When I got to Nancy's, Vincent was withholding hugs as punishment for being gone.
We're going much better now, we've played the upside down game and the world was set right.
We also sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Happy Birthday Dear Nana enough times to drown the neighbourhood.
Sitting on the front porch, littlest Maya doing sleep-calisthenics on one knee, discussing everything and anything...
Montreal is beautiful. In between the concrete buildings, the too-wide streets, the armies of SUVs barfing into summer air.
Last night I wound up early at O'Donell's by the extra half hour it takes to find parking in Paree but not in Montreal, and I went wandering.
I eventually had to remind myself to stop clutching my bag underneath my elbow like that.
I stopped in the middle of St-Catherine's, the drunken frat boys miles away and not even looking at me, and I felt so safe. Montreal is so, beautifully, serenely, safe, sweet, she is a little girl of a city with flowers in her hair, the old stone cathedral curled up amidst the corporeate garb of the towers.
There were a thousand hugs in the pub, and I love all of you. Marv and cf and Mystie and David, not enough time with any of you but in my silly head it was just that first hug that already had me overwhelmed.
Musta been the beer.
Bruno swept me off the floor with his hug, this great looming man who took years to address his sentences at me, threatening the same shoulder-treatment as Thomas.
Steven's face, my first True Friend, the first face I saw last night, and the night only climbed upwards.
It ended with me and John and the bartender, exchanging bad quips and reminiscing.
When he announced that he's finally learning to live in a Monstreal without a Monstre, I would've cried but Marc's little aside not a 'alf 'our before had already pushed me well past, well, everything.
When one last chorus of "WHY TORONTO?!?!?!?" rose up last night, he beckoned me into the corner behind the stairs, and took both my hands in a very un-Marclike tender gesture, and made sure I wasn't listening to any of those barbs, or he'd send them all packing for me.
He wished me well, wich such earnestness...
There is magic in the fire lit under me now.
Lunch this afternoon with Ollie and Marc, dishes with ACTUAL SALADS without you having to ask for them, and banter that blew me away. Everything from the concept of an anarchist goth to our collective horror at how society condones not taking responsibility for yourself.
Words that soard and fought and tumbled and parried.
And now, I am curled up in a place where there is nothing but warmth, hiding for the afternoon. I'll finish my packing early tomorrow instead, or show up with terribly disorganized luggage, that's all.
Warmth. So much warmth. Last night's hugs, a Montreal summer, Seb's phone call this morning and catching up as though I'd never left, and the view from the top of the mountain, as I took a half hour off errands to climb up to the cross and remember each nook and crater of the cityscape.