Shirley of the North

(from Sunday, this post but I wanted to check before posting the link)

oh so many months ago my friend the golden boy returned from Burning Man, and from three splendid weeks driving the desert, the Oregon shore, and the little beads of rural islands (farms! art!) strung together by small ferries, linking the wild Washington coast with Puget Sound.

He returned to his job in Vancouver, as a supportive housing worker for just-off-the-streets clients with mental health and addiction issues, and one afternoon found himself curled up in a ball on the floor of his office. After a decade of front-line work, suddenly, he was done. He quit his job, shed all his possessions, and moved into his van.

He’s been madly happy. And so free. Almost every day he posts a photo of where he’s made his home. This morning it’s a community garden overlooking the city’s east side. Daffodils! Crocuses. Woodchips and cherry blossoms. Raised beds and woven willow fences, knee-high .

I used to work in Kitsilano, with just such a garden out back of my office. I’d wander out at lunch and sit on a swaying wooden bench, chickadees flickering through the cypress trees, the sky a pale cyan with high small clouds, dew evaporating off the overwintered kale and chard, and the soil–insulated with layers of straw–breathing moisture into the fresh day. The ocean was close enough to bleach the garden stakes and fenceposts (just indirectly, salt in the fog). A little cob house, all curves, got built in one corner during the years that I worked there. The wrought iron garden gate was fashioned from an amazing fusion of gardening implements–shovel, trowel, pitchfork, all kinds of things.

Beyond the garden, the way down to Zulu (I sure miss Zulu records, where not only could you listen to any CD, but they had at least a dozen listening stations of new music, each a different genre, and each with about 15 CDs), was all cherry blossoms and flowering magnolias, petal bursts bigger than my hand. A community garden ran all along the railroad tracks just beside my building, with little tile mosaics and wooden chairs, watering cans and trowels tucked along the lovingly tended path.

I used to have good talks with the chief gardener. She gave me cherry tomato plants, and advice on growing basil in a cool climate. Her name was Spring.

I can’t believe that the cherry blossoms have been out since January this year; that the daffodils and crocuses are almost done, that I called my mom a week ago and she was out in the garden, pruning.

Here in Montreal it’s dry and just barely zero. I’m going to put my laundry on the clothesline today, to dry stiff and frozen while I glide off towards my favorite hour: skating in the sunlight on the pond in Jarry Park.

No Comments »

It’s been bothering me that I haven’t been writing these last months, in this blog or anywhere. And somehow I’ve become stilted: pissed off that I’m not as eloquent these days, I just don’t start, waiting, deluding myself that my silence is storing up power, like some Hindu god meditating on a mountain one thousand years for the moment of release when he births the world.

No Comments »

I went on a ski trip for three days this weekend. It should have been easy–under normal conditions it’s four to five hours between huts. But it was seven degrees and raining. I hadn’t really thought about it: what difference does rain make except more of a slog? It hadn’t occurred to me that snow temperature can get much above freezing–after all, snow is basically little crystals of ice. Except when it’s puddles. Then your ski wax really is rather useless. And it’s not so easy to slip your way up slopes with a large pack and no grip. It also gets worse after dark, at least if you have a weak headlamp and the last descent towards the cabin is steep and the path twisted. Thrilling in a way. On the other hand, the ice crust was so sharp I actually cut my face up during a particularly stellar faceplant. It looks like I have a big nick on my chin from shaving.

I’ve actually been on far more dangerous, and far more exhausting, trips. But I was recovering from the flu, and so weary to begin with that I felt like packing it in and taking a nap in the snow at 2 pm on the first day. I had to keep going, but my second wind didn’t hit till 5:30, and it had pretty much petered out by 6:30, when a kind jackrabbit returned packless from the cabin and took my load for a couple of km. Even without the weight, I had hardly any kick in me–I was trudging, not skiing through the slush.

Except for the jackrabbit, everyone was utterly exhausted at some point on the trip, and everyone hit a wall. As Steve said at 4 pm on the first day “I’ve worked more so far than I expected to all weekend.”

