the gravity of other people, part 1

fret not, I have not in fact driven off the road. Instead, I went places that involved seeing people that I knew , and being the social animal that I am that meant time for blogging went out the window. A lot has happened, though. While I feel a little remiss for not documenting every step of this latest part of my journey, I realize now that a post focusing instead on what has remained in my memory, and not just a chronology, will be more satisfying to write and maybe even more interesting to read. (People close to me say that I have a problem with prefacing everything, and first I'd just like to say.. :).

I woke up before the sun on Thursday morning--4:12 in fact--to the sound of my suite mates at the hostel in Montreal taking a somewhat half-hearted (but fully intoxicated) stab at getting intimate. Luckily, it devolved into snoring before it got serious. I slept a bit longer but then got up as planned to see the sun rise.

Montreal centers itself around the majestic Mount Royal. While a beautiful park skirts the peak, it was the view from the top that seemed like a way that I might make peace with that city. It had been an interesting experience being there, one with lots of sights and exciting moments of feeling somewhere foreign, but one without much interaction. Strangely, without friends or family to serve as witness, the time almost felt like a dream. Considering that I already felt on less-than-solid ground having just leapt from relative tranquility in Boston, the added sense of sur-reality (blogs = make up any word you want) was not exactly pleasant.

But that morning, after thrashing against the 9% grades of Mount Royal's summit roads, the city lay half asleep before me, and I felt like I could breath. The stylized facades of Old-World blocks and modernist apartment complexes, the severe steeples of church after church, the dense urbanity giving way to abandoned shipping quays giving way to stretches of French-Canadian farmland--all of it was smoothed over in the dark hush of pre-morning. I took pictures as the sweat from the ride slowly dried, and smiled at the pair of hooded grandfathers walking like little boys down the hill. Before I knew it the sun had peaked out and this great city gleamed at me. I thought about a day when i would seek out the spot again, and share it.

And then all too soon, everything came to life. Riding to my car in Westmount (about 15min ride from Montreal's center) was all about being blinded by the sun and salivating at the Ferrari screaming from stop light to stop light (probably the most excellent and least practical way to get to work). Waiting for the cafe to open, the bread delivery man stopped to chat about my bike, a Mercier. He got a huge kick out of a French-less American riding a bike with a French name; I got a huge kick out of talking to someone who wasn't also behind a counter. A latte and a pastry later, I was on the road to Toronto.

Toronto, whether Canadians like it or not, is the center of their country. As I would fully discuss later on with my friends born-and-raised there, about 90% of this massive country lies to the north, largely uninhabited. But Toronto rose from its fur-outpost routes to become a hub of trade and finance (fueled by the bootleg industry in the 20s and oil industry of more recent years). Most of the place feels new and shiny, but is balanced by block after block of quirky, pointy-roofed houses. The down-town area definitely has the neon-ized, fast-food, gritty-curbs feel of big cities that I can't stand (coughNEW YORKcough), but the feel is completely different. Maybe it was the hundreds of bikers I saw out, or wide streets that let the daylight in, but I felt comfortable there like I haven't in other large metro areas.

But the big change was that I had people to see, and places to be. After a stop-off in Cobourg for some lakeside kettlebell tossing, I put my big-boy pants on to brave Toronto traffic. After hundreds of miles of calm, straight highways through farm-country, even the uber-polite Canadians felt intimidating barreling down the express route to downtown. Finding my old classmate's beautiful house in Leslieville was easy, and while she wasn't going to arrive until later I was able to let myself in and get settled.

I hadn't quite accounted for the figurative load that would come off once I locked the door behind me, though. Suddenly, solitude didn't mean being in my car, or surrounded by swarms of strangers. Alone was quiet and comfortable, and came with running water and a stocked pantry (Canadian graham crackers are just as good as American counter-parts, in case anyone was wondering). Showering and practicing, I slowly got all the kinks out, and left to meet my other friend and his brother for dinner.

I hadn't seen him since summer camp almost a decade before, but thanks to Facebook we had kept each other in mind over the years. When the opportunity finally arose for our paths to cross, it felt obvious and warm to meet up. His brother, who he lives with in the amazingly classy (but largely student-filled) neighborhood of Toronto called The Annex, had just nailed the MCAT to the back wall (95th percentile or somesuch ridiculousness), and high-end burgers and beers seemed appropriate.

My first (and potentially only) metro-ride of my journey took us to Ossington for dinner at Tall Boys, wherein one can (if they are awesome like us) have amazing nachos followed by kimchi cheese burgers and craft Canadian beers (Crazy Canuck IPA, anyone?). It was excellent, and felt like a time out with old friends, although I had only just met his brother, and only just reconnected with my buddy.

I rode home in some seriously brisk weather, and met up with my host, just back from Boston herself. While both of us kept yawning, we couldn't pull away from the conversation until late, agreeing to continue after sleeping in the next morning. I slept, and slept.

