Montreal (and the unfortunate realities that unravel from an internet dimentia)

Je souhaite que je pourrais aimer et être aimé dans de grandes villes
--or at least that’s how Google translated it.

So we made our way to Montreal, a less exclusively French, trendier, nightlife city. The City of sex and glamour, they say. I had sort-of had an internet “girlfriend” a few years back, whom I wanted to meet up with. The thing was never very serious, all predicated on this idea of sex that was going to be delivered as soon as I was to show my face in Montreal. That was years ago, in 2005. Here it was, 2008 and I was coming to Montreal. Boy, I had no idea.

I wrote to her, explained the situation. Here is the message she sent back:

Hi Jason,

out of the blue indeed, but i'm glad you wrote. granted, i'm sure i'd probably cringe if i went back and reread the musings and tirades of my.... (geeze how old even was i?) self, i cringe when i read things i've written six months ago, so be the pitfalls of spontaneity, and the "safe" "anonymity" of the internet.

that said, i do look back fondly on our email flurry, and don't even remember why we stopped or never met. it's nice to hear you've become a vegetarian, i'm still vegan, but muuuuuuch less preachy than i used to be. i got burnt out working in animal rights, and well, have evolved ideologically (i should hope) so i figure i'm probably much easier to talk to these days. i've heard about WWOOF and considered joining a few years back, and still might one day, but right now i'm kind of in a smoking/drinking/city life place while i finish my never-ending bachelor's.

you're not still working on the human genome project are you? i took a course on bio-tech art about a year or so ago and there was a bunch of work focusing on it... i'm not sure if you've ever run into that group who offers water and cookies "infused with dna".

anyway, i guess email me back to let me know when you'll be around montreal, and i can pass you my number.

take care,
Martine

The interesting thing about this email is that she obviously remembers me as somebody else. I have never mentioned the human genome project to anyone, having only really learned about it last year. So she thought I was a scientist. She remembered me as a “safe” “anonymous” scientist who dipped his hands in DNA all day and chatted up French-canadian lovebirds by night. Quite the alter-ego. And I was going to exploit this.

You see, I had an idea of how Montreal was, a booming city with wonderful people everywhere, French people, passionately Catholic people, pedantic oratorical people, spectacular people, young people, hilarious people, sexual people, illustrated people, nihilists and anarchists, prostitutes, kings and thieves. Comedians with scowls and supermodels with bodies in their closets. I thought of Montreal as a Las Vegas where the dopey, backwards hat guy was rendered obsolete, tried to cheat a mobster and was dumped in the bay—they sell champagne on the streets and instead of sidewalks there is a hard wooden floor for ballroom dancing. Montreal, to me, was nothing short of a mirage. But as I soon found out, I could not have been further from the truth.

I epitomized the poor city. I made it into a spectacle before I knew anything about it. There was not a chance in my mind that Montreal might just be boring. It might be commercial. The insanity that reigns in New York City might be commodity in Montreal, might be a pastiche, a campaign. There might be graffiti, but it is all done for aesthetics and not rage. Not that this was the case, far from it—but the idea of this city being small, being modest and forgettable was so far out of my mind, that to expect anything less than miracles pouring out of its sockets, to me, would have been absurd.

It all began as we got off the train and I stepped outside. Ah, that sweet city air. The Montreal I expected: urban smells, the smells of carbon monoxide and three-day old trash, of pizza being made and a faint smell of burnt rubber. Intoxicating nauseous fumes that remind you of home. Then a kid pushed me: "Move aside, boy!" he said laughing with his friend, making the "b" in "boy" with that Haitian pop of the lips in the dialect, as if making a “p-“ sound like in "p-p-p-p-". I ordinarily love that dialect, that flaring of the lips. But shit. That was a snap in the face, some real attitude. Of the city, I thought, oooooh crap. Here we go.

People were yelling at each other getting out of a taxi, a parking attendant at a parking garage was talking into his walkie-talkie with piercing eyes. There were a billion people with briefcases. A man was yelling at the driver in front of him, head stuck out the window. At that point, it was like New York; which to me means a land of superheroes. This was it! This was Canada' New York. We got it!

We went to the Parc Mont-Royal and sat for a bit, watching pigeons dig into the dirt for something, worms, presumably. Then as weird as could be, over the hill we hear a voice calling to us: “Hey guys!”

It was Georg! The man we hitchhiked with in Nova Scotia. He had left a few days after we did from Nova Scotia and his first stop before going to New York City was MONTREAL. WEIRD, HUH? So we were talking to him for a bit, and after the weirdness wore off we realized we didn’t have much to talk about with him. Maybe we were all just tired or something, exhausted from the travel loads, but we weren’t connecting with Georg at all that moment. It might be like one of those things, you have a friend whose really awesome after 12am. Like at the stroke of midnight, they turn zany, fresh and mad. But before that, say at like 3pm, they come off as boring and self-indulgent. Maybe Georg was only meant to be our maritime friend, a party purely for the hitchhiking endeavor. And Georg in Montreal just made no sense at all. Anyway, we made a plan to hike up Mont Royal and we asked Georg to give us a call later, gave him our number and that was that. No more Georg.

I found out later, from couchsurfing, that Georg had tried to call us but the calls would not come through because our service was American. I don’t know how the party would’ve evolved with Georg spicing things up. I bet they would have gone a lot better.

Hiking up the mountain was a cinch, and at the top was a big touristy area with a fake castle. We ate some hummus and decided to call the CSer we were trying to stay with, Francis, the anarchist.

One of the reasons I had wanted to go to Montreal for more than one night was to stay with this guy. He was self-described as “One of the most kind and responsible downshifter, shit-disturber,rabble-rouser,incorrigible leftist, prankster, malcontent slacker, anarcho-punk ever made.” He lived in “Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, a popular/worker district in inner east of the city.” And he made it explicitly clear, “You can stay as long as you want if you're correct person, otherwise, don't come at all.” I wanted to see if we had what it takes.

The big problem was that I had accidentally told him we would be arriving three days before we had got there. So at the time that we showed up, it appeared that we were just assholes who blew him off. Then I called him while he was at work and tried to make arrangements and he was like “I can’t do it!” So, I figured we were fucked. “Okay, I can see you are in a jam. I host you tonight, but that is all…”

”Great,” I said. But I could tell we had pissed him off. Ah crap.

The biggest problem was the 7doigts show. How could we go to this show, then show up at this pissed off anarchist dude’s house at like 1am and expect things to be chipper. After much deliberation, I made a sacrifice. I decided I would go to Francis' house early on, Mark could go to the show, and then I would make it smooth for him to show up later. It was sort of an unfortunate compromise for myself, but I could take it. Having a place to stay, I decided, was wise.

I weren’t going to meet up with Martine until the next night, so it was out of the question to call her. She had already told me she had plans on Friday; we had to make do. We ended up walking around Montreal, seeing McGill University, and walking along some parks that met with met up with the St. Lawrence River. Later that night, we met Hugo and Emilié at Vietnamese place before the 7doigts show.

