3.05.2025

Had a dream where Trump stole my shoes. Seriously. I didn't even watch the plane crash of the union and I feel I should be spared such things.

Mont Royal. Went up most of the way and I feel like I know this side of it pretty well. Up to the chalet and the view up there. Down, then, to the lac where kids ice skate and families gather and then I thought I was being clever and was going around the mountain to get home before the snow started again but instead I went through the sprawling Catholic cemetery and was in the middle and it was just me and the suspiciously quiet dead and I pulled out my phone to navigate and it directed me for half an hour past some mausolea and into a snowy field on a path that had a few bootprints in it but was otherwise a meter-deep drift and it took me to a locked gate I couldn’t get through. Now if this were the States I would have found a way through that fence, there were some bent iron bars in places and it was low enough it looked scaleable but of course with the snow drifts that could all have gone very wrong but my main concern was to not get arrested doing something untoward or unsavory in a graveyard in this place where I'm trying to make a good impression. Anyway I made it back, up the slope and back down again and past the statue of Saint George Etienne Cartier and I’m properly sick of that dude at this point but it was good to see him because it meant I was almost home.

People here are accustomed to all of it. They ski and laugh and goof around on the mountain. Maybe I've never lived anywhere. The notion doesn't even bother me. And I know it's not really true but it's just been so long that I felt connected to a place. I've tried to force it, tried to insinuate myself, to prove I'm not an invader. I have no money to ruin things, I always declare. Everywhere I've ever been I got there just too late to be considered a local. Oh you should've been here two weeks ago, that's when it was authentic and cool.