The comforting thing about the tug is that I know I have heartstrings.
(I need to be reminded sometimes)
The discomfort of course lies in the faint velcro noises as each thread holding my heart so brilliantly displayed on my sleeve, creaks a little, tears a little, stretching somewhat and all the while threatening to one day give way.
Brussels. According to Lionel it's a filthy little town. According to Lionel it reeks of urine in comparison to Bruges.
But in comparison to Paris that reeks of urine in a way that can never be masked...
Brussels was the Europe I remembered.
And Jean-Mi and Marie-Nat were the people I remembered.
No, wait.
They were the people I was afraid to remember. They were better than my idyllic memories.
They were perfect by the very definition I've put together so carefully, and every filthy joke and every strange idea, and every aspect of their lives brought brilliant tears to every eye.
The photograph on their wall of them and a third uberman, Laurent, three kilometeres straight up in the mountains where they go to collect g�n�pi (it only grows above 2.5km in altitude) to make their liqueur, was proof of their accomplishment.
They way my tattoos don't terrify them, the way my lack of adhesion to protocol only makes them smile.
They're the old europe I remember... Not this uptight paris where it's how you look before how good you feel, before how good you can do.
Just something in the way they threw together pasta with chicken and cr�me fresh, something in the way their engineer careers do not preclude their inclination to live outside the box and be living exmaples of Larger Than Life.
Oh... That's just the shallow things.
Something in the way moments from the train station I was laughing in a way I get to do only so rarely.
Yes, I admire them. Yes, I admire them as much as the boys in Monstreal that I left so heartachingly behind.
(� comme je fais la frime that my heart has something to ache over)
But... I don't know. Maybe it was the russet in the cheeks of the fat mothers trundling by with their giggling children.
Maybe it was the lack of bilboards in the city streets.
Maybe it was the talk of how the European Union would slowly right the wrongs of the hulking beast that is the nation that holds too many by their testicles by the sheer volume of their consumption, and how my career will be better off here in ten years.
Something, though, something in the sheer bliss of reflecting their smiles back at them...
... had me doubting my earlier thoughts that perhaps Canada really is a place I should be returning to.
The crazy open mindedness lives in them too.
And brighter still.
And...
Somewhere in all that I met Nine and Mr. Pyke hugged her lovely shoulders,
And returned to these grey Parisian streets and once again slowly woke up to realize that even Montreal has cobblestones, and while France has perfect wine and every place is just a train ride away, and that Belgium still holds real families behind daintily etched walls...
And eventually remembered that I have laughed anywhere and everywhere, and that no matter where I am my career is in my hands and not the hands of a recession they're afraid to call a depression.
Still somehow, the storm is still roiling inside.
So many words and I've all but missed recording the perfect glee of the days just passed.
(yes, even the flirtateous gym teacher ;)