Montreal Under Siege

Took a walk yesterday and did my best to aestheticize the effects of our latest winter storm and ignore the fact that we're already ten days into March and I still have to wear my giant winter boots.

Ever since it became a near-certainty in my mind that I'd be leaving Montreal by the end of this summer, I inevitably started seeing it through nostalgic eyes. I think there is this giant, bright red switch in my brain with a sign above it that reads "EXECUTE SENTIMENTALITY: USE WITH CAUTION," and some devilish little nymph is having a rave up there, flicking switches without discretion. Which would explain why I get weepy while I'm waiting for my bus, because dammit, I'm only going to have 127 more chances to wait for that bus before it's all over! I miss that bus stop already! The same happened in London before I took off after my undergrad. I even started feeling attached to that grimy little apartment that I sublet for the last couple of months.


As for Montreal: I've begun to totally love the way that my grocery store never has fresh produce, and the sidewalks are never clear, and the kid above me never stops running in circles while flinging all of her toys onto her floor/my ceiling. I will even miss the tow trucks with their dying-animal sirens! What will I do without those things! But seriously, I will miss, with heart-squeezing immensity, the view from my bedroom window, where I have probably accumulated 10,000,000+ hours of daydream time over the last year and a half. One day I would like to write some sort of personal essay about all the bedroom windows I have stared out of in my life. They are all unforgettable! At Gascon, I stare at the clotheslines and watch the old couple hobble up and down their deck and hear my neighbour start up his massive diesel truck twelve times a day. Where does he go??? I'll never learn the answer to that question, because I'M LEAVING! This little alley, the Gascon universe, will continue to fill with snow every winter and garbage - er, flowers - every spring, long after I've left. Someone else will look out of this window, and curse that kid upstairs, and wait half an hour for the bus, and track questionable smells in the kitchen, and fish around the toilet tank for the faulty chain. There will be no more pitter-patter of Tycho feet in this apartment! Actually, that's a moot point, since he hasn't done much pittering OR pattering lately. More accurately: there will be no more heavy snoring of Tycho in this apartment! I can't bear to think about it. On the other hand, I can't wait to start the next adventure. Why must I always be such a melodramatic contradiction!

Soon I will explain how I came to spend about five seconds at a hotel in Ottawa this weekend, long enough for this to happen:



Oh, and this:


Actually, I'm not really sure how that one happened.