5.02.2025 - Weekly Digest
Happy Day After May Day. Canada, you're giving hope.
4.28.2025
Shoe store closing early for Canadian Election Day. That's how serious. Folks are out. Bits of conversation about how and where and whether to watch results.
A couple balconies over a woman plays long sweet chords on accordion over an invisible acoustic guitar. Slow strums and arpeggios in A minor. Birds everywhere, like the ones busting out of that pie in the nursery song.
Met my neighbor today. Technically he's my host as he owns the studio I'm staying in but his ex-wife administrates those things. He and their daughter occupy the units next to and upstairs from mine.
Black sweater, socks on the sidewalk, super friendly. We get into it quickly. Not going back if I can help it, I say. It's already dangerous, he says.
The border states, everyone is so pro-Canada, he says. I know I say I've been going to Ontario my whole life, it's just like another state. You know who would like to hear you say that. That's not what I mean but he knows that and laughs.
A soil truck too wide for the narrow street scratched and dinged about five cars on each side. Now it’s parked in front of its worksite down the block and the driver paces back and forth, looking down the road at the people talking about what happened and pointing in his direction.
I miss neighbor drama. Bring me into your neighbor drama. They are going to vote, he and the daughter. Freedom is on the line. National identity. Not going to visit my friends in Boston, he says. Me either. They're going through phones, harassing Canadians, scientists, folk singers, anyone they can harass. Making examples out of everyone.
The window is stuck and I can't open it. He takes a look for me. He will come by later and help.
The daughter comes out. We compare notes on walkable places and agree that Montreal is the best. Nowhere is better for most things. I would live here in this unit if I'm allowed to stay longer. You should ask them, she says.
I like the attitude, I say. Elbows up and everything. I will stay and fight for this place if I have to, I say. No one believes me but I mean it. Go vote, I say. Go with God. I never say that and mean it.
4.29.2025
Lady stands by her washing machine, guarding it. This one doesn't do any work I tell her in Imbecile. Last I was at this time it left moist my bath. Towels.
She doesn't understand me. She waits by the machine. She peers at the display. She reads a print newspaper from three months ago. "Where to go When You Have Winter Depression." I think.
That machine in the corner is going to jump its connection and attack us. I want to warn her but I'm worried I'll just do more harm than good. Some things people have to figure out for themselves.
She guards her laundry. Doesn't move from the spot. I come here because there are tables and free wi-fi and you can sit by the window and write about your fellow launderers like a pervert. She stands. She will not be away from the laundry in mid-cycle. She has reasons for this.
Once, a long time ago when she was young, she stepped outside to watch a solar eclipse during the spin cycle. When she came back in, moved by the experience and the strangeness of it all, someone had torn her laundry out of the machine and scattered it over the tiles. Her garments, her serviettes, everything was soaked, saturated wet and heavy and full of soap. They didn't even steal anything. It was an act of vandalism, of personal sabotage. She assumed it had been brought on by the eclipse, temporary insanity, that the way animals go to sleep and plants fold up during the event, some people just lose their shit for those six minutes, driven to unthinkable behavior.
So now she stands by her laundry and reads old newspapers and she sure as hell doesn't mess around with solar events.
4.30.2025
There's another launderer I recognize. Younger, taller, rows of braids tight to her skull. I remember her from last time. I remember her because she came over to where I was sitting and helped herself to a couple of dryer sheets from a box I had in front of me. She didn't ask, just a quick gesture to indicate she was taking them. I was fine with that. Liked it, even, but it was confusing.
All these possibilities branched out from that one small action: she wasn't rude about it so I didn't take it personally, but the worst case scenario was that she could tell I was an American and therefore not entitled to parade my personal possessions around these parts without consequence. Tariffs and all that.
Another was that in this particular laundromat, such items are considered communal property. Maybe the owners put out detergent and fabric softener and such for everyone to use, but I've seen no evidence of that. So the convention was already established - which means, it looked like I was hoarding public resources and she saw no reason to ask my permission.
On a larger and more abstract scale, I want to believe that such a thing derives from a communistic attitude in general among the Quebecois. My house is your house. My dryer sheets are your dryer sheets. I like this one best because it's a concrete example of an innate sense of community I've been observing and trying to articulate since I got here. Also it suggests she just thought of me as a member of the tribe. One of the cool kids. Cool kids share laundry resources. Naturally.
The version I choose to believe is this: the young woman is a scholar of sociology at McGill. Her thesis entails spending portions of a grant to engage in ethnographic research in public spaces on the island of Montreal. It's her routine to go to several laundromats a week and test launderers' boundaries. She's gotten into some pretty gnarly scrapes, taking wet clothes out of dryers and putting them in other dryers, mixing customers' loads together, throwing black socks in with whites, jamming up the change machine with non-Canadian currency. She does all of this under the auspices of 'research' but in fact she's a Moroccan trickster goddess. Once, during a solar eclipse, she crept in while everyone was outside watching the event and removed all the clothes from all the machines and scattered them across the tiles, still wet. Then when the sunlight returned she recorded the customers' reactions from a cafe across the street. So I got off easy.
5.01.2025
The office worker who looks like an actor known for playing spies sneezes into the sleeve of his cardigan. He's been sick since the solar eclipse. He knows he shouldn't keep his glasses on when looking directly at the sun. There's something rebellious about ignoring safety advice. He comes across as collected and organized. Reserved, even. What we don't know is that he gets private little thrills from detaching his seatbelt on airplanes, riding his bicycle without a helmet, ignoring the sell-by date on dairy products. Once when he went to do his laundry he used someone else's detergent when they weren't looking. He's the reason you can't find your remote control. You'd never suspect him and he likes it that way. Graffiti follows him wherever he goes but you'd swear he had his hands in his sweater pockets the whole time. Just now he has decided he will stuff his used face tissues in a drawer under the desk where the paperclips are kept. No one needs paperclips anymore, and the next time they do they'll discover a papery cloud with waxy hard parts and it will be their problem to deal with. They will blame each other. Recriminations will ensue and in the office space it will be like poison gas hangs in the air. The manager will not want to spring for cameras so a few bitchy notes will be posted on the drawer in question but by then he will have moved onto bolder, more insidious pranks and the cycle will not end until he is the last office worker on the job and he will have the place to himself. It could take years but he's committed to it. Only those with patience win the long game, he says to himself, and blows his nose on an expense report.