 1999 was suspended by the kindness of the fellow travellers that I met in Kitsilano and the burgeoning friendships I made with a group of people from Point Grey and Kitsilano. The then occupants of West 10th and Macdonald (in 1999 the house was two …
In August 1999 I boarded a plane bound for Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Bangkok. I had been travelling around what was once called Indochina, that being the countries, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos for around eight weeks on a very tight budget, but had enough money left over to either take me west, to India, …