About three months before he died, I came home (we lived together) after we had gotten in a huge fight and he had stomped off to go get drunk. I found this document open on the desktop and I was shocked because he had been telling me for months that he quit using heroin... After reading this you can see that it clearly says he never stopped using.... After he died, it seemed like the most appropriate thing to read at his service. I wanted people to know who Colin really was and how his drug addiction ended his life.

- Felicia

I am often amazed that I have kept away from the needle for so long. I injected heroin once, many years ago, and have not done it since. I smoke it every day, sickened but soothed by the bittersweet, cloying taste of the thick blue smoke in the back of my throat.

I am a momentary participant in the street corner culture that the drug has created. I weave through these motivated zombies in order to get what my body needs then I rush away, glancing nervously over my shoulder with an eye for the police.

It's a dangerous game, but I've been lucky. Among the zombies I appear anachronous, a clean and polished stone among the detritus. The junkies and dealers used to think I was a cop, the cops still ignore me; their eyes trained to pick out grimy street denizens, not a clean-cut urbanite such as myself.

The street dealer and users are ugly reminders of where I could be. They bleed from open, unhealing sores, their bodies are undernourished and emaciated and their eyes are dark and bloodshot pits, sunken in pasty gray flesh and staring beyond what's in front of them into a vacuous future.

I don't remember when I actually fell in love with Felicia. Love is a tricky thing to pin down. Sometimes it stays, sometimes it runs away. Freud said "We are never so helplessly unhappy as when we lose love," but we all go through this at some point, so it's a condition of our existence. I've fallen in love five times, destroying the bond three of those times, never making the bond once and gripping, indefatigable, the heart of these two hearts. Every relationship has a half-life-some transcend the human life span and create eternity.

I will conquer this incredible Demon. I will survive for another day. I will wake up tomorrow clean. This Demon that sits inside me will not take me. I believe if I believe, that I will persevere and make it through another day. I will evade the Demon and avoid its sufferance for another moment. The Demon has no real power over me.

Sentimentality makes the mind weak. Fear makes the spirit weak. These may be the same things. I think that I fear sentimentality.

You'll never get a dealer to agree to not sell you junk. Not because he wants to make money off you, but because he has an intrinsic sympathy for your condition.

My life is full of ghosts. Shadowed figures come and go, taking and leaving imprints, impressions of their having been. Ghosts are made of ether. Drawn into the lungs the ether imbues the body with a sense of realness, a sense of belonging. Not strong enough to change our will, it tells us our will is fated.

- Colin Breckon

Colin Breckon and I were best friends and worst enemies. He paged me four times that day but never answered the phone.  He left notes I never got from the man; I suppose they shoulda gotten a note to me, wouldn't you think? ... I lost 6 friends in that 6 months of time, Mike Douglas being another since he is posted here. We used to sit on the sidewalk at TIS and look at his art. Whenever I drink I pour one out for these lost souls, and remeber to live today like tommorrow may never show up. Five years later I can finally hang out in downtown Portland again. I can stand on a piece of side walk and not always remember, but not always forget.

  - Dabby McCrashalot