Montreal

A Porchfest Porchcat Saturday

Pictured: I stumbled upon this band playing classic rock tunes as I made my way from the métro in NDG (details below).

Last night I went down to Boulevard Saint-Laurent to check out the street fair I noticed they were starting when my bus ride from Vieux-Montréal the other day took a meandering detour up Sherbrooke. I also wanted to go grab a beer at the Anglophone pub I discovered, Barfly, since I was starved for some socialization and figured it would be a good place to chat up some locals.

I had some great conversations about the politics of Quebec and Canada, the sheer complexities of which I was not aware. I didn't realize how contentious the Quebec political climate is, and how much the provincial government has alienated its anglophone constituents.

During our conversations, someone brought up the fact they were going to attend an event today called Porchfest NDG, a neighborhood music festival taking place all around the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood. I woke up and, after writing my morning pages, decided I'd make good use of a sunny afternoon and find my way there.

Luckily, NDG can be accessed via the Métro Orange Line, at the Vendôme station. This was the furthest I had ridden the Métro so far, and I was taken aback by how unique and beautiful some of the station interiors were. It got me to thinking that it would be a fun photography project to visit every métro stop, photograph each one and publish the photos on a website to showcase the art and architecture that livens up commuters' days here.

When I got off the train, I emerged a couple blocks off Sherbrooke, and tried my best to orient myself.

First, I discovered the band pictured above playing some mean classic rock covers. People had congregated in the street to watch them play, so many that cars had a difficult time getting around us. It was incredibly inspiring to see a full-on concert crowd in someone's front yard.

I remembered NDG was just beyond the A15 overpass, so I followed the road signs to the A15 and eventually found the park that was to host the festival's inaugural event.

I was too late for that, but instead stumbled upon a dadcore punk rock band playing outside an Anglophone used books and music shop:

They were excellent, but unfortunately I arrived at the end of their set and they only played a couple more songs.

I also noticed this nifty mural while walking on Sherbrooke:

On my way back, I remembered that Sherbrooke would eventually lead me back downtown, so I decided to walk along it as far as I could before I got tired, and then find the nearest métro station to wherever I was. This led me to Westmount Square and the Atwater métro:

I had to change trains at Berri-UQAM, since Atwater was on the Green Line. Eventually, my legs sore and my body sleepy, I found my way home.

After a few hours of lazing about in bed, I walked down to the phở restaurant around the corner to get some tasty soup. The guy running the place (I imagine he's the owner) is an all-around chill guy—super-friendly and hospitable. And being that it feels like 110 degrees outside in Florida most of the year, I haven't wanted noodle soup much down there, so it was nice to have a cozy bowl of noodles.

When I got back from dinner and a quick trip to the corner grocery store, a white-and-black cat approached me on the sidewalk outside the apartment. When I bent down to pet her, I expected her to be shy and to run away, but she seemed quite interested in me. So much so that she followed me up the stairs, where I sat for a moment and pet her. Then she leapt onto my lap, at which point I began wondering if she'd been abandoned, or at least, forgotten about.

But then, when I left her and went to unlock my apartment door, she zipped up the stairs and walked in the door ahead of me.

It was at this point that I was concerned. Was this just an extra-social neighborhood cat, or was she in some sort of distress? I located two phone numbers on her tag and called and texted both of them while I sat on the porch and comforted her.

It took a full hour for her owners to return my calls, but they laughed and said she's quite social... which I think is quite the understatement! Her name was Fleurette, and she was probably my favorite part of the day:

A brisk wonderland

Pictured: A church I visited in Vieux-Montréal yesterday. The interior was stunning, but unfortunately my little Nikon camera couldn't cope with the low-light conditions. Trust me when I say it was a spiritual experience.

Autumn has broken here in Montréal in a real way. I awoke this morning delightfully chilly, pulling the sheets and blankets up over me and snuggling in for a few more minutes of rest before springing up to make the morning coffee.

The sky is clear and blue, and Montréalers are bundled in hats and scarves and jackets.

The past weeks have been incredible for my personal growth, in spite of (and probably because of) a spell of depression. Here's why:

Throughout most of my adult life, I've been a hopeless romantic. I don't mean this only in the sense of yearning for romantic love, although that has been a component. I mean that I'm hopelessly addicted to the promise of salvation that allegedly waits for me on the other side of some effort.

This year, that effort was my 25-hour drive to Quebec. I was so sure that when I arrived, I would be greeted with perpetual elation and bliss. Instead, I found ... myself, here, in Quebec, away from all my friends and family, in a city where I know nobody.

