home... makes sense.

I wrote in a short story once about a character who: The more he travels the more home makes no sense to him. That was fiction. I’ve been away a lot lately. I’m back now. And home is making good sense to me. Here, I can cook whatever I want for dinner. And I have so many more clothes and coats and shoes to choose from than I do on the road. This makes the weather so much easier to deal with. In my hometown, I run into people I know and we chat right there on the street – what a good system. Yesterday I ran into an old friend in the dépanneur. Home is where other people know what a dépanneur is. It was mild out, for Montréal in March, so I walked down to The Word. Home is The Word. In Montréal I walk everywhere, because I can. Makes sense. Walking the dog, I ran into another old friend on Fairmount Street. Home is walking the dog. I’m so happy to be back in town I don’t even mind that spring is taking so long. No buds on the trees yet. But the traffic lights are almost ripe. Excessive nonsensical signage always reminds me of Montréal, so somehow even this sight made sense to me yesterday:



Perhaps because, as Montreal poet Anne Carson writes in The Life of Towns: "Towns are the illusion that things hang together somehow..."

She goes on to say: "There are regular towns and irregular towns, there are wounded towns and sober towns and fiercely remembered towns, there are useless but passionate towns that battle on, there are towns where the snow slides from the roofs of the houses with such force that victims are killed, but there are no empty towns (just empty scholars) and there is no regret. Now move along."

Montreal may be all or none of these towns, I don't know. I'm just happy to be here.
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