Montreal in May

Montreal is in a state of being. 

Being beautifully on edge, charmingly sad, flawlessly imperfect, playfully proud, constantly in love and unmistakably real.

The city is more like an open playground than a secure indigenous cradleboard. You get to stretch like a tree, jump like an antelope, get hurt, recover or remain broken. Montreal is the ultimate transitional space where the reality and phantasies negotiate, form and reform.

When the bagel seller tells you that the bagel you just purchased is as hot as its maker, you know the city flirts like a charming old gentlemen who happens to look like Leonard Cohen. 

When you see the tiny cream cheese tubs being neatly displayed in the fridges of St-Viateur and Fairmount, you know the city recognises and honours harmless human impulses and desires. Hence, the bagel devouring people outside the bagel shops, standing or sitting, have become part of the city scenery. It has nothing to do with elegance but pure satisfaction and soothed curiosity. 

You know the city takes care of you like a mother does when you walk into Atwater Market. The coffee, the fruits, the vegetables, the seafood, the meat, the pastry, the bread, the cheese all smell divine but fundamental. 

When you visit McCord Museum with your rucksack and there is a free locker waiting for you, you know the city is in sync with your physical needs.

Sitting at Place des Arts with a street musician, listening to the story of how he got his guitar signed by Paul McCartney and invites you home to see it, you know the city has got a lot to show and to say. 

When a man comfortably dresses like Moses and talks to you friendly about the amount of mushrooms you need to keep yourself happy, you know the city embraces all kinds of quirkiness without prejudice and lovingly reflects it all back to you. 

In Montreal, you are seen and heard. There are no boxes to tick. You don't feel so much like a peg that can't fit into a square hole.

In Montreal, you are you, with eyes wide open, ears wide open, heart wide open.

People without homes, kids rolling on the grass of Mount Royal, pine corns releasing aroma, street musicians being annoyed by STM, heavy stainless steel Metro doors, colourful baubles at Le Village, feeling real and being real.

Leaving the city by train on a forward facing window seat, Joni Mitchell sings into my ears: 

"I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine 'cause
Part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time"

Unexpectedly but not surprisingly, the city has been engraved in your mind and senses. You absorb, digest, integrate and then leave as who you truly are but more.

Yes, this is it.

My  Montreal in May, my May in Montreal.