watercolours

ice, whiskers, books and light feel

Left that place early and walked east along Sherbrooke in the sunshine, absorbing a week's worth of vitamins. It had warmed up and then it cooled right back down and so the snow melted into streams and puddles and then stopped suddenly in it's tracks. It was that perfect kind of ice, crystalline and brittle and translucent on the verge of opaque. Every puddle cracked so nicely and I thought about how children are probably happy because they know how to get their satisfaction without thinking too hard about it. And thinking about that I meandered along and tried to open my eyes wider and not let one stranger catch me scowling. We exchanged a knowing smile when you almost slipped and I took big deliberate steps to protect against the same. I listened to music and looked at the colour of bricks on buildings when the sun hits them like this at this time of day. I walked through the park and then got to the place that sells the healthy cat food. I used my French and talked about you, Mooz. I took a different way home and saw things a little bit differently. I looked into your window and it was chock-full of books and when I walked inside it smelled so good. There was a grey and white cat sleeping on a stool, there were books that looked a thousand years old, there was a box of original prints and the words all around were mostly French but there was that one shelf that was full of English. And it was full of what seemed to be carefully selected and lightly read novels. Mostly for three dollars apiece. I looked and found and wanted several of them, but I thought about money and all of the other things I also need to use it for, and so settled on four. But the wild-haired, bearded, bespectacled man at the counter informed me he took cash only. Shucks. Well I will put one back. Is there tax? Maybe I will put two pack. No tax today. Gosh, you are very kind. So leaving and then walking, I caught up to the one other patron who asked me in French if I found anything interesting in there. And I did! And we walked together and talked about books and neighbourhoods and discovered we are neighbours. And we said goodbye and then I came in to your purred greetings and lovingly cleaned up your little messes. I continued to think about this day and how nice that sunlight was and how good it feels to walk around smiling and feeling good and actively opening up my heart and just seeing how that feels.

Woke up today and something had changed.

Woke up today and something had changed.

Followed my breath to work, passing once-puddles that were shattered like car windows.

Walked quickly and lightly, as if having finally found my sea legs after weeks of semi-stumbling.

I thought clearly and openly, looked longer at each thought and thought "hmmm," but never drew any conclusions.

I thought of Moozimah who is fiending for that catgrass, knocking over dishes in the middle of the night in an attempt to climb an almost-storey to reach that new treat.

I drank two big cups of coffee after three weeks of having hardly any. I felt it course through my network of veins, felt it pull at my chest muscles and squeeze the air out of my lungs. I felt the rounded edges of my orb-like eyeballs twitch and shiver and I thought, I better eat some vegetables.

My brain hummed along, mostly quietly for eight hours.

I walked home, chasing my breath. No music now, just cold air coming into my brain and still the thoughts are moving along slowly. Like there is something in there that I should be looking at. Like the weather changed overnight and my brain must catch up. Like Moozimah knows a secret and whiskertickles me as I sleep saying with her eyes as she ruffles her mane, "look."

Hmmm.

excited feelings about:

• the onset of fall and the emergent hues


• the giant Dragon Tree and the tiny Spider Plant that will be new additions to the single sill of my little apartment


• the idea of dolphins, diving birds and medium fish, and their frenzied cooperative feeding


• meeting a brand new human being in approximately four weeks


• hammerhead sharks


• the prospect of being paid in art supplies


• the oncoming education in human synergistics


• a new Bill Bryson book


• developing eleven rolls of film, spanning many moons


• seeing Wilco on Sunday in the evening


• replacing the boggle battery and upping the competitive ante in our vocabulary battling


• familiarizing myself with all of the acceptable Q and Z words in Scrabble


• squash and beets and baking bread


• saving dollars and going places


• learning more and more about the universe through watching dear Moozimah mature into a fine young lady cat

that was early may

A while ago. Took a cab home with Tarif, who talked to me through the rearview mirror as he drove slowly down St. Denis and then talked some more as the lights at St. André changed from red to green about twenty times. Said a lot of things and laughed and looked me in the eye and spoke honestly about things that people don't tend to say. His eyes were twinkly and his teeth were large and yellow and he turned around maybe twice but mostly it was through images that he said,

• education here is meaningless


• there is a book of spirituality where he comes from, which every scholar has to read and we have no equivalent here


• Montreal is becoming and Americanized city because of our obsession with money


• people aren't good here intrinsically, but because they are afraid of the consequences of bad behaviour


• no one expresses their aggression and that is unhealthy


• all the natural food is gone from the world


• this is the closest thing to communism


• there are smart people out there, but why aren't they using their knowledge?

