Old Montreal in November

La ville commençait à se réveiller, un samedi matin. Le soleil n’a commencé qu’à se poindre il y avait une heure à peine. Quelques passants s’affairaient avec un bon café chaud en main sous un morne ciel gris, et la douceur de la température en cette fin d’automne semblait alléger le présage des froides nuits à venir.

Le Vieux-Montréal me paraissait alors grisâtre, mais une courte promenade m’a suffit pour y retrouver des couleurs et nuances que j’avais oubliés. Les tableaux d’une exposition :

Le Boris Bistro. Tiède soirée d’été, un vent léger, retrouvailles en tête-à-tête entre amis, avec le calme bruissement des arbres de la terrasse. Nous sommes égayés et léger. Petit bonheur.

Le Titanic. Établissement situé au sous-sol d’un immeuble, invisible si on est pressé, ouvert seulement du lundi au vendredi pendant le jour, et donc probablement (possiblement) très populaire. Existe depuis belle lurette…

Le Petit Moulinsart. Nestor y tient encore le menu du jour pour les touristes et curieux! (Et sûrement pour quelques habitués occasionnels!)

Stash Café. Je vois le vieux piano à travers une fenêtre ouverte, toujours à la même place, il y avait plusieurs années. Qu’en est-t-il devenu du beau jeune pianiste dont une amie et moi nous étions innocemment amouraché? À travers cette même fenêtre, le silence qui y régnait en ce matin semble encore me parler.
Et ces grands hôtels au centre de la vieille ville : mythiques et un semblant inaccessible, mais une fois l’enceinte artificielle pénétrée, tout se fond et tous se confondent.

En ce samedi matin, rien ne paraît. Le restaurant du St-Sulpice sur St-Paul est tout aussi sombre et inanimé que son homonyme sur St-Denis. Rendu à proximité de la Basilique Notre-Dame, seul des touristes lève-tôt accompagnés d’un distingué maître d’hôtel brisent ce confortable sentiment de paix et plénitude.

« Et avec toute la poésie des choses fictives, je dessine la réalité imaginée de ma vie. Le vent, le ciel, la pluie, le sang des êtres et l’essence des choses, l’amitié, l’amour et la musique, tout me subsistera après. » (Marie Brassard)

Montréal, le 26 novembre 2011

Gil

"You pick up a nickel, but you dropped five cents." - Gil Scott Heron.

Below, an amazing poem by an amazing writer, done gone.

Their love comes totally without reservation

Without pretence or nonsense, a brand new sensation

Little girls trust their fathers through all situations

This is how the dreams of an ultimate destination.

Maybe they don't know how they link generations

And carry your immortality on to yet another station

But somehow they must hear and feel god's vibrations

And know that you are their connection to creation. - GSH

Read more here.

It's a Fly

It's called a fly.

Because it can fly.

Or maybe flying is called flying because it's called a fly.

Something we might never know, no matter how hard we try.

---

George Dyke

Bernie Beach

You landed on our shores, by way of the bathtub's waters.
And now, fleetingly, we enjoy your squeaks and your squeals as we clean your bottom.
Your friends, ducky and hexa' all come for the fun.
To see the 'diddle boy and go for a float.

Some places are temporary and we know it.
You'll grow quickly, and so will we.
And so we turn to the days. These days.
To be here, in these days, and to be moved and yearn to be never moving.

To stay on Bernie Beach and to let the waves crash to the shore.
But yet to laugh at them and their wasted effort.
To dance at the edge of the land.
Where waves turn all to sand, and people come to watch it go by.

The waters are fleeting, and make fleeting as much as they make fleets.
We sit in the empty tub. Put in the plug and watch if fill.
Splashing and carrying on, our friends come to play.
And then! The plug is out! The waters run away as quickly as they came.
We're cleansed, and renewed and ready for the next pages of a life.

- George Dyke

Peninsula

We walked along the Peninsula on a sunny, breezy Spring day. A narrow strip of land, just 100m across on the edge of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On the edge lying on the "far side" of that cradle of civilization. Jutting out from the edge of what otherwise was a forgotten corner of a forgotten land in country of great prosperity and progress.

The grass stood waist height and swayed in the steady wind. That wind was gentle, especially when compared with the kind of weather the harsh North Atlantic can dish out - even on the lee side of the island. As we waded through that sea of grass, we got further from our car, further from the world, and as we progressed, the Peninsula got narrower and narrower. Until we found ourselves at the very end of its extent, and reached the point where it plunged into the deep, dark, salty ocean.

We sat there, at the narrow point for a while, talking, or not. Just enjoying the sight and knowing this was a place where it was entirely possible you may never return to in a lifetime. For the journeying there was not just a leap, but several leaps away from "normal life". The kind of place that the heartiest of sea birds might out on their list of rounds. But that all but the most adventurous of travelers would leave off their list.

On the way back, we stopped to take a look around the modest remnants of the homes of a brave few who might have dared to call this land their home. Single room shacks with a rusting bed frame, and an old iron stove, now only partially enclosed by decaying plank-board walls. How does one come to live in such a place? Is it a pull from the wild? Or a push there, a spirit driven out of the mainstream world by the crush of society? Was this place abandoned with haste? Or did it's former occupants simple fade away into the salty sea that surrounds? A place of youth, or of old age? Of love, or spawned by fear?

Feeling vexed by the questions, and tired with satisfaction at having explored, we got back into the car, and headed back to town. We left that strip pretty well as we had found it - asking very little of it, and expecting no more in return.

----
George Dyke

The Sea

When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.

My holes were empty like a cup.
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

In relation to Sun's Rays -

Something I wrote "way" back in 2002 - sitting on the edge of a cliff in Newfoundland, early (really) morning:

Finally I reached the ocean, and realized that I could basically walk right along the cliff, almost as far as I wanted or could be able to go. I walked until I found a comfortable area to sit down, to gaze at the ocean and the waves below me. I guess at that point I found what one could term as total plenitude. Watching below, trying to predict when the next big wave would crash, listening to the booming sound of the waves hitting the cliff, seeing a few birds peacefully bobbing up and down the surface of the water had me mesmerized. A few clouds of mists were visible close to where the camp was. The light was also shining at the perfect angle and intensity, so that whenever a wave would come crashing against the rocks, I could actually see the microscopic droplets rising up before me, and barely feel them caress my skin… And I sat there, for how long, who knows, how many times have I said that already? Time had stopped…

***

A feeling that I could somehow explain in music.

...but that is the subject of another post.

-JP