SLUMBER PARTY!!!!!!!!

Zoe's mom said that if a person walked through every door backwards, they could remember their dreams. The neighbors said to make a dream wish list before going to bed. [I've been trying to influence my dreams for the past week and a half.] Like Christ, they suppose that if we just ask, we will receive. I'm not sure what I asked for last night.

But . . .
Hillary (as in Clinton) showed up for a slumber party. Under the Iowa caucus model of meeting and greeting the locals, sharing tea and sympathy, she stepped into my home and my subconscious. We drank too much wine. I pulled out a bed for her and gave her my best sleeping bag. I cleaned up her dirty dishes. Sleep campaign ads, perhaps the newest infiltration of our brains. Tonight will I dream smear campaigns about another potential Nader run?

Intersections

I once told you that at -40 the readings for celsius and fahrenheit are the same. We've been dancing dangerously close to this intersection for the past two weeks. Bomber hats and long johns and hunting socks dominate my landscape.

At -32, however, one hits another crossroad. Here, one finds Chinese bubble tea and Gay French communists.

Chinatown, on Saturday. The numbers are all there: 32 below, ten to four. I share bubble tea with two redheads and a Groucho Marx look alike and a beet connoisseur. And the tapioca pudding balls in the bottom of the tea come rumbling up the straw (cushioned with cocunut or almond or mango tea). And the effect, like an animation on a Mr. Goodbody special on digestion, is startlingly corporal--the straw becoming part of the body, and the pudding a member of some process.

The office, on Monday. 32 below outside; unheated inside. The electrical panel on the fritz for the past two weeks. I need gloves to type. Didier comes in to archive films and we discuss the strange effect of self-censorship in artists and cultural organizations. Change to please, change to receive a grant. They probably don't even recognize they're doing it at a certain point. And that's terrifying. True, one leaves talking a bit like a communist after having been in dialogue with one, but it illuminates the problems I've noticed with the organization. How exactly does one make that shift from anarchial movement to cultural office? We're both a bit disappointed, Didier and I, with the rules and regulations and formats that have taken hold of this once very playful collective.

Hitting lows like -32 and -40 may convince some that global warming is not an issue. That's tomfoolery, I'd say. But this is just a segway into what I want to say. The French organization Alliance pour la Planète has encouraged people around the world to turn of all electricity for five minutes, between 7:55 and 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 1st. I think this is pretty rad. So, I'll participate. I've been working eight hours without heat anyway; I think I can survive five minutes in the dark.

left to my own (de)vices

Today until 10, I will sit alone in the same old chair. The new French intern will arrive late, will bargain with me so that I can leave early this afternoon, should I choose to. Should I choose to? I've been told it feels like 1 degree outside today. I came without hat, without gloves, and I thought that today was a day to walk. What does the internet know about the cold?

The place will be quiet, this office. G-I and the Mussels from Belgium will both be gone for four weeks. It's up to the Frog and I to learn how to make the most (or least) of their absence. I'd like to leave this internship having contributed, having accomplished something; such as:

*making one short film [not necessarily in the job description, but in my selfish initial interest in accepting the deal in the first place]
*carving out a niche in the Montreal film/festival scene, making just one contact who could offer me the option of living permanently in the city
*organizing junk that hides in the office's many corner [this, i must brag, has already been accomplished, with a Mr. Clean sheen as the bow on top]
*finding a way to phrase my project proposals to G-I so that they're accepted without her knowing it
*cleaning off the salt stains on my boots. i feel like Lot's wife. I can't be constantly reminded of my wrongdoings in this manner. it's too direct. Send me an e-mail, God.

Off to discover my best method of failure or accomplishment...

