I can smell it walking down the street. That aroma like Miles Davis, heavy on the high note. Bright like sunshine drying clothes on the line. Evaporating into your nostrils, focusing your third eye, the scent always fleeting, here then gone, lingering just long enough for you to register a question mark.

...?

I've learned from excessive outward motion (my current record in one city without leaving: five months) and obsessive inward emotion, that comparing cities, people, communities, solar systems, lovers and breakfast cereals only breeds dissatisfaction and the craving for someone's else's Lucky Charms. Judging and choosing favorites also fosters the most selfish of human emotions: missing, which has absolutely no use in a touring artist's life. So I won't exactly say that Vancouver is a favorite, but I will say that in the past year of touring, there are three cities I would like to challenge my five month record in: Portland OR, Anchorage AK, and now Vancouver BC.

In other words, I've fallen in love. And I walk down the street, checking out the real estate, as another question mark comes to mind. I mean, doesn't it seem ludicrous? It's a plant. It grows. It is native to....earth. A government making a plant illegal is like outlawing elbows. Laws can't stop a seed from sprouting and as far as my spirituality is concerned, the Creator doesn't make mistakes.

So when I walk for an hour without seeing litter or graffiti, I give this city a shout out. When I open my bedroom curtains and see Cypress Mountian posing for her postcard, I blow her a big sloppy kiss. When I buy my hemp seed foods right off the grocer's shelves, when I smell the unmistakable aroma of sweet jazz sunshine being smoked on the street, when I feel uncommonly safe walking alone downtown after dark, I try not to make comparisons, but simply appreciate Vancouver for what she is.

Howdy, Neighbor... pass the Grape Nuts.

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