So, what’s new…
My new job: it’s awesome. It’s really mellow. Helping people shop is a pretty great job really. Some people you just welcome and offer a helping hand if they need it. Other people, you tell them what looks good on them. Suggest nice clothes. I especially like suggesting kids clothes. It’s fun. Everybody loves those flowery and puffy little girls dresses. Me included. Then there’s the little old ladies. So lovely. Of course there’s the long hours standing up, but that’s nothing I can’t deal with. Along with the new job, I also have a new morning commute. Since it’s been nice out this week, I took out my bike. I almost got killed like 5 times already. It’s a little scary biking in this city. After a while you get used to it though, and I know I will. I just hope I don’t get killed first. But then, there’s these amazing moments of complete freedom. Wind blowing in my hair. The fresh air. The speed. There’s also the half hour of uphill riding early in the morning. I’m not used to getting up early yet. My muscles aren’t used to the effort either. And this is pretty freakin strenuous work here folks. I used to do this ride like once a week and considered it THE effort of the week. Now it’s every morning. My body is so freakin tired right now. Also because of last night. This morning, I took the bus. (!)
Last night, this band called The Luyas were playing at Le Divan Orange. I’m a big fan of these guys. Stef Schneider on drums, Jessie (I don’t know her last name) on guitar and voice, and Pietro Amato on French Horn and keyboards. Fantastic musicians really. Big fan! Well last night Stef was hurt and therefore couldn’t play with the rest of the band. I was sad. So was alot of other people. Stef blows my mind every time. But I was optimistic about this. They still managed to impress the shit out of me. Seriously. The guys opening for them though, The Beds, were hilariously bad. Then it just got plain bad. Kinda like a high school band, ya know? The bands you hear at Variety Shows for 3 minutes then move on to the next act. This here was just painful by the end. …but gladly, they were first and then there was something real good coming up. And good it was. I’m tired today because I ended up making new friends and staying out too late. It was a fun night. Making new friends is awesome.

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So Friday, I went to go visit an apartment in the Mile-End with my friend Jon. So when the phone rang that morning and it was a lady at Cache Cache who wanted me to go for a job interview in the neighborhood, I figured, why the hell not. The apartment was okay, but the kitchen was ridiculously small. Like there wouldn’t even have been enough room to put my kitchen stuff in, let alone the food. So I decided not to take it. But Jon and me had a fabulous day walking around the Mile-End and then went to grab a bite to eat over at the Arts Café. Fantastic. Just really freakin’ great. I even ran into my friend Jake on the bus and got to chat it up with him on the ride up. It had been a while since I had last seen him so it was nice to reconnect. He seemed well. It was nice.

Then I went for the job interview. Cache Cache is a lovely boutique that sells ladies and children’s clothes and house things. A very “feel good” place as my friend Andrea likes to put it. (www.aprilcornell.com). So I did the interview. And she offered me the job. This girl was so nice. Turns out she also has a literature degree. We connected. And what she offered me was something stable, the salary I wanted, hours, insurance, and very good chances of promotion. When I went in for that interview, I was pretty sure I wasn’t interested. When I left, I had to seriously consider this great offer. In the end, I decided to take it. I can’t wait. It’s going to be so relaxed working there. And the area is so lovely. I’m going to love it!
Then, Saturday morning, I woke up and went down to the dep to pick up the Saturday papers and search for the perfect apartment. And what do I find? The perfect apartment. Got me a 4 1/2 in a nice neighborhood for about 100$ less than what I’m paying now. 2 balconies, dining room, washer & dryer, and an awesome landlord. MMMmmmm, yes.
So, next thing on the list was finding someone to take over my lease. I put up the ads last night and today had two visits. The first one seemed interested but said she had other apartments to see before she made up her mind. The second one took it and signed the papers. Now, all there is left is for my landlord to approve the lease transfer and we’re all set.
Of course… then there’s the fun part of packing up all my stuff and moving it. Oh, sixteenth time since 2002. But that’s just gravy, and of course it’s a necessary part of… moving… yes. Moving is more than just picking out an apartment and letting go of your old one. It’s putting things in boxes and taking them from point A to point B. Simple facts. And it’s going to be a FABULOUS summer. Best summer ever!

I also posted some new pictures in the Doors project.
http://s67.photobucket.com/albums/h315/JazzophileB/Montreal%20Doors%20Alleys%20and%20Fire%20Escapes/

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Last night I went out in the rain and took some pictures of China Town. It was lovely in the middle of the night. There was no one around. Just me and everything made shiny by the freezing rain. I sure was pretty tough. Then it occurred to me that there were probably rats around that area… and I got a bit freaked out so I headed home. That and the fact that my batteries were dead and I didn’t think of bringing a spare set with me, that kinda took the wind out of my sails. So I posted them on my photobucket page. Some of them ended up in my “Doors” project and the rest are just in the general album. This picture here is my favorite of the whole set. It was taken from the arch at the entrance of Chinatown and you see all the way to Square Victoria (the big building in the background). I used to work around the Square and for six months, my favorite part of the day was crossing China-Town on my bike. That was until tourist season got really intense and I had to get off the bike to get through all the people (oh the joys of city-living). I mean, sure, I could’ve taken an alternate route, but I liked this one. So this, right there, in the morning, was a charming view.

