2,000 stairs to Valhalla

There are approximately 256 on the winding staircase to the Mont Royal observatory. It is a beautiful staircase, winding up the side of the mountain through the rotting masses of foliage. The firm wood of the steps, the simple utilitarian railing, the observation platforms, the respectable size of it. It's not a set of stairs, it's a staircase. zigzagging zigurats.
There was much consternation form the ranks of our motley crew when we discovered that this staircase was to be climbed nine times during Monday's practice. However, consternation quickly changed to resignation as we lined up at the very bottom and went up.
and up
and up
and up
and up.

And it felt good. It really did. At the end, that is. Heavy breathing turned to shallow breathing which turned to not breathing which turned to lightheaded euphoria and camaraderie. We hummed the tune to chariots of fire and gulped water and stared at the throbbing city below. At the end of it, in the little cove of the team room, twelve bodies lay in a circle, chests rising with full breaths of air.

I have never been that high. I'm not sure it it is possible to get that particular brand of ridiculously high on any substance, whether legal or illegal. The death of a body flying, a mind gone, a present and imminent physicality while the world screens slightly, legs shake, lines blur, quadriceps stop working and it's hard not to laugh for reasons unknown.

I do not mean to overexaggerate the achievement of climbing 2000 stairs. My friend and private hero climbed Everest and died doing it - compared to that, 2000 stairs is not even worth mentioning. It's just that I used to be addicted to the edge and have since become complacent. I biked miles, ran ridiculous lengths, kayaked waterfalls, climbed things that scared me, and now I sleep and enjoy cookies more than I should. I miss the carnal, primordial knowledge of being alive at the brink of something. Comfort is good, but so is extremity. Even if it's found in a city park.

Anatole France

"The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever."

There may be a post coming up about Anatole France, for Anatole France is kind of ballin'.

Rain, plaid shirts, a friend, and the engineering library.

I am for the moment mellow.

Bread and Games

Over the course of the past few weeks, somehow I have found myself entrenched in a million plots and sub-plots. Every move I make will potentially trigger a grenade in the minefield that has sprung up around me. It's extremely invigorating while at the same time quite distracting from things like chemistry and minerology. My classmates seem to need to relieve the stress of going to university with folly and jest and immaturity and intrigues and "that's what she said" jokes. If I went through the entire list of battles/skirmishes I am waging right now, it would look something like this:

The M.I.N.E. game: whenever anyone on the nordic team says the word that is spelled m.i.n.e., they do ten pushups, no matter the situation. This applies to coal mines as well, bonus points if that's the connotation.
The Game for Life: any beverage drunk using the dominant hand must be finished immediately. This is an intense endeavour that must be shaken on. I am slowly learning to do all things with my left hand.
The Surreptitious Game: is somewhat failing, and it's kind of a problem.
La semana cuando hablamos solamente español porque no queremos olvidar la lengua: My roommate and I both used to be quite proficient at Spanish before moving to a franco (hah, not the dictator!) country, and the regression is bad, so we're only speaking Spanish to each other for a week (any english is punished by ten pushups). My biceps are going to be ridiculous at some point.
The Frisbee-Rugby-Soccer-Tag Game: is another nordic invention. Has only happened once, but entirely worth it.
The How Many Brownies/Apples/Superfluous Utensils Can We Steal From Caf Before Anyone Notices: may have to start being done blindfolded. It's kind of easy.
Drinky-Laughy-Spitty: Get a group of friends. Hold hands. Gulp water, then try to hold it in while making each other laugh. Best played in a park at two in the morning wearing spandex.
Assasins: My floor is playing assasins and trying to kill each other. Doubt permeates the air. I can feel paranoia setting in.
The War with McGill Bureaucracy: is possibly the most intense, unpleasant and dire. A secretary/coordinator was extremely unpleasant to me today, but after facing Czech drugstore ladies/librarians/cashiers from the age of eight, things of that nature hold no fear for me. I was unpleasant back. My problems did not get solved, but she started being nice.
Capture the Flag: a fine tradition that accounts for, among other things, the shape of my left eyebrow is finding continuation. We managed to lose the flag, which is always a sign of a game well played.

Just call me Secret Agent Kamikatze, actually. Thank you.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there; otherwise known as Epic Nights in Dorval

Unfortunately for me, George Harrison's cliched quote doesn't quite apply to a recent situation I found myself in. Our conundrum was more of the sort that we knew where we wanted to go, there were many roads, but none of them were accessible, we didn't actually know where we were, and it was two thirty in the morning and getting colder.

To explain:
A friend and I decided that we wanted to go climbing at Ringaud, a rock about 45 km from my lovely hovel on Rue University. Sans automotive transport, the best option was clearly to kick it old school and take our bicycles. This could theoretically have been a good idea had we a) had any vestige of a map or directions b) had set off about four hours earlier and c) had avoided a friend's home brew at a nordic sauna party before setting off. As it were, we set off at 11:17 p.m. on the dot, certainly not drunk but not completely ascetic either, and with a cry of "Westward ho!" started pedaling fiercely down Rue Maisonneuve. To those who have never biked in a city at night - there are few feelings like it. The wind, lights in the darkness, the fluidity of motion, two figures weighed down with giant climbing packs coursing though throngs of clubgoers and musicians headed off into the unknown.

