cathy i'm lost, i said, though i knew she was sleeping

montreal, laurier ouest and avenue du parc. on this corner the PA, my old grocery store from my old life. julie asked me this morning if being here was a too-large reminder of d. i hadn't thought about it, had willed myself not to think about it. i'm wanting to stare through the ghosts of this city and see instead where it lives in me as home. i watched the city approach from dorval on, montreal by train - triplexes, factories. over the river, south of the market. the gentrification of rundown buildings - lofts with grand curtains behind facades that wear washed out advertisements for sugar, for machinery parts, for meat packers, like old denim. i'm home, i think, say silently to the ribbons of highway, the atwater tunnel, the urban playgrounds full of unattended children on a tuesday night. the cross on mount royal from this window - from the side, it's all scaffolding and naked and unlit in the rainy grey of this end of april morning.

i used to pass this corner every day on my way home from work. stop into the PA, me and d. and katie. we walked our bikes, or else it was winter, and we didn't have them at all. but we'd almost always break at the PA, for yogurt, cheese, veggie pate, and those improbably red tomatoes in the middle of february. that was before i moved to BC where the gregariousness of tomatoes is never improbable.

at this corner, from julie's window: the red striped bus stop, traffic light, the croque en bol pet store, where i used to buy food for lady, treats for camille. the banque laurentienne, and across the street that upscale vietnamese restaurant, chez van. i've never seen anyone in there. and i've never been. i can't see it but i know the banque de montreal is kitty corner, its wheelchair access ramp strewn with bus commuters, though maybe not today, in the rain. under this building and in front, the starbucks. the only freestanding one in the city, or maybe only the first now. there was a protest to keep it out when it first opened 5 years ago, but now i notice that it's full of happy sipping people in familiar low light and cherry wood accents. the funny thing is that laudan used to work there, and she said that in the mornings, when it was new, the starbucks used to be a meeting joint to michael - the artist, the street man with the cart of animals - 2 dogs, a cat, some pigeons - and an assortment of other odd montreal characters. i learned that michael had an apartment. he just chose not to live there. i wonder if now that the starbucks has established itself, if they let those folk in any more. i like picturing that - a table full of well-lived-in people, the city staining their skin, animated and alive, boisterous, over grande lattes in the starbucks. if only it was that kind of place still.

accidental death and dismemberment

i can't believe i'm posting about mortgage insurance. actually, i'm NOT posting about mortgage insurance, i'm really posting about being aghast at the fact that i'm tempted to. reaching a point in my life when mortgage insurance is something i think about - devote way too much time to thinking about. the value of a life. the value of my life. of j.'s. and the impact on our joint investments... god. so much for being committed to slumming it.

i used to always think that growing up was for grown ups. that i'd be immune somehow, peter pan-ned in my early twenties. i wonder, now, if my dad felt like that. or my mom.

but she had life insurance, and a good thing she did, my life the richer in money for it. death has a way of growing you up but good.

a note on the wisdom of the cynic

Mercury Retrograde

I don't quite understand what makes the planets pull
us into believing that where they are makes history happen –
clocks stop and contracts go bad
and bank accounts drain with a stealth
that thieves should envy.
The astrologers know.
Or they say they do and the starstruck faithful
queue up in virtual space clamouring
for the next Freewill,
impatient for the month to trip into its neighbour
for the next installment of Susan Miller's uncanny.

It's a matter of blind faith you said, over coffee
and a donut, or a danish –
that bit of something you always ordered
to keep your tongue busy.
You were on your soap box that day,
in good form and on about the wisdom of the cynic,
your head back in laughter
or otherwise leaning forward, a question mark hanging invisibly
from the furrow of your disbelief
at my will to believe.
(We used to argue about that a lot –
the empirical, the spiritual –
and usually
you won, or I let you win
so I could watch the victory slide quietly
into your hips and know that by lunch,
we'd be on to something
else.)

I let you win that day,
or you thought you did,
and you got up to pay, all loose-hipped and winking
only to return, hand out for a tenner,
face flushed by the faux pas
of your insufficient funds.

there are about 5 things i'm trying to tell you

too long since i've written, anywhere, or anything. back in touch with k. who has her own blog - a true blog in the style of deft bloggers everywhere. that would not be me. but i'm self referential and narcissistic, so i'll make particular note of her bukowski entry of friday april 15. that would be me.

caught in the funk of april. my girl tells me that it's only the profound who suffer from depression, as if my depression were evidence of my Very Deep Thoughts. she's kind, but i think too generous. me on last night about my own superficiality, the constant soundbiting. my fraudulence. funny how these troughs always follow those smooth sailing moments of balance.

i was reading in the globe and mail on the weekend (a leah mclaren article no less - small digression: i used to hate her, but am hating her less. does this mean she's getting less annoying or have i become immune?) about the children of the boomers. Generation Fearless, she calls them. they would have that name - all bravado and look at me and self-confidence that will either bowl you over or bore you silly. i don't know that there's any in between. i have to wonder about my own ambition, that *i* fear *them.* too, my kneejerk cynicism and sense of being somehow wiser, superior, to this next crop of pretty young things.

j. on the election of benedict xvi: "wait a minute... the guy is 78 and he's GERMAN???? don't you think there must be something in that?" god knows i'm prickly about stereotyping, but it got me thinking. apparently, other people are thinking the same thing.

and in the realm of the mundane, i got a new job, starting may 24.

that's 5. seems enough for 7 o'clock on a wednesday morning.