lapsus linguae

getting there: slightly less than half the fun

There’s no direct train from Montreal to Boston and flights start at five hundred and seven dollars. So very early Thursday morning I once again I found myself taxi-hurtling toward the Terminus Voyageur to board a Greyhound, south-bound chariot of the damned. Hands Off! The moustachioed driver powered blind.

Vermont Transit puts the junction into White River Junction. Our bus pulled in and the population doubled. We waited for the bus to be refuelled under stencilled signs of possibility. Wherever it was we were, there were lots of places we could go. I saw no sign of a river, white or otherwise, on either our way in or out of town.

My friend Lana picked me up at South Station. She apologized for taking me the shortest least scenic route to her place. I said: That’s okay; I just took the longest least scenic route to get here.

The official hotel of MiT5 is, I believe, the Hyatt Regency. I’m sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of Lana’s loft in Roxbury. Home sweet ‘hood.

Navigating her gold pickup through pothole-cratered project cracked-out homeless streets (familiar to me now, this being my third visit), unmarked cop cars cruising past (one with inside blue lights flashing), shifting gears, cutting corners, changing lanes, and cracking wise, Lana carries on a long distance cell phone conversation with her Italian lover. We’re on our way to an art opening. It’s almost midnight in Positano.
. . . . .

Exited thoughts now long to travel

We had a flurry of out of town visitors this fall. All those folks who said they were coming Montréal this summer left it to the last minute. And they all came at once. We didn’t quite get to spend time with everyone who passed through town in the past few weeks. But we really enjoyed those we did see. The spare futon is folded up for winter now. In less than a week I hitch up the horses and head west to Wyoming.

iam mens praetrepidans auet uagari,
iam laeti studio pedes uigescunt.

Exited thoughts now long to travel;
Glad feet now tap in expectation.

Catullus, XLVI

I pulled my suitcase from the closet so my dog would get used to seeing it around. But so far I’ve put nothing in it. It’s hard to pack for six weeks in a place you’ve never been before. What to wear in Wyoming in November? Correspondence with the Ucross Foundation indicates that the weather will be highly unpredictable save in this one fact: there will be wind, lots of wind.

Where is Ucross? People keep asking me. It’s in Wyoming, in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. Where’s that? You know in the movies, when the wagon trains are slowly advancing westward across the plains and then finally some mountains appear in the near distance? That’s my idea of where Ucross is: on the ranch just before the mountains begin.

USGS Topographical map of Ucross, WY

Aerial Photograph of Ucross, WY

The Ucross Foundation website offers up this historical narrative:

The Ucross Foundation occupies a cluster of buildings collectively known as Big Red. The Ranch House is one of the oldest standing houses in the area and tepee rings on the hills hint at a much earlier history as first nation hunting grounds. Built in 1882, the Big Red Barn was a former Pony Express stop, and was on the stagecoach route that serviced Buffalo to Clearmont from 1891-1911. Having missed the last coach by 95 years, I’ll fly into Sheridan on Big Sky Airlines out of Denver. And now that the Internet has put the Pony Express out of business, I’ll rely on wi-fi for communication with the outside world.

The village that grew up around Big Red went through several name changes, eventually settling on Ucross, named after the original Pratt & Ferris brand. Here is a photograph of ranch hands taking a break at the Big Red Ranch in 1898:

American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming

So far, this is the only photographic indication I have of what to wear in Wyoming. See the seated guy with the beard on the bottom right? That’s the look I’m going for. Minus the beard though.
. . . . .

Leaving Banff

leaving is hard
especially people and places you love
especially early in the morning

driving away from mountains is hard too
even after you stop looking over your shoulder
they’re still there in the back of your head

there’s nothing fun about an airport
except arriving at your departure gate and
hearing and the half-forgotten accents of home

on the plane I sat next to a guy who had never flown before
he was older, anxious, without English, hands scared, arms brown
and the whole flight I tried to look at everything as if I’d never seen if before

flying over Montréal I spotted our apartment
easy to do as there’s a large, green, copper-domed church near us
and even from the air I could see the Portuguese football fans going crazy

my husband met me at the baggage claim
the baggage took its sweet time, still on mountain time
but all that standing around was nice after four hours on the plane

