Accordion Times

Saturday night we set out. Even though we were tired and some of us were cranky and we didn’t really know what to expect. Up a down-way street. Heads lowered, we leaned into the nickel and dime sized March wet snow. Down under the CN overpass, a right onto Bellechasse, and then east, east, east.

The best place for a Nova Scotia kitchen party in Montreal is the Petit Patrie. A dog, a trumpet and a piano. Two fiddles, a mandolin and a drum. Three accordions. Four small children. As far as I could tell… they were all moving so quickly.

I’m a big fan of dogs, fiddles and accordions. Less so of small children. But these were free-range kids, with little or no interest in adults and their goings on. They had their own party plans. They climbed the couch mountain. Waved their painted paper batons. Spun like tops, crouched like dogs, played dead on the floor. For twenty seconds or more. Then sprang up quite alive again to hunt down two-part piano harmonies and/or wheat-free cookies.

We random grown-ups were left to our own devices. We sat on the floor. Drank French wine from Beartrix Potter mugs. Read a How To Train Your Dog book. It’s too late, S. said. Our dog’s nine. Tunes unfolded. Keys were negotiated. Fifths were found.

Two smallish girls, aged five or six or so, discovered the hostess’s necklace collection hanging from a pegboard. I was enlisted. Because I was sitting right there. But soon turned double agent. For the hostess, supervising. For the girls, reaching, untangling and admiring. It’s hard to say what language we were speaking. French, English, Polish, Hand Gestures. A translator was brought in to invite me run up and down the hall with them. Someone, somebody’s mother perhaps, explained: She’s a big person, she might not want too. So they brought me the last wheat-free cookie instead. And later one of them hid behind me in a game of hide-and-seek. Surely, in little girl land, this is a huge complement. A great honour.


. . . . .

what's that smell?

Spring is in the air:
A dubious proclamation to make mid-March in Montreal.
One must interpret the signs creatively.

I lost my winter gloves.
That may mean another cold snap’s on the way.
And I lost my travel umbrella
So maybe there’s a voyage in my near future.
The jury’s still out on that one…
Fall grant results are in and spring deadlines loom.
Daylight savings time came into effect early this year.
But I keep sleeping though that extra hour.
Tax time is also in effect; my office floor is a sea of receipts.
The federal budget came down stinking of electioneering.
The provincial election campaign stinks of provincialism.
Is this a three-way race or a three-legged race?
Canvassers ring our door-to-door bell in record numbers.
Mild weather helping to get the vote out.



The annual Saint Patrick’s Day snow has all but melted.
There’s not much green, no buds, no leaves, no sun, no flowers.
But at long last an English bookstore has sprouted up in Mile End.
Perhaps that’s not a sign of spring, but surely it’s a sign of something.
Welcome S. W. Welch. By the time the fresh paint smell fades
the neighbourhood will be in full bloom.
. . . . .

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.
. . . . .

in memoriam

In 1986 MC Shan released a song about the housing project where he lived (Queensbridge) entitled The Bridge, which became a tremendous hit:

Ladies and Gentleman
We got MC Shan and Marley Marl in the house tonight
They just came from off tour and they wanna tell you a little story about where they come from
The Bridge(scratched) (3X)
Queensbridge

Up the street in Queensview I was busy turning fourteen. America was pushing two hundred and ten. Carvel ice cream birthday cake melting on the countertop, we watched 4th of July fireworks from my grandparent’s 10th floor bedroom window. Grucci specials exploded over the twin towers. Firecrackers, gunshots, and sirens sounded up close and personal in the Queens streets below. And something else. Something else had to be going on somewhere. Graffiti tagging, all night ghetto blasting, and maybe some b-ball trash talking in the D.S. Park.

Hip-hop was set out in the dark
They used to do it out in the park

I couldn’t sleep, those stifling Long Island City summers. My grandmother insisted: Insomniacs sleep more than they think they do. I’m telling you, I was up all night pacing the apartment. Well then you would have run into your grandfather and I; we can’t sleep either. Can’t argue with that logic. MC Shan was right:

if you wasn't from this town
then you couldn't fight and win

Sleep tight G.F.


Queensview March 9, 2003


Queensbridge March 6, 2007
. . . . .