onset of summer in the city

Sunny spring day off. Perfect kind of air, not hot or humid but warm and breezy. Walked just a little ways. Big street is closed off as they string up some pink bulbs and lights to make this space more festive for the coming summer months which will fill even fuller with people and action. Sitting in l'Escalier, by the window with the light pouring in and the breeze feeling nice. Drinking coffee and listening to some hornfilled slow jazz, reggae, french anthem like songs that some dj is fiddling with in the corner.

My little homemade sign request for someone to share the internet in my dingy apartment building culled no interest, but I left it up for months anyway. Thought maybe in the fall someone would see it... Then walked in yesterday to a note under my door with a name and number. But now I don't know if I want it anymore! I have been getting used to a nice little routine without it. I like having to walk to a place like this to use it, to sit for a little while, drink some coffee or tea and get filled in/filled up and then leave it there to rest until the next time. I feel worried that if I have it fulltime, I will abuse it and overdo it. But I also feel like maybe that is a good challenge, getting it and making a real effort not to do that. I dunno! I do feel out of the loop in a lot of ways though without internet: I don't write as many emails, don't skype, don't chat, don't read the news, don't get new music, don't know what's happening musically here or elsewhere. Yeah, but I think I am managing alright. I feel a weird dilemma about this now, whether to accept the answer to my own offer. I guess I'll see.

This onset of spring has been really lovely, and changing the whole feel of this city. It's so amazing, to have dreamed about a place and a reality and then to have it come true. One thing I have been noticing is the amalgamation of so many smells, walking down a street and right through walls of so many different things. It's a lot of garbage and dog shit and piss and rotten food and cigarettes but mixed in with wet soil and worms and new flowers and clean laundry and groceries and cooking food. The streets are also filthy, but beautiful too because even though there is garbage everywhere, the buildings are so lovely and everyone is making the most of their tiny plots of land by planting and tending to gardens. And there is a mixture of people everywhere you look, the down and out walking right between the well to do, everybody touches elbows and breezes by. And some people smile right at me and wish me a good day and some people scowl or look more often at the ground. Everyone is here! A jumble of everything, a city. I guess this is new to me, and I realize how much I love it.

Yesterday I brought a blanket to the park and lay in the grass, listening to tunes and looking intermittently at the sky and the people and the new leaves on every tree. I read some more about Neil Young's journey through life and also just lay back with my eyes wide open and thought about things. I get to walk five minutes and lay down, that is incredible. I kept thinking I was going to be longing for the water and the escarpment and the small town harbours once summer set in here, but I think that the city charms will continue to win me over as they have begun to.

fieldwork

That sky was lit up that odd shade of blue, the half of the moon that the sun still touched was this weird beacon in outer space, as if stuck there. It does not seem to be dangling from anywhere because there is no hook, no ceiling, no rooftop and just no stopping outer space. The grass is green, I know it, but in that light it's almost purple and it's dampening under my feet. The evening is every colour, muted. The transition into night is slow. The smell is of things growing and things falling apart. The air is all around and there is the fast and slow rearrangement of each piece into a different thing that is essentially the same. What do I know but what I feel? If there were an answer I would find it by climbing the silver thread from which the moon does not dangle.

just watching

Slept through the heat of the day, and through phonecall reminders about the beauty just behind the curtain. But I couldn't muster it, not until 5pm and then thank goodness that it was still as light and lovely. Sitting on the metal balcony that overlooks a hundred others below it, the street so jampacked with people and cars. What a lovely way to watch the day wind down, watching people, watching the sky as it's turning blue before black. Watching that best light touch everything that way, drinking cold beer and listening to new Radiohead. Talk about life and you create an excellent way of visualizing the mediator artist, one foot in each realm, bringing the information down from the mountaintop to the people. Everything flows through and isn't that both wonderful and terribly frustrating, having both everything and nothing at all. There is a wasp crawling all over your brown leather hat, and getting comfortable. Staking a claim I suppose, because hours later after walks in and out, down the street and up the stairs, the wasp remains there on your hat. Hmm.