What I love about trips is the getting away: the stillness alone on a trail, the sun slowly melting snow in a quiet forest. I also love the comraderie, the relaxation that comes at the end of the day, sitting round a table lit by a candle lantern, nothing to do except the dishes and maybe playing cards and drinking tea chased with whisky or a little rum. All the dayclothes hanging on makeshift lines above the woodstove, the cabin warm and scented with the resin of whatever wood is burning.

But this trip there was little time for rest, either on the trails or later. We were all too tired even to do the dishes at night, just leaving them to soak until we had had our nine restorative sleeping hours.

The last day was sunny and gorgeous, and the distance was doable in good time. I’m posting a couple of pictures that are from that day. In the background of the second one you can see the ridges/hills that constituted much of the terrain. They were not huge but we did go all the way up, traveling along a ridgeline and crossing over between valleys.

Usually trips give me space and thinking time; that was a little less true this time, particularly as the trip itself was a different kind of iteration on a theme of struggle–how sometimes one is just so tired, how as I get older life can seem to require more than I feel I have in me. I try to frame challenges as rich experiences, as hurdles that force me to grow in ways I otherwise wouldn’t or wouldn’t be able to. But it’s not always true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you doesn’t kill you. And leaves you where you have to adjust your expectations. It’s OK if the possible is different; but sometimes the horizon of possibilities shrinks. And that’s like a river where the ice is being eroded from underneath: your life stretched thinner and thinner, the solidity of self diminished. The surface placid but not the underbelly, cold water churning and sweeping your insides away.

Disappointment is a demon and I must summon my powers!!! But I have been flagging: I used to grow stronger from the fight and now — like with the ski trip — it’s more ambiguous. I feel the costs of expending my energy. Do I need more strategy, to be cool and efficient in what I take on? Or is the real struggle one of love, to not be diminished by disappointments but always to bring to the world an open heart? I guess what I’m working on is mindfulness: a balance of both, the dancer who is deft and strong, swift yet sure, and somehow delicate.

Enough angst and philosophy!!!! Really it is the lucky who get to think about such things: self-improvement, dreams, what one wants to contribute to the world. So many people are stuck on just survival, especially in these times.

No Comments »

I flung my windows wide today for the first time in weeks. I had come back from a walk–in Park Lafontaine, sitting on a cleared bench, snow almost at seat-level, the sun was too bright for me to look anywhere, I had had to squint away from the sky, the snow, the undersides of branches glancing white in reflected glory. It was too bright even with my eyes closed. A pigeon grazed ten feet from my ear, the flap of its wing folding like canvas, like the door of a wall tent untied in the March breezes up north. Immediate, sharp: sounds no longer stifled by smog, cold, and shuttered buildings, but unfurling like an open wing.

It was fabulous, if just for twenty minutes, to have the breezes from miles away, from beyond Montreal island, chase through the open windows into my room. For the neighbourhood itself to stream in with the light: the scrape of shovels on sidewalks, rattlings and footfalls of passersby, even the swish of wheelwells splattering through puddles at our streetcorner.

No Comments »

I don’t know if it will stick, but tonight is the first real snow of the year. Leaves still linger on a lot of trees, although more are on the ground than on branches, multicoloured coats cast on sidewalks, in gutters, and ruffling the great lawns of Parc Lafontaine.

Tonight was also my first soccer game with my new indoor league. The gym was far bigger than I expected, the area of play at least three times the size of the small elementary school gyms I’m used to. We’re playing in a school, but it’s an enormous stone edifice, with a pool, across from L’Oratoire St. Joseph.

The slush is reminding me that I will have to go on a journey, and soon, to acquire both new bicycle wheels and tires. The city bike that I got to replace my much loved, stolen bicycle, has steel wheels. The brakes have almost no traction in rain. I can grip as tight as I want and literally the only way to stop will be to put my foot down and drag for a good several meters. I tried sanding the wheel rims, but steel doesn’t sand down very well. So I’ll have to replace the wheels–which will also make the bike lighter. And since the tires are so thin, I will get new ones that are either knobblies or studs. I’m leaning towards at least one stud, on the front wheel, even though studs slow the ride down and they are not cheap. But with lighter wheels, and losing the heavy and useless kickstand, maybe the bike would make a worthwhile winter steed.

