walking at dusk

It gets dark earlier and I am often still out on my afternoon walk at sunset and dusk when the light effects are so interesting. 

The first pic I took was along the Lachine Canal with the abandoned Canada Malting complex in the background. When I posted it on FB, a friend commented that it looked like an Arthurian castle. It *is* a post-industrial castle. And if it deserves a fairy tale, as another friend suggested, then I offer Rose and Leo's romance in my novel, Five Roses (Le rosier de la pointe), since this is the abandoned factory where I imagined Leo squatting.  

In the second, I was looking over my shoulder at the sky--then saw the two places of worship: the steeples and the lit sign of the Dollarama. 

At the Five Roses flour mill, the doors were open and we saw milled flour being funnelled into an enormous container truck. The funnels were as large as small rooms. You could smell the flour in the air. 

#stillwalking... 

stump in the air

Once upon a time a tree grew into the wires overhead.

Or was there a tree already and wires were strung along the street anyhow?

The service people who install wires don't always exercise foresight. We moved into a house with a stone windowsill pulled a foot out of the brick wall by the weight of the telephone wires that had been hooked into it some years previously. R had to fight with Bell to get them to come remove the wires and reattach them appropriately. That was hard enough. They categorically refused to pay for the damages incurred. 

A tree is a tree and it keeps growing as trees do. At what point did the tangle of branches and wires become a problem?

Was it a problem? Clearly the wires continue to function even though they became surrounded by and embedded in the branch. And yet the tree was cut down.

I would love to have been party to the discussion as to decide what to do.

February walk on the river

Walking on the frozen edge of the river

three Musketeers brandishing cattails












one dog

Beavers


(Adult human male included for scale)

winter sun / hello from a tiger

This morning the distant sun was shining as brightly as it could through the winter mist: a fiery haze. How can a thing be fiery and still so cold? Ask Dante. The icy sidewalk was so frozen and unyielding that the recycling bin R had put out to be collected had skittered into the street. I had to carry it back and try to balance it on bumpy-ice-varnished sidewalk again.

In the afternoon I took a walk and crossed the Lachine Canal. More bumpy ice. Sun still valiant.

I was heading from the market to Verdun to visit a friend for tea and met this imposing figure who I see whenever I walk down that street.

Which street? Sorry, don't pay attention.

I've never been sure where to place her/him in the kaleidoscope of human experience, but today I was reminded of an installation/dance performance I saw a couple of weeks ago.

The artist was Claudia Chan Tak who had gone on a trip to China to find out more about her Chinese heritage. The installation featured paper lamps, costumes, Chinese words and their French translations, photos, figurines, videos, emails, and more.

Also: a less weather-battered version of the Verdun tiger.

Is it the eyes, the muzzle, the humanoid skull?

Seriously, you don't forget this head.

Merci, Claudia!

metal angels and sunshine in Verdun, Sept 2015

This morning a friend sent me these two side-by-side photos. They so perfectly match my mood. I've finished going through the copy edits of my new novel, Five Roses, which makes me feel... both angelic and corroded as weathered metal? And I'm looking down the sightline of another marker. Time for us Libras to go sit in the sun.

I regret that I can't get the pictures beside each other but there's only so long I have patience for fiddling with the computer.

pianos outdoors in montreal

I love these old pianos on the street or in a square. I have no idea if they're kept tuned. How can they be, exposed to the weather? This one looks like it's seen a few sleepless nights.
There are several throughout the city. This one's in Verdun on Wellington across from a store, Ardene, that sells plastic jewellery and other fine accessories, and a Thai Express. It's next to the church that I think of as the de l'Eglise church because it's next to the de l'Eglise subway station, though that makes no sense since "de l'Eglise" means "of the church". Who would call a church Of The Church? Sounds overdone even for Catholics.
Anyone who walks by can sit down at the piano and start playing. I've heard mini-concerts. Or people can just horse around. That's okay too.
I am not musically adept and can only play one piece on piano--Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. It was taught to me by a musical prodigy who could hardly talk yet, but refused to believe me when I, an adult, told her I couldn't play piano at all. She taught me Twinkle Twinkle. It's true, anyone with five fingers on one hand can play it. It requires the minimum of coordination.

thinking outside of the alphabet

For years I've been buying spices at whole food stores where they're kept in jars or bins, and you shovel out packets yourself. Usually they're organized alphabetically. Cumin follows cinnamon, etc. Or, since this is Montreal, curcuma follows cannelle. You get the idea. It's how we've been schooled to think. E, f, g, h, i...
I was scanning for spices today and realized that whoever is now organizing the shelves--or was it always like this at La Branche d'Olivier in Verdun and I only clued in today?--the spices and herbs are organized by colour! Basil, tarragon, mint, and thyme make one family; cinnamon, cumin, allspice, ground coriander another. Within the families, lighter shades come before darker. Once I noticed, I spent a long time wandering up and down the aisle.

