the very first ride into paris is my favourite. in the early morning fragile, the only metro smells are sewer, cologne pressing against damp skin, cement. this is before you remember to anticipate the softness of chestnut blossoms, stale cigarettes, always dust and endless cafes. this is before you wake and wander rue mouffetarde cobblestones for pain and cafe creme. and monet's water-lily pond and water-lily paintings, a thunderstormy chopin piano concert in a small church. gypsy bouquets of mouguet for mayday!
we spent our last novel-reading day on a park bench in st-germain-en-laye, then we had dinner at the house where ernest hemingway lived and paul verlaine died. this, all this before packing bags, checking passports and beginning the long journey to home.

dear geometry, let's unravel these threads.

.


wondering: if this paper will write itself
listening: the otherside, ohbijou

sight: partypolaroid (stolen from harriet)
sound: cold tea blues, cowboy junkies

i have been walking & shopping & talking in all the corners of this city... now the future has fallen and school is mostly done it is so easy to wander, come home late for dinner, to always listen and to look. i'd forgotten about the comfortable mess of pastel-painted hands, the bankrupt richness of an empty page.
we sip san pellegrino and pretend to study, discover new & even better than toronto bubbletea. and at the market this morning, all sitting together on a bench with crepe or waffle breakfasts - this is our bittersweet second-year ending. the hallway busker is singing simon & garfunkel and that's always the same but we, we will always be different.
and i go on cornerstore adventures for spontaneity's sake and our midnight scrabble games turn to words with stories instead of scores. postmarket, i stumbled into a church bazaar booksale and spent an hour running fingers along their sometimes crumbling spines, because that's the best way to browse. for $7.50, i added plath, atwood, st. vincent millay, more grooks, mary stewart, eliot, flaubert, ishiguro and others to the library i am happily building.
i bought a fantastic new dress to wear in paris and greentea incense to burn in the lonely new flat. it's time to drag suitcases and storage trunks from the basement and decide what goes where and when. but first, we're going to climb citadel hill and watch clouds and kites and the warm unfolding of summer.

look! crocus-comets are sparkling through the earth.

the sea was shining because the sun

listen: my favourite chords, the weakerthans


everyone is celebrating because today is beautiful and it is spring! and i love walking empty dinnertime streets because the sidewalks smell of barbeques and backyard paper-plate dinners. i wrote my last exam yesterday morning and this weekend is for doing all the things i like!

and if this is my chance then i don't want to change.

anais nin e(s)t un ananas.

sound: easy to fall, matthew barber (with jill barber)
sight: april bicycles with december sleigh-bells

for the first time in so long i feel grounded, planned, positive. you can ask me my future, you can ask and i will answer! there is a certainty of what's ahead and comfort in the unsuspected now expected.
florence is out but paris will always be in! we are going to have marché mouffetard breakfasts, spend our afternoons at museé jaquemart-andré, l'orangerie, watching toy sailboats go round and round and round in the fountains of les tuilleries. i'll wander the montparnasse cemetery, re-read baudelaire and 'a moveable feast' for location and finally finish the many journals of anais nin.
and then back to a new halifax home for elementary russian and may! i'm still waiting to hear back about the field botany class of july and have more interviews and possibilities for part-time jobs. but i will be in halifax (also in school) this summer and you should come visit!

this is my way from here to here. i am glad to have found it.

old hearts & granite flowers

listen: there ought to be a moonlight savings time, blossom dearie

sundays are pyjama breakfast-in-bed mornings! i have an almost week until my next exam and three piles of books are lined up, waiting against the wall. this morning is for reading, this afternoon will be a wandering adventure! the small hands of crocuses (or croci) have built bouquets on greygreen front lawns, while telephone-wire sparrows are listening in to the cryptic humming of our every conversation.

you've got no secrets; you've got no lies

so shoot the lights out on broken knees & beauty on, beauty on, beauty on

mood: whistles whistling and confetti in the air
song: willow's song, isobel campbell

"The guitar filled with rain, rain softened the paper sacks, the sacks split and perfume spilled on the pavement, pearls rolled in the gutter: while the wind pushed and the cat scratched, the cat screamed - but worse I was frightened."

today is a humdrum day. i'm waiting. i'm waiting. oh, i'm waiting for the winds to change and for lost messages, replies, offers, signals and most of all, for patience. the warmth of the fireplace plus the coffeeshop windows reflect false flames into the outside rain and they slick along the roofs of cars that are passing by.
someone left their library receipt pressed between the pages of my borrowed book. (spring garden - adult, 03/21/07 12:24 pm, breakfast at tiffany's: a short novel an, ordinary people, the united states of leland, a history of violence, the royal tenenbaums). like birthday cards in abandoned desks or a secret inventory of your grocery cart, now i know you just a little.

the trick of finding what you didn't lose.

mood: i step right and you step left
music: how they fly, great aunt ida

windowful mornings of scarlet geraniums remind me of home and also of paris. two weeks tomorrow! (if i make my essay lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita, lolita. repeat till the page is full, printer would you notice?) i can't wait to go away and then come home to here, one street one month over.
today is far too beautiful to give up on. it is blazer-wearing weather again and i tiptoe through softening snow toward the ocean. there's an old man tossing crumbs for the birds (pigeons, doves, gulls, ducks, chickadee) and paintbrush dandelions, strip-striped birchbark, the noise of waves.
don't tell anyone but tonight we're going to roll down citadel hill and you, you are invited!

a small box of octobers, a handful of aprils

listen: you could've been my johnny marr, knock knock ginger

springtime children in snowsuits are digging for chocolate eggs in their frozen-again gardens. this is the first season of easterbunny snowmen! footprints lead me far from our door seeking just-because books, market lilies, a caramel varnished guitar, snowstorm adventures, possibilities.

the sunglints of hidden foil and ice light up these smallest of celebrations.