Luckily in two days we’ll be back to wet and warm.

No Comments »

My friend Duhane phoned tonight as I was packing for a bike trip. He sold me my new bike. The trip is its first real road test.

I told Du that I was packing pretty light. “Take the dresses out,” he said.

“How did you know?” I was laughing.

Apparently I packed two dresses years ago, when we’d biked through Albania. And with a similar rationale: I wanted to have them in Tirana, to frolic with friends.

Duhane also didn’t think I needed the soccer cleats. But they are coming for pick-up soccer (if I can in fact move at all after biking 230 km in two days). However, I have been persuaded to chuck the rubber boots.

Probably this little solo sejour, with last minute info gleaned from the internet, is ill advised. Although, if I’m willing to forgo O-town festivities, I could just take three days, camp in two provincial parks along the way, and have a relaxing trip.

The point is, after all, to clear my head, and get some summertime in.

And now I better get some sleep.

No Comments »

I met two luthiers at a party tonight. They don’t fix violins: they build them from scratch in their small apartment. A tiny cottage industry in which they buy the wood, heat the varnish on the stove, and make instruments, then take them round trying to sell them. The couple moved here last july from Mexico. Both speak Spanish, which I speak poorly. Additionally, one speaks English and the other French. It made for a peculiar, linguistically cross-pollinated conversation.

No Comments »

Through some quirk of fate, I am playing in the A league of the association de ultimate de Montreal. A is the highest of leagues A through F, with several of the divisions having splits within them (b1 and b2, for instance). Other than a brief stint with East Van Halen (who were rockin!!!! the team uniform was whatever rocker/heavy metal shirt a given player could dig up) I haven’t played since 1999, when I was part of a low-level rec team that my housemates in Ottawa had just for fun. Sargent Fun–this was really her nickname–in particular played on a couple of other ‘real’ teams, and the main object of our team was to have an excuse to wear mango shirts and hold fruity drink parties. In fact, a whole wall of the fishbowl was devoted for a time to a series of pictures of me holding large fruity drinks.

How I digress!! My point is just that I am surprised to be playing on a high level team, and even more surprised, now that I am over my performance anxiety, to find that I really enjoy it. I like the players. They have spirit! And they also have strategy. This is actually what distinguishes them from other teams I have known. Not handling, not fitness, not fancy plays and drills–just really excellent strategy, the ability to analyse in detail and on the fly how the play is going, and to adapt plays and planning accordingly. Of course, the players are also highly skilled, but it’s their calm that carries them, the thinking they do as they run and pass and check.

They are also from quite a different cross-section of Montrealers than I meet in other life. More on that perhaps another time–it’s after midnight and I must sleep.

No Comments »

Mercury is my spirit tonight: god of shepherds and cowherds, thieves and travelers. Aegis and cipher, dancer and guide. A protector of poets, the guard of weights and measures, he who twins cunning and commerce.

The god of thieves brought me something: my last bike was stolen, it’s taken nine months, my new beast I can ill afford–but I feel like I have wings, truly, flying feet. My little bike is that fast, that light. I have shot around the island these last few days. Today I explored an old mill, from the 1780’s, that used run-of-river waterwheels to power machines to make flour, nails, wool, and an assortment of other goods I can’t remember. Out in the far-flung corners of the island, between the condominium towers and residential streets, are remnants of eighteenth century villages. Stone houses set back from the streets; a waterwheel collapsed in the river –I love how in Quebec the discarded, reintegrated pieces of past centuries co-exist with the countryside, not remarkable unless you look.

No Comments »

A couple of weeks back I took a road trip. We camped two nights at a pullout off a rural road on L’Ile D’Orleans. Each morning I would climb the six-story wooden watchtower (no idea why it was there–it didn’t seem to be a firetower, it wasn’t manned, the tiny red light which flickered off the top wasn’t bright enough to cut through fog, or seem to do much more than signal to nearby flying objects to avoid the tower).

