Exquisite Corpse

It’s Thursday. I’m doing Jo’s walk. I pick a random direction, 300 paces from my house. 

I find myself counting paces in twenties. Falling into an intuitive rhythm of twenty. Trusting it.

I’m in the middle of an alley, middle of a block, at Gate 1. Looking for something meaningful to rest my eyes and attention on. The most beautiful tree in the middle of the lane. Seems to have grown despite all encumbrances, telephone wires, fences. They make room for it. Truly a tree. Truly a tree in the middle of the city. The vines overtake the wires, the wires touch the trunk, this cannot be safe. But it looks like it’s been tagged for removal.

How can we live together?

I take a left on this bustling commercial street that is Fairmount, that has bagels and ice creams and gnocchi for take-out. And cafés, always cafés, many cafés in Montreal. And a new specialty cheese shop has just opened. And yet another café. I don’t know how they survive.

The birds are busy. Sounds of the city. I lie on a bench. Notice what I notice. And what I notice are all the different rhythms at play: a person walking slowly; a person riding a bike; a person out for a jog; fast-paced walking with purpose; slower strolling, meditative. 

Jo’s instructions are for a “long straight”. Very different from counting steps. Stop counting. It seems to be what walking is for me. To lose count. It’s all about time and all about losing a sense of time. Just “being with”. Being with myself, the pavement, my footfall. 

This. A padlocked door. Makeshift, temporary. Blocked entrance to this magnificent old swimming pool building that they’ve been working on and trying to renovate into a performance space. It’s been closed for 10 years and each city administration just keeps putting it off. And in the meantime, it’s available and accessible to no one.

So frustrating. All the advantages of city life and yet, this walk seems to be drawing attention to all the hindrances, obstacles, interferences. Our big bullying footprint.

A little public-private library. A give and take. The take-a-book / leave-a-book concept. They’re scattered all over this neighbourhood. The spines of the books remind me of that prompt to write a story using only titles of books. An exquisite corpse, cadavre exquis type of game. Hidden sources.

Is that what city living is? One person leaving something, planting a seed, and us just building on it without knowing what came before.

An exquisite corpse of a city.