How to Dismantle a Russian's Apartment

I found a high cupboard to hide the cat litter. This cupboard, like the box on the shelf to the right of the front door and the canister under the sink, was oozing with plastic bags. Enough to survive the Monday and Thursday trash days in case of a nuclear holocaust. Moving the cat litter motivated us to move the computer monitor and the two boxes of video cassettes, an action that freed up the shelf--that hallway straggler. This took care of the shotgun artery of the third-story apartment. We still needed to settle the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen cupboards. We'd probably never know what to do with the office. She'd clearly been embarrassed--the desk covered in a plastic IKEA body bag.

The Russian said to move nothing. Don't unplug any cords. Don't move the dishes. Don't disturb the balance of the closet. All we needed--Z, J, and I--was a camera, a legal pad, and a youthful sense of anarchial order. This Russian had needed a change, and we were there to bring the Quiet Revolution (2007 style).

This is how to dismantle a Russian's apartment (in Montreal), to make it yours (when it's clearly not), to carve out a niche.

Step One: Check out the situation.


Step Two: Disregard her warnings.


Step Three: Document all change.

Step Four: Mark your territory.
Final Step: Try not to gloat.
As James Bond suspected, the Cold War is still on.

Going Dutch

The pipes will freeze if you're not careful. And this is what Heinrich had come to tell us, Kino's landlord, the Dutch expat who'd spent twenty years in Manhattan having sordid affairs with his coworkers at the United Nations. I touch his arm when I laugh, when he says things get complicated if you date the boss. And we talk about the sexy forty-something that lives in the loft above the office, a recent divorcee and a friend of his. Heinrich in his liberal Europeanness and artistic soul tells me to approach the older man should I pass him in the stairwell, to invite him for a drink. "He's just devastated," he informs me, elaborating that the man's got a good job as a private pilot for the Canadian equivalent of the Warren Buffet family. Thirty minutes later he tells me I'm a real character, and that he will call the both of us sometime for a drink, the pilot and me, "something informal." A Dutch date where we each cover our own hides and worry not about owing something to the other person.

This morning: frozen pipes. And my new friend calls in the afternoon: "Jordan, I'm so upset with you." This isn't friendly banter; this isn't mild flirtation. I've lost my chance at a Dutch-organized date with the man upstairs. So I guess this is how I pay--my end of the bargain. This is 2007, sisters, and chivalry is dead.

The Montreal Years!

The last time we saw each other, we were eating tapas topless. June--Madison starting to heat up. It was the culmination of the potlucks and dance parties and general absurdity that had taken place during a scholastic year in which we were supposed to be maturing. Julia left the next day; I got Mono; Zoe ran off to a geriatric sweatshop baking pies. Separation didn't seem to serve us well.

Yesterday, a half year later, I found myself surrounded by two of my favorite friends. I meet up with Zoe, the Olympic Stadium tower framing our reunion. Snap a black and white photo, and you could sell that image for twenty-five cents at any major tourist joint in the city! We prance down Ontario street and end up in Cafe Clo, where she orders the pâté chinoise (a disturbing mound of cow fat and potato), and I the tourtière (cabbage and meat in a crust that tasted, according to Zoe, like a Christmas cookie). Claudette, our crotchety waitress, seemed mildly annoyed by our inability to understand her Quebecois accent, and she transfers us to another waitress. The meal concludes, like another I've had recently, with Jell-O as a dessert option (Jell-O as an option! Times two!). Oh, North America!

Meeting Julia later in a sleazy bus station restaurant, we move on to a more ambient cafe and catch up, this time with all our clothes intact. We order a French beer celebrating Alsace's revolutionary history of separation from France, then Germany. Political consolidation never tasted so good! So here I am, with a foot of snow on my doorstep, and some good friends around the corner. I can't wait to take this town by storm!

Lines of Flight

To connect: A 30-something, a dusty loft, Villeneuve.

