MONTREAL IS...
Montreal is where you’re brave enough to step onto icy sidewalks with sneakers.
… the largest island in the Hochelaga Archipelago, five times larger than Manhattan. It’s where bohemia thrives and where people talk in two languages and kiss on both cheeks. It’s the place where John and Yoko sang give peace a chance in room 1742.
The metro stops and we all cram in, the people all in red and blue jerseys on the way to the Bell centre for a hockey game.
It’s a place where plastic water bottles still have caps that come all the way off (unlike in Europe).
It’s home and home is cold and bleak and brown and beautiful. The fluffy white snow that blankets the concrete and turns the city into a winter wonderland melts in clumps, turns to slush and sleet and ice. Montreal is where you’re brave enough to step onto icy sidewalks with sneakers.
Montreal is thick socks, double layers, work boots, toques. It’s feeling strangled by my scarf but regretting not wearing one when the wind chill kicks in.
Montreal is being hypnotized by the incessant flashes of neon signs that pierce through the darkness while sitting on the bus, travelling downtown to meet up with friends for 5 à 7. How can it be so vast and so quaint? Looking up, the sky is so voluminous. On the ground, the most profound memories are made sitting on the floor in someone’s apartment in Saint Henri or walking to the metro, hunched over and shivering, speaking with a friend as our words pour from our mouths in a cold mist.
Montreal is where life feels as real as the pot holes and cracks in the sidewalk. Here there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. And the crack is in us, a wound so deep the healing will leave a scar: the vespers of people passed, of careers careening and disappearing. We huddle together with a beer in one hand and a slice of pizza in another, too tired and beaten to perform a fallacy of success in the final frontier of a capitalist system. It doesn't matter how trained or seasoned or recognized or researched we are in our respective fields, unless our art can influence, goes viral, steal attention, buy followers, soothe the masses, create wealth for someone, we the opera singers, the dancers, the painters, the poets are all but jesters, making joy with scraps, laughing through the tears, shining light in places that need love.
And here are my friends, the people I’ve known for so long. And we’re giddy with memories and gossip and life that we’re chewing each other’s words, swallowing whole lifetimes whole. What the fuck is this stage of life we’re all in now? No one told us that when shit turns sideways that real life begins.
The words we share feel rebellious and naughty and courageous. Between us, in dialogue, we are carve out space so the darkness can be shared and honoured. We’ve known each other for so long that our social masks are translucent. A rage is bubbling inside us from a system that chokes us into believing that happiness is material and success is only real when other people say you are so. We need to normalize talking about grief, we say to each other. We need to normalize talking about mortality, about not being afraid to say the real stuff. The stuff that has hurt us, that continues to hurt us. Plans are bullshit and it’s time to pivot. We touch each other’s hands and hug and cry. We affirm each other’s existence. This is love.
No, I didn’t go to Banquise for a 3am poutine, I missed out on seeing the hot strippers at Campus, I didn’t go to Saint Viateur or Fairmount bagels, I barely saw the plateau. No, it just wasn’t in the cards this time around. I did what I could, knowing that it would never be enough.
And now I’ve returned to a place I’ve called home for over ten years. The jet lag comes in waves. Do you ever think you’d want to move back? Lately, some questions just make me want to turn off the lights and crawl into bed. I mean the answer is: sure, no, I don’t think so and why? Mostly I just want to live in a world where I can travel to Montreal more often. I like my place here but I miss the people elsewhere.
My cousin left Montreal so long ago to start her life in Vancouver. I asked her once why she left and she said, “it was just time to go.”
I thought I’d see some sun when I was in Montreal but the weather had turned grey and I left my vitamin D in my kitchen cupboard back in Amsterdam. I kept my seasonal depression at bay by eating Eggo waffles for breakfast and downing cups of instant coffee.
Montreal is cinnamon Eggo Waffles with maple syurp; Veggie samosas from the Deli on Parc; comic books from Drawn and Quarterly; Montreal is a depanneur and a 24 hour dance party and a thirty-minute walk home in the cold because the bus never came and it’s better than waiting an hour at the bus stop for the next one.
Montreal is a bixi bike and trips to Costco. Montreal is family, watching Jeopardy and dancing with my mom to Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers”.
Thank you for the visit. But it was my time to go.