5.30.2025 - Weekly Digest
5.27.2025
I have a certain Russian dictator in a choke hold and I'm saying some action movie shit like 'Death is too good for you' when I'm woken up by a loud crash. My laptop has tumbled off the bed and it took the miniature cooling tower on the jerry-rigged table with it. There are hazards to this kind of living. Now I'm up two hours earlier than I'd planned and I decide to go buy a pair of shorts. It's gonna be 20-40 Celsius degrees warm today. I have no business shopping in any country. But I've learned it's good to touch clothes before you wear them. My walk to the train is uneventful. It's sunny as hell and I don't trust my senses. The city bursting with color and music and French laughter. I've come to know Montreal as a Gothic and gloomy place and I thought we had an understanding. This cheerful aesthetic feels forced and it doesn't affect everyone. Even in the sunshine there will be a couple looking how I remember Soviets being depicted in American propaganda, holding each other by the elbows, stumbling like they're walking into a snowstorm. And a lot of folks dress all in black whatever the circumstance. There was a comic arts festival over the weekend. The street was closed to traffic and there were vivid images everywhere, little kids' drawing classes, interviews with effusively nerdy graphic artists. I checked out about ten of the booths but didn't buy anything. I still have this hangup about acquiring physical books, like I know I might have to ditch them at some point. Moving to another neighborhood again next week. You learn to live with less. You stop fantasizing about your old furniture and make tables out of step stools and shelves. You still wish you had your own bicycle.
5.28.2025
Rode up (or over) to Parc Olympique and the Botanical Gardens to see what they look like surrounded by evidence of life. This is the first neighbo(u)rhood where I stayed when I arrived in Montreal in January, when the snow was legendary and being measured in kilometers. Where I started this here weblog Without a Gun. Sitting in a stranger's kitchen staring out the window, marveling at how the birds managed to stay alive despite having few resources and even less clothing. In those times when I was cold and confused and fresh off my decision to leave the U.S. there were few constants. One was the local market where I often purchased quiche. The other was a coffee shop where they played rock music I was familiar with and activists gathered. Getting there was a whole trek, dancing in heavy clothes to avoid icy patches, feeling like one of those human-sized muppets who always look out of place on the stage. I learned that the bike paths are plowed even in the deepest depths of winter, and the trail along the highway that runs by the warehouses on the river was the most reliable way to get anywhere. Now I cruise down those streets unimpeded and it turn outs the bike path runs the length of the entire city. The freedom this presents. It's like I just got my driver's license. I have no desire to crawl back inside or to watch Lost or fall asleep playing a weird poker game on the laptop. Sometimes it almost feels like I know what I'm doing.
5.29.2025
Weird insomnia's getting the upper hand on me. Full REM for a few hours than ka-smack I'm awake like it's time to do something. Opposite of sleep paralysis. Waking immobility. I'm not fit to make diagnoses. Last time this happened there was a direct cause and effect, the cause being a useless therapist who in our one and only session diagnosed me with vitamin D deficiency, never mind that I told him I was on supplements and getting outside for a couple hours a day. He put me on 100 million units or something up there, in the cosmic scale of things, which I learned a few nights later has the potential to rewire your nervous system real quick so your circadian rhythms stop following the sine wave pattern you're used to and start looking like staccato beats and shouts on an audio recording. He spent a good portion of our session talking about his boat and how he was looking forward to retirement and I sure as hell hope he did. He also didn't write anything down, canceled our second appointment, and never bothered to follow up about it. Anyway I don't know if that's the cause this time but I'm making adjustments. The daily and nightly bike rides have me feeling good, the healthiest I've been since I got here, and I have to remember that I'm on this magical island with its own compass points and that there could be some science in the way the sunlight is refracted off the St Lawrence at this particular latitude and stupid as that is I'm in no position to argue.
5.30.2025
photo: old timey map of 'Le Canada Du Nouvelle France' on a brick wall from 1705
Lots of logistics happening and I will need to make this a short, maybe even criminally lazy, image-heavy post. Please forgive.
I have news to share. I will share it soon. I get distracted. For instance:
If I've learned anything about the internet it's that cats get clicks. There's a map on a brick wall in the neighborhood and a gray cat who serves as the map's guardian. He waits in that spot, knows when people are stopping to look at or take a photo of it, and grazes up on your legs to receive pets. This is the toll for viewing the map. In some mythologies he built the wall and the map painted on it. He is an ancient Quebecois deity and if you don't show him attention it's going in your file.
photo: gray cat approaching on sidewalk
The Mixbus is a schoolbus where DJs spin records. This just happens at random in a public park next to a school. I don't know how mobile the bus is but it wasn't there two days ago. The scene around the Mixbus is popping. Complex polyrhythmic beats all over the place. Dancing, laughing, smoking and vaping stuff. Everyone enjoys it. I keep hearing from locals that they experience culture glut here in the summer. It's hard to decide what to do with yourself with so much going on. I'm okay with having that problem.
photo: Le Mixbus (painted bus w/ a stage and canopy on top)