I spent a long, long time looking out from the top of the tower. It did a lot for me. It had been weeks since I had been able to gaze that far. That landscape was like Teresa Island: I think I could watch it every day of my life, and always feel satisfied. There was so much to see, and the nuances changed by the day and even by the hour. The first morning I just wondered: why is the geology so different on the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence? Why do most of the islands run in long striated lines, and why is L’Ile D’Orleans such a round and fertile farming bump? Which way is north and how is the island actually oriented? What are the white flocks of birds? Are the shimmering green-brown not-so-far-away masses floating in the fleuve just clumps of seaweed? Is it a bank or shoal?

I loved watching the sky. I loved watching the shadows and the movement. One could see the shadows of birds shooting across the fallow fields, the snow just melted (there were no leaves, barely buds on any trees, everything was the colour of mud, mulch, and leftover grass bleached and rotting). I was eye level with the birds. I listened to the geese in the morning, and the crickets. And the early morning farming machinery–already the locals were out tilling, some were starting to plant and then covering the rows with plastic sheeting, to insulate against frost.

My companions had a more lackadaisical approach to camping. I got up at 7 and went for a run in my longjohns (the car was locked, couldn’t get more appropriate wear but luckily my longjohns were black and shiny like running tights) while they slept. I ran down the long rural roads, gazing out at the wide river as I crested the rolls of hills, then dipping down so I could only see the red-brown cliffs and north shore mountains (rugged, arctic, barren still in the first week of may, not a speck of green anywhere). Soon I found myself trotting by a clustering of farm houses, with dogs and kids playing in the yards, gates swung open for tractors to travel, and old men out doddering down the road in their baseball caps and flannel shirts. I stopped to ask one directions. He told me he was from the south shore of the island, had lived their all his life, but now he lived in a sanitorium of sorts. He was proud of himself: he had walked five kilometres yesterday. He told me he had cancer, that he had nearly died the winter before. I wished him health. “It’s not the kind of thing that can be cured,” he said. He spoke matter-of-factly, much as if he was telling me that a frost had killed the lettuce crop. We paused a minute, mulling over his truth, and then the conversation resumed: the road did not circle back to the main road, I could either cut across the fields or retrace my steps.

As we were chatting, another old fella came up and started in on greeting his friend. His speech came out as complete garble. To me, anyways. It was extremely jarring: I had had a conversation with the first old man no problem, but the second one–who actually spoke quite similarly–had an accent, and a slurry of local expressions, so thick that I could make no sense of anything. Of course, this old guy assumed that I understood every word he said, and I smiled and nodded along. After a few short minutes I took off, slapping my feet up the road and over the hill from whence I had arrived.

I felt a little bad just yelling goodbye, not again wishing well to the old fella, but it didn’t seem appropriate at the time.

After my run I again climbed the tower. The sun was much higher, the sky bright blue, the river glinting white and gun-metal grey at certain glimpses in its flow. I came down to have breakfast with everyone, but a part of me wanted to be back above the crowns of trees, looking down on the campground and fields, the ponds and granaries, and out past where the St. Lawrence opens up, wide wide and fluvial — a zone of diadromous drift, where almost an iceberg could float by. So many, peculiar coming-togethers: the north shore harsh, barren and with winds forever gusting; to the south the Appalachians smoothed and glossed, weighted down by millenia of ice, split from the shore by the St. Lawrence lowlands; and of course the river itself, pulsing tides, spindles of salt slipping and mixed deep, the long thin fingers of the gulf breaking open, waiting for the sea to extend its hand.

No Comments »

The lion king came to visit and it was good.

[I've never seen the disney movie or film: if I did I might have to change this alias.]

No Comments »

Because the house is brick, it doesn’t shake from wind. My window doesn’t even rattle. But when the trees roil and rumble, when the powerlines dance, the wind whisks and forces itself through the smallest spaces. I can feel it if I hold a hand up near our porch doorway.