It was weird, because everyone spoke French. But they just looked like hipsters. I mean they were skinny tight, had fashionable hair sweeping over their bangs or black-framed glasses or an ironic T or strange earrings or visible tattoos and sarcastic temperaments, BUT THEY WERE ALL SPEAKING FRENCH. "They dress just like us, but speak a different language!" It’s just weird how hipsters have a universal code of dress, like Hasidic Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Nuns, or businessmen, hipsters will look the same in any country. Only they’re trying to stand out. It’s just crazy. I guess the main difference between these French hipsters and American ones is that they can do this:



whereas the hipsters I know smoke pot really well and that’s about it.

We separated. I’d never see Hugo and Emilie again. I took a train to Francis' place. He was not there. I ended up splitting a bottle or two of wine and some scotch with his roommate, the historian Raphael.

And this is Raphael.

I have never met more of an encyclopedic man before. He knew details about everything. It was amazing, a real mad feat. We talked about French-Indian war, why Peace Corps might be colonialism, the success of student unions, and what a legacy the acrobatic circus is to Québec: "This is how we know circus. Not the animals and clowns. Acrobats and a story"

The idea about the Peace Corps concerns the idea that you are the white savior in a village of third-worlders who can not provide institutions for yourself. “If you want it to be a legitimate experience,” he said, “do it only for yourself. Do not have any reservations about the change you’ll make in their lives, but just your own. That’s the only way to avoid it’s being colonial.” It’s a very wise criticism if you think about it, that self-determination requires leadership without assistance. He was a wonderful thinker.

I suppose he had been involved in the student union, which is how he met Francis. They led a big crusade dealing with student loan funding and unfair appropriations. Their demands were not met completely, but great strides were made. These guys were activists. They stood to make a difference. I respect that.

He also illuminated this concept he was going over about The Neoliberal Choice that is fed to our culture. That they will brainwash you into thinking: These are the choices. You choose “the best”, but you've chosen nothing at all. It reminded me a lot of the Guy-Debord concept of blue-collar workers finding solace in making their lives more aristocratic or ornate, when the reality is they are just enslaving their own culture further. The fake idea of upwardly progressive supposed choice. Yes, yes.

Francis came home, thin-faced, thin-eyes, sharp nose—the way I’d picture a Frenchman. With pale skin and dark hair. He worked as a lighting engineer, lit stages. He was Left to his very core—very DIY—even owned his apartment, from an inheritance. He had lived in the same place since birth. He had just worked a long, long shift and immediately began making a sandwich with some white meat, tons of mayonnaise. We had just begun talking about the election in America and typically they both agreed that voting doesn't matter as it’s the "same-sided coin" theory; I go in and out of agreeing with that concept. We also discussed the potential inclined by couchsurfing, an actual social network being enabled. Francis was skeptical.

As he put it, Couchsurfing seems like a good natural phenomenon, but it’s run by this panel of “creators.” In essence, they work at best as an oligarchy because they have the ability to censor and delineate. So the whole “Come join the Community” thing is a big rouse, because they can deny anyone they choose to. I make the argument that it’s at least a big step, and he can’t deny that because he is part of it. It’s probably good not to make couchsurfing into a deity or something, even a really good idea has very fatal flaws.

He was pretty funny though. He tore down basically all institutions, even grating on the French for instating their Thanksgiving holiday. He says they make up holidays to match the English.

“Why do we not have Thanksgiving on the same day as the Americans?”

“So, we’ll have it before them.”

I suppose it’s a problem of washed-up pride.

Mark came back from the show around midnight. He told me it was just as well I didn’t go. The acrobatics were limited. The show being performed that night was a satire, with a guy leading it and telling lots of jokes in French; "the show was really satirical, but all the jokes were in French. A large chuck of the show he was making fun of people in the audience. I had no idea what was going on." Apparently every time Emilie would attempt to explain the situation to him, another joke would be made and she’d laugh. So he heard a lot of build-up, but ne’er a punchline. Hell, I thought that was pretty funny.

Francis had to go to bed in anticipation of a major crazy busy day the next day, Raphael as well. We decided twas a fine idea so we called it quits as well. Also, Francis had a big picture of Tom Waits lookin crazy in his room.

The next morning as we were leaving there was a man chasing his dog screaming his name "MADDIE!" we thought his child was getting hit by a car or something until we saw the dog and it wasn't in danger, just joyfully running down the sidewalk. Then we started laughing this really hysterical laughter. The tension was so ripe from this man screaming, really SCREAMING like belting it out, like he was being tortured. It was insane.

We walked by the bay; Montreal has some amazingly designed buildings. Then we started a long trek up St. Laurent. I took some more notice of the campaign poster graffiti. Some of it in Montreal was more heated and vitriolic. Lots more Id stuff, similar to the giant penises that flock like sick birds on the walls of urinals and underpasses in the States. Nonetheless, the graffiti is for the most part crass and intellectual at the same time.  As you see on your right "Le Quebec End" and below you, Lemmy from Motorhead.  

We walked for a real long time, all the way up the street. I gave some change to a one armed man, ate a falafel eventually.

Mark was once again taking pictures like a fiend. He explained to me how photogenic Montreal was. The way he finds beauty everywhere because Montreal's grid is set at an angle. There is a huge difference between natural light and reflected light. Most cities face the sun, so the buildings block it out, the only light you see comes off of windows. It is a dull lemon color. But Montreal captures the light perfectly, avoiding this fake light allows for sincere pictures. A city set-up for reflection.

So this is where the epic night begins. I haven't showered in awhile, brushed my teeth in like three days. I've been wearing the same pants for three weeks hitchhiking all over. I smell like a weightlifter. I look like a bristled, confused computer programmer or a mountain man—however you want to look at it. I am preparing myself for a casual meeting of acquaintances. There’s a possibility of some kind of sexual vice, but she has a boyfriend. I have no need to be a home-wrecker. I just felt it all appropriate. The innocent whatever happens happens laissez-faire caprice was wearing me into a lull, a dream. This was so despicably easy.


It should be noted that the way I had pictured her was the way I had seen her online. Let this be a note to all online dating services, a picture is worth a thousand exaggerations. To me, she was dreadlocked, slutty, well-read with theory, spiritual, and insane. The kind of girl that heaves t.v.’s out of windows. I was expecting a ludicrous anarchist with a Molotov cocktail for a tampon. I wanted that French disgust that lauds shit and burns cars, not the wine and discerning condescension. Oh no, not like this, not like this! How did it go so wrong!

We walked around Montreal with no particular plan. Looking at the futuristic art-nouveau buildings on the shore, eating at vegetarian new-wave restaurants in an area called Mile End after walking down St.-Laurent and watching the tourists peck bread from other tourists hands. It was simply a day in one of the big megalopolises that eats civilization alive, the breath was air, the fresh was clean, everything was alive. Why not? fuck it, it's French. We had heard of riots being expected because it was the night before election day, this in a town where student demonstrations are every four weeks. And life is a frustrated holiday. Cette vie!

