3.30.2006

A story of parts.

Part 1

It is 12:30 am. And when the minutes pass midnight, I often sit down and write. I let words appear one after the other on their own, unconsciously.

On February 24, 2006, sometime in the afternoon, I’ll take you on the random musings of such a night.

Right now, all is quite but the quiet tapping of fingertips pressing down on little square buttons. My left hand feels numb, I have 8 grapes sitting in a bowl in front of me and the desklamp is casting shadows on the walls. There is wind howling at 50km/hr outside the window. Somewhere out there, I know, someone is sleeping on some empty street desperately seeking warmth underneath a thin layer of newspaper. The howling outside lights an image in my head: I see a pack of hungry wolves on a snow covered hill with dabbles of green pines everywhere.

Inside, I feel like a tiny school girl. Clutching her very first school bag, leaning in front of some pebbles, imagining lost cities and forgotten conquests.

Somehow, right this moment, I feel exactly like I felt on this day:

October 3, 2005

The afternoon has been spent catching glimpses of sunlit vesper through thin wisps of black hair, and the aroma offreshly cut grass inundating content nostrils.

There will never be much to rival the explosion of life inside one’s imagination.
Once dreamer, always dreamer.

Part 2

There is sunshine dust sprinkled in the atmosphere. The sky is clearer than I have seen in months and birds have started casting shadows on the brick wall in front of me. Right now, it is 9:20AM, probably 08 seconds in. She Wants Revenge is dancing inside the speakerphones: The crowd on the street walk slowly, don’t mind the rain.

Funny how the walls metamorphose.

Funny how suddenly bricks become roads and roads become dust. You and I are holding hands, driving past some deserted area in a gas-guzzling car, speeding faster than the flow of racing blood, throwing pebbles and sand underneath rubber tires. Sunlight stings our eyes and scorches our skin; life is burning inside but we like the pain because we are racing our own heartbeats.
Lean over and suddenly, we are expanding, we are exploding, we are collapsing into ourselves, black holes that we are, zooming into the other side of the universe.

There, you are lying beside me, in a ten by ten room, our hearts beating at the pace of clotting blood. It’s as if I can feel your every pores, oozing warmth, pressing against my own. Music is making my veins radiate inside out and my fingertips have disappeared.
I have never felt this peacefully alive before.

Part 3

My story starts from a clear blue sky, with a speck of blinding sun just like this one, stolen from a photograph taken on one of those first days of spring. It is Saturday March 25th 2006.

The city is just warm enough and you are wearing a black T-shirt and a 30-pound black leather jacket. Between your fingers, you feel the dull wood of a tiny baboushka doll while clusters of sunlight pierce through your eyelids. You keep your eyes closed but you see clearly inside: there are fields of white with thousands of black dabs and doodles. There, you search the patterns for hidden faces, sandy beaches, blueprints to a hidden treasure somewhere on a pacific island. For a moment, it’s all you need to see and all you need to feel, nothing really matters when the world is black and white.


But then, you open your eyes and you are sitting in an oversized and rugged crimson
leather chair with your arms placed palms facing up on a round table. There, you are in a circus tent, with baboushka-sized midgets in green polka dotted dresses dancing around you. At your right, there is an 300-pound bald Soprano singing Mozart’s Magic Flute. And at your left, a purple and yellow clown is doing mind-boggling handstands while performing magic tricks.

Across from you, at the other end of the table, there is a black haired girl in a little red dress, drawing your future on your palms. She is speaking but you can’t hear her. Her lips are moving but only the bald soprano’s voice is resonating in your brain.

Part 5.

The dome of St-Joseph pierces Montreal's first May day, evoking talks of clutches and crutches and shrill fear of heights.
Mondays are always the deadliest. The sun is blinding and the air is stuffy.
The circus has suddenly disappeared. The jugglers, the clowns, the sopranos and the contortionists have packed their belongings into black garbage bags and left on three-wheeler mini-bikes to get kidnapped in the depth of South-American countries. All that is left is a long lane of gravel, sand and dust with random candy wrappings, neon-coloured straws and occasional bloodstains from ferocious brawls.
Amongst the rubble, you are digging for lost treasures, perhaps chunks of gold that a circus monkey might had ingested on a trip to Peru and carefully excreted into the warmth of Montreal soil. Or maybe you are just looking for a handprint eternally conserved in concrete. You don't really know: the heat seems to have-melted your last chunks of working grey matter.
With a flash of a sunlight, a homeless man stinking of whiskey and piss runs towards you, brandishing a metal construction pole and screaming "CHAAAARGE!!!" on the top of his lungs. You are scared shitless but you keep your cool and elegantly inflict one of those westling moves (those precious ones inherited from grandpa) on this lunatic and manage to bring him down cold.
Immediately, a luminous sense of pride imbues your entire body as you realize that you were destined to be the best wrestler the entire universe will ever witness. You feel yourself metamorphose: your muscles pump up,your veins pop out, your heart rate shoots up. The only womanly aspect of this transformation is a tight spandex suit that skims your enormous new frame. But then again, it is black..and red, which is never short of awesome.