She had needed me those days I was gone. "J'étais dans la maaarde"--this is my greeting as I walk in that door for the first time after two and a half weeks. And so I'm immediately given two tasks: clean up the grapes and cheese and crackers and orange juice and the soiled plates left out over night after a board meeting; clear out the refrigerator, but don't throw out the mushrooms. I go back to the kitchen and snack on a few crackers. Minor terrorism. And I don't throw out the mushrooms, but I survey the situation--the corn, its summer husk molding to the side (how has this escaped us?), the various styrofoam boxes containing blacks and greens and frothy fungus, foaming at the mouth. Oh yes, she had needed me those days I was gone.

And so I return to the job. Dressed to the nines, at least, but collecting someone's half-chewed cracker (soft on the incised edge) and listening to her explain to the new intern that the organization is pretty relaxed.

To resist: A 30-something, a dusty loft, Villeneuve.

Villeneuve is not really an impressive street. Between St-Urbain and St-Denis streets one finds a splattering of supermarkets and upscale salons. But it is a quiet street, where winter becomes a time zone, where seasons recall the past. Boeuf Rouge market, the red brick with a bull head gracing the line between the front door and the balcony of the second-story apartment--this year's candidate for the Threshold of Joy. ToJ, of the Madison variety, was a statued fountain, seemingly abandoned, disused, at the top of a hill behind the zoo. No matter what state I found myself in, nor what chill or sweat, arriving on the path that moves past the statue, I traversed some emotional threshold, and felt instantaneous joy and peace. This year, strangely, it's the image of an old-school grocery store with a vintage sign.

Lines of flight. Relating and derelating all of this. Rearrange, I suppose. Not just the juice boxes in the fridge. Shuffle the joy into the menial, spread it out. Bring it all together. Resist, subvert, redefine, and thrive.

verbal diarrhea

Maxwell Smart's shoe-phone rang in the middle of an opera. My bowels dialed up in the middle of the night; it was Mexico on the other line. She wanted her things back. I conceded the Radio Flyer Wagon, the first born, the pineapple and the guacamole, but I told her she'd have to sue me for ownership of the following:

*Philippe, the French watersports guru
*a walk through playa del carman; one chocolate gelato included
*a Gargoyle-inspired dog constructed on the beach
*a six-year-old Quebecois boy with goggles on his forehead
*a row of hammocks
*three Cabañas

I have yet to hear back from her lawyer. But they probably don't know the country code to call Canada (cctcC).

Like all splits, there's a line drawn dividing what you had and what you no longer do. The divorce settlement. Eleven below zero. It was snowing as I dragged my suitcase home from the Mont-Royal metro. Back up north. Barring any three-month wedding engagements, I won't be home until summer. Home, with its strip malls that perform like weeds (I'm content giving that sight up for a few months), and its stoic fields turned gold (how i miss the prairie), is both a place to be and a place to leave, but it is always the point of reference. All that is done is done in response to that place. You're either home, or you've left home. And so now I've left home, but I was home, and despite being tripped up in my normal routine (return, contact no one, wander alone), I was pleased to have delved so deeply into the relationships that I've missed while away. This blog was supposed to be about weddings and Indian food parties and Cancun, but I've sat here, eating malt-o-meal, finding no good angle to take. This is probably a symptom of exactly what I'm supposed to write about--the extent of social contact I made. With no time alone to reflect, I'm a little overstimulated by it all. I'll post some stolen photos.



Bronwyn and I with our childhood sister, Emily. Spending thirty hours straight with us, stranded in a scurvy Norfolk hotel, I think she learned a bit of what it means to be sandwiched between the dynamic duo. But I'm thrilled at the level of reconnection we had after all these years. Tenderness!





This picture has already received much praise in the blogosphere and has been picked up to grace the cover of the next great Canadian indie band's debut album. Jeremy and I vacation together in Cancun, start a gang on the beach, and have the same dream that we are walking along the shore and notice a hundred canopied beds. I think he calls me a "weirdo" in his dream and mine.










Me and my baby brother! We make quite a display on the dance floor. People are amazed at our talents (talons). R.IP. bro!







Cheers to the state fair of life! OH, LIFE!