As we were eating, we were approached by a bubble-faced man in a black overcoat, an enormous smile and a long brush of hair pulled back behind his head. He started asking Mark about his jacket and we invited him to join us eating sandwiches. We talked about all sorts of things from that point, this idea in science that has just been found--singularity theory, he was obsessing over the idea that they could combine robot "enzymes" with human DNA. The creation of a half-human, half-robot which could reproduce! Merde! Shit!! the guy was going out of his mind in disbelief.

In fact, this guy was obviously twisted right out of his shit. Lovely! Just our type. What we didn’t expect is the possibility he might be completely out of his mind. I didn't realize it but certain hints began to take shape. He was so scattered he couldn't comprehend anything we were telling him. He was so paranoid, he wouldn't let me write anything down. But he kept smiling. Mark tried to explain to him how binary code works and the guy mused on it for half an hour, amazed at how a language could exist in numbers. And i mean like real fucking amazed. Like as if numbers had a life of their own kind-of amazed. Fascinated to a point where it didn’t make sense anymore. He nodded his head, and as the product finally came to him—he almost screamed out in joy. What a miraculous discovery. It was as if a caveman was handed a loaf of bread. He just shit his pants with happiness.

I had to explain to him what Darwinism was, what intelligent design was, what anthropomorphism was. It was great! At each definition he moaned in glee over these phenomenal human ideas being formed, with the same black-pupiled holy shape the eyes take on uppers, this guy was obviously wrecked on some delusion, some chemical dropping bits of acid-lime on the cerebral cortex and he was as giddy and contorted as a maniac. It was fun. I felt like I was explaining these incredible notions to a toddler who, never having heard the theory, allows it to transform his entire perception of reality. I had no idea what cave this guy had been hiding in though.

I don't know what came over me, but the guy was so interesting. As we left the restaurant, he walked outside with us. I told him to come along. It was his venture now, taking us all over the city and spinning these exciting stories about his Montreal. As he told us, he was a saxophonist, graduated from McGill. He had played at clubs all along the US west coast.

He had played with some of the greats. He was known around here, but strangely had been out of work for two years. He was trying to land a gig currently, his grandmother's 85th birthday party. hmm...

For all my observation, it appeared he was living out of a bag. Left two to three times in the hour to use the restroom, once coming back with a changed shirt. He had ideas about creating new club venues, building up certain spots of Montreal. He introduced us even to a club owner, his former high school teacher. He spoke some French to the guy, presumably about a gig, then left smiling. The entire performance was really exciting. Not to mention the city! He introduced us to buskers he knew singing on street corners, waved to people laughing in small unpretentious art galleries--they seemed more homey than bare. Some of the area was gentrified, sure, and there was a bourgeois sensibility hanging like a chandelier over the community aspect tying everything together; I mean it was too fancy to be bohemian, too expensive. It seemed the homeless had been exited to unseen areas eating donuts outside of the bus station bla bla, for now, at the time, the city looked beautiful. I don't know why or how they did it, maybe it was him, a wizard with a veil that created the mirage of a perfectly quaint pseudo-bohemia, but I was mystified with it. It was perfect. A lovely town.

And now, as it came time to meet my internet girlfriend Martine at the wine bar she had asked me to meet her at. Seeing that she had a boyfriend, i didn't not feel compelled to meet her alone. I figured Mark should come, and this guy Anthony. Sure, why not. He might as well come along.

Mark/Anthony (J-lo in the background)

I guess i didn't realize at all how crazy he was. Close-talking. Elaborating enormously on meticulous details. Spitting a little as he rambled on certain things, stuttering as he obsessed over inane and unimportant details. When he felt agitated or nervous, he'd start doodling viciously on a cocktail napkins. But the place! Holy shit! $40-50 dollars for the cheapest bottle of wine. Skyrocketing prices for just a drink. Like $27 for a fucking glass. I’ll admit it I can be cheap, but this seemed exorbitant. Suddenly, it dawned on me. Who is this girl? This was not the vision I had carved out of internet images and my insightful imagination. She was no hippie anarchist madwoman, but chic, cute and fancy.

Uh-oh.

To make things short, things fell apart at the seams. She was dressed up like it was a date. She was very cute and she made herself look even cuter. I was wearing dirty clothes, my face scruff and a smell. She spoke all the French necessary to order the wine. She let me test the bottle (a bizarre little charade that i know how to do from watching idiots do it on t.v. I think both her and the waitress knew i didn't know shit from shampoo but i smiled the whole time and gave the waitress a thumbs up. I figured i'd take the whole back-woods know-nothin’ approach to the fullest degree possible, which worked out well). Mark knew what to expect when I invited him to this venture, asking me, “are you sure it’s not a date?”

“Nah, she’s got a boyfriend.”

“I’m pretty sure It’s gonna be a date.”

“it’s not gonna be a date.”

And of course, inevitably…

In one of the little vignettes where Anthony disappeared to the bathroom she asked "so, where did you find that guy anyway?"

"Oh, Anthony? We were just sort of eating and he sparked up a conversation."

"He's kind-of creeping me out. And i think he's gay."

It sort of dawned on me that the guy was pretty touchy. He was constantly grabbing my or Mark's shoulder when elaborating and got really close to the face when expounding on details before smiling and sharing a sort of intimate mm-hmm that lead you to almost want to believe some of the contrived spells he was concocting.

I think she felt Anthony’s fascination was a rouse to get us to like him, because we’d think he found our stories so interesting. She did not buy him at all.

What should have been a sure thing, ended up being a disaster. In lieu of finding a transient ex-“lover” with his crudely moustached transient friend (Mark) and a schizophrenic saxophonist with broken French (who also had a spitting problem, I should add), Martine found that she had had enough of this endeavor and created a story about a sick friend she had to see. "Oh no," I thought, "it's all over."

The free sex I had promised myself was lost on the line, a baited fish dragged back into the sea by a violent tide steered by a saxophonist who kept grabbing my shoulder. Oh, merde!

She gave a nervous European kiss on the cheek thing and I guess I’ll never see her again. For the best! What’s that phrase, yes yes, C’est la vie! I would not want to obsess. Although, that truly was a plane wreck.

Maybe if we had all gone to a grunge bar and drank some delicious beers, things would have gone better. Travelers shouldn’t go to wine bars, I learned from this.

But that was it. Fin. End. And there was still the issue of the saxophonist Anthony.

I think he was trying to console me, but I just kept laughing at the situation. I ended up draping myself in an aggrieved nausea on a statue that had the inscription “Por mon drapeau je viens ici mourir” or “for my flag i'll fuckin die” and there was an impaled morose Shakespeare looking mother fucker dying at the bottom of it. I thought the statue was amazing.

