I Want Colors and a Laugh

We haven't had as much of the thick wet white stuff as New York, though it did snow most of yesterday -- it's been a pretty easy winter here in Montreal. But the city is at its ugliest: piles of grey glop everywhere, four inch slush with ice water underneath at every streetcorner, heavy ruts in all the alleys, and, on most days, a leaden sky. I paw through my clothes closet looking for bright colors, and every time I pick up my paintbrush it automatically hovers over Hansa Yellow, Cadmium Red, Ultramarine Blue: palette as Ouija Board.

Today, which began with a howling wind out of the north, has turned sunny and almost warm, and I hope some of the slush is melting and running down the drainholes into the St. Lawrence to be carried away, far away from here, out to the Gulf and the big bumpy sturgeons who like that grey color. If I don't walk home while it's still light, I'm thinking I may go down to the end of the next block where there's a little florist and look for something bright - a little primrose or something - to ease the turbulent days when winter refuses to relinquish its grip.  I don't think I've bought flowers all winter. They're expensive here and, well,  I forget. Instead, we always have bowls of fruit: right now I'm looking at yellow pears and fat orange clementines. But I do sometimes wonder think we're absolutely crazy as to live here. We moved NORTH! Nobody does that.

I guess you have to just laugh about it. My friend Vivian sent me a Kate Beaton comic today - I didn't even know about her - and I thought this one was very funny - I love her face when she's in the stationary store saying "PENS!" and I love the bits about halfway down where she goes outside and talks about Canada with, well, what we could call "a grim but familiar affection." Yep, Kate, you're right. It's nuts, especially when you weren't born here. But -- take that, New York City! How long will you be immobilized? Finally, something we're definitely better at than you.

But it's almost the weekend, and I'll leave you with humor: here's another Kate Beaton, this time about poetry: Hipsters Ruin Everything, and one about Queen ELizabeth I. The artist says she "was born in Nova Scotia, took a history degree in New Brunswick, paid it off in Alberta, worked in a museum in British Columbia, then came to Ontario to draw pictures." As her topic index indicates, she likes drawing about history, literary figures, Canada, Catholic saints. She's good, eh?

Comments

[Marja-Leena]

Oh, I still remember those kind of days, that after-mess! It all came back last year when we had so much snow here in Vancouver. Hope the thaw happens quickly and spring arrives soon for you! Or, better yet, you could move to Vancouver :-)

Thanks for the 'funnies', they're wonderful and she's now in my feed reader! Great that she's Canadian too, eh.

In fact, still on the subject of Canada and as a new Canadian, you may find interesting a couple of articles I've linked to in my latest post.

[zuleme]

ooh I like that blue coat!
Here we just got more snow just when we don't want it and we didn't have it when we did.
Maybe I'll get to do a little skiing before it all turns to mush.

[Teresa]

I love this post, Beth. It is funny to hear you talk of things that could be mine. We also have had a mild/not so hard winter here, and the snow is now clumped at the curbs in filthy heaps.

"NObody moves north." I get teased every spring when I go north for a vacation just as it's getting nice here. But I am boreal, and I love the bleakness, the contrast, and the songs and words that brings.

Your photo up there is gorgeous. The color. The intensity.

T.

[Dick]

Having envied you your snow, Beth, in the wake of some luscious description in the past, I hope to God it's finished with us for 2010. A beautiful guest that long overstayed its welcome.

I love the Kate Beatons. Shades of Jules Feiffer. Thanks for the intro.