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It has been a very long time since I’ve written an entry to this. It seems I lied in my initial statement. Or, rather, we’ve seen how long I can keep that up. About a month and a half.

 

I am in Montreal again. Literary festival that Willow invited me to. Blue Metropolis.

 

….

 

Start again. I think I got interrupted. That was days ago now, when I wrote what you were just reading. The festival has ended. I attended the cocktail closure that didn’t have cocktails, and it ended. I’m still here: I moved my suitcases to Chez Sean & Anae in Verdun this morning.

 

Let me try a poem, to start, since I’m out of practice. I’m out of practice re: both, but when I sat down I did want to write a poem.

 

Avenue de Mont Royal again

Leaving the metro, I look for Cafe Noir—

It’s a couche-tard now—

Because I wrote some much poetry

That meant something else there.

Its good to come back to the heart of my unconscious.

 

Bistro de Paris; cash only.

I’m sitting here with a glass of Quebecois cidre.

Possibly waiting to meet a friend. French poetry night tonight.

I’m intimidated by the promise of French poetry night. Ah well:

I’ll stay for one or two, even if she doesn’t come.

Or not. I don’t want to break a hundred.

 

Just before this, I was at the cocktail closure

Of this year’s edition of the festival met bleu.

I had a second glass of complimentary wine

Having a lovely conversation with a Torotonian film professor

Who might have had a couple more.

I’d come to here Hotel 10 for this festival,

And weaved through its panels and the like

For two sleep deprived days.

Sleep deprived for other reasons—once

To finish copying out a draft of Five Perspectives;

The following night because I was engaged at three in the morning

And had to uber back across town.

Both things: like everyone else, I contain multitudes,

That old cliche. I only wrote that because two people have said it

In so may days.

When I write lines like that, I laugh with myself.

It’s only a good life when you’re living it.

 

I’m staying with friends from Verdun

My ex is three blocks away.

If I leave here, I’ll go back there,

And the night and whatever it means

Will commence. I doubt a poem will be written about it.

 

So, that’s the poem. It’s not good, but its a nutshell.

 

I’m in Montreal again—for the Blue Met festival, held for the most part at the Hotel 10 at Sherbrooke and St-Laurent. Which was where I stayed the first time I came back here, nearly a year and so long ago. I’ll always like how these things manage to go around in circles.

 

It’s been a good couple of days. Like I said, I was sleep deprived. The festival was not the only thing on my mind, and I had not had time to settle down from an upsetting couple of weeks of work and sickness. Such is life. I was in a festival across the country when I should have been sitting quietly and recharging. I am insane to have done this. Oh well—it was worth it.

 

I’m sorry I’ve vanished for two months! I was busy with a bunch of other projects, and that’s where I needed to spend my energy. I didn’t like how this thing was taking over, and I have so many other plates I’m juggling. And, honestly, its hard to sustain this. I find too many days when I have nothing new to say; so many days where I just repeat myself when I make myself speak here. But here I am again. I am in Bistro de Paris and need to do something, anything.

 

Call this the beginning of volume two of my scribbles. I already wrote an epilogue for volume one.

 

I’m not ambitious, this is just my way of having fun.

 

What was it Sky Gilbert said in his panel? I was half asleep and I’m unsure I retained it. He never thinks about any audience or reader, he just writes for his own satisfaction. I’m not Sky Gilbert and so I won’t say that. … I’ll just say this is my way of having fun.

 

Someday I’ll find a way to keep all this plates in the air. Someday. Even this one.

 

I stayed the first half of the week, the half I’ve lived through already, at a small… well, I got it through AirBnB but it seemed to actually be a sort of hotel. It had “VOYAGES” written over the door, and there were little posters for ViaRail and Passports Canada in the stairwell. Anyone I passed on the stairs seemed to be aware I was from out of town, if I was using those stairs. The doors didn’t have locks like proper apartments either, and in the inside looked like, well, a hotel room more than a living space. So, I’ll call it a hotel.

 

I don’t have much of an impression of it. Apart from the first day, when all I did was write, I barely spent any time there. It was a bed and a shower. I liked having it so clue to Hotel 10—I could run there and have a shower between events and come back fresh. It was useful. It was a place to shower and sleep. I’m glad to have moved on from it.

 

It was a stupid way to plan a trip, by the way. Half in one place, half in another. Makes it impossible to settle in for the first half. I vow to never do this to myself again. I probably will do this again. No matter: I’m fine. I’ll be alright. It’s more interesting to write about.

 

And it’s nice now that I’m in Verdun. I have hope that I’ll settle in there. Now. I feel I can relax.

 

It was an easy move since I’d never really unpacked anything. Not much of anything to go back in the suitcases. So: nice and simple, and out I went. Put the key back in the dropbox. Zipped across town.

 

It’s nice to see Sean and Anae. I got them first thing in their morning, and then I was off again. Saw another friend. Yasmin again, and it was nice to see her. Went with her shopping. Then back on the metro and back to another two panels and a cocktail closure. I invited Ian to the cocktail closure and it was nice to see him too.