To help take my mind off things, luckily, the city was in chaos that night. I suppose i hadn't noticed, having been swooned by the guarantee of a lovesick entropy waiting to take off into the fourth dimension, so when i realized that it was saturday night, everyone was drunk, eurotrashy and yelling and being slutty--it hit me like a cyclone. Fuck this city. Everyone here is an asshole, crazy, machismo like bullets, high heels, bitchy remarks, haughty french laughs, angry English barks, people in polo, ralph lauren, hugo boss, other faggot moron brands and we look like hobos in this swirling mass of a euro-chic club scene. Anthony tries to comfort me, i tell him i'm not bothered. No, no sir. There's bigger fish to fry. I can't even believe what happened next.

Fire broke out. Literal fire. Seven engines barreling down the road. In his schizophrenic haze, we encouraged Anthony to go check out the scene himself. See if he could help. He arranged to meet us at a grunge bar where a Swedish heavy metal band would be playing. We told him of course. (We even went there later, but it was a ten dollar charge. Fuuuuuuuuuuck that). So we ditched him. Apparently, a club had lit up and was smoking, outside two guys—a thick white guy with a blonde buzzcut that looked like Dolph Lundgren and a heated Haitian guy were yelling and pushing, as a huge crowd amassed around them, girls either spitting, crying, or yelling to “tear the other guy a new asshole” in the most delicate French the phrase can afford.

And swirling amidst it all was Martine. There she was in the middle of the crowd, seeking her way through and not seeing us at all. I was going to follow her, but then Mark grabbed me and smiled, said, “Jason, this is Martine!”

The frame opened up and I saw this madness, the euro-chic explosion of style and shame. It was camaraderie at its most moronic. It was the antithesis to the Montreal of my dreams. It was insane.

Oh, merde!

No place to stay, no place to go. We spent four hours in a diner chewing slowly a vegetarian poutine (Traditional Québec fast food: French fries + gravy + cheese (vegetarian is tomato sauce instead of gravy, actually pretty good)). The woman serving us was an amazing Greek woman, with a slyness that made me want to slip a love note secretly into her apron. When she wasn’t flirting with us or other drunk bastards, she was laughing, telling stories in the corner in Greek. She was amazing.

At 4:30am, we made our way to the train station and tried to sleep there, we got woken up twice by bugger security guards. Assholes. Well, I did. Mark, of course, had no trouble. Finally took off at about 10am to Ottawa, which was an amazing city.  Fuck Montreal.

Québec

Les trains roulent en tourbillon sur les réseaux enchevêtrés
-Blaise Cendrars

When we got back to New Brunswick, we had a long walk ahead of us. After the day before, walking 7km felt like more than it should have. There is this massive bulk of communication towers there we found out was Radio Canada. The lot of it is huge and the wires form a little city, like an industrial plant but no smokestacks or lights--all cables.

We met a dark-skinned (maybe part-aboriginal) girl in Sackville named Ellen and her hipster (tall shaggy hair, glasses--like me!) boyfriend who took us to a vegan bakery/deli--we got two soup bowls to go (one free because they burned it--supposedly!), a loaf of bread and some sweets. She explained how burned food causes carcinogens and likened chemistry to artistry "always an ELEMENT of creativity." They said Montreal was a city of sex, in a disparaging way, to which i exclaimed" Great! I love sex!" which put the guy off but the girl laughed. I suppose i was hitting on her. Oh well. C'est la vie! I told them what wonders couchsurfing was. I've yet to hear back from them.

On the way back to the train station we found a more industrial bakery with the door open and a woman signaled us in, where they were selling bread cheap. It felt like we were buying bread on the blackmarket. We bought some fudge there too, blackmarket fudge. I can say with great assuredness that the bakeries in Sackville are superb. I wish we could have stayed there longer. To do it over again, i think i would've skipped a night in Montreal for a time in sackville, oh yes, oh yes.

We made it to the train and had twelve hours before we'd arrive in our first city on the "Big City Hub" of Montreal, Toronto, Québec City and Ottawa.

We got off the train and i must say, i was nervous. Angelique had warned us that the French in Québec were notorious for being rude to people who didn't speak the language, people who didn't even try. Well, fuck. I know a morsel of French, maybe.

So when we got off the train in Charny and knew there was a shuttle we must take to Québec, i was silent. I was silent to the man asking me in French if i was going on the shuttle. I said, no. I thought he was asking if i wanted a cab. Then i figured it out and felt like a twit. But still, i kept silent--getting into the backseat of the "shuttle" (or minivan as we like to call it in English.) I didn't want him to know i spoke English, because he’d immediately pigeon-hole me as a tourist. I chose rather to be a mute, aloof Frenchman instead of taking the risk of speaking. But I’m pretty sure he knew anyway, and just figured I was an asshole. I mean, he obviously did. But with the contraption I had going in my mind, I figured he was taking us way out to the middle of nowhere to rob us.

Oh shit why did we come to this wretched, French-insistent country! I missed the good ol' Tim Horton's Canada so much, immediately.

But no, the guy just dropped off the other passengers, at a bus station, at a hostel, at a hotel, then us? Well, we're going to Rue 4eme (4th Street), I tried to tell him.

What? He asked.

I'm not sure, i told him. I pointed to those words on a piece of paper (Rue 4eme).

He shrugged, laughed a little and said alright--whatever.

He snapped on the meter. I guess he was just planning on prowling 4th street until we found a place that looked nice. Mark thought fast and quickly said, just take us to the train station. He turned off the meter. Phew! I guess the guy wasn't trying to rob us. I was just crazy paranoid and self-conscious not knowing the language, so i made up this evolving scenario that got as bad as possible. Then he pulled out his gun and shot Mark in the face and tasered me. No, no, no. Jk, lol. Simple frightened tourist syndrome. Oh, merde!

Québec is a wonderful looking city, even the train station is austere. Each building is filled with history, a city filled with big white stone monuments. There is an old city and a new city (or greater city). The old city contains an ancient wall preserved from the fight with the British and another citadel which i guess is some kind of fortress.

We were staying in a neighborhood called Maizerets (I think) with an acrobat/sailor named Hugo and his girlfriend, an architect, named Emilié. We found out later that because Québec houses the base of Cirque de Soleil, many performers live in the neighborhood we were in--where the circus school is. We showed up at about 8:30 in the morning. Hugo is a thick athlete with a strong square chin and wide-apart eyes; he is a handsome guy. Emilié was a tall, wonderful looking woman with red hair that would be called "ravishing." Her temperament was consistently bright and energetic. She made a feeling that was at once comfortable. When we first saw her, she was wearing a bathrobe. We had come during their breakfast.

Hugo and Emilié were incredibly hospitable, even giving us a key after having known us for all of ten minutes. We were awed, but that's couchsurfing for you. Amazing people everywhere.

