Nomadic Tribe Soup

Shirin says it takes her a while to feel awake in the mornings, and she takes her time. As wide as her smile is her heart, this femme extraordinaire came into my life via my yellow tuque -for which she wrote a little poem. I imagine Shirin opening her big drowsy eyes, the vinyls from the night before in the living room, the vintage cookbooks in her kitchen... How still is everything in the morning. Sweet temptation of lingering. When I wake up these days, it is usually to the sound of someone playing the piano across the back alley my bedroom overlooks. Nothing like a back alley 'une ruelle' in Montreal in the summer.  La ruelle, that wonderful hideout between streets filled with cars, noise and speed. In the Plateau, the pattern is one street followed by a ruelle, then another street, another ruelle. To counterbalance the roar of motorized vehicles, the rush of our anxious civilization, ruelle lingers. The leaves on the giant tree rustle, some sleepy head pops up on a balco...

"No more fence sitting!" ushered T. Lotsofconsonantsforalastname, when he asked me if I was returning to 266 to retake my room and my role as Dave Number Three. After all, Henry and Justin, the bubbles of mold on the kitchen wall were getting lonely and he could use some help taking the garbage out. I never returned to 266 to live although of all the places I stayed in Toronto, it resembled home the most. And perhaps that is why. I am always fence sitting between places, affiliations and even time. I'm somewhere in-between Toronto and Montreal, between past and the present, between celibacy and commitment. I am accumulating perfectly halved experiences, half-hearted romances, a half and half consistency of thoughts and wishful thinking. It is a state of being, as all the decisive people order their complex drinks at Starbucks or similar chains in perfect fluency, knowing what they want, with and without this and that, in this size, I imagine myself standing there, amaze...