The next day unfolded better than I could've hoped. While I usually push myself to make and follow-though with plans, I was too tired to have planned very much for that Friday, and just let the day happen. We got up and almost immediately began warming up together, a ritual for brass players as sacred as it is rare. It was a perfect way to demarcate time that i had spent so intensely alone from this new time, with a person who knows me in a deep and important way, through my music. Hearing her beautiful sound, and talking to her, and feeling the warmth of musical fellowship even for just an hour or so, made me feel positively zingy (another new word for ya). I realized that more than any specific part of seeing her and my friend the night before, though, I was moved by the simple gesture of sharing the load of experience with a trusted other; the gravity of my present was no longer centered wholly in me, and it felt great.

After lunch from a decidedly snobby (and yet wholly inept) neighborhood cheese shop, I cruised over to the Art Gallery of Ontario to see an exhibit of Ai Wei Wei's work. This is the artist who designed the iconic "Bird's Nest" Stadium for Beijing's Olympics, and subsequently spoke out against the government's policy of removing residents and glossing over major problems in Chinese society. After a series of shockingly public incidents, all documented in the exhibit, Ai has been under house arrest for the last year at least.

But for how powerful his story is as an activist, his art shocked and amazed me. Candid self-portrait photographs depicting his daily life gave way to giant wooden sculptures modeled after his cat's play toys, held together with ancient Chinese woodworking practices. Then across the room were three seemingly rough-hewn beams, the thickness and length of tree trunks, that appeared to be joined along their lengths imperfectly, leaving a hole. On closer inspection, though, the hole was a perfect outline of China, and the beams were salvaged from a demolished 13th century temple.

The message became simpler, and more harsh, in the final room. A series of haphazard photographs showed Ai flicking off famous building around the world; another series depicted him dropping a presumably ancient vase, deliberately allowing it to shatter at his feet. And then on the far wall, showing Ai's largest and most involved project, was a 20'x30' spreadsheet listing the names, ages, and birthdates of more than 5000 children (less than 10% of the total death count) killed in the earthquakes in Sichuan in 2008. For a country he loves so much, Ai's role as artist seemed to be to become intimate with its most horrendous aspects.

After strolling through some other galleries and getting an excellent primer on photographic history (my buddy is a photo major at Ryerson University), we met up with my host in Kensington market. Think Santa Cruz meets Telegraph Ave. Other than offering some of the very best people watching I have experienced in quite some time, the place had shop after shop of beautiful fruit and produce, colorful used-clothing hanging from trees, and incredible ethnic food. Walking all over, I found a music store that summoned visions of Amoeba in the Bay Area, and finally had a chance to try poutine. An excellent way to feel the rest of Toronto.

I kept remarking to my friends that the town felt full of people brimming with style but who had none of the bad attitudes that so often accompanies such individualism. While I know it is a huge (and probably untrue) over-simplification, Toronto felt like it had all the good parts of a big city, and few of the bad.

That's enough for now. Up next: 'Merica.

la ville de l'ouest midi

well, today represented my best attempt at sponging up Montreal, in one day, on a budget.  how did I do? I got up early, amazed that no one was snoring in the big hostel room, until I realized that I was probably filling that role--oops.  norman mailer talks about the palpability of people sleeping in densely packed arrangements, and it is somethin special.  reading his "the naked and the dead" was a through line of my day, as you will see.

it was pretty cool out, but I started sweating as soon as I got on my bike.  maybe it was the millions of people commuting to work, I was a little skeert with how fast those ladies (seriously, mostly women) were charging the bike highway that I found.  Montreal has a pretty active bike sharing thing going, and generally being on my was when I felt most comfortable.

which was something i thought about all day--the totally contradictory demands of being a stranger in a strange land.  on the one hand, all i wanted was to blend in at the market i found myself at around 9a.  the merchants were setting up their stalls, all business but handling the most beautiful and strange produce this side of Berkeley bowl, and I kept accidentally catching their eye and then hoping no one would speak to me.  when i finally couldn't resist the "ontario sun" plums i approached the vendor, and she turned out to be one of only two people I've spoken to who didn't speak English.  Needless to say, we didn't chat much.

I wound around the stands of eggplants the size of my butt, cabbages the size of my rib cage (seriously), organic tomatoes that you had to buy 5 kilos at a time (wtf?), hundreds of bunches of dried garlic, and a whole corner spot housing floor to ceiling chilis--on the vine, by the box, and dried.   I picked up a bomb latte on one end of the market (and started the book), and an apricot beignet on the other.  I wandered into two cheese shops, finally trying and buying some comte and summer sausage the second time, and a spice shop that had more things I didn't recognize than things that I did.  I made circle after circle taking pictures and seeing things I wished later I had bought, or at least examined more closely.   (Mostly, I just wish I had made friends with the mushroom man.  There was a mushroom man!)