Over toast and nutella, Hugo told us about the rocky history of Québec, how it was the oldest settlement in Canada, set up to be the New France. But then the British took over from the Seven Years' War. The Americans tried to "liberate" the City, ceding it as a French-American colony, but failed. Then it was set up as a garrison, to protect British Canada from the newly established America. A turbulent history.

The French secessionists formed out of a racism from the segregation-like act in 1791 put in the constitution that divided Canada into the "Upper" English-speaking colony and the "lower" French. Hence the divide between English-speakers and French-speakers. That also makes the hostility an antiquity, a tradition really. The way North and South is still prodded over the Mason-Dixon line. It's kind-of absurd to carry on about woes from so long ago.  Though, how can i knock a people's demand for a particular culture's standards.

Emilié had school in the "Old City'" she said she would take us there. She had an umbrella that said "Merde. Il pleut" And it was the only French that i knew off the bat for the whooooole trip.

We were curious how one becomes a circus performer, so Emilie told us.  Hugo had become a circus performer because he used to be a volleyball player. His jumping skills were noticed, so he started to work on professional trampoline acrobatics. From there, he continued on into circus school. 

While we were on the bus, Emilié also explained to us how she was involved in constructing (or modelling) green buildings in the area. Her hero was Frank Lloyd Wright, the laureate of Pittsburgh. A man sitting near us was reading a wakeboarding magazine in French; I was happy I could identify what it was. Outside of her academy, Emilié showed us that in Québec the two stores that sell exclusively Christmas regalia are right across the street from one another, in the “Old City” square. She explains how it's both nauseating and cheerfully pleasant. Afterwhich, we separated from her.

Stranded in the midst of the city, knowing no French and aware of the problem that lay in this, we tried to avoid most confrontations.  I suppose it is true that people will pretty much ignore you if you don't speak French.  I went into several book stores and could find no French-English phrase book. I would assume from this that they don't want your petty half-assed attempts.  They want you to know, or to leave. That or i just went to the wrong book-stores. One woman in a restaurant just stepped in front of me, when i hesitated speaking; I let her. It was rude, but fuck it. So she fell into the stereotype. Besides her, we really had little problem. People seemed generally nice, impatient at times, but nice.

Still, it is interesting. The whole of Canada surrounding them speaks English. A large part of their own population does too. There is so much media imported that’s English. Why don’t they just give in. It’s an interminable pride that stands out, way national, way aggressive. It’s at once absurd and majestic. I really liked how French it all was. It’s been under “British” rule since 1861, but they’re sticking to their guns. It’s admirable. The city has that magic feeling of dead souls, of people inhabiting its wall—living history. It’s an old place with old buildings, stone roads and pastel paint on many of the houses, if they’re not built of big white granite stones. I like that image of a city, of it’s being a big monument within a color chromatic. You can feel that wealth of Old in Pittsburgh and in New Orleans and New York City. It takes old buildings with personality. It is staring back at you from balconies and dark open doorways, ghosts. They are ever-present, lost in some subliminal past. It makes the soul warm to walk through it.

We walked around the city for a little while, came to the citadel and climbed it. Another girl we corresponded with on couchsurfing, Meg (or VegMeg is her CS name), asked us to join us for lunch. She was a vegan chick who offered us a place after we had found one. It was only right to thank her in person.

She took us to two of the vegetarian restaurants in the city. One (where the woman stepped in front of me) was a small market. I had delicious kung-pao tofu there. The other was a bigger buffet we went to for dessert. They were both excellent.

Meg was a bit of a critical vegan, completely devoted towards the necessity for Veganism. She criticized me for eating cheese, which she described as "fat that breaks up in your mouth," I have really tried to limit cheese-intake since meeting her. She also told us about interesting farming techniques, like the Santa Cruz Farm in Santa Fe that is entirely vegan, using only plant-based compost and mulch for fertilization. Mark and her talked about the problems of farming, calling dairy and cheese manufacturing "the holocaust" because of the way animals are kept, carted and slaughtered--a phrase I'll never forget.

Meg was a great sweet girl with a terrific humor. She had lived in Quebec City for a few years, having moved there from Ontario for a job. She did not want to learn French, so she just picked it up casually. I guess this could be construed as both rude and egotistical. If you’re going to be in a place as a visitor, the least you could do is make an attempt to learn the culture. Meg just kind of shrugged her shoulders, not my problem. Rude or not, the gesture was kind of charming. I’ll survive. They’ll survive. Let’s not kill each other over loose ends. A ‘whatever’ approach. Hmm. Whatever.

We decided to take off to walk around the city all day, walking through the streets in between rainstorms (it hailed that day, right before our eyes!), or hiding under canopies. When we could we were taking pictures. Mark took the majority of important pictures. I stuck to taking pictures of graffiti, something that always fascinates me. Because it was election time, there were a bunch of campaign posters. For some reason, I found French graffiti really intriguing. I wanted to try to explore the differences in how street-people exposed problems. I found that a lot of French graffiti was seemingly well-informed and some of it was even inspirational, a cry from the self-indulgent name-blasting that usually eats at walls in the States. Then, I guess there’s a lot of different kinds of graffiti everywhere; I shouldn’t be so judgmental.

"It is precisely the possibility of realizing a dream that makes life interesting."

"There is only one thing that can make a dream impossible: Fear of failure."  "This is a Failure."

Hugo explained that this is an attack on this woman's conservative policy.  Being that one of the most vital economic forces of Quebec's economy is the arts, this person calls this woman "Conasse!" or "Bitch!"  "The average salary of an artist is $11,000 annually.  The threshhold for poverty is $18,000 annually."  Then the pun, from "Quebec takes force." to "Quebec makes the force."

This is a cannonball.

I bought a bottle of wine and some groceries to make the crisp potatoes and anaheim peppers meal, but it turned out as mush because i fucked it up somehow. Sort of like the game telephone, you repeat something again and again and again--albeit inconsistently—and you have a new result each time: genius or mush.

We watched parcour tricks on youtube, where people leap from fire escape to fire escape like super mario or monkeys



and they showed us the "chinese poles," which one of the people living there, Francis, was his specialty. two very high poles on climbed up like a bear and then did backflips to get onto the other one, tripped out shit.



We talked a lot, about sailing, Québec, Québecois folk music and Hugo and Emilié's misadventures in Europe--like tricking a station agent in Metz into believing their 13-day pass was a 30-day pass and getting lost in the middle of nowhere in Turkey when the train broke down.

Hugo was a seasoned storyteller, you could tell, a born entertainer. He would cup his hand to his mouth to make it static-y when doing impressions of the conductor: "Attention--Ladies and Gentlemen--we have come upon--a slight--delay..." He did impressions, hard stares with pauses and crescendos that erupted into gestures with his hands. Emilié stood fast behind, fact-checking and supplanting the story with asides and alternate gestures. They were like a comic duo, a team.

