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.