Filed under: a city called montreal, friends, st. henri, that weird feeling i like to call attraction, thoughts about thoughts
my cat misses me. i come home and she’s angry, intolerant of affection, constantly needs to be near me. i can’t explain to her what’s going on, that i’m hurt and sad and can’t be in the apartment where i used to be happy. why i’m sleeping in friends’ spare rooms or their empty beds or on their couches until august 1st when i can move out and put distance between myself and the last two weeks of sadness, mistrust, and loss. all she knows is that i’m never home anymore, there’s no one to cuddle up to on those sweltering hot nights in the muggy loft bed where all of the day’s smells have risen and are trapped between our bodies and the ceiling. and she isn’t sure why i haven’t honoured our morning meeting on the fire escape where i drink coffee and she sunbathes with her tiny nose bent upward, reading the wind like a newspaper. i feel bad: she has a history of being abandoned and while i’m trying to visit her as much as possible between feedings, it just hurts too much to spend time there and feel nostalgic for the friendship i’ve lost.
that’s where we are these days, my cat and i. we’re stuck between not okay and okay, waiting to move on.
Filed under: a city called montreal, that weird feeling i like to call attraction
i’m not gone, i just haven’t felt very inspired to post recently. i sit down and feel foolish writing out my little adventures on this blog, sometimes. i enjoy my life a lot but writing about it can be repetitive. the things i do are often beautiful to me, but without giving out the visceral taste of it in my mouth, the touch under the pads of my fingers, the thrill in my arms that situations create, i can’t always write about them. i’m not a good enough writer for that. also, these days, i am too shy to write much about what else is on my mind because, more often than not, it is personal things i am figuring out.
so until i can find a way to make my days sound interesting again, i’m at a loss for words. but i’m here, still. i’m sure i’ll be back tomorrow or the next day with something, but i thought i should check in to say: this place isn’t dead. it’s just quiet.
Filed under: that weird feeling i like to call attraction
i am not as grateful as i should be for nights like this, on the lachine with the river cracking between us and verdun, a channel of unsafe ice you could have walked on a few weeks ago. (we almost did but were too scared, anyway.) or grateful for my cheap camera with the high-sensitivity setting we joke about because we’re highly-sensitive people: we pick up on everything and throw it into bright contrast. we devour the potential for situations and our frequency for slights is finer tuned than other people’s. it’s a funny combination for a friendship, but i think we make it work.
i’m not as grateful as i should be because my mind is in someone else’s kitchen and, if i’m being honest, pretty far from the canal and the split ice and even from my friend beside me here, no matter how much i love her. the metal rail i am sitting on that keeps people from the river is cold on my thighs where my skirt has hitched up and my long-johns aren’t doing their job properly but i’m lost to that, too. all i can think about is ginger snapping in a frying pan, which has nothing to do with the light pollution kissing up the front of the mountain or my wet feet hanging over the canal in their ripped boots, both of which are barking at me to notice them. and i’m not, at all, because nothing is going past my eyes tonight. even the deep, swooping love i feel for the abandoned factory leering over my shoulder isn’t holding my thoughts.
when the poet takes a picture there i am, frowning deeply, irritated with myself for filtering my enjoyment through my thoughts of this person who will not leave my head. wondering if i should feel this way. i would like my concentration back, this dual head space where smell-memory takes precedence over present existence feels ridiculous… there’s no logic here, thanks.
Filed under: a city called montreal, friends, that weird feeling i like to call attraction
i walked my way quietly, meditatively to the poet’s house last night and holed up under the covers in her bed with my overdramatic heart keeping me company as she organized her newly-painted room. someone in her house had found paint in the exact shade that she wanted, a dusty sage green, sitting on the curb nearby. eventually the poet came and sat with me and i rested my head on her arm while she strummed out newly-invented music on her ukelele, quiet and contemplative and wordless. the poet’s ceiling is whipcream swirls of white plaster layered in semi-circles, makes up the floor of the workshop room upstairs. the walls and floors are thin in the apartment, and sometimes we hear t’s music leaking down to us as they work upstairs. last night, though, it was just the poet and i and the ukelele, me trying to figure out the tangle of myself. i’m over dramatic, i often fall into the poet’s bed sighing and asking her “why?” and she tries to answer. it’s a weak insufficiency i dislike about myself, needing people to respond to questions only i can actually answer.
Filed under: that weird feeling i like to call attraction
Filed under: a city called montreal, that weird feeling i like to call attraction
Filed under: a city called montreal, that weird feeling i like to call attraction
i”ve been…distracted. the distraction comes in the form of a person, and while they are definitely a very welcome distraction, i keep forgetting to do things. like update this.
but anyway…i’m sitting in my living room watching Side B and AH playing mario kart to a warped pat benatar tape. pat sounds like the devil when she sings “hell is for children” her voice wavering and dipping into skewered sound. because we don’t really have a cd player, we’ve started scouring fripprix for tapes. so far we have the aforementioned, liz phair, tv show themes from the 70s, the cranberries, the clash and a country western xmas tape. we’re getting there.
it’s raining, 16 degrees…an unusually cold august day. i spent the morning metroing from mile end where i slept last night to st. henri, where i live, to old montréal so i could meet my uncle for breakfast. once there i drank my second, third, fourth and fifth cups of coffee while rapidly talking about how the olympics were ruining vancouver, how it was speaking french as an anglo, and how much i liked montréal. it was one of those times where you know you are talking too damn much and you can’t stop, the words are out of your mouth before you know they’re even in it. maybe it was because i haven’t seen any of my west coast family since december and i haven’t seen my uncle in two years. i realized today how much he looks like my da and, in turn, my late granda. it’s odd to see my da’s face, but not quite my da’s face, looking back at me over $15 french toast.
i just put the 70s tv themes tape into the player.
i’m in the weird kind of mood that comes from something different in my life, where my routine changes in a way i like but am new to. and i really like the change in routine and the person who caused it.
AH is winning at mario kart, and Side B hates to lose. my cat, the squash, is sleeping on our couch. i’m reeling from the coffee, my brain flitting between very awake and very asleep. unfit to write a blog entry.
