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.