penultimate notes, part one
It's my penultimate night here in Montreal. I already feel sad. Pretty down, to tell the truth. It's strange when I think about it though.
I can still remember being full of nothing but hesitance, anxiety, nervousness and pure unadulterated fear when I was at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I had a 7 hour stopover there. My mom was tired after the insane leg from Singapore, so she slept in a chair next to mine. I just sat around, watched the Parisians and other travellers go about their business. Different tongues articulated strangely foreign languages; tired sojourners like my mom slept on the thinly carpeted floor, heads resting on their bags; children running in circles and yelling at the top of their lungs... and I could think of was if I could do this.
It had all seemed so easy in theory: what's so difficult about living on your own? You have no bedtimes, no one who'll query into your late return, no one to inform of your whereabouts, no one to tell you to do chores. You can read and eat at the same time, you can not do the dishes if you don't feel like it... your chocolate remains where it is and not into someone else's tummy. Do your own laundry, prepare your own meals, clean up after yourself, turn the TV off yourself, sleep in till 2 in the afternoon, balance the checkbook etc.
It sounded like fun, honestly. I couldn't wait to get out of Singapore and start living on my own. It seemed so... exciting.
And it has been fun, and exciting. Mostly, anyway.
Yet nothing seems quite the same today. I awoke to a wet morning, but the lawns were lush with green, the trees glittered with precariously perched pearls of moisture, the puddles shimmered with the tiny droplets of rain that barely made a sputter when they hit ground. After a brief conversation with a close friend, I sauntered (very slowly) to the bank, and the walk through the park was nothing short of... fulfilling. I could wax lyrical about it, but I doubt any string of words - coherent or otherwise - would come even a hair's width of doing the scene justice. I doubt a series of pictures, short of a panoramic one (and even then...), would have done a better job.
Right now, I've come to see Montreal, and my little room with its scuffed parquet flooring, to be my home. I've lived here for 3 years (in total), walked the same sidewalks till I knew every crack in them, stood in the middle of the same junction and just listened to the sounds of the city, seen the same moon rise over the spire of the nearby church... I've seen the tree in front of my window bloom with leaves, then bare its skeletal fingers and covered in snow, and right now, it's budding.
Seeing as how this is the penultimate farewell note, tune in in 24 hours for the next - and forgive the pun - ultimate instalment.
I can still remember being full of nothing but hesitance, anxiety, nervousness and pure unadulterated fear when I was at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I had a 7 hour stopover there. My mom was tired after the insane leg from Singapore, so she slept in a chair next to mine. I just sat around, watched the Parisians and other travellers go about their business. Different tongues articulated strangely foreign languages; tired sojourners like my mom slept on the thinly carpeted floor, heads resting on their bags; children running in circles and yelling at the top of their lungs... and I could think of was if I could do this.
It had all seemed so easy in theory: what's so difficult about living on your own? You have no bedtimes, no one who'll query into your late return, no one to inform of your whereabouts, no one to tell you to do chores. You can read and eat at the same time, you can not do the dishes if you don't feel like it... your chocolate remains where it is and not into someone else's tummy. Do your own laundry, prepare your own meals, clean up after yourself, turn the TV off yourself, sleep in till 2 in the afternoon, balance the checkbook etc.
It sounded like fun, honestly. I couldn't wait to get out of Singapore and start living on my own. It seemed so... exciting.
And it has been fun, and exciting. Mostly, anyway.
Yet nothing seems quite the same today. I awoke to a wet morning, but the lawns were lush with green, the trees glittered with precariously perched pearls of moisture, the puddles shimmered with the tiny droplets of rain that barely made a sputter when they hit ground. After a brief conversation with a close friend, I sauntered (very slowly) to the bank, and the walk through the park was nothing short of... fulfilling. I could wax lyrical about it, but I doubt any string of words - coherent or otherwise - would come even a hair's width of doing the scene justice. I doubt a series of pictures, short of a panoramic one (and even then...), would have done a better job.
Right now, I've come to see Montreal, and my little room with its scuffed parquet flooring, to be my home. I've lived here for 3 years (in total), walked the same sidewalks till I knew every crack in them, stood in the middle of the same junction and just listened to the sounds of the city, seen the same moon rise over the spire of the nearby church... I've seen the tree in front of my window bloom with leaves, then bare its skeletal fingers and covered in snow, and right now, it's budding.
Seeing as how this is the penultimate farewell note, tune in in 24 hours for the next - and forgive the pun - ultimate instalment.
NIGEL
1:16 PM
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