s.

i haven't been around all that much lately, but i have to say: i miss you.

love.

driving up north to what i originally thought was a small logging town, i was overwhelmed by the greatness of the sky and the mountains around me. these are my mountains, those my family would drive to every weekend from the day i was born to when i turned about ten and our family life took a 180 turn, not necessarily for the best. those where i first experienced peace and carelessness.

i was looking in the rearview mirror, comparing the color of the sky and the road behind me with the path that lay ahead and surprised myself thinking that i prefered watching the scenery disappearing behind me. the colors seemed more vivid, the mountains just a little bit higher.

i think, sometimes, i get a little too nostalgic. comtemplating past events rather than looking at the present. i also spend a great deal of time imagining a bright, precious future, thinking two steps ahead instead of concentrating on where i'm actually setting my feet.

and i deeply feel the need to change that.

my boss brought his dog to work. she's an energetic giant poodle. she's always dropping the ball at my feet for me to toss across my basement office. during our lunch break, she pulled half a pack of english muffins out of my bag and ate them (including a good chunk of the plastic wrapping) hilarious!

i never quite realize how much the city gets to me until i find myself in the montreal metro again after being away for a few days. my attitude is completly different though and i experience a dreamy, hazy state that clouds my mind for a couple of days until the imperatives of clean laundry and furballs in the corner of my room that need to be vaccumed draw my attention again.

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a friend of mine sent me a 'thirty things you want to do in the next thirty years' type of list. i've since been unable to answer. it is not that i can not name thirty things that i want to accomplish but i find myself torn between establishing either unbelievably utopic or absurdly mundane objectives. i could very well name you thirty things i would like to do in the next 30 minutes, 30 days, even before i turn 30! but i freeze when put under the pressure of writing down things i might have to commit my mind to for 30 years.

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on another note - or maybe it is just an extension of the same topic - spring is definitely in the air. i must say that it is not without having any effects on me. i see friends and acquaintances looking to find potential matches to spend the turn of season with and i wonder really whether i'll also commit to watch crocuses, tulips and hyacinthes fall in and out of season.

but who knows, really, where we fit in mother nature's grander scheme of things?

i am amazed about how little somethings, disagrements and such, can grow out of proportion when they are not addressed.

and i've been trying to get to the root of them, but it seems that as soon as i unroot a conflict, planting it in what i see as a more fertile land, i turn around and see another droopy creature, waiting.

maybe i should just become a hermit. or a botanist.

k.

i remember how you once said that if you paid close attention, you could hear a smile in someone's voice over the phone.

years later, i know this to be true.

white girl shows up at the corner depanneur owned by a chinese from the south to buy sesame snaps (i love these guys!).

his cigarette display has been taken down, the shelves as clean and sparkling white as new.

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white girl (feeling there is something wrong): "ni ban jia ma?" (gosh, are you moving?)

chinese guy (lowering is head): "nope, suspension de permis. one month."

white girl: "oh. that sucks."

----

white girl returns to work and asks her colleague to get the full story. the chinese guy apparently sold contraband cigarettes to an inspector.

all of us showed up there this week, making equally stupid comments ("oh wow, you are cleaning up the place?" / "oh no, don't tell me the teenagers broke into the dep again?" and so on.) he must think we are nuts.

but so do we, because he still sells contraband cigarettes hidden under the counter.

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edit:

white girl was thinking, this morning, how it's only the little guys that pay. and this, my friends, is just a little example of it. while we are increasingly getting exposed to corporate scandals, what we see in the media is surely just the tip of the iceberg. and, unfortunately, a lot of money is put into paying for inspectors to go around your local depanneur as opposed to trying to unravel greater source of fraud.

i've been feeling lost in translation recently.

it seems like everytime i'm in a context where i need to speak one language, i always feel limited and can't help but switch to the other one when i realize that i am minimally understood.

this morning typing up a report at work, i was thinking of what i wanted to write in french but i realized after a few words that i was typing the very same text in english. odd.

i just came home. my apartment smells of smoke. the lights in front of my house are not working. in the dark, i can not find an explanation for any of this. no traces of smoke on a door, nor discarded pieces of lumber. everything looks fairly normal except for a fresh batch of incense sticks that f. bought and left on the living room table.

i went to the museum of the chinese in the america's today. it was my second visit there in the same number of years. it's a small place, well worth the 3$ admission fee although it probably takes the average person less than 20 minutes to see it all. their first exhibit called 'where is home?' is quite memorable. maybe only because i think i wanted to be home when i was going through it. (their definition included: a place where you feel welcomed, safe, understood, where there is comfort food and familiar talk.)

chinatown is bustling on the weekends. old women sitting on stools on the sidewalk with a table in front of them displaying various sizes of flesh-colored underwear. old men bringing their birds out for a stoll in the park, just like in the Tremple of Heaven park in Beijing. i can close my eyes on some street corners, smell their air and pretend i'm back in china.

there was a sign on a store that sold spiritual paraphenelia on grant st. that read accesorize your spirit. it reminded me of this restaurant i passed by years ago on the long bus route to toronto, the one that goes through every small village, god's mercy cafe - serving jesus daily. or should we say, marketing jesus daily?