 

There were no cocktails at the closure, only wine. I didn’t complain. The red was bleh, but the white was good.

 

Enough about today. I have a lot of catching up to do and I will not cover all of it.

 

I don’t even know how much I’ll write. I can sense the flow starting to evaporate.

 

What else could I write about? There’s a lot.

 

As I was showing up to something on the first proper day of the festival, I noticed someone I recognized at a table in the hotel’s cafe—John, a poet from the QWF schmoozer—and I went to say hi. He asked me to sit and join the table. I spent the next several hours with these people.

 

I don’t like that above paragraph very much, but it’s true. That turns out to be a social evening. The tea and salad I had rejuvenated me, as much as it could. Jetlag was still there. I reflected that I hadn’t really socialized with anyone in the physical world (I had socialized plenty over my smartphone) since before I’d left Vancouver.

 

We went to the opening ceremonies, one of us from our table—Tawdiha Tanya Evanson—was up on stage talking about her dreams. She had practiced lucid dreaming, and journaled it, for a few weeks prior—quite seriously, with substances and scheduled timing—and was sharing her results. She had just translated it from French that morning, she had told us, because she had only just then been told that she could deliver it in English. The backstory added to the power of it: and there was a power. It ended with a communion with dolls in a shop in Istanbul, ended as firmly as if a curtain had dropped in front of it, in the middle of a scene. As a dream does. We were hanging on that end, the way one should be obliged to hang on an end.

 

And then we retreated to McKibbin’s half a block away to have dinner and a few pints of beer. It was nice to socialize with people because, I realized just then, I’d spent a couple days without any social interactions with anyone. It was nice to be among people.

 

Met someone publishing a short story collection similar to mine. At least, it sounded similar. Curtis McRae. And the collection will be called Quietly, Loving Everyone. We talked about our respective collections—although mine is much further from publication, it does exist. This was nice—there aren’t many honest-to-God literary story writers in Vancouver, or, if there are, I can’t find them. I had sat with him earlier with my tea and salad, and the server had at one point mistaken us for the same person. We do look similar: glasses and bread, hair a bit shaggy. And we were sitting across from each other. Well: it’s nice to collect a new friendly face. He’s editor-in-chief of a literary magazine called Yolk. I’ve heard of it—I don’t think I’ve ever met one of these editors face-to-face before. I think I’ll submit there, now that it’s real like that.

 

This entry is getting choppy. It’s the problem when I try to write these entries now. Some energy is gone. Something slips away before I can get it to paper. Perhaps I should be happy with this. I won’t disappear into this. But you must be sensing the thing falling apart.

 

There are things I’d like to write about but I know I won’t be able to do them justice, so I won’t write them write now. Perhaps later, in England. Right now, my brain is too out of fuel.

 

Let’s talk about Bistro de Paris a bit, since I’m here—

 

I remember the sign of this place. Blue, running up and down vertically. A yellow Eiffel Tower.  I passed it enough, I did used to live around here.

 

Obviously francophone, and I was intimidated. And too poor to go out drinking anyway, back in those days. But it’s relaxing in here. I do know enough French to order drinks. That is nice. I can sit at my little table and sip local cider and write all this. The poetry should have started by now and has not, I don’t know why. Anyway, I don’t mind the rest, and I can write this. I would never have written this if I hadn’t come to here.

 

I will stay for at least the start of the poetry, then decide what to do. I would like to go back and spend some time with Sean and Anae as well. I wanted to show them Tails Noir—that’s a video game I’m playing. Furry detective game, side scroller pixel art sort of thing, set in a weird dystopian Vancouver. I liked it. I like to share it. Largely because it happened to be the last thing I was doing before I left to come here. … I haven’t spent much time with them in years.

 

Then he’d like to see me. I’ll spend some time with him, too.

 

It’s a busy night ahead of me. I wasn’t kidding about what I said in the poem.

 

Hey, they want me to read my poems. I guess I’m staying for a bit.

 

Poetry reading going well. Have read a couple. I know enough French to introduce myself and make a joke about the Canucks playing. Talked with the host a bit: Nicolas. Welcoming sort of guy. He knows about Devon and Cactus and Accent. It’s weird that people have heard of things related to me here, but why not. I am wondering whether or not I should get a third cider. But I know there’s a night ahead of me.

 

It is strangely easier to go back to Verdun, since I know people are there. It is not so lonely. It is better staying with people than staying alone. I didn’t quite think that last time—perhaps I liked the place I was staying better. Perhaps it was the circumstances. Je sais pas.

 

I don’t know when I’ll post this anywhere. It rambles and the focus comes and goes. I’d like to give it a good revision, but I don’t know. I don’t have energy right now—I’m burning out. Too much is happening. I know that something needs to give: it’s one of those times in a life. Something has to give and, if I’m not careful, it might be me.