Needing Distance

The weather has gone from cold to warm. The windows are left open now. The noise from the street comes in and makes itself known to us. It doesn't want us to forget about it. It is so nostalgic that way. I wish, I hope, that one day the noise from the street can just grow up and live life without us. That it can stop worrying about getting our attention and move on. There must be other ears for it, ears welcoming, maybe even ears deaf.
    The noise from the street comes in many voices, tones and moods. It so often isn't satisfied to murmur or lull. It too often insists on sudden claps, attempts to get our notice.
    Maybe it's us ? Maybe we should just ignore those advances. But it's hard. This is a long and complex relationship.
    Maybe we all have to move on.
    It'll be a while before it gets cold again and the windows close.

33° Burns

When I turned thirty three years old I was six years past the age I thought I'd be when I got my shit together. For some reason twenty seven was the magic number. It popped into my head in my late teens as the marker when I'd be what I was destined to become. It sounds good to a younger person. Still young but far away enough to continue being a little dumb ass.
    All I did at that age was actually move out of my parents house. One maybe hoped for something more dramatic, something beyond the 'well, you should do that anyway' category. It was a step for me. I had friendly support and the change was made. Moving out allowed me to no longer crash on the floors of my friends who lived downtown. It also allowed me to have people over to my place, which I rarely did. Jesus Christ, six short years later I moved back in with my family.
    My father convinced me, he is very convincing at times, how awesome it would be to move into the building he bought. I could run the shop he opened, live upstairs from it and never stray too far. I bought it hook line and sinker. It was a tug, for sure. My mother was very clear that I didn't have to do this. I should have listened to mom. Well, I didn't and the lure of low overhead won out. And what was I doing with my life anyway ? I was making bits of art while unloading trucks and pricing stock at a downtown record store chain. I had two university degrees that occasionally worked out at parties but I was not using my so-called potential.
    I ran the shop. I still run the shop. I moved into the bigger apartment in the building when it was vacated. I did so in anticipation of a future girlfriend maybe moving in with me. Now we both live with my family so to speak. We enjoy the perks of a low cost of living along with the agony of being between a rock and a soft place. How does one untangle the lines, move to another place, away from the business we've claimed as our own and made fancy ?
    Today, almost twenty years later, the conundrum reverberates in my heart every day. We have a great apartment that is too noisy at times above a business that looks better than it operates. In the heart of a great neighbourhood surrounded by the best community anyone can ask for and yet…and yet. Gratitude exercises come and go, privilege is seared into every mouthful I eat, kids making noise in the alley is constant. The traffic outside my door will never ever stop. I'm middle aged and I can't help but feel I took the easy way out in this life, the road paved with minimum effort. I live in my father's house which means I haven't built my own yet. That lost hobbit hole I dreamed of as a kid.
    I am not a carpenter like he was, I'm kinda handy but not so much. I've learned a thing or two about odd jobs and upkeep. I open the bill envelopes when they come but have a hard time saving any money. My mother warned me about planning for the future, I told her things would work out. Somehow they have worked out but on their own terms not on mine. I've left life to do it's thing and only recently have awoken to the fact that I'm the one steering this clunky boat.
    At thirty three you're either crucified or given honorary degrees. I retreated into my nest.
    At forty six all I can think of are my fifties. So how does one steer a near lifetime of passivity into total action ?

Night Bus

Like many good Greek boys in North America I lived with my parents way longer than my barbarian friends. This meant that by the time I got home from a road trip to the west coast as an eighteen year old, the home I got back to was new. My family moved to a deeper suburb, further away from downtown. Now, if I needed to go out or attend class I'd have to give myself an hour and a half for the bus and metro ride. I started crashing over at friends a lot.
    Buses came every half hour. Pacing at bus stops became normal. I always carried a folded piece of paper in my jacket pocket to scribble down cool band names I though of or some lyric I made up. I also would find things on the dusty streets and collect the ground scores in my jacket pockets. Right pocket for wood and metal, left for plastics. On the bus I entertained myself with a pocket book and often, with markers. I'd crouch low and decorate the back of the seat in front of me with vivid symbols. I got to carrying more than one colour and often drew elaborate doodles on the 215. None of this was ever documented of course, documentation was to become de rigueur with street art later on.
    Eyes in triangles, the word EVOLVE underneath, random Discordian in-jokes, prophetic mutterings. My first 'tag' was an eight fold path and the word, again in all caps, REPENT. I mostly stuck to discrete spaces for these communiques. Bathroom stalls, buses and metros, campus. I even scratched some triangles around town and left the occasional sticker. Some surfaces acted as message boards where other freaks would leave their ravings. This was just before the ubiquitous name tag came and covered Montreal. With that particular street style I feel that lone and unique voices were crowded out from public spaces. Signal to noise ratio went in favour of noise. It was the era of the copy cat.
    I was able to cover a bit of ground because of my heavy and constant commute and because of the floors and couches I would crash on instead of making it home after a party. I would find myself in different hoods, ill rested hung over and with a marker in my pocket.
    Quiet suburban streets at four in the morning were perfect for practising walking with eyes closed, for singing and chanting.
    I moved out at twenty seven, having spent too long in the West Island and too long catching night buses and too long waiting and pacing and nodding off on my ride. Finally another late bloomer and curiously not a Greek became my room-mate. We would often head home together back to the burbs, him a driver and me a willing, begging passenger. On these drives we would plan what would become our eventual escape. We made it out, together, to a decent apartment on Ave. du Parc in 1995, just a few doors down where his relations used to live a generation ago. "There? You moved there? We worked so hard to get out of that neighbourhood!"