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i’m putting this blog to sleep, for awhile… both it and i need rest. the things i want to say these days are too personal to say here, too angry and sad. the end of june/the month of july were hard for me- a lot of things that i didn’t like happened. and people who i don’t want to be privy to my thoughts (you know who you are and you know why) have access to this blog, so i feel uncomfortable speaking openly at the moment. you’ll forgive me (i hope) if i step away from this for awhile. maybe no more than a month, maybe several. we’ll see what happens.
please feel free to get in touch. my e-mail is, as always: quietinthecity at gmail.com. i’m always looking for penpals and new friends. don’t be shy.
take care,
vaughn
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Filed under: Uncategorized
i spent all of christmas eve day with t, making banana pancakes and doing the dishes together, talking and talking. on the walk home i realized that i wasn’t sad- i walked home in the dark down my long street, almost bereft of xmas lights, feet slipping on the ice in their cracked black boots feeling as though i should be sad. i searched myself for the sadness and couldn’t find it, was too thrilled about the conversations i had just had, the leftover taste of banana pancakes and herbal tea in my mouth. this happens when i meet someone i can talk to (which is so rare for me anyway) especially when this person is a lot like me in the ways i like myself, when conversation isn’t awkward or strange but continues from one point to the next, hours clicking by like the second hand on a clock until you realize you’ve been there longer than you intended, that you have responsibilities outside of the conversation you’re not even halfway finished with.
today my household (plus the smartest lady ever and t) celebrated xmas with gift opening, eggs benedict and coffee-eggnog-rum. i talked to my family and the smartest lady ever and i took the dog we’re sitting at the apartment for a walk in the snow, getting the opportunity to talk one on one, which is rare since she lives in toronto and i never see her anymore. it was a good day, and the only sadness i felt was sitting around the table with t and the smartest lady ever talking about our families, about our homes. i do miss mine, but i hadn’t thought i’d survive away from home and suddenly it’s over, just like that, and my couple of days were so so full i missed sadness almost completely.
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Side B and i went to the “shame the flame” protest yesterday with t and sk. it started out very calmly, a group of activists gathered in the centre where the flame was meant to come through. music played and people danced, chanted, spoke. it was almost like a dance party (“what did i tell you when you first moved here? everything in montreal is a dance party” -Side B) i translated for t and Side B when the speeches and slogans were in french, we ate free vegan sandwiches- basically, we wanted to take up space in a non-violent direct action.
then the police started to get violent. they pushed the crowd back and the crowd resisted, threw snowballs. the police pushed harder. around this point, we lost sk and t fell over a bank of snow with the crowd forcing them down as the police forced us to back up blindly into solid piles of snow. someone else and i grabbed their arms and hauled them up, and then the police forcing the crowd back knocked us all over again till a third person joined us and we managed to get our footing. at this point, Side B and I linked arms and found ourselves right at the back, police with their hands on my shoulders holding me in the crowd. then the police decided to push forward and suddenly the back where we were became the front of the protest and Side B and I found ourselves almost kissing the police shields, wedged between a huge canvas banner being held behind us and the cops. we were yelling “no olympics on stolen native land! pas d’olympiques sur les terres volées!” and i was yelling loudly, screaming probably, until suddenly i felt this dull pain in my side and i realized that i’d just been hit by one of their batons, blunt end connecting with the soft flesh around my ribs. my mind went in three different places- first reaction was fear and i felt my eyes sting in conjunction with my body. the second was resignation and i remember thinking to myself “they just hit you and they’re going to do it again. and then they’re going to do it again. and you can’t stop it.” the third was rage because they were hitting Side B.
i threw my arm up against the shield that was pressing on her face screaming “elle est une jeune fille! on peux pas bouger!” (she’s a young girl! we can’t move!)* i don’t know why the french came out, maybe because the police were speaking french and it felt like the thing to do. “bouge! bouge!” (move move) the police officers were screaming at me, hitting me in the ribs with his nightstick and then punching me in the gut until i felt like i might be kind of sick. we honestly couldn’t move, the canvas banner behind us was pushing us forward, the police were pushing us back. and suddenly sk was there, holding the banner yelling to me “get behind the banner! get behind the banner”! and people grabbed me and i grabbed Side B and the bottom of the banner and they flipped us under it, away from the batons. someone- honestly, just a pair of arms belonging to a person much, much taller than i- put their arms around either side of Side B and i, comforting in the crowd full of people protecting us for a few moments from the batons. then i grabbed Side B again and pulled her to the side, couldn’t stand the idea of her being hit ever again and needing to get away from the police over there.