Thinking, these kinds of conversation don't happen with everyone or anyone and how a man like that needs open ears and eye contact and to sit in a cab for thirty minutes after arriving at the destination and the meter isn't running and just let me tell you one more thing and everyone needs to be heard sometimes and I need to have more faith in myself too.

just dream of the lofty pines

Sweet summer long weekend brings good things all around. Scavenged wooden chairs with wicker seats unravelling, not the comfiest but so nice to look at, and okay so twelve earwigs rode in on the legs but now they are squished (I am sorry bugs but you aren't meant for this inside world).


Lazy evening heat still lingering, sitting on the mexican blanket in the big park in the dark. Those bottles are pop not twist and the kindness of strangers opens them up and we empty them while sharing rude slang and learning some new words and giving advice about this city that we are lucky to live in. Peek at the fireworks which peek out from behind trees way down at the water. Seeing only the ones that shoot up high but still gasping quietly my oohs and ahhs and remembering all kinds of things.

Keys locked inside and busting through the screen window. A confused cat, frame bent out of shape and hammered back straight, clothes hanging on my bicycle, the heat and laughter and understanding everything.

In the morning, the heat, the creaking, the sweating, laughing. Couple of weirdo gomers slow dancing to Suzanne in the doorway. Leave me smiling all day, you do.

seeing the pleiades riding on taurus' shoulder

If I had $95 to $200,000 to spare, I might buy a ticket for a seat on a sub orbital flight into space. A brief look at earth's curvature and some minutes of weightlessness. You can do that these days, if you have those meaningful pieces of paper in bulk.

A while ago I came up with this question that is somewhat character defining to my judgemental mind: Given the chance between a week in outer space alone or six months in Europe, if money had no bearing, which would you choose?

I would love to give my mind the added dimension that an insider's look at inner space would. Being in space instead of pondering it as an outsider from thousands of lightyears away (or below or above or within or without or whathaveyou). Think about how that would change your mind!

Space makes my mind breathe in a different way because it forces a broader frame of reference, or maybe takes away any kind of knowable frame. It makes my cluttered mind want to do some spring cleaning, to sweep out the corners where the petty thoughts linger, gather dust and end up characterizing my daily thoughtlife. I want to know space and to obtain a sense of unfathomable distance, size and real emptiness. Of lightness and darkness, of time collapsing.

If you said Europe, then I don't know...

on a wednesday

Stood for a bus on a highway off-ramp, wind so strong my shirt was flashing my belly, sand in my eyes and cars whipping past. Then on the bus where I can smell ten different people and feel the heat of three for a ride through this foreign neighborhood. Seeing all of the different people, the cans of beer tucked into brown paper bags, the sweat beading on people's foreheads and soaking in the smalls of their backs. Then on the metro, staring at the dried puke on the sliding door and that man who is leaning right into it, talking animatedly to his wife, unknowing. Then emerging back up via escalator to the sounds of a busker playing 'heart and soul' on an electric guitar, only it took me a few seconds to place it but now it's right in my head. Skin feels greasy and dirty and I'm sweating still in the air conditioned library, but I feel like my head is put on straight and I feel that familiar giddiness that comes from deep in my chest and must be expelled and so I keep laughing and sort of day dreaming about jumping into Lake Huron.

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.

city invisibility

Fell asleep to the sounds of an old man rifling through the garbage bags outside my window. He was making these noises that seemed part moan, part howl, part song, part selftalk, part pain, part gasp, like a man sized raccoon who has seen better nights. It started to rain and the rain is starting to turn into snow and the snow is turning into slush. I can feel this weather living inside my skull and there doesn't feel like there is enough room in there for both my brain and this storm. Building pressure and I think I might need to take my brain out for the evening and maybe even longer, until the sky clears. I would like to be in a boat just floating in water, and then curl up in a bird's nest for seven days and nights. You can come too.

