Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

Introducing
Forget Turns 2 Years Old Today
(or Valentine's Day 2003 or The Forget Day Massacre or A Short Personal Note or A Shot On the Arm or The World's Finest Web Magazine Gets A Little Older, Wiser, More Sage, Maybe A Little Less Cocky or Shelter For Baghdad or This is all About Forget)
by Kent Bruyneel, Editor-In-Chief

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Did you think you could hold us down? Did you think I was getting old, tired, frightened, and lazied by everything around the corner: by what could pop out at me from the opening of some train station; that the train platform itself could collapse; that the phone ringing from your pocket could be the worst thing you could imagine (okay, I am still afraid of the phone); that some small slight could stop what is our fate, our destiny...did you think you could derail that? Did you want to watch us surrender, go under for the third and final time? Did you think that? Did you think you could hold us down?

***

Darren is in Yellowknife taking shit from me and freezing his ass off. Stephen is in Seoul being a rockstar. Megan is next door. Matthew is upstairs. Craig is going to Toronto alone. Nick is in Europe, no doubt, not alone. Lee is doing a nickel in a medium security mansion. (Who knows where Kelly is? Chasing down the streets of Paris? Eating hot dogs in California?) But they are all here together, right now, forever. This is what this magazine has given me. And on this magazine's birthday, they are who I offer to you by way of celebration. Thank you for reading.

***

About one tenth of my email (I get a lot of email) is about how friends of mine, people I know and respect want to stop the war. I bet Iraq is a magnificent country. I bet if you were a traveler in Iraq you could find a family that would let you sleep near where they sleep and you would not only feel safe in their house. It would be your house. On the street where my parents live there are families from almost every place you can imagine. It is the place I feel the most safe. Like my brother says, peace for all. (I bet you could have a meal with that family you never imagined and, man, you could sleep and dream with angels painting murals from conversation on the walls or the flaps or whatever makes the shelter that keeps the children safe and warm in Iraq).

***

I miss you. Looking for pictures tonight I found this one of you going up the stairs at my place. You were walking away. We have about 48 hours before we are scheduled to turn in the book. It's hard not to talk to you. Hard to know that the field between us is this immense, untreatable and littered with remorse or indifference or what? But I read this quote the other day, can't remember who said it, but it made me think of you...hard times ain't quit, and we ain't quit. I hope you read this update, hope it makes you smile, I hope you are okay. We ain't quit.

***

Did you think you could hold us down? Did you think this would come to an end? Did you think just because we sleep late in the afternoon and don't get up and move around when you think we should we were broken or beaten? Did you think because we weren't being paid we would stop believing, bleeding? Did you know I talked to bp Nichol's widow today? And that she smiled at me through the phone and it surprised me and I knew, fuck, I was more certain than ever before, that this train is riding on rails far more secure than you could see from the outside? That this is a magazine that learns and leans and falls in love and backs itself into corners, and comes out, and will never give up? Do you see in my eyes that I am not going anywhere? That I am not alone? That Mike over there will kick awake soon and smile? That Matt will be down later and we will get back to work? Did you know any of that? Do you see in our eyes that we are serious and unbowed, and not quitting? Did you think about any of that? Did you think you could hold us down?

***

Kent Bruyneel likes all kinds of people, music, books and movies. He likes to sing out loud to the Beatles "White Album", he thinks Markus Naslund is the best hockey player in the entire world and, somehow, that there is still a decent chance for peace, and for rapprochement.

Forget Magazine began two years ago today. Valentine's Day 2001 in an apartment I shared with Blair and Trevor, then Tyler on a perfect street in Charlottetown. Hence all the fuss today.