my mother-in-law is an expert in not paying for parking
brandishing an out-of-date handicap parking pass at the police
she circles the airport, idles in the bus and the taxi-only zones

which is right where we found her, my husband manoeuvring my luggage,
and my dog! panting and drooling and shedding and wagging in the backseat
best of all the welcome-home surprises

between the airport and home
between the dog and the French and the high heat and humidity
we nearly died three times in old-lady related driving incidents

dropping down from Little Italy into Mile End
football fan flags festooned every apartment’s balcony and
my mother-in-law asked me if I missed Saint-Urbain street

even though my husband says I came home on the loudest day of the summer so far
to sick sticky heat and the stink of smog and moving-day mounds of garbage
yeah, I said, I missed Saint-Urbain street a lot

cars honked by with girls leaning out the window waving Portuguese flags
and July first moving-day vans parked at traffic-snarling angles
and in-between families lived out dramas on sidewalks and steps

I forgot how many books I have
and how many hot outfits and cool shoes
and what it’s like to drink vodka fresh from the freezer

we drank martinis from martini glasses
and ate fried calamari from the Terrasse Lafayette
and my husband caught me up on the neighbourhood gossip

the old Greek lady next door got thrown out after twenty-three years
all the while I was away she was packing unloading crap on my husband
now our apartment is full of old textbooks, floral bed sheets and fresh mint

the tacky Anglo girls that have the back-balcony across from ours
have taken to inviting two loud, shirtless Latino boys over
whenever their boyfriends go away for the weekend

our landlord, who lives downstairs,
has divided half his yard into a parking lot and
we’re excited because at least it’s not a swimming pool

while I was away my dog puked in my studio so many times that
my husband threw out huge piles of my stuff and now that it’s gone
I can’t imagine what I was keeping it for

despite this, in case I haven’t mentioned it already,
my dog is the cutest, sweetest, best-behaved dog ever
who snores, and cuddles, and is afraid of thunder

leaving is hard, but coming home is good
and, in case I haven’t mentioned it already,
my husband is the best person I know

. . . . .

WestJet 667

There is no first class. We board all at once.
The forward toilet abuts the cockpit and is unisex.
13D is an isle seat, no matter what 13E and F say.
The faux-leather grey seats look just like in the commercials.
With a television monitor mounted in the back of every one of them.
It’s not like in the old days, when the in-flight film was free.
The headphones cost one dollar, three dollars for the nice ones.
And what you get is satellite TV. What you get is commercials.
You can’t turn the monitor off. It flies with you, inches from your face.
The default screen is a MapQuest map © 2003. Place names haven’t changed.
Fin Flon has not flip-flopped. Grand Prairie has not shrunk to Petite Prairie.
A white and windowless airplane icon pixel-pushes across the MapQest map.
Left wing grazing the 49th parallel, body long as the width of southern Manitoba.
Our fuselage overshadows Brandon, sets Swift River in its sights.
We cruse at 38,486 feet. Everything is downhill after that.
In Montreal, before take off, the MapQuest map said we sat at 36 feet.
And for a while I thought that’s how high the seats were off the ground.
We arrived in Calgary earlier than I expected.
The city met us at the airport at 3740 feet.
Now that’s first class.
. . . . .

The Earliest Morning Airport

The fastest taxi driver sped through the earliest morning rain listening to the quietest FM radio play the Frenchest jazz chanteuse singing her brokenest heart out. Fastest, earliest, quietest, Frenchest, brokenest.

I arrived at the airport so early that I miss-read my boarding pass, just to kill time. Gate A 49 is not the same as Gate A 4 – 9, and although there were plenty of places to buy a cup of earliest morning Frenchest coffee in the Gate 4, subset 9 area, there was no Gate 4, subset 9. There were no places to buy coffee, Frenchest or otherwise, at Gate A 49, 50 or 51.

In the coffee-less under-construction wing of the earliest morning airport, Saint Germaine played softest moaning and groaning and all alone-ing downest-tempo beats. The newest toilets were motion-sensitive. The cleanest sinks were motion-insensitive. I washed my hands of them.

Gate 49 was not the quietest place to wait, not even in the earliest morning. An orange T-shirted green-tattooed not large but barrel-chest bleach-blond man paced, board of waiting to board. No one left baggage unattended. There were no suspicious packages to report. It was a domesticated flight.
. . . . .