on the side of the protest now, we linked arms with each other and then with the people next to us, facing a solid wall of riot cops. we were screaming, trying to drown out the ceremonies as olympic propaganda played on the big screen. i made eye contact with a police officer, focusing on him because if he was going to hit me again i wanted him to see me as a person, not just a screaming asshole. we held eye contact until he looked away, looked back at me, looked away again. i was desperatly afraid of being hit again and it sort of hurt to breathe, a throbbing pain in my stomach. a person behind the police was trying to get someone’s attention and i caught their eyes. they tried to communicate something i couldn’t understand over and over, pointing up the street. i think they were trying to tell me that the police were closing in from above us as well.
the police had seperated us by this point, pushed half the crowd of protestors away and cornered about 100 of us in a semi-circle against the facade of several buildings. they kept advancing, pushing us closer and closer together like a herd of animals. they were vicious. they kept us cornered off there for a couple of hours, threatening us as we screamed and blew noisemakers and made as much noise as possible. the flame was lit to an orchestra of protest.
we did force them to cut a two hour ceremony down to 30 mins and delayed the ceremony by about an hour and a half. most importantly, we didn’t sit idly by while this overblown, ridiculous atrocity of a games went unhindered in its celebration.
this morning i am sore and i have a pattern of bruises/sore spots starting with a large one over my hip and traveling to just under my right breast. my ribs still hurt when i move a certain way. but i think it was worth it. i am viciously anti-olympics for a number of reasons and i have never regretted showing my support for anti-olympic movements. i know it’s going to happen, but it’s a fucking atrocity.
*please forgive my terrible french spelling in this entry, i speak/hear it better than i write it!
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early this morning, s and i went for a walk along the lachine, bundled in our coats against the sharp wind rising off the canal. because it is winter, the water level has fallen to reveal all the debris that would normally be hidden beneath its surface. in the pauses during conversation we counted bike frames choked with muck, a pink kiddie pool, huge spools used for rope, a car skeleton and unidentifiable red metals poking half-sunken out of the muck. i find debris haunting and odd, out of place objects of former moments in people’s lives suddenly in new, strange context. we were delayed by a train crossing the tracks along with a line of cars and several other people on foot, waiting for the huge beast to slink past us. i remembered a few months ago, late at night, caught on the small strip of road between two passing trains with mz. vile, Side B, and the smartest lady ever. at the time, there were no other people i would rather have been stuck between two trains with and i snapped this picture with all the love in my heart:
after we crossed the tracks and the train had passed, s and i walked through the market, sticking our hands into a huge crate of cranberries to feel the compact fruit clicking against our fingers, taunt with possibility. as we walked away, s offered me one of the two she had pocketed and i cracked the tart skin between the mollars on the left side of my mouth until bitter juice prickled against my tongue. i live for small things like that, the sudden, temporary burst of red in my mouth overwhelming all other tastes.
sometimes i love my friends so much my eyes hurt. and writing this now is making me miss the smartest lady ever and mz. vile, who are (not really that) far away in toronto but who were part of nearly every day of my life this summer. it is making me realize that, yes, loving your friends is more important than most things. i love my friends right into the dark, mucky parts of my heart.
oh my, today is the last day of november…that crept up on me.
so, at the start of the month i decided to post every day for all of november…and i only missed two days. while the perfectionist part of me (i *am* a virgo, afterall) is disappointed, the rest of me knows that i missed those days because they were times spent away from home, enjoying myself to the wee hours with no computer nearby. i relish those moments far more than i would have enjoyed doing 30 days as opposed to 28, and so i’m satisfied. november has been a really good and really weird month for me, and i’ve appreciated all of it.actually, this autumn has been incredible, and the first snowfall today kind of marked its end…winter has finally reached montréal, the semester is almost over. the thing i am starting to realize these days, however, is that my time in this city is so far from over i can’t forsee a date of departure…which is sort of scary but also incredible.
regardless, i’m going to try to keep posting regularly- at the very least, once a week but probably more.
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i have a presentation to do tomorrow that my whole body is dreading, so instead of an entry here is one of my favorite poems, has been a favorite since i was young.
