There are wind-swept songs of days gone past that I don't understand- but am still plagued to hear. There are stories that begin in the salty air of Californian beaches, ideas that stem in the minds of poets sitting in the dusky cafés of San Francisco. There are dreams that form during long walks in hidden avocado groves at midnight under full moons and starry skies. There are days that bring new adventures and life-changing moments. There are nights that bring love and hate and magic and passion and all those beautiful things that only few of us get the God-given ability to understand. There are people that can bring out the hidden animal within- people that are given the gift to reach inside you like no one else can and take out the best and the worst and every other part of you that even you did not know you had.

And that is what Mark Conlon became to me.

But, as usual, I begin my story too early. I suppose I should go back to where this whole crazy mess started. It was only two years ago that I met Mark, then called Spot, but it seems as if an eternity has passed between us. When we met, we were two kids running around the streets of Brooklyn trying to make a buck for some food. It's funny how people change- how they grow up, mature. That's what happened to us. Living in the streets already causes someone to grow up fast, but the things we went through changed us forever. I was so naïve.