Here's a picture of a cat sleeping among babouches at the market in Fez--because I can't find the picture I was looking for of heaps of freshly ground, brilliant spices, which were also at the market.

stripes of hot and cold / weather as sense memory

It's still only March, the first day of spring etc, but in Montreal I've worn boots and my long down coat at the end of March, so this past of week of sunny days and high temperatures feels unusual. I go for a walk with the sun beaming hot and sky beaming blue. I can sit on the deck. Wear shorts and flip flops. I know it means that the Arctic is melting, but it's hard not to enjoy the warmth and air after having been stuffed in undershirts, collars, and sleeves for months.
Since it's still only March, stray puffs of breeze tickle like they've slid off snow. The nights are cool. The mornings take a while to warm up. There's a tough, dirt-speckled edge of snow in my alley that hasn't melted yet--what's left of the waist-high blockade this guy bulldozes (illegally) away from his back gate all winter. Stone walls that don't get any sun smell dank and wet as if it were winter. Then I step out of the shadow and get blinded by the sun.
When I feel the stripes of cold and heat, the fresh mornings and hot afternoons, my body remembers the times we've travelled to warm climates during the winter. Spain, Tunisia, Mexico, Morocco. We walked across sun-bright cobblestone squares and sat at outdoor cafés in January, February, or March, luxuriating in the hot press of the sun on skin. There was always an odd tendril of breeze--down a mountain or across the water--to remind us of ice and snow. As the sun began to sink, I had to pull on the sweater hanging off the back of the chair. Return to the hotel to change from sandals to shoes.
This week I'm in Montreal, walking along Wellington in Verdun, where the sun is so hot and white that I can't tell what's inside the plate glass windows of the stores. I pass an alley that's in shadow and feel the tunnel-breath of winter. My skin remembers the Jour et Nuit where we had fresh-pressed orange juice in Agadir; sitting in the park among the plane trees in Barcelona; shopping for fruit at the market in Roma.
I'm enjoying the weather while it lasts and the memories it prompts.

organizing junk

Perhaps not everyone, but most people like to arrange things. Books in alphabetical order; spices on one shelf; canned goods on another; screwdrivers by size; a flowerbed of red geraniums bordered with blue lobelia; bridesmaids from taller to shorter. You go here, you go here. The arrangements aren’t always neat, but objects (and ideas) get grouped.
What is that arranging impulse? It follows us even into death. When I went to the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City this past spring, I took pictures of burial arrangements.

Everything in its place with the idols out front. Presumably there was food, which has since decomposed, in the bowls. Each object here has meaning—or we assume it does because it’s here. Arranging gives value, even if it’s only subjective.
A couple of months ago I noticed that someone has been collecting junk and arranging it under the overpass east of the Maxi on Wellington St. heading into Verdun. At first the junk was literally bags of garbage. Old clothes I suspect he rifled from the donations box in the Maxi parking lot. Overstretched sweatpants and T-shirts scattered in heaps. Then he added a discarded chair. Some empty detergent bottles he could have scooped from a recycling box.
I know it’s a “he” because R has seen him when he jogs by in the early evening. There’s no one when I cycle past in the morning. The site is in permanent shadow because of the overpass. The concrete backdrop has arches, lending the suggestive air of an ancient temple. Garbage as artifacts from a consumer civilization. Every two or three weeks, the city clears the space.
He begins again. Each new exhibition grows more inventive. He’s got the passion for junk, he does. The messy heaps have been replaced by strategic arrangements. Here, a women’s pink bikini bottoms—which might have fallen from a bag after she changed when leaving the pool, or been a discard after sex. Here, a twisted length of glittery wrapping paper from a birthday party. A long-sleeved shirt with one arm stretched, the other folded: flagman on the ground.
This past weekend all the smaller objects were rearranged around an intact car bumper. A blue beret propped on top.  A defunct printer. A red platform shoe with a bow on an open magazine. A pink thermos.

Each new arrangement of garbage looks less like junk and more like a cultural event. Which makes me wonder if the arranging impulse that prompts people to stack their bowls in one cupboard and their mugs in another isn’t the rationalistic impulse it seems, but some nascent desire for artistry. ??
Quick, someone fund a SPECT scan to see which side of the brain has more blood flow during organizing.