Randomness is good for the soul.
The Jacques-Cartier bridge, resplendent in rush-hour traffic.
I was on a mission for bedroom slippers.
Little Amanda, Eric and Annie's littlest one, had forgotten her slippers at Grandma's when they were in town a few weeks ago.
Little Amanda and her big eyes sent me on a mission to meet her grandma.
Who thought I was a telemarketer when I first called.
By the time I got there, rolling fields and that typical Montreal spring-green forestry just at the edge of my sight for kilometer after kilometer...
...Cedric, Amanda's littlest cousin, was waiting on the stoop with his ladybug friends and yelling for Grandma:
"She's here, the lady's heeeere!!!"
Only in incredibly thick Quebecois.
Grandma sat me down for coffee and showed me pictures of the entire family at every age, talked about how much she missed them but how proud she was of her son Eric and this adventure he'd taken his children on, the experience he was giving them...
We talked for an hour, Cedric running about our feet, giggling and playing monkey-man, and she kept telling me how much Annie and Eric were happy to have gotten to know me, how she's thinks I'm just PEACHES too...
And I drove right back into traffic heading the other way, across the towering bridge so much more majestic than the amputated version they filmed for "Johny Mnemonic".
I sat through the traffic and the honking barrel trucks and irate little-big cars, so angry in their impotence, and revelled in the chance encounter and the moments it had given me to relax, let go a little, and appreciate perhaps just how far I've gone and how much freedom I still have.
I found Seb wandering the streets north of Montreal, told him of spending the afternoon in Johnny's store, helping out and answering phones like once upon a time two years ago, of how the neighbourhood kids came in and whistled at my hair and asked if I was back for good yet.
"John needs his cool roommate back" said they.
I have two other observations from yesterday:
One of the most wonderful sights in the world is watching cf's face erupt in a grin, turning eighteen shades of purple and utterly effacing the glower he so often hides there.
The only sight more wonderful is watching precisely the same thing happen simultaneously on his, The Soprano, and David's faces all at once, in the shade of a heatlamp on the terasse of Santropol.
All we needed was Marv's face doing similar calisthenics, so that I could hug him in mid-grin for the immensity of the compliment he paid me.
Thank you for fetching my pirate, Marv.
I only wish I'd known that it would have caused so much upset at the time.
Upset. Over me. I mean, really...
Please, everyone, stop being upset.
Please. Don't be upset with lady worksalot, or with David, or with CF and Marv or any of you.
We're human, wonderfully, blessedly human, and we're some of the best of them.
So no upset.
Just more love, k?
And suddenly I am less afraid to return to Paris, knowing you're all here and that circles are widening and that lives are stepping along in their individual crazy ballets.
I am less afraid to reply to Guillaume and perhaps finally accept his invitation to the theatre.
To go see an opera in Paris, on the arm of a man, finally knowing that I won't be hurting by smiling my grin so far across the ocean.
Oh to enjoy that opera...
...now I just hafta pick which'un I'm gonna go see.
And maybe beg the boys back in Paree for more billiards lessons cuz it took a good five games last night before I sank a single ball, and by the time I'd gotten the flow of beer aiming my veins, it was time to leave.
It seems that it's always time to be leaving something...
But if I wished for stability, I would find myself bemoaning stagnation shortly thereafter.
I have nothing to wish for, my heart is so full with everything I have already...