At first, this was an exciting prospect. I love that feeling of arriving in a new city and feeling the energy and potential of the place. But, as the days go on, it becomes familiar, and that novel feeling wears off. What once was new becomes routine. And it happens quickly.

I found it difficult to cope with this, until I asked myself what the experience could teach me. And the lesson, found through weeks of daily journaling, wasn't what I expected to find on this trip. But it is what I've truly needed.

For most of my life I've struggled with remaining grounded. Sometimes I feel like a bee flitting from place to place, trying to pollinate as many flowers as he can. I try to view this as a part of my nature and nothing to be overly concerned with.

And I think, to a point, it's true. I'm so grateful for having the privilege to have lived more life by my mid-thirties than most people live in their entire lives. Sometimes, if I'm tuned into the divinity of the present moment, I feel the need to pinch myself just to see if I'm dreaming, because I've been so goddamn blessed in this life. I wouldn't trade my adventurousness, my creativity, or my appetite for romance for anything.

But the insidious side of all of this shows itself when I'm not tuned into the present moment and I'm not viewing my current circumstance as the existential perfection that it is. I become bitter. Anxious. Depressed. I expect so much more than life can offer, and when it doesn't deliver, I can't cope with the dissonance.

We all know that attachment is the root of all suffering. But it requires constant effort and practice to make use of this beyond uttering it as a feel-good platitude. It requires noticing when your expectations exceed reality, and bringing your expectations back down to earth. And most of all, it requires observation of our present circumstance—no matter how vile or unfit as it may seem—as perfect and divine.

The curious thing is, as much as my solitude on this trip has recovered this wisdom from the bowels of my intellect, I find myself constantly forgetting and returning to my patterns of control and the anxiety and depression they produce.

Perhaps that's what people mean when they say that solitude can help us find ourselves. Perhaps it is out of necessity, in our darkest and most lonely moments, that we uncover wisdom we've always known in our minds but seldom practiced in our hearts.

So today, I'm basking in the tranquility of this perfect present moment. I hope you find the courage to do the same.

Un paradis piétonnier

Pardon my French, haux haux haux... I'm trying to learn as much as I can while I'm here. The title of this post translates to "A pedestrian paradise".

At risk of sounding like a broken record: Why do we build cities like we do in the United States, when there's clearly a better way? I came to Montréal to discover whether my suspicions were correct—that there could be a city somewhere in North America where the automobile wasn't the highest priority citizen. Even in "progressive" Portland, life without a car was tenuous at best due to most of the city being filled with single-family housing. And Manhattan has the opposite problem: Skyscrapers suffocate the island with hoardes of pedestrians on every streetcorner.

But here in Montréal, life is so pleasant on foot. I walked around in awe at how much I could access on my own two feet. I walked by several supermarkets, some ethnic and some organic. Shops of every stripe. Cafes, bars, restaurants. Parks and playgrounds. And despite the density, I haven't once felt overwhelmed. In fact, I've felt more comfortable than I ever do in America, because I haven't been steering a two-ton hunk of glass and metal through a goddamn city.

There are several streets in the central city that close traffic to private automobiles, such as the one pictured above. Walking down these is like being in an urban wonderland. It's quiet. It's charming. There's a real sense of place. You're free to stop and enjoy yourself without the threat of being run over.

I will never stop asking: Why don't we do this in America? Why do we choose to live our lives confined to horrid glass and metal boxes careening dangerously through asphalt-laden hellscape cities, when there's clearly a more livable way? I'm here, I'm experiencing it, and it's so much better. Not only is it better, but it's also, per capita, much more efficient and economical.

I've had a few incredible multilingual experiences here so far. Yesterday, I came across a Latin supermarket, where I bought some pastries, a baguette, and some chorizo to prepare at home. The clerk didn't speak any English. I didn't speak any French, but I could tell she spoke a bit of Spanish. So I used the few Spanish phrases I knew to hopefully convey the transaction. It barely worked and we both kept laughing at each other.

Now I'm sitting at an Italian-owned cafe. I walked in, and, armed with a bit more French, asked "Parlez-vous anglais?" The barista seemed a bit confused, and just asked "English?" I couldn't tell what her native language was, but a couple of the regulars spent the next fifteen minutes conversing, switching back and forth between Italian and English.

All of this is making me realize how much more rich life would be if I were multilingual, and I'm going to make it a priority to learn French from now on, since I'm sure I would enjoy my time here even more if I weren't timid on account of the language barrier.

I'll leave you today with an interesting quirk I've seen here. There are still quite a few payphones strewn about the city—I wonder if these are kept in operation for those people who cannot afford cell phones. Anyway, being a bit of a telephony nerd, I couldn't help but snap a picture:

À plus tard!