enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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AHHHHH the weekend! AHHHHHHH

Hi there,

Do you have any idea how dumb I am??

Why yes, yes you do, if you read this diary!

So I'm in Montreal today, and I'm thinking...GEE, no wonder I don't want to go to Paris. When I lived in THIS large, French-speaking city, I was practically suicidal on account of my terrifyingly bitter, nasty and twisted psychopath of a PhD supervisor at McMuffin U. It was the time in my life that ground me down to the lowest, most centipedinal state I have ever experienced, and that truly I still feel the repercussions of as I sit here.

Oy I'm a moron. I've been wondering why I have France block bordering on phobia, and there it is. I hadn't been back to Montreal since I left, other than touching down in a plane en route to Zurich or Paris (again only to touch down :)).

So there it was. Standing there right before me. Like my grandmother thing the other day.

And I didn't even do my morning pages today, for the first time in two weeks. I got up early this morning after an absolutely crap sleep (probably the workout was too late, and I had a bit of anxiety going over this meeting today, which went fine), and I looked at my train ticket (thank GOD!) and realized that my train left half an hour earlier than I had thought...So off I doodled to the train station. We had had a big snow storm yesterday and the streets were slick; I was worried about the taxi getting here.

But all was well. All went well. The only crappy thing is that I forgot to take my camera. Doh! Montreal is an ugly city, but it's kind of beautiful ugly, if you know what I mean. This is true in the way that a really long and crooked nose can be beautiful-ugly (I have a small and crooked nose, which is the same thing: ugly-beautiful...makes me unique).

MOntreal is a melange of modern office towers, copious churches with gorgeous old towers keeping watch over the seaway. The Catholicism there is kind of eerie and cool and the churches gothic. This is probably because with the Qui3t R3volution in the 1970s Quebeckers pretty much completely threw off the church and they seem empty (even without going in one gets this sense - imposition without anyone to impose upon or over). Quebeckers now all shack up instead of marry, and the birth rate plummeted so far that they implemented an expensive birth bonus (bigger than the national baby bonus that we used to have), and a vereee expensive publicly-paid child care system.

Many of the churches have been sold off and turned into - true - condominiums. Other churches have been blended into new buildings, so for example you have a giant church tower that is blended into one of the campus buildings of one of the four universities downtown.

Today, the meeting that I had was at that particular university, which was quite convenient as it gave me the opportunity to walk to the old building in which C. and I lived ten years ago, near the old port. It was at that time a building owned by the guy who was running the FUR shop on the main floor (I kid not), a furs shop and entreposage that had been his dad's and probably his grandad's, and that still bore the signage. Said building was not really QUITE in the stately old port, but rather in the red light district, which amused C. and I to no end.

And no, the fur shop was not a "fur pie" shop. :) I say "was" as when I got there today the place was papered up! It looked so forlorn. The sign said that he had moved to another town (a suburb of Montreal). An era had ended. The little Thai place where C. and I used to eat sometimes was still there.

Montreal is arguably the most interesting city in Canada, for a variety of reasons, and the film and festival culture there is unparalleled. Also, if you want anything to do with gay pride or general diversity, go there. They have the second-oldest St. PAtty's day parade in North America, as well, which always tickled my funny bone as the greatest entourage in the whole parade were called the "Chinese Irish." (There's an interesting chinatown in downtown Montreal.)

Leaving the city tonight, there was as full-orb setting sun. We criss-crossed through the old factory district from the late 19th century when the anglos owned Montreal and the French Canadians were the working (under) class. I think that that is my favourite part of the city. There's a book in French called The T!n Flute set there, by a writer from Winnipeg originally, from the 1930s, that is one of the best evocations of the poignancy of a kind of desperate vulgarity under neon that I have ever read. It reminds me greatly of that Degas that I posted a pic of a few weeks ago, of the absinthe drinker. And fuck that - if you need another reason to think fondly of Montreal need I say more than that Leonard Coh3n is from there? :) Actually, a lot about Leonard Coh3n can be directly attributed to Montreal. There's a wonderfully gritty poetry to the life there. I mean that, too: a genuine poetry. Oh and the baguettes and bagels and grungy hippy students and the chocolate...mmmm.

Muchly more to speak of. Still pissy about the dating stuff. I got two more stupid notes from two more stupid men today, and I had to remind myself to "drop weapons, pull away from the keyboard...they are only men and therefore no match for my wicked tongue." Let it lie, baby. Let it lie. I think I should re-headline my profile "Lo0king for Leonard." There's a really, really weird independent film from Montreal called that, that I can't not recommend (incidentally). :)

XOXOXOX

8:05 p.m. - 2010-02-26

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