dis-donc

Just back from a lightning-brief trip to Montreal for an audition. How did it go? Not well. Do you ever have days when everything you say comes out wrong? Clunky, graceless, mixed-up, unclear? Well, sometimes dancing is like that too, and everything you do is just not right.

Montreal is one of my favourite cities though, and it's full of wonderful things:

1. Random strangeness. This is the side of one of those stores that sell clothes made out of hemp, and felted slippers made out of humanely raised wool, and incense, and meditation cds. And that's my sister wielding a baugette.


2. My very favourite croissants in the world so far. I'm a pastry fiend and would probably live off butter croissants if I weren't convinced that such a diet would make me feel like a sluggish lump. The croissants here are the most satisfying cross between crisp, flaky layers that crackle under your teeth and steamy, chewy, butter-scented warmth. They are glorious. The bakery is tiny and the windows are always steamed up and it's full of sweet, French-speaking bakery people who look as if they have just stepped out of some enchanted sweetshop.



3. Gender Mannequin
This shopfront is on Sherbrooke, near St. Laurent. I've never been inside, but the window displays are always so strange and so outrageous. They're completely different from the inside of the shop, which is spare and populated by groupings of pale, still mannequins in an assortment of sizes and shapes. There was also a clump of male torsos made out of clear plastic and lit from within by different colored bulbs.

4. Bily Kun, a bar on Mont Royal that has taxidermied ostrich heads mounted on the wall.

5. The lavish use of the word "donc," which I just like the sound of.

6. My sister and I decided that Montreal has an above average percentage of attractive young men. We couldn't decide if this was because we were walking around near a university, or if the cold had somehow transformed them, or if they were all just genetically fortunate. In the end, my sister declared it to be a similarity to the distinctive French nose: large, but elegant, and somehow good for balancing a face on.

7. There was a man who came into the coffee shop that we were haunting. He had long, wavy hair and a scruffy face. He spent ten minutes sorting through the basket of morning papers, setting aside a small stack of sections that he found acceptable before getting his coffee and taking a seat by the window. Instead of reading his paper, he whipped out a comb and a hand mirror and spent the next several minutes combing his hair with luxurious flicks of his wrist and long gazes into the mirror. He looked like a pirate (or, as my sister says, like an extra from Pirates of The Caribbean who walked into the Lord Of The Rings makeup trailer), but was acting like a mermaid. It was fascinating.

One of the strangest things is how you go through U.S. customs in the Canadian airport when you depart. There are signs everywhere saying, "Welcome to the United States," with the seal of the Homeland Security or State Department or whichever agency it is; but as soon as you're through the gates, you're back in Canada, under a wash of bi-lingual French and English, and waiting for a plane to actually take you home.

airport things

Airport delights:

1. Upon emerging from the security checkpoint at Lihue Airport, you come upon two musicians in aloha shirts, one playing the guitar, and the other playing the ukelele. They sing songs in Hawaiian, which has a multitude of euphonious vowels.

2. The newsstand in Lihue Airport sells cookies with chunks of arare (rice crackers seasoned with soy sauce) scattered throughout like chocolate chips.

3. The sensation my new old typewriter made while making its way through security and agricultural inspection: What's in that sturdy plastic case? Oh, just a typewriter. Oh... well, haven't seen one of those in a while.

4. The flight attendant who used the expression: "What the h, blank, double hockey stick, do they think they're doing?" This entertained me entirely too much, and I kept looking up from my magazine and thinking, hah! Double hockey stick.

5. Science fiction exhibit at SFO. Not entirely sure what this was about, because I was on a moving walkway and too tired to go back and look, but there were definitely robots. Big, silver robots. And wonderfully pulpy illustrations in bright colors (I've just looked them up, and they are covers from Weird Science and Weird Fantasy). I love the SFO museum.

on reflection...

This sign is from the airport, international terminal. Something--probably the pictures of the Olafur Eliasson exhibit I'd just seen in the MOMA store--made me think of a room with a giant, still pond in it, fathoms deep and smooth as glass. Or a room panelled in mirrors with different colored lights reflecting in all directions. Unfortunately, I think it's actually a politically reworked word standing in for "chapel" or somesuch. But since I didn't actually go and check, I can pretend that through a little corridor and up some stairs is a magnificent Room of Reflections whose beauty will make you fall on your knees, like that little person icon there, in wonder.

Am tired of writing today. I've done perhaps 1500 words and things were humming along nicely, but I'm at one of those getting from here to there moments and I just want to skip over it and go on to the next bit which is going to involve bright lights and nightmares. It's the pyrotechnic bit of the chapter. There are just all these details that need setting up and they're feeling a bit sluggish and dull. However, I've found out what a ghost machine does and more about Agatha, so that's good.

I watched the "Utopia" and "The Sound of Drums" episodes of Doctor Who and was happily astonished by how fantastic Derek Jacobi and John Simms are. There's a moment when Jacobi just looks into the camera and goes from being an affable professor to a very dangerous maniac. It's chilling and wonderful. There are moments of sci-fi apocalypse that seem a bit ridiculous (though still much enjoyable), but having a character who is quite like the Doctor yet so horrible, driven mad by the same powers that make the Doctor wonderful, is brilliant. Typical archetype stuff, I guess, but really solid nonetheless.

Bought three new cds: Muswell Hillbillies by the Kinks, End of History by Regan Fionn, and Hilary Hahn's Bach Partitas for Solo Violin. Self-indulgent, I know. I went in planning to get the Bach because I think the partitas are glorious, but then I wandered into the music section and was lost for an hour or so. How could I resist an album with songs titled "Hey Rabbit" and "Abacus" (the Fionn)? Or one called "Muswell Hillbillies"? There's a song on that album called "Have A Cuppa Tea," which made me laugh because I went into a coffee shop the other day and said, "may I have a cuppa tea?" and the girl behind the counter said, "huh?" Hopefully the music will live up to my enjoyment of the titles, and if not, at least I have the Bach to console myself with.

Obviously, I haven't been working too hard if I've had time to watch Doctor Who and buy music and take pictures in airports, but I still haven't found the stamina for writing again. It's odd, because I don't know the details, sometimes even the big obvious chunks of "what happens next?" until I'm writing them, but once I do see them in my head, I get impatient about turning them into words and just want to dump them out and carry on to the next bit. Lazy.