General Photobucket page:
http://s67.photobucket.com/albums/h315/JazzophileB/

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Would you look at that lens?!
This, my friends, is my new macro lens. It’s super mega wonderful and almighty powerful. This puppy weights like 10 pounds, but it works so nice. For those of you looking for some specs, it’s a Vivitar Series 1, 70-210mm, 1:3.5. It’s pretty freakin sweet. And I managed to get a super sweet deal on it, and it looked at me with its puppy eyes, and I just couldn’t leave it there. The only down side is that it doesn’t have a CPU, which basically leaves me on my own and throws all of my automatic options out the window. While my other original lens offered me wide variety of automatic features that calculated the light and chose the aperture and exposure for me, this one is old school and incompatible with my camera in that sense. Since I don’t really know how all that stuff really works, this puts me in some kind of a pickle. Well, i just have to learn I guess. And for that sweet lens, I’d learn the world over if I had to. THAT, my friends, is Love. Simple version: I’m just going to get myself a light meeter and a read up on it and learn this shit!

Spring is nice in that sense; how suddenly projects seem realizable. The winter rut is over. And this whole job changes that I had to deal with was probably just life’s way of freeing up my stressed-out-and-worried-manager-head to make room for more exciting things like this.

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Doors made of wood
Big heavy metal doors
Doors with no knobs or handles
See-through glass doors
Garden gates left wide open
while others swing freely in the wind
White picket fence doors
kept closed to keep the kids safe inside
or simply to protect the garden gnome
and all his lawn buddies
Kitchen swinging doors
Locked apartment doors
while others are left ajar
Car doors
that ring when left unattended
Bus doors
that feel the movements of your hand
Metro doors
held open to let the others in
Doors open at 9pm
Activate alarm before locking the door
Knock knock - who’s there?
Doggy doors
Foggy Doors
Frosted glass doors
Screen doors
Gated doors
Garage doors
French doors
Automatic doors
Exits
Closed bedrooms
Sorties de secours
Revolving doors
Heaven’s gates
Portes ouvertes
Doors when there are no windows
Patio doors
Thank you, come again.

Today I went to the Mile End on a promenade. It was a lovely day for this. I brought my camera with me, having decided to finally get serious about this Doors project of mine. And the Mile End was just the perfect place to start. There are so many cool houses around there. So I walked around after having written this little poem and looked at doors. What a fun time I had. Does anyone ever even look at doors anymore? I certainly came to the realization that I didn’t notice them very often, and the times I do notice them is just not enough. I wrote this thing and was amazed at how many different types of doors there are. Of course this is not an exhaustive list, it’s a poem. Then I walked around and looked at doors. I also looked for “FOR RENT” signs as I’m trying to find a new place to live, but I didn’t really get lucky there. But with the doors… man! Did I ever strike gold! Today’s the most fun I’ve had in years!! I’ve got to do this again.

So this is my project. Doors, Alleys and Fire Escapes. I also have this fascination with the twisted stairs of Quebec… the fire escapes, in French we say “escaliers en colimaçon“. Ever since I moved to Quebec, I’m just absolutely and totally fascinated by them. They’re just so special to look at. They catch the light in a particular way and give a new “twist” (pun intended) to plain alleys. And I also like alleys. We don’t have alleys in N.B. Well, not as much as here in Montreal… they’re everywhere and more often than not, they are far from boring.

See the following link for the rest of the pictures:
http://s67.photobucket.com/albums/h315/JazzophileB/Montreal%20Doors%20Alleys%20and%20Fire%20Escapes/

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So yesterday there was a storm. Yeah, a freakin snowstorm. Funny how things suddenly change like that huh? One day it’s freakin summer and we start dreaming about the terraces and actually go and wax our legs because we’d like to believe that sunnier days are happening and that things are actually looking up. Then, BAM! fuckin shitstorm.

Let’s rewind here and go back to those wonderful days in high school when they taught us about pathetic fallacies. And I quote from Wikipedia:

“the pathetic fallacy is the description of inanimate natural objects in a manner that endows them with human feelings, thoughts and sensations”.

The way I remember it is that when something is going on in the play or book is reflected in the weather. But that’s just how I remember it. Things get nice, you think you’re in the clear, then here comes a fuckin snowstorm.
I was watching a movie the other day. A really brilliant movie. I think it was called Melinda & Melinda. It seemed cheezy and stupid and for the first 45 minutes it was. Then, it changed. It got good. Anyway, I was having a really shitty day and had just gotten my heart broken and then the piano player tells the girl who’s crying over a song that reminds her of a guy:

“-Why is it that things that start off so promisingly always have a way of ending up in the dumper?
-Not for everyone.
-Well for anybody with any imagination. You know, life is manageable enough if you keep your hopes modest. The minute you allow yourself sweet dreams, you run the risk of them coming crashing down. Believe me. There’s plenty of old songs that I cry over.”