There Will Come Soft Rains by Sarah Teasdale
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
this is a recipe i pull out when i want to impress someone because it is easy and tastes gooood. i came up with the sourcream substitute myself, and i’m pretty proud of it.
your ingreedients:
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 cup vegan marg
- 1 tsp baking pwdr
- 1/2 cup soy/rice milk
- 1-3 tsp vinegar
- pinch salt
- cinnamon (varies)
- sugar (at least a cup)
how to make these babies:
heat yer oven to 320 degrees fahrenheit
mix cinnamon and sugar in a bowl, set aside.
put flour in mixing bowl, and cut marg in using two knives until you are satisfied it has been well distributed. add in the following order: baking powder, soy milk, salt. then add the vinegar according to taste; if you are a big fan of mixing sweet and sour (like me), add two or three. If you just prefer a little touch of sour (like the poet), add one. taste the dough every time you add vinegar to see, and make sure you mix it well. knead it into a ball and plop it on a well-floured counter. roll it out to about an inch thickness. using a spoon or knife (i prefer spoon) butter the dough like you would a delicate piece of toast. then generously sprinkle your cinnamon/sugar mixture over the dough, and spread it around.
next, cut the dough into fairly small strips, as though you were cutting tiny portions of pizza. you don’t want to make these too too wide, otherwise you’ll have huge croissants (or maybe you dooo? experiment to see what you like.) then pinch either end of the bottom of the triangle into a tiny point, and roll them inward. i have drawn a very technical diagram of the process because i forgot to take pictures. since my computer drawing skills are pretty limited, i just used shapes and my favorite colours.
very technical drawing!
then roll them in more cinnamon/sugar, and put the little croissants on an ungreased baking tray. you want to bake them for 15-20 minutes or until the bottoms are brown and the tops are a wee bit crispy. then you are going to want to eat them, probably.
et voila!
fancy vegan sourdough croissants!!!
1/2 cup marg cut into flour
tsp baking pwdr
3/4 cups sour cream added after butter chopped into flour, mix. see how firm it is. if too soft add more flour, if too firm more sour cream
pinch salt
roll out
marg on rolled out circle
dust with cinnamon sugar
cut like cuttng slices of pie from centre out
roll up from thin tip in toward outer edge
then dust in cina sg
350/20 mins before burned
the poet, hyena and i were sitting in this pizza/poutine place and, over the mess of fries, gravy and cheese curds, i said: “i want to have an adventure tonight.” so we headed to their place in order for the poet to change, and then followed hyena for about fifteen minutes through dark passages till we came to an abandoned building. adventure!
we had to climb down to get to it, sitting on damp earth and pushing ourselves forward with our hands into the vast, empty room littered with glass from broken windows, chunks of concrete, and spray paint cans abandoned after lengthy graffiti sessions, the evidence of which was all over every surface. hyena led us through the bottom level to a set of exposed concrete stairs and up into a huge open room where the length of one wall was pane after pane of smashed or broken glass where a soupy-yellow light from street lamps filtered through, saturating the floor with intricate shadow-patterns. we couldn’t see very well so we went slowly, feeling with the soles of our boots for rubble, weak spots in the floor, bottles lying around. as we made our way up rusty stairs to the roof the slight anxiety i had felt lifted, and we looked out over st. henri, over the lights of the neighbourhood. then i saw them.
the roof was weak in many areas so we kept ourselves six feet apart, me in the middle. all at once, i had to pause. a piece of triangle-shaped wood had fallen onto the rooftop, sinking into the muddy rubble. around its perimeter small yellow trees had sprung up hugging the rotting wood. the trees were here, nowhere else, just in this tiny, perfect pyramid of miraculous-yellow. the poet and hyena went ahead and i knelt down beside the trees, boots squishing in the thin layer of nurtuing decomposition. i touched the yellow leaves, running my finger along the stems, saying “hello, hello, hello” to each little beauty, feeling myself start to cry. i can’t explain how much those trees meant to me, how desperatly happy they made me feel, how they moved something terrible and wonderful inside my chest. but these trees made my night with their fragile, increidble ability. even thinking about them now, i can’t help it, i start to hurt.
like i told the poet later, i could see myself falling in love with someone who understood those trees, that emotion…this is the kind of person i want to love, someone who would understand that crying over tiny yellow trees wasn’t foolish or odd, just a natural reaction to such overwhelming, intense beauty.