a spring wind to blow the cobwebs away

Strange winds blowing, the kind that make you wobble as you're walking. Force you sideways, even. Good thing my hairs are attached to my head, because that wind wanted to take them away and I bet that even your snugfitting hat would have been airborne in such a breeze! The mildness in the air is something that I haven't felt in at least six months and it's so invigorating and causes stirs of excitement for the things that are on their way. I lean into that pushing wind and watch my step as I lumber along the muddy pathway through the park. Two young boys are playing with cap guns, from far away I see one lying on the ground, the other standing above him looking helpless. I worry that something has happened, and then closer, I see the little silver gun in the taller boy's hand, his foot perched upon the other boy's torso. Nothing alarming, just a good old game of cops and robbers or cowboys and indians. The taller one must be winning, like how my brother always won, no matter what. I make my one and only gunshot noise, pointing my finger as I pass them (only the sound gets lost in the wind) and then they're out of sight but I can hear the firing guns behind me, "pkew! pkew!", as I hunker down and carry onwards towards nothing in particular, except maybe a clearer head.

everyone is a creature

You two come to pick me up at 8 o'clock and I crawl into the backseat of the newest, fastest, smoothest car I have ever been in and we cruise down the road looking for a place to happen. Listening to Don Henley's Boys of Summer and we only know just that one line, "I can see you..." but we are psyched to hear the song and to be driving in such a smooth ride in the evening when it is becoming springtime and we have nothing on the go. You, you are like a mixture of two of my uncles, one when your face is serious, the other when it crinkles into a smile. We park that baby and emerge into the busy, modern streets where everyone clutches shopping bags and has a funny look about them. Us three are like sore thumbs and we duck into one of those Irish pubs and begin our guzzling. We are stuffed to the brim with food and we are downing beers even though they hurt. Let us find out a little bit about you. Dock worker, no hobbies, well maybe moose hunting (and you didn't get a moose the last time because you didn't feel like it). You still have some frozen moose meat in your freezer, you gave some to your landlord and you gotta use up the rest real soon before six months has gone by. The band begins with the Pan flutist and the smiling fiddler and the other. I am too quiet to make my request (until two beers later) and it's I'se the B'y! You appease me and I know all of the words from my grade five choir practices. Bouncing our knees to this whimsical music and the searchlight outside keeps time with it. Looking at everything on the walls when you two are outside and the paper jammed into a light socket, rolled up but unravelling like a rose and then the executive men at the table next to us are trying to hook us in but we just laugh and point out the facts about everything, thinking how great it would be to get paid to be an observer who just points things out, when that sometimes seems like our only calling. Later, you leave us there to see Cookie the trainwreck on a shipwreck on a planewreck, and you make sure we are settled with one last beer and we are never ready to call it a night and so we stay and the music doesn't end either, so we keep bouncing our limbs and taking it in. The fellow who resembles a young Steve Martin is taken with my teeth and his friend thinks I look like Miley Cyrus, trying to convince everyone with a pocketsized image on his phone. They are here for the playoffs, and don't I know that you always wear suits during the playoffs? and okay sure you can buy us some beers but that's just because we are broke and we don't want to see the end yet, but that bar does close eventually. Let us go next door and so we enter down into the dingy disco where maybe five people are dancing real close and dirty on the floor. I feel like I am in a circus mad house and yeah you're right, it's probably better upstairs and yeah I dropped a beer but no I don't really need another, in fact I really ought to be going home. It seems the only time that I practice my French these days is when I am drunk and heading home, charming all of the Haitian cabbies, and dear Moozimah, you are the greatest greeter with your tumble roll over soft belly offering and oh my! Threethirtya.m. and it's going to be a hazy day. The sunniest morning arrives promptly and I am hobbling through the streets, feeling that loopiness but also feeling wonderful and humming 'where is my mind?' and looking at the sky and taking in the man on the corner. He is like a smurf, with his bright blue tshirt stretched over his giant Santa Clause belly and he has one of those jolly round faces, framed by the wildest beard I've seen in weeks. Also, the young woman sitting on the sidewalk, sandals kicked off and picking at her toe, an open can of Old Milwaukee on the ground beside her. The daisy chain of tiny children, tethered together and speaking French as they are guided along by the leashholder through these dirty sidewalks. Oh my goodness, gracious, goshness! Everyone is a creature.