The pitch of the wind is about that of a whistle. Except it is thinner, and whorling–one can hear how it turns in upon itself, creating its own tunnel and rushing to meet its pitch.

Windstorms–not blizzards, but wind with rain–are an odd thing for a Montreal February. I am hoping not too much rain melts and freezes the top of the snowpack–as an aside, this is a major impact of climate change on animals in the boreal and tundra: they starve because the lichens and mosses in their winter ranges become glassed in, and the animals cannot chip through the ice enough to feed.

My freeze-up complications are comparatively minor: Wednesday I plan chase the lunar eclipse up Mont Royal (unless it is cloudy), which will become difficult if the escarpment is icy.

I hope I can convince people to climb with me.

I am too tired tonight. But perhaps tomorrow I will put up an excerpt from Don McKay’s Another Gravity –one of his moonpoems.

Or maybe not, ’cause you can already find one of them elsewhere in this blog (oct 2006).

No Comments »

My dance teacher said tonight that flying is actually falling. To watch the wings and chests of birds. They are like dancers: the body falls from its second centre of gravity, even as the wings rise. The chest is still. When Nureyev leapt, and seemed to stay suspended for ever, his body was soft, falling. It is the only way humans can fly: by gently giving to gravity.

Not the jump, but the descent, the floating, the supple fall. It’s like everything she teaches, that the centre is not where it seems. Moving backwards, the body may be forward; the arms thrown up are an illusion, as the knees, hips, and centre of gravity drop to hold steady.

I try to feel these things, as we repeat the motions over and over, rhythmic with a pattern of breath. My mind can rarely follow. I hope my body is learning something, and that it sticks.

No Comments »

Last night I was walking home down St. Laurent when I saw a city truck go by, lifting bike racks off the street. There were a few bikes on the city trailer too: if they were attached to a rack, well, they went too.

There’s no removal notice fixed to the bike racks –I’ve been very careful in far-flung corners of the city all week, to lock my bike only to signposts, not bike racks, as I pass through Petit-Patrie and the like (I find it somewhat disturbing that a neighbourhood is actually called this, “little motherland”, intended with the full patriot connotation).

Suddenly, just in time for winter, the city systematically dismantles its entire cycling infrastructure. It removes the bike racks. Rips out the posts that separate bike paths from roads. There’s no co-ordinated system of public announcement around this. But woe be it to the unaware, who will receive only a stiff admonishment from the Quebec bureaucracy. Contempt. It’s just like Cinderella — your fault for not being home at midnight. Forget sunshine, shimmering, leaves dancing and diaphanous. Maples are deadwood, gardens just brown bits of earth. And your bicycle-chariot? Nothing more than a pumpkin.

Winter and the world turns bleak–if not naturally, then the state will make it so: parked cars fill up the bike lanes; wheels splash, soaking cyclists with slush. Riders are relegated to the narrow runnels between snow piles and disgruntled Honda Accords. It’s an endemic and peculiar logic: cycling in winter is subhuman — let’s make it worse — ah! cycling in winter is subhuman.

Other cities may neglect the winter cycling infrastructure — not clear the paths of snow, for instance. But they lack the underlying motive, the deeply buried drift, the full morose moment necessary to the Quebec psyche: misère a la Marie Chapdelaine. Only Montreal is so brilliant and idiosyncratic: nurture the summer cyclists, breed them like billions of flies, then–SPLAT–smack ‘em into winter traffic. It’s an elimination dance, a la Ondaatje — simple, swift, and sly.

One must live the national drama, non?

No Comments »

Seven years ago in Ottawa, right before I moved away, I had about 2 1/2 months off. It was a beautiful autumn–it was the year Pierre Trudeau died–and there were many many perfect fall days, just like today: the air fresh and clear, the sun bright, the sky shades of robin’s egg blue. It’s the perfect day to go swimming in a small lake, surrounded by maple and pine, and the pink rock of parts of the Canadian Shield.

But I need to spend about six hours working. And I have less than six hours in which to work. Maybe I’ll work on the porch …

No Comments »