We also made friends with François, their roommate. There's a picture of him on your right.  He told me of his brilliant experience doing missionary work in Honduras. They went down there on Christmas, and the town all had their doors open. Food was being cooked all around and libations were plenty. It was a giant community event, truly happy and they had just arrived. It was the only traveling he had ever done, but it sounded wonderful. He also told me about Bela Fleck, and the importance of the jazz banjo. He explained that the essential difference between jazz opposed to classical comes from the players forming "a whole new arrangement of the song at the same time. playing it for the first time--that's the definition of the movement."  



We left the next morning, early early. Took off to Montreal. But not before they told us about a spin-off cirque de soleil called Les Sept Doigts (The Seven Fingers) show we were invited to, with discount "performer's" tickets, I might add. I could only pray we wouldn’t be asked to much acrobatics to prove our authenticity as said “performers.”

OH BOY, CAN'T WAIT FOR LES SEPT DOIGTS

P.E.I. (Î.P.É.) (The Shire)

The road to get to Prince Edward Island (PEI) was Highway 16. We got off the train in Sackville, New Brunswick, a quaint little college town that the agent at the train station told us was the arts capital of the maritimes. We were skeptical. The man was overeager to help us, laying out in fervent detail all the necessary tools for backpackers like ourselves. He gave us very, very detailed directions and talked for a very long time about the spectacle of PEI. He had to be starved for company working as the station agent in Sackville, which seemed a dead town. He was very informative, explaining to us the site "Hostels International" and how to look it up on Google, imploring us not to be late for our train on Wednesday, writing down precisely the time it left, detailing out a map with pointers of hot-spots to check out in PEI while we're there, as well as giving us the numbers for the cab companies in Sackville in case we changed our minds about hitchhiking. All in all, the effort of the man was very sweet and it was understood that he rarely came upon the opportunity to indulge to patrons with his multitude of information. I felt strangely like i was doing him a justice by listening, abiding to his lengthy information about this small town and all of the facets that keep it as a crossroads. He was pale, with a growth on his upper chin--but he was young. And besides the heavy bags under his eyes and the unique, desperate energy; he was a remarkable man. I imagine most adaptations of the man Charon, who tows you across the river Styx, are inadequate in their representing the man as old, withered and frightful. It would make more sense in the mythologies for him to be a young man, condemned to the service of an incessant feat. That way, as the tow comes under way, you can see the suffering in hope for the outside world. That's the sadness, that he was young. And he guided us as best as we could, even encouraging us to walk on the train tracks to get to the road, "it might be dangerous, but it's faster. You watch yourselves there."

We walked the 7 kilometers (a little less than 5 miles) to Highway 16 and waited at the on ramp for four hours chatting about making a musical called "Paris, 1968" that refined the history into a war between the representation and the real, calling that spectacomachy. Mark also thought it was stupid that the french spelled "West," "Ouest;" I believe he thought it was pretentious. Mark had believed it would be a better idea to split up to more easily attract drivers. I thought that wait would be unseemly lonesome, so i made the executive decision to stay a pair. I'm glad I did.

Even though we were waiting for what seemed like forever (especially with the excruciating build-up and let-down of every passing automobile. Imagine having to watch a commercial break for four hours, with each commercial you hope that your show is coming back on. Well, maybe that's an adequate metaphor). It was getting cold, but we were talking about all kinds of things so it made the wait easier. For instance, one of the games we played was deciding on whether or not drivers were pissy, rude, afraid of us, or just so zoned out they didn't see us. While it sounds bitter, it was; but it was fun.

I thought i had seen a Tim Horton's, the Canadian staple coffee/donut shop, at the truck stop near the junction. After a few hours, mmm mmm coffee and donuts sure sounded good. Mark said they were probably talking about us at the stop. Everyone had seen us. They were probably asking (gossiping, really) about us on their CB radios ("those guys still out there?") So we went in. No Tim Horton's, i was wrong. Just a diner. We got there like 50 minutes before it closed. Ordered hot tea and french fries.

Now, supposedly the french fries in Canda are exemplary, particularly in the Maritimes. A product of PEI greatness, the potato crop. You can't get fries that'll compare anywhere else. But not these salty cardboard potatoes at the truck stop. Uninspiring, to say the least--but at the time, they would do. Warm and heavy. It was a cold night, lower 40's.

I fell in love with the waitress, a shy red-haired girl that would be in one of those country songs, "I worked here my whole life and damned if i'm staying, but damned if i'm leaving..." She was interested in our adventure and said she lived on the way to the PEI bridge (our direction!). I didn't have the nerve to pitch the idea of a ride to her, just then. I was hoping we were charming enough that she'd pick us up on her way home, but after consorting with co-workers she probably thought it a bad idea. Yes, yes.

But we were out there, embittered by the cold. A joke began

about complaining about the girl not picking us up. I'd say to Mark, "hey, was that your girlfriend that just passed us?" He'd say, "I don't think your girlfriend loves you anymore." The tirade kept us going, and in a pathetic way it was sad, but not pathetically sad--the sad that it takes in overpowering a weakened situation--like most Beyoncé songs. In a fresh way, it was absurdly sad. Ah well, we thought. We decided at about 11:30 that we weren't going to be picked up that night. We went to a nearby thicket of pine trees to sleep on a grassy moss, that as Mark says in his blog "was nicer than any mattress i stayed on for the rest of the trip."

We woke up early on, and went back out to the road. To cut it short, we spent 20 hours waiting on the side of the road in New Brunswick. At about 1pm the next day, Angelique picked us up.

She was a lovely woman. A government agent for the Treasury, we were her first hitchhikers of all time: "I've never done this before, but i figured what the hell." She was incredibly sweet and drove us all the way to Summerside in PEI, even offering us a trip back when she came back across! When we got out of the car, she asked us a strange question. Doting on the fact that this woman in her 30's with kids whom was a worker for the government, i couldn't identify with her so much as to ascertain what she might have meant. What i mean to say, the way i misinterpreted her was just as flippantly absurd as what she had really been asking. But then again, i learned that essentially everyone in Canada does--doctors, lawyers, bankers, students, the lot! She asked, "you guys puff?"

I thought the question was weird, so i asked her, "you mean sex?"

Mark explained that she meant pot. I felt kinda stupid, but i had never heard that euphemism short of the Peter, Paul and Mary song. Either she didn't hear me or she didn't care, because she still offered to take us back.  Awesome.  I guess we could prepare for a wild ride.

Angelique took us to her hotel in Summerside where she was running late for a conference or something. Oddly, there was a antique car show of Ford Model-A's gearing and cleaning up in the parking lot. Upon talking to one of the old greasemonkey gents we learned that they were rich bastards from New England that transported their cars to exotics places (Scandinavia, New Zealand, Asia, The American West) to drive around in a big train of old cars and honk their horns and flip people off. Man, old people's hobbies sometimes blow my mind! Anyway here's a picture of what i looked like in the reflection of a wheel cap:

So we were in Summerside, but trying to get to Charlottetown, a good 70 kilometers away. It was nearing mid-day and judging by the luck we had had in New Brunswick we expected it to be a hard trek. But just as soon as Mark put out his thumb, a gentleman pulled over and offered to take us. IT WAS A REAL LIFE MIRACLE!