an old man is snoring

Rainy day Monday sitting in the usual public space to be on the internet for a little while. As always, feeling surrounded by funny things. The guy who just sat down in the window seat opens up his laptop and the background is a life sized photograph of himself, wearing exactly what he is currently wearing. I wonder if he just took the picture before he came in here? Or he's just wearing his fave outfit + hat? Dunno. I feel like I say this all the time, but sometimes I feel like I forget how to be on the internet. I need some internet coaching from my friends who are internet savvy. Advice about useful sites to look at, entertaining things, relevant news information maybe? I feel like I spend an hour catching up on my friends blogs and week old facebook things and then I have exhausted my interests, but surely the internet is wider than that... I don't know how to find funny things or anything that seems worth passing on and so I feel like I'm not fully participating in the whole "web"aspect of the internet. Ahh, I dunno. Some mildly interesting TED talks and photographs of strange looking sea creatures and the end is almost upon me. Now the window seated man is playing some internet chess. I am feeling some Ontario nostalgia and am really looking forward to going home for a visit. Been talking to Callie on the phone and can't get over her burst in vocabulary and general coherency, and Hunter too, with his "Hmmmm... I know!s"and little babbling bursts. Excited about several future things, including some milder weather and my increasing mobility and figuring out what I'm going to do with myself. Been feeling crafty and getting back into my quiltmaking, I want to start some more projects and try to accomplish more in my excessive spare time. At the same time, it's pretty lovely, having nothing to do. Okay rain, let's get reacquainted.

easy monday, fine and dandy

Deep sleeping and strange dreaming. We are driving together, you the passenger like you always were, me swerving and having trouble, like I always do when I am driving while asleep. I start to pull over, you ask me why and I try to explain that my vision has suddenly become the size of a playing card, held an arm's length away. Like looking at a tiny screen from a distance, rectangular tunnel vision and trying to navigate a windy road. Later, in your big country house we are sitting around with our elbows up on tables, propping up our chins. I am showing you the beeswax beards that I have made for us, "here, you put the candles in these little holes and the whole thing will get warm and malleable and that's when you plaster it onto your face..." Later on, hobbling through sunny streets with showerless wild hair and filthy sunglasses. The bar is closed to the earlycomers and so we find ourselves inside a dive called Bistro de Paris, drinking gigantic five dollar mugs of nameless beer and eavesdropping on the other seven patrons. The men's bathroom door has a window and so I can see the back of every man peeing, see which ones go into the stall or wash their hands. The gambling corner lit up by digital slot machines, where that man is spending all kinds of money, swaying in to press the button so rhythmically like a dance, hoping for five cherries in a row. It aches to see those crispy fives get devoured when we have a loaned $40 to our names, between us. Thinking of Joni, thinking "hey, honey, you got lots of cash, bring us round a bottle and we'll have some laughs" but nope that gamblin' man's just doing his thing and we still have 29 dollars to blow so I guess that's that. Then back across the road to the matinee show of those fine country singer friends. A few more pints and now it's only eveningtime just beginning, can't be the end but we are flat out of money. But we don't want to see the end! So nevermind the end, we are coming over for your specialty rice and spinach! Depanneur deliberations and one big bottle of beer with our last nickels and dimes, but it turns out that you don't even drink and soon enough we have switched to tea (verbena and sage, steeped just right). Taking in your beauty of a voice with your haunting songs, and singing Lhasa and harmonizing and cutting up the garlic and onions like a family and enjoying that meal and sing, sing us some Leonard Cohen, but oh no! You get a phone call from down the hall to keep it down and we laugh our heads off at that and move into the room for a few more songs, marvelling at the words we remember and our voices come together and my, how a good sing song is sometimes all I ever need. When the end has come I take the steps to hobble home and it's lovely to be out when the city is so dark and quiet and empty. I am walking the way I want to, and ignoring the leering cabdrivers and kicking a can and listening to Mama Wolf and home to bed, to bed to sleep. In the morning the weather is trying so hard to be springtime and it's lovely to sit and to listen to songs and to stand up straight with my guitar. Belting out these country songs with real lungfulls of air and real room to breathe and toughened fingertips and increasing confidence, at least in the presence of my one cat audience. Afternoon has found it's way here with that same ease that a regular Monday tends to. Minty tea and tuning out the strangers, but never really. Reminiscing about all kinds of funny moments and feeling lucky in life lately because I get to feel so free and to laugh so constantly and know nothing about the future and that's dandy and fine.

