Yesterday morning: late June air soft and mild, mist clearing slowly away. Made the short drive out to the storage compartment where most of what passes for my worldly possessions are currently crammed together. Marveled at how many spiders and bits of cottonwood fluff manage to insinuate themselves inside a locked storage unit. Did what I needed to do, closed the place up. And stood outside listening to the sweet call of a mourning dove, realizing all over again how much I miss the wildlife that hung about outside the house that I let go of close to a month ago. Have not heard a mourning dove since driving away from that sweet place on the first of June. But another bird, a kind that begins warbling with the very first pre-dawn light and continues blathering away for hours, that feathered blabbermouth I hear every morning in my current squat. And heard in Montreal. Every morning, early, and every evening as daylight waned. During the two weeks north of the border, in my rented 23rd floor squat, I could hear that same song coming from one of the tree-lined streets that surrounded the high-rise. And while I may bitch about it starting up at 4 a.m. (hoping it's obvious that my tongue has been shoved firmly into my cheek), hearing that music way the hell up at the top of an apartment tower in the middle of a major city felt so good.
Same goes for the sound of swallows streaking across expanses of blue sky, their song sounding like expressions of pure joy to me. Different cities -- Montpelier, Montreal -- same sight, same sounds.
Anyway. Montreal. The days rolled by, I carried out my usual hunt for the right morning caffeine joint. And given the shameless abundance of caffeine pushers in Montreal, it was not a fast process. I thought I'd found one soon after arriving, a café at the intersection of a busy, funky boulevard and a busy pedestrian way. But the combination of the music being spewed from the in-house music system (oldies. and why the mania for oldies? i would much rather hear less well-known, more interesting music, would much rather hear just about anything than the constant regurgitation of the same pop tunes over and over and over and over. that's just me, though, and i'm not in charge (probably a good thing for the world at large).) and a 20-something counter-guy who seemed to have some real attitude toward me re: me sticking to English.* Which sent me off to try out other joints, until I found one closer to my squat, with the right combination of positive aspects, that became my default wake-up haunt. Leaving me happier, with more of a feeling of being at home in the neighborhood.
What I experienced re: the tolerance and kindness of the local Francophones seems to be the general rule -- the spirit of inclusion overshadows the pushing by a minority for purity (meaning Quebec sovereignty, exclusion of non-French speakers, all that). And there is a thuggish minority that pushes in that way. While I was there, a minor flap quickly grew to much larger, noisier proportions when two bands composed of Anglophones (who had been included on the roster of groups playing an alternative celebration of the St. John Baptiste holiday) were unexpectedly dropped from the roster after pressure from one of the event's sponsors, an organization that apparently had ties to hardline Francophone/sovereignty elements. The media got wind of this and gave it major exposure, resulting in big expressions of outrage from all over the political and social map. Two days later, the bands were back on the roster and not at all displeased with the mountain of free publicity the hooha had produced for them. Which just goes to show, there's something to that old show-biz saw that any publicity is good publicity. (The even itself had its moments of tension, but they passed.)
Me, I love hearing the blend of languages that are encountered out on the street in Montreal, in shops, cafes and restaurants -- French, English, a surprising amount of Spanish and Chinese, now and then eastern European languages. Plus, there is something about females speaking French that is outrageously attractive to my ears (and provides major craven incentive for developing some facility with the language).
*I started every exchange with a friendly 'Bonjour!', then switched immediately to English, having essentially exhausted my French with that first volley. Yes, I can mumble 's'il vous plaît,' can spout a few random words, but not enough to string together a coherent sentence, and don't like sounding like a total incompetent. So I depended on the tolerance of Montreal's francophones. And everyone, apart from that single impatient, dismissive counterperson -- no matter their age, no matter their gender, no matter where we had our dealings -- treated me well. Hard not to love a place so consistently kind.
One of the original goals of this trip had been to spend two weeks studying French. Once there, however, I discovered that every language school I investigated would only allow rank beginners like myself to begin classes on a specific date, at the beginning of a four-week cycle. And none of them began that cycle at a time that would allow me to get two to four weeks of study in. So despite me wanting to get a teeny bit of a grip on basic French, it didn't happen.
Now and then, when someone I was talking with realized I knew no French, I'd speak a little Spanish, which sparked their interest. One woman commented in a friendly way that when I started out with 'bonjour,' they assumed I spoke French. I wondered aloud what would happen if I started out with '¡hola!, she said that when they say 'ola' (no idea re: the spelling) they mean 'chill.'
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Graffiti along Monkland Avenue, Montreal:
España, te echo de menos
[this entry in progress]
España, te echo de menos
rws 8:09 PM [+]
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