I was so struck by this dialogue. It seemed so real at the moment. It was perfectly representing the specific thing I was going through. Come to think of it, I was playing the pathetic fallacy thing on the movie; as though it had feelings or could see right through me or something.

Well to get back to my original point in all this, it seems as though the weather is playing some nasty rollercoaster tricks on us lately. First it gets really freakin nice, then a storm. Then it gets nice again, and the week after we’re back in the cold and windy winter. And then we start dreaming of summer. It seems reasonable enough to allow ourselves to dream of nice things like that again. We have all the reasons in the world to believe that it’s finally heading our way. People even start taking their bikes out. Then, here we go. Another fuckin storm. And there we go again with the 4 days of plows beeping their ways into our perfect nights’ sleep. They come crashing and banging into our neighborhoods when we finally had allowed ourselves to believe that all that foolishness was over.

It feels as though my life has been the exact same way lately. And from what I remembered of that pathetic fallacy thing, it seemed as though life was a writer playing that trick onto my existence. I went from extreme cynicism (dead of winter); to having to let my guards down in order to make this thing work with this guy (things began to thaw a little); to living in bliss-land for about a week and a half (I actually let myself dream that summer was headed my way. I even took my bike out: pathetic fallacy (p.f.) version- I bought the guy a freakin toothbrush…what a fool I was); then the storm hit (I got dumped); then the weather got warmer again (I forced myself back up from that silly and foolish game I was desperately trying to hang on to and enjoyed the fact that my life was still as it was and that I hadn’t lost anything but rather gained some war medals by springing back up so quickly) in other words, this is just a temporary setback, summer’s still coming, it just got delayed at the airport. To put a timeline on this, this is first freakstorm we got around March 2nd (and yes, it WAS pretty weird to get a storm at that point after the nice weather we had been having that week). Then it got nice again. It got nice and then even nicer (p.f. things seemed to be settling back into something alright. I started to believe I was going to get through this); the pavement dried off, the snow melted all away. The rain even washed all the salt off the streets and people started taking their bikes out. Tuesday, there was FOG it was so freakin warm in Montreal. (p.f. I went into work and my boss actually talked to me for the first time in two weeks. Things were looking up). THEEEEEEN the big storm hits (they fired my sorry ass out of there).

And that, my friends, is how I relate my life to literature. This is how obsessed I am with books that I’m actually starting to believe that my life is one. My life, is now in sync with the weather… one long pathetic fallacy.

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So today, I went to work….and got fired. It’s not that I was a badass and did something I wasn’t supposed to. Really, it just wasn’t working out. My boss was an ass who felt threatened by the fact that I seemed to connect more with the employees than with him. He kinda accused me of being on the internet rather than working. Also accused me of not working at all. Ha! If he only knew. Well. I really think it’s for the best. I totally wasn’t digging the whole McD’s vibe in there that he seemed to want to get together. Whatever. What really gets me is that the person taking my place is a 17 year old baby. Especially with the whole stress about being absolutely perfect that I’ve undergone over the past 3 months, now they seem to think that this child can do a better job than I can. I’m not so outraged for myself as I am for my guys who will now have to be told what to do by this person who is the youngest of the team. They have waitresses old enough to be her mother. Man!

Yeah, so it is a hard blow. I mean, loosing a job when you’re a student is one thing. Up until now it didn’t even really matter if I had a job or not. Well it did. But it didn’t mean that I would be in danger of loosing my apartment for so much. Now this is the real ball game. There is actual risk of starvation here. It’s not the end of the world, but it is scary as hell. And as much as all these things totally get to me, I can’t help but feel terribly relieved that it’s all over. All the stress. All the responsibility. All the “am I being good enough?”s are all gone! It’s all over. Finally.

So after leaving (***)’s house, I had to turn left to go home. That’s where I was going. Actually, I was going to go to L’Utopik and see if they needed anyone. But as I got to Prince-Arthur, I felt compelled to go right. I had a feeling. I had a feeling about a sign in a window or something. So I went with it. It was sunny and I could use the exercise. I saw a sign. I went in. Talked to the manager. He invited me to sit down and have a cup of coffee (how ironic). He interviewed me. I didn’t even have so much as a resume on me. I had just gotten fired and was still shaky from all the emotions and stuff. And this guy. He told me to come back on Sunday at 6 for training. So now I’m going to be a waitress. I’m not getting my hopes up too high yet. (edit: end of paragraph deleted)

So last night, my boys from Freddy were in town. It was so good to see them again. See, friends that you’re totally and absolutely comfortable with are actually pretty rare. I mean, I get to open up alot with people. But friends I feel comfortable like that with is just so fuckin precious. It was so good to have that again, even for just a couple hours. They didn’t end up staying the night. I was hoping for breakfast or coffee in the morning, but they had to head out. Well, it was good while it lasted. AND I got to get my hands on The Olympic Symphonium’s CD that just came out and I’m SOOOOOOOO EEXCITED about that album. It’s like unbelievable beautifulness that I can now enjoy several times a day. I believe that since I bought it (less than 24 hours ago) I’ve listened to it at least 15 times. It’s a little short, but damn is it ever sweet!

So I think that about covers the last 24 hours for me. I’m gonna get to bed now.

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