My next ride took me all the way across west Montreal, through residential blocks with identical brick houses and the "kitchen/bath warehouse" area of town (scintillating).  It was about here that I realized that Montreal is just like someone took a european town and smashed into the mid-west.  In so doing, it sprawled out into the flatness of middle-(North)america, became affordable, and changed KFC to PFK.

After some aimless, inadvertent canoodling through construction sites and blocks of paved-over public school playgrounds, made loud by uniformed pre-teens, I finally got back to my car.  I wanted to check on Cass the Car, and took advantage of the neighborhoods quiet and the presence of Clark the KB to get some swings in.

I had thought at one point that I would ride to some of the islands east of the city, but bailed at this point in favor of eating my lunch in Westmount park.  Some awesome old dudes decided that a little park should surround a big public library and a totally free greenhouse.  I ate, and then took close-ups of flowers, and then fell asleep reading in the room next to a man reading arabic and another who kept chucklin at his new york examiner newspaper.

I kept riding up sherbrook, doing some of the most gritty city riding i have had to do yet in montreal.  I got passed by this helmet-less guy who was barely pedaling but was able to melt his way through tiny cracks between bus and volkswagen, barely touching his brakes or turning his big north road handlebars.  Amazing.

I had wanted to get some practicing in, and mcgill seemed to be the obvious choice, and I thought I'd try my luck.  I breezed in, following students past the id checkpoints and keeping my head down.  After my market travails, a hallway of practice rooms with a bunch of american accents around made me feel right at home.  It was nice, and a little nostalgic of times at the conservatory.

I wandered through the place des artes in search of the contemporary art museum (free on Wed. nights), but when I couldn't find it I just sat out on the plaza and ate a little piece of snobby mexican chocolate from the market.  other than gesticulating as startlingly as i could at the gulls and pigeons when they got too close, it was incredibly pleasant.  dancing water fountains, sunset on modernist architecture, more of my book.  I imagined the glass of wine my mom and I might share if she were here.

When it got a little chilly, I walked down to a pho place I had spied in the morning, and the soup was huge and great (a strange brain buzz a little late made me wonder about msg, though).  Chinatown is great, and like most parts of Montreal, clean and pleasant and not too crowded.  Everywhere feels so safe, but I have seen exactly three police cars.  Midwest politeness raised to the power of Canada, with a healthy dollop of old-world decorum = no crime? maybe.

the sun set over the quays while I read some more before I spun back to my hostel.  locking the door on my shower stall and the accompanying quietude was delicious.

a circle of hostelians are calling for me to join their drinking game.  duty calls.

Gettin to it

So it starts, y'all.  After a week of saying goodbye and taking in as much Boston as I could, it suddenly felt awkward to go.  Like I had talked about it so much that I had already done it.  But doing the thing is a whole different enchilada; much less glamorous, a lot more expensive. Left Boston at 1030, got on the freeway at 12--seriously.  For all the ways Boston really showed up the last few weeks--weather, people, fun, etc--driving a car in that metropolitan area is still laughably impossible.  Anyway, the car felt good except for having a little dip toward the back wheels.  Not bottoming out but lets just say I was driving more gingerly than usual.

And other than some spotty cell coverage through Vermont everything went great.  Marisa killed it with her mix, even sticking Ginsberg's "Howl" in the middle, just to make sure I was paying attention.  I stopped in Quechee State Park for an amazing practice session in the woods, and then got down and dirty with Clark the Kettlebell--300 swings down, 9,700 to go.  Ahem.

I was actually really surprised, though, when I crossed into Canada, how foreign everything felt.  I mean, km/h?  And new money?  I spent most of the rest of the way biting my nails about not remembering how to speak French, but of course everyone speaks English, too.   By the time I found a parking spot on a quiet street in the most Brookline-esque neighborhood I could've dreamed up, it was getting dark and I was mad hungry.

Like the father from whom I sprang, my instinct led me straight to the first pub I could find for a brew and some sausage and some Canadian football (which people are surprisingly excited about).  Awesome.  Then this hostel, after an initial shenanigan getting in, turned out to be great.  Somewhere between freshman dorm and random Allston party: drinking games and pastel colored walls, with chalk boards everywhere.  Veerd.

Around I began leaving words behind.  It is an amazing thing to not say anything to anyone for hours and hours on end (although there was definitely some gratuitous yelling, and maybe some god-awful freestyling.  Duh.).  Of course, the problem is that being social and being silent are sort of like opposites.  But the idea of letting new sights and time alone and biking around function like hands wringing water out of a stale wash cloth feels right.

Tomorrow looks packed--markets, McGill, museums, and then something excellent tomorrow night.  I will keep you posted.  Oh, and I'm going to try to figure out pictures, cause I have some sweet ones.