early spring / Montreal

I haven't been blogging much because I'm writing. There's only so long I can tolerate a computer screen. Computer screens, even the most ergonomic, are evil. I'm not worried about plasticine-headed aliens in UFOs abducting me, but I can feel the neurological tendrils of computer energy going through my eyeballs via the optic nerve into my brain and touching whatever in my grey matter gets electrified to give me migraines.

Deliberate fiction (novel writing) takes precedence over accidental fiction (blog), right? Right.


I took a day off today to go walking with R. We took the subway to a point 12 k at a diagonal from here and walked home.

Popular cafés were swamped with people milling on the sidewalk, sitting wherever they could outside, waiting in line. Very Montreal. This spot still has its winter igloo up.




We walked over the mountain which my Alpie genes oblige me to specify that I mean the Montreal mountain. It's... I'm checking here... 233 metres or 764 feet high. More than a hill but no Alp. Higher elevation meant there was still snow, though it was corn snow, granular and wet, only a couple of degrees away from being slush.

Down the mountain, across downtown, down, down, down toward the Lachine Canal and the proliferation of condo projects. Is that going to be penthouse up top? An open-air pool? The billboards promise all kinds of delights. A couple of weeks ago one said (in  French): Being able to walk to work, that's true luxury! I guess sales weren't going as expected though, because the message was changed to: Luxury is being able to choose. Laminate as opposed to granite?

Home again where we've been moving rooms around. Furniture is pushed about, walls need to be painted, patches on the floor re-varnished. Cabinets had to be taken off walls and everything inside will hopefully not be broken.

In the meantime we can have tequila in a champagne glass and listen to Manu Chao.

R assures me he has a plan for putting the cabinets back up on the wall without help.

Bye for now!

March 14

Opening the curtain of my study window this morning. Usually see the brick house fronts across the street. 

snowy day / museum visit / river walk / montreal in march

Something I read made me wonder what story a person might see if I didn't point in a direction. No words. Though... I have to admit that no words is a hard interdiction for me. But I'm telling you so you understand that I'm not posting pictures without words because they are so fine. Except for the two R took with his camera, I used my phone.


But I wonder what kind of story one finds here. Random pics taken over three days.

Lachine Canal / Ontario creek

I grew up in southern Ontario where there was always a creek nearby. That being southern Ontario, you wouldn't sound it like "creak" but more like "crik". If you were from the country.

In the summer we would swim in the crik, though it meant jumping in and not touching bottom because there were bloodsuckers. We would jump and thrash about and climb out again as quickly as possible.

There were long hours of hanging off the bridge over the crik and looking down into the shallow water at the ink-slash schools of minnows and the crayfish that scuttled from shadow to shadow. You had to be very still for the crayfish to move--for them to believe that the shadow you cast was a tree, not a bird with a long, stabbing beak.

Today--in Montreal--I was crossing the footbridge over the Lachine Canal. Here and there the ice was melting. Looking down into the water I was reminded of those long-ago crayfish. Those skittering, skeletal shapes that lived in the rich muck of the crik's bottom, their movements apprehended more than seen through the light ripple on the surface of the water if there was a breeze.   






Then the late afternoon sun  shone into the water picking out the shapes of abandoned grocery carts.