mingus take me away

Sitting at the Grade Bibliothèque public computer listening to Charles Mingus and I have tuned out the immediate world. I keep glancing out the window though, because there is some very nice light shining down today and I feel some weird anxiety about being in here. My lack of home internet has made me feel some occasional funniness about checking things on here, in public. I am sure no one's looking over my shoulder, at least not directly. But still, even just trying to write openly and honestly is hard! I think about the amount of time that I spend spying on strangers, glancing at what they're checking out on youtube (Michael Jackson death conspiracy videos, soap operas, etc.) and I wonder if anyone is spying on me. I dunno, I don't care.
I feel zonked out today. I have been missing my full mobility and craving long walks. The weather has been finicky, but has been looking a little more like spring and that smell of melting things and old garbage makes me feel giddy. Funny how music like this can transform a whole situation. It reminds me of my Taid and then I remembered that I took a reference from someone earlier today who had a voice just like his, and then I remembered that it was his birthday two weeks ago and I didn't even think about him on that day. I guess he would have been ninety-seven? What's up with time and how it can make you feel so funny? And what's that supposed to mean, feeling funny? Well, I can't say. I am working on decluttering my brain and maybe in the process I will be able to work on becoming more articulate with my thoughts. I feel like lately I go through my days just giggling and feeling funny about everything and never really establishing why.

whiskertickled

I woke up this morning because I felt something very soft and gentle tickling the tip of my nose. I opened my eyes to see gigantic cat eyes staring into mine, mitts up on the edge of the bed, our faces inches away from each other's. Whiskertickled awake at 8:40am by that sly girl Mooz, but what was she looking for? I asked her twice, but she just flicked her eyes and ruffled her mane and yawned so big I could see down her esophagus.

smiling strangers

If ever I find myself having some negative thoughts about strangers, or feel my attitude start to turn a little sour, I will have to remind myself to remember something. There are so many kind-hearted people all around, and a sure-fire way to spot them in the crowd is to hobble around on crutches. Everywhere I have ''walked'' for the past six days, I have been faced with smiles, sympathy-eyes, offers of assistance, doors held open, arms held out, looks of concern, coffee delivery and endless words like ''j'espère que tu n'a pas loin a traverser'' or ''I once busted my knee up too, and I know how much crutches suck''. I feel like even though it's precarious to crutch through the slush, there are enough people watching me and waiting to see what is going to happen, that I'll somehow be caught if I fall (again). Or at least helped up or something. People are sweet.
Today was the first day that I caught my positive attitude fading, because I was getting so sweaty in my struggling and I kept remembering how good it feels to walk home from work listening to music and enjoying the fading daylight and just having a spring in my step, and getting so frustrated because I can't do that. It's an incredible thing to have legs that work, which you can push extra hard to make them strong and flexible. It's amazing to be able to jump up to grab something, or to sit cross-legged or to put on your own socks. Or just forget that your legs just do work for you and you don't even have to think about it. I guess it's good to try to think about that stuff when you have it to appreciate, and I know that I do that too. I think about it especially now though, that I have a bit of a challenge to overcome. It's really not that bad and there are many good things coming from it. My upper body is exercising in ways it hasn't since July, I have been sleeping so soundly by the night nighttime rolls around and I am lying down and I automatically get a spot whenever I take transit. But it's the best being the object of all this smiling and so thanks to all of those people for all of that kindness, it's really reassuring.

tea with eva b.

got lost a little while in the stacks and piles of things bringing my inner taurus packrat out kicking and grabbing and no i can't even wear earrings but i want those dangling things and probably i will never wear that but gosh it's so pretty and i guess i am pretty much flat broke but still i guess it's okay to get just this and this and okay this too. the tea was free. walking home then swinging that bag of loot i find myself dancing a bit at every red lit corner and smiling at every stranger and then home mooz is a purrbag and i am eating pickles and rolling around ideas about summer and the future is wide open and time time time is not even going as fast as it usually feels but feels just right...