The man who picked us up was named Joshua, a very nervous Johavah's Witness who had lived on the island for his entire life. We gauged afterwards that Josh probably had not had many interactions with strangers in his life. He was just a kind soul who really didn't know how to talk to people. He was training to be a mechanic and had worked on a farm for pretty much all of time. I tried to engage him in conversation about either of these things, but he simply said, "I really don't have any interest in farming/mechanics. It's just what i do." I was a bit dissappointed in this, but Mark seemed to empathize. He talked about how he worked on bikes a whole lot, but hates talking about it. It irks him the people who know so much trivia about bike manufacturers and the types and styles. Joshua told us about his love to drive on the red clay of PEI. "I love the land," he said. He munched on a 99cent Wendy's chicken sandwich for most of the trip, another thing he seemed to love.

I could understand Josh's interest too. Prince Edward Island was perfect. Somehow the clouds managed to maintain this overall pretty impression--all cumulus, all the time. It was like big bunches of imagination lying in dormant comas, what Louis the whateverteenth must have looked out on when he opened the windows and looked at the bushes at Versaille. Immaculate. The landscape is beautiful. The hills have a soft roll that stretches over the entire island. And the land is red. The island is built on this sediment composite of red clay, so all the soil is red prompting the nickname The Red Planet (i made that up, but i imagine someone came up with that before me, surely!). Looking out the window at the transfixing scenery, silence dominated the car. Except for Joshua's rattling his fingernails in rolling succession on the steering wheel, no body spoke. I have mentioned before the somewhat latent suspicion I had that Joshua had not had many interactions with strangers in his life, which explains the question which came next,

"So--uh--" he paused, searching wildly in his mind for a question, anything to fill the void...

"...you guys like any interests?"

Mark and I shared a glance, then i guess we kind-of rattled on about some basic things we enjoyed: reading, biking, hiking, traveling Canada. It was weird. He obviously wanted us to fill the void but wasn't actually interested in the conversation. I thought maybe i could engage him in talking about the Apocalypse, which another Jehovah's Witness had explained to me in really explicit, wonderful detail back in California--but he still seemed only to nod, what seemed slightly annoyed. OH! and the biggest oddity! His plan had been to take us merely to his stop, ten kilometers from where we started. But, he ended up driving us the whole way!

"Well, i haven't got much to do," he explained.

We were wowed. He basically dropped us off at the doorstep. Those Jehovah's Witnesses, man, are immaculate with their kindness. It was really amazing. I hope for his sake he learns to engage strangers more in the future; a man that kind should have a bevy of friends! A truckload! A mess! A gross!!

We were going to stay with a kid named Chris whom i found on couchsurfing.com. He was an interesting kid--half-nerd, half-hippie. He made money as a busker to tourists who visited throughout the year.

(Fun Fact: We all know that Anne of Green Gables was a popular story set in Prince Edward Island. But did you know that it is part of Japanese high school curriculum. So, like, 80% of tourists to PEI are Japanese--and apparently LOVE Anne of Green Gables and LOVE buskers.)

By the time we were through in PEI, we had designated the place as "The Shire." Surely, you all have kept up on your Lord of the Ring's mythology because of Peter Jackson's famous movies. The shire is a paradise set up apart from the conflicts and horrors of the rest of the world. It is a farming community that subsists on good cheer and healthy eating. It is a small community, rural and beautiful. It's P.E.I.

PEI is an island that is mainly agriculture. There's a university and some other basic stuff, but truly it's a small kept-away nook. If you think about an island like this, that doesn't have wilderness areas really, there is no harmful wildlife. No cougars lurking in the bush or on cliff-faces. I take for granted that everyone in Canada is much nicer to. For instance, i saw a drunk get kicked out a bar, got right in the bouncer's face and the bouncer held his ground. As the man walked off, even pissed off, he apologized. I've seen knives pulled in the states for putting Weezer on a jukebox.

The house we were staying at was amazing. They had a hobby of smoking weed out of a collection of fruits. No kidding. They would buy fruits, exotic fruits--apples, mangos, grapefruit, bananas, orangutan--to smoke out of them. They had a whole rotting collection in a crisper in the refrigerator. Seemed a little Daumer-esque if it wasn't so damned CUTE! Also, a couple of the roommates had an anachronistic (it seemed to me) fascination with Magic cards (I mean i thought that trend died, not here!). Everyone ate potatoes, puffed weed, played magic cards and sung this interesting celtic-derived folk that was taking evolutions into sectors of indie rock and hip-hop. The man who is most well-known for the genre is named Stan Rogers. His folk is definitive maritime folk, the brand that coagulates around the towns of Halifax, Charlottetown and Moncton. Here's a song he wrote about having to work out West to make money, called "The Idiot":

Incidentally, when i was in Alberta, i met a man from Newfoundland. I'll tell you all about him later. But he has tremendous pride for the Maritimes as well, and turned me on to this charming (as well as more contemporary) ode by Classified:

So now you have a sense of Maritime music. It's pretty eccentric. And lovely!

On the first night there, they took us to open mic at bar called Harriet's. I have always been pretty skeptical about open mics. But this one was different. I don't know how to describe it other than a tranformation. This guy, Chris, who we were staying with just gave himself up on stage. He entirely handed his ticket, his soul to the performance and fell into the role of infatuated romantic, leaning into the song, begging for it with his voice. It was wonderful. All the singers were wonderful. Especially this one girl, Marie. She was a pretty French-Canadian girl who was so petite and shy. She seemed so nervous and had that desperate look of worry about approval when you engaged her in conversation. But when she stepped out onto the stage, when she started and really poured into it, there was everything: a truly naked lunch. She was raised and magnificent, a yodle from her throat, carried by eminence, by eloquence and music. It just all made sense. I felt my heart quiver. It was no wonder everyone was in love with the girl.

The household was set up so there were three guys living there. One was a private in the ROTC and the other, named Christensen was this taut wiry nerd with muscles who loved Magic cards (his family was descended from vikings but as he put it, "they're all giant hippies now"). Down the street was a household with three girls. The private dated one of the girls. Christensen dated another. The last was Marie. Marie and Chris were left stranded from the perfect equation. So when they were prompted with the (by now) redundant pressure, it went like this:

"So two of the guys date two of the girls, and we're just waiting on the last two."

Marie responds sarcastically, "We are going out. We just don't sleep together."

