...and the race is on. Canada or Germany, with Belgium looking like it's heading for an honourable mention.
Where will a monstre go next? P'raps with tears and grins and her singing teacher, who leaves Tuesday and not today after all, but we're crying already.
"Hey, my brother in law is single, my brother in law is single, monstre meet Sven!"
yeah yeah yeah... oh. wait. YOU're Sven? HELLOOOOO Sven. ;)
Sven, it was delightful wrestling in the grass with you, while the kids played truth or dare, it was delightful watching Sonia hurl herself at you and dare you to piggyback ride her all the way around the violet lights illuminating the quaies, and then have you race back and attempt to talk me into a game of leap-frog, or leap-chicken. My ego would be bursting at the seams, but right now I'm still too high from the sheer fun to banter with my ego.
Sheer play. That's what we did. We played. Frolicked. We frolicked in the grass on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon.
Cristal, it was heaven to cuddle with you on the blanket, in the grass, to salsa and waltz with you while Maja played guitar, to sing at the top of our lungs and draw applause from across the river.
They called me to do the marathon today, and I bowed out, inventing an excuse, and looking for the guilt I should have felt but couldn't find anywhere inside myself.
Then they called afterwards citing Maja, saying she'd be upset if I didn't meet them at the American bar, rollerblades in tow.
And so I went, ran into people I haven't seen along the streets of Bastille, trundled down to the Route 66 (which in Montreal was the name of an old biker hangout where I learned to drink), ordered myself a pint of Guinness which the bartender drew a clover on top of and everything, and sat my tired-already ass down at the table in the far corner.
Then Guillaume sat down. And put his hand on my knee.
"Don't do that" said I, in all frankness, loud enough for him to hear but not so loud that he would be embarassed.
So he leaned up against me instead.
So I moved.
My chair kept inching over to the right in rythm with every other word in the deadbeat conversation until I was on the verge of getting up and introducing myself to another table.
And then the germans arrived, in full cavalry, Maja and her beau and his brother.
All shy grins and healthy tans and beautiful boisterousness.
I leaned into Maja and we played fliratious blondes with each other all the while crying that we were being torn apart.
We hummed a little and then couldn't help but bring in the lyrics and eventually just outright sing, and quiet as we were trying to be, the next table over hushed the rest of the room, and I turned purple but went right on following Maja's lead into this tremulo or that screaming high C.
The silence afterwards, was more deafening than the applause that followed it.
Sven broke the shock by pointing out my guinness, and nodding hearty german approval. A few shy quips back and forth, all politeness, and then I called Andreas the bitch that he is, attempted to explain, in german, that yes, that really is what I said, and we were off.
"Oh, monstre, showing off with that guinness but look how slowly she drinks it!"
"Oh, she likes Kostriker Schwarzbier, eh, do you know where that's made? They use it to clean the grease off tanks in military training, that's why it's black."
And on and forth, and don't you worry but I got my slings in.
Guillaume passed out on the table, his head must've been caving in with the effort to keep up, the languages and images flying far too swiftly, the conversation far too passionate.
yes, I'm feeling that venomous.
Later on we met up at les quaies des Ourcqs, near the conservatory, pulled on our skates and threaded through the parc de la Villette, peppered with bright red buildings, to find the ultimate picnic site.
Eventually we came across Cristal and Daniel and Sonia and the gang, after two more "Guillaume, please don't touch me" incidents, and when Cristal and I did our fancy dancing-skating thing on the cobblestones (turns out I haven't forgotten as much as I'd thought), I tripped on air and skidded across on my kneepads. Daniel helped me up, we laughed heartily, and we would have been off in the direction of grass and rest until Guillaume put his hand on the nape of my neck and tried to massage it.
"Mais arrete de me toucher, merde!"
Gasps all around. Witnesses this time. I'm not sure he said another word all evening, and when the wine was done, and the wrestling well in swing, he poured his attentions into his empty glass and again, I searched for the guilt and found it missing.
The germans told nazi jokes, then Alex and I told jew jokes, we stopped to translate into french occasionally, and once in a while I did the german-english translating, and here or there Andreas would stop me and ask me to repeat myself, taking notes on some article of absolute ridiculousness, claiming that he's going to quote it to his students.
Until the blow job joke, when, uh, they didn't recognize the word.
The ensuing explanation was, uh, well, you had to be there.
Curled up on a blanket massaging Cristal's aching back to the apparent delight of the company, listening to Daniel growl in yet another beautiful baritone, playing truth or dare and the two blondes, German and Canadian, trying to explain to the kids that when we were littler, the game was a lot more interesting...
They got the idea eventually, but we had drifted off into wrestling fights, singalongs, heated conversations on the nature of the world and other such delicacies, and it was all too swiftly time to leave, but not without one final chorus of Edith Piaf.
We waltzed and sang "La Vie En Rose" to more applause, and marched back to the cars with "Milord" booming across the river and bounding back at us.
Parting ways, thereafter it was Seb and I and Maja and the germans heading north alone, and we shed a few more tears, pledged one last singing and german lesson tomorrow, the opera with her two boys after, and then perhaps an attempt at heading out for a visit.
Canada or Germany, neck and neck. Brilliant stars that shine behind the faces of magnificent people, calling me to adventure with them.
Canada's ahead in the jobhunt so far, but if Maja means it, then maybe I'll be having a look at Hamburg after all.
Although, of course, if all else fails, it's marriage in the Azores. ;)
As some point, shortly after having planted my elbow in Sven's sternum, followed by being lifted onto his broad shoulders and spun around for good measure before being pseudo-violently flipped onto the ground, the games resumed around me and I stared up at what few stars we could see through the violet haze and imagined my patch of grass, with my germans and my Cristal, elsewhere, anywhere, where the glare from the sky could be a more brilliant hue, and the eventual ending different from these stairs and this door and these angry voices in the cour.
Elsewhere with no goodbyes, and as many hugs and all the warmth anyone could ever imagine.
And y'know what?
That's where I've been looking for. The rush of the water and the wind in the mountains and hugs, the way the Canadians meant them, in the sharpest cold of the loneliest winter.
Warmth. A place of warmth. I carry a sliver of it with me, tangled in the mess of my hair, and like the drop of water --
I am looking for the answer to the question:
How do you keep a drop of water from ever drying out?
I am looking for my ocean. And yet, I am always leaving it behind, my eyes catching on cobblestones and losing sight of the blazing hearths and hearts which surround me.