#theshortestdays (2)

The number 10 bus stops at a corner, splashing through a puddle. It's a grey day in Montreal, unseasonably and wrongly warm for mid-December. You'd think this city of northern people would be happy, but instead there's a pervasive glumness in the demeanor of the pedestrians I watch through the grimy window, and in the silence of my fellow passengers, who stare at the floor. I try to amuse myself by translating every French sign I see, like this faded poster for a local beer, St Ambroise, in the window of a defunct depanneur: "Méfiez-vous des faux saints" - "beware of false saints." Across the intersection, a child stares out the window of a garderie, a pacifier in his mouth, waving at nothing.

We pass shrubs wrapped in burlap and white plastic, a mountain ash weighed down by heavy clusters of orange berries, a confused magnolia tree with fuzzy, swollen buds, soggy Christmas garlands hanging above Avenue Mont-Royal. The streets are wet and full of detritus: paper, wrappers, leaves. Teachers and nurses have been out on strike: there's a handpainted banner proclaiming "équité" stretched on someone's balcony, and the bedraggled strike banners tied to poles at the local provincial health clinic drip with water. At the Gilford community garden the still-green plots look more like they usually do in early April, and the picnic tables piled on top of one another seem ready to be unstacked and used again. As if to concur with the seasonal confusion, a red sign on a separatist's porch reads, "Oui! le Quebec, mon pays" (Yes! Quebec, my country") with a daisy for the "O" in "oui."

I think of Mexico City: the constant sound of vendors hawking their goods, of street musicians and boom boxes, the riot of bright colors, the more-or-less constant warmth, the young lovers who can't keep their hands off each other because they're finally alone and anonymous on the bus or metro. Here, a girl with pink hair and a nose ring gets on with her boyfriend. They're both in studded black, decked in chains and covered with tattoos, listening to their own headphones. They don't even hold hands, but if it were April, they'd act differently: in the spring, sun-starved Montrealers of every social persuasion peel off their clothes and practically go naked.

We northern people don't know what to do without our seasons; like the budded trees, it throws us not to have a cold December, ice on the outdoor hockey rinks, and snow for Christmas. So we swelter in our parkas and tuques and scarves, feel affronted by the holiday music coming from invisible loudspeakers, and grumble because Christmas shopping in warm weather feels like a chore instead of a pleasure. There's one advantage though: In spite of the posters advertising medicines for "la saison de la grippe," no one on the bus is coughing: even the germs are confused.

Comments

[Natalie]

Strange winter. Here in London too it's unseasonally warm and it's been very wet, flooding in parts of the country.

Your description, Beth, as always are full of the music of words, sounds, scents, sights.

[Martine]

I don't know if you noticed that "faux saints" is also a play on word for "faux seins", or "fake breasts" :)

[Roderick Robinson]

SEASON'S GRATITUDE (Because the familiar phrases at this time of year don't work for me.)
For being serious in the best senses of the word (considered, untrivial, informed, communicative); for knowing and loving music and being able and willing to pass on this knowledge and love; for being devout and thus meeting Eliot's observation: the English are in the main not religious but are fascinated by those that are; for being well-read; for seeming to benefit from the twin worlds of Canada and the USA; for writing frankly, including several years ago, a description of being kissed; for having and sharing a rich background.