"Gonna change that," Chris coyishly kids, but there's a visceral heartache there that resounds in his face, and again in the music. It's so perfect, it's a melodrama. She, the lonely nervous angel, and he the helpless romantic nice-guy, straining for an affection they can only hear in music but neither hearing the other's full song. Oh, these damn days of our lives! Or maybe he hears her but she doesn't hear him. The scenario made me come apart, I felt more tension than an old sweater being pushed through razor wire. I felt like i was in the midst of a drama i only ever thought i'd see on stage. But here was the reality! That's the kind of magic i'm talking about with "the shire," a visceral image of life and the story. It was the power that took Hamlet going into a theater while he was part of a theater to finally achieve some kind of supreme sublimation in necessary justice. A meta-perfection, only achieved in infinite smallness and infinite bigness. I felt like i was teetering in the scope of something beyond dimensions. A dimentia! I have never been that close to the real story before.

In whole the experience was delightful. We got back to their apartment after a night of singing and drinking like jolly little people, then everyone got baked and traded music. Everyone was floored when Mark put on Remixes, Volume 1 by Ratatat. It was like a kaleidoscope of sound; for folk-crazy people, i can imagine what that kind of layering suddenly posits. Maybe i'm underestimating their music knowledge though. Also, they had a big Canadian flag hanging up in the living room, a sign of sure pride of country. As Mark put it, for this kind-of crowd, "that would not happen in the US."

We got up late in the morning, and Mark insisted we see the coast even though it was raining. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't have it. It was ridiculous to think of not seeing the coast of PEI while he was here. If he had to, he'd walk there. And that's just what happened. We got something to eat, and started hitchhiking, a slow and unsuccessful process of flagging down unresponsive drivers. We did get picked up once though:

This girl in a white camry pulled over and let us in. I sat in front and Mark sat in the back on a pile of her clothes, shoes, magazines and plastic bags full of appliances and food. On the dashboard in front of me, a big spider was weaving a web. Mark's door did not close all the way, he had to hold it with his hand. He also did not have a seatbelt. "Casey" as i called her, because she never told us her name, smoked menthols while driving at top speed down Country Road 15, north towards the coast. She had blasting on the radio first a remix of "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake and that song "The Vengaboys" by the Vengaboys. You know, the one where that weird-looking man dances a fool in the Six Flags commercials. As the music played she darted down the road, weaving into the other lane to pass cars. At one point she passed a stopping school bus; i thought we'd hit it. At some point she turned down the music and started talking. She had just moved to Halifax with her boyfriend two days ago; "my boyfriend broke my nose," she said. Though her nose did not look broken. She told us she picked us up because she hated to walk. One time her car broke down on the way to pick up a friend at the train station, "and i refused to walk." She waited for her friend to walk to her, to come get her. She drove us to Harrington, a good 20 miles up road in a matter of five minutes. She was a tiny girl, very very small with pale white skin who looked girly with freckles, straight platinum hair with pink accessories in it and piercings in her cheek and nose. She looked like a raver. "Well, bye," she said, at the tip of her driveway. Mark and I got out, then "whoa."

Then we started walking. Kept trying to be picked up, but drivers weren't having it. We walked for four hours before we came close to the coast. Mark was taking pictures like a mad man the whole way. On the route, we found a cemetery by the side of the road, he took tons of pictures there. We ate some apples from an apple tree by the side of the road too. We bought some old, old cardboard cookies at a dime store. Mark tried to ask them how hard it was to get picked up hitchhiking and they looked at him like he was going to rob the place. It was a strange encounter. On the road, i came across a dead raccoon. I picked it up to throw it into the grass to decompose better. I saw inside a cavity that a bug had ate out from its anus--it was gory and red and deep and hollow. I don't think i'll ever forget the image of that dead raccoon's eaten cavity. It was a horrifying impression.

We finally got to the coast after hours upon hours of walking. It was windy as shit that day, and the coast was like none other i had ever seen. There were huge breakers set up to collect sand as dunes in order to protect the wild grass that grew there. It wasn't a coast for swimming, but more a conservation area--with recreational facilities, like a park. There were crows flying around all over the place. Mark snapped a genius photo of the corpse of a bird being torn apart by other crows. It's stunning. If you ever get the chance, ask him to see it. I might post it here if he lets me. There was also this strange pink foam that was building up from the surf. I was exhausted that day and began to lose my mind. I have a video of me taping this foam, and a song i made up called "quivering jelly t.v.". My idea, at the time, was to have an absurd television show which broadcasted the life of this quivering pink jelly 24/7, not unlike the plot of the Truman Show, but this would be much more mundane.  If you would like to see the video ask me for it.  I've decided that keeping it up here, well, it just makes me look too damn crazy.  Here's the ocean, though:

Doting on the luck we had had hitchhiking during the day up towards the coast, we were pretty realistic in our assumption that we would not be picked up at night going down into the mainland. Our option was to either walk back or find a way to call a cab. We found a restaurant called the Millhouse next to a tourist resort, set back, called Vacationland. The place looked amazing, so we decided to eat there. Good, simple food. Delicious, PEI-grown (or as they put it "near") potatoes and a slice of pie for dessert. Mark ate mussels, sabotaging his potential Vegan of the Year award. The woman was amazed we had walked from Charlottetown and made it seem like we were crazy. It really wasn't that long of a walk. Not crazy, anyway. It seemed we were the only people to ever walk down 15. She was spry and country, with weird teeth and a jolly laugh--the type of woman you would imagine runs a restaurant that friendly.

After we had eaten, we decided spending money on a cab would be unnecessary. We could just walk back. The woman thought we were morons out-of-our-mind, but i think we found that encouraging. The walk back was amazing. The night made it really dark on the road, so all the stars were bright and the houses--set way back and lit only modestly--looked cozy and romantic. I can see why Anne of Green Gables raved about this fucking place. It's perfect. Mark took some very elegant photos of farm houses and trees. I'm pretty sure you can check them out on his block (it's http://train.ography.org) in case you forgot. We finally got back to Chris' at 3am, never to see him again. We woke up early in the morning, and rather than risk it took a bus to Summerside for thirteen bucks to meet back up with Angelique. We had some time, so i showed Mark the wonder of the Tim Horton's experience. We got half a dozen donuts and i wish i could say it blew our minds, but it was sugary fatass dough. Surprise! Although, for what it was, it was pretty good.

Angelique took us back over the giant bridge that seperates New Brunswick from PEI. There's usually a forty dollar tax to cross the bridge, but because she was a government employee--she didn't have to pay. So we didn't have to pay either! We had decided early on we would to enhance our chances of getting a ride. But what luck, riding with this hip, double-0 agent, we were born free! Amidst puffs she told us about the race riots in Nova Scotia in 1990. Apparently she had been somewhat involved after some event involving her sister. I won't go into it, but it seemed hostile. She also detailed the feeling of the separatist riots in Quebec, something she had seen as well. I had never heard of any of this turmoil, but she had apparantly been on the front lines. Really, we knew nothing of Québec, not the language, the history, the culture, nothing. "Expect to be treated rudely there," she said. I think at that point we gulped.