This was chiefly the problem, of course -the unknown. Once Rue Maisonneuve came to an abrupt end, we were a bit short of options. The original plan was to follow Highway 40. Being the ultrabright (almost incandescent) individual that I am, I had pointed out the several structural flaws in this idea to my companion, but was waved off as a worrier. Thus we found ourselves in West Island suburbia staring at the ramp onto the highway. Companion kid flatly refused to take the highway, thus corroborating my initial stance on the issue. We biked around various sketchy areas until we hit Easton Road, whose familiar name compounded the irony of the unfamiliar surroundings. A late-night/early morning pedestrian informed us that we could take another route to get to the West Island shore and continue our trek, and after many minutes, many miles and many unspoken questions we reached a shining expanse of water. It was frankly a breathtaking sight - the lighthouse, the cold, the various signal lights conveying unintelligible messages to the dark. We sat in silent awe, then remembered the shreds of an agenda and spun off into the night.

At this point, however, it was two thirty in the morning. Instead of Ringaud, we were in Dorval, also known as Large House Suburbia of Quebec. Instead of the woods we were planning on crashing in, there were a few trees scattered in wide, rich-people backyards that bordered the shore. We were quickly running out of options. Sample conversation:

"Uh, we're screwed, do you know that?"
"Let's not be reactionary here!"
"Uh, okay, but we're still screwed."
"I'm cold and tired."
"Me too."
"Let's go to Ringaud."
"There is no [several expletives] way we are getting to Ringaud at all, ever. We have no [several expletives] idea where it is!"
"Sleep?"
"Sleep."

So we ended up laying our sleeping bags on some rich person's lawn on the waterfront and shivering for a few hours with intermittent sleep, then waking up to a true morning eudaimonia as the sun flooded the plain of water with unbreakable light. Unfortunately, this moment lasted only until we attempted to turn on our cell phone and realized that it was dead so our fellow climbers would have no way of knowing that we weren't actually in Ringaud and would therefore be driving there in vain. With this stark realization looming ahead of us, we opted to turn around, find a metro, and head back home. We got a few odd glances on the metro. By the time we got home, we were tired, sleep deprived, and somewhat in awe of what had transpired in the past twenty four hours.


The lighthouses on the St. Lawrence. Early morning clear-eyedness.


Train rails. It's possible to go to Ringaud for $8 canadian by train. Why this didn't occur to us I'm not sure.


Our bikes, leaning in exhaustion on the fence.

I believe my nordic team's captain sums it up best:
This probably can go on the list of "Stupidest things our rookies have ever done".

Word. Time to do laundry.

And I guess, but I just don't know, and I guess that I just don't know

My last midterm was yesterday. "Happiness is a warm gun" was stuck in my head for a good portion of it. By the time I stumbled bleary-eyed out of the lecture hall at 8:30, I wanted to do anything organic chemistry, so I ran up Mont Royal barefoot. Running up Mont Royal barefoot is not a good idea during the day in the middle of August, and at eleven at night the foolhardiness of said plan was grudgingly acknowledged by all involved - nonetheless it was a highly pleasurable experience.

This is my chief conundrum with university, and oh, what a pleasant conundrum it is. There is so much to do, and it seems that day-to-day life requires a level of intensity that I haven't used for a while. School is hard for the first time ever, and freedom is unlimited for the first time ever. The past few days have been in the sign of long runs, longer conversations about Latok II, mindblowing acoustic concerts, bike rides to Parc Lafontaine, floral shirts, tam tams, changing leaves, the discovery of excellent pubs (and a few bad ones along the way), bleary-eyed morning training, but also a new addiction to coffee (straight, black, 60 cents from the Architecture Cafe with yer own mug, makes me feel like a superhero for about 45 minutes) and five-hour study sessions in the engineering library. I am realizing that everything requires my full and undivided attention - I have to be fully present in everything I do. Studying, training, fun, longboarding, climbing, revelry, ill-advisedness, sleep, attempting to cook things, all of it. And it's great. I used to be an intense person, and I'm coming back to it. And it's going to be fun.


Stencil grafitti from Prague. It's intense and raw. I will be, too, by the time I get off my roommate's bed and go to class.

It's Canadian Thanksgiving

which means, in effect, that almost no one exists in residence. They've all fled to Kingston and London and Hamilton and Sackville, places that sound mysterious and foreign but can actually be found by throwing a handful of darts at southeastern Canada. So it's just me and a handful of Americans and Vancouverites, bonding in solidarity over being left behind.

Actually, I really like it - being left behind that is, as my thirteen-year-old self used to rail against President Bush's child education policies. I like the strangely quiet feeling of a student residence when the students have left. There is no beer pong on the kitchen table. No one is blasting the trance remix of Beethoven's ninth from the second floor. The television room is empty even though there's a hockey game on. The few of us are like survivors marooned on a ship that even the rats are leaving. Together we are still loud and ebullient, but our cries sound hollow against the walls of a castle meant for more occupants.

Tommorrow it'll be back to the strange and sometimes surreal normality that is cohabitation with two hundred people, but for now we'll watch the silence for signs of movement.

A dep, a plum, a cat

The air is changing. It's crisp, it's cool, the wind blows so that running nordic practice in shorts against the failing sun feels sharp in some way. There should be bagpipes in the background. I feel the continent beyond the borders of the island, pressing in in all its vastness. I envision the leaves changing across the Ontario forests, the cold wind across the Yukon plains, the Northern Hemisphere beginning its tilt toward darkness.

I felt this especially at five last night when I took a solitary bike ride through the St Laurent/Prince Arthur area with no goal in mind. It was typical fall weather all around and I enjoyed just wandering and looking around and trying not to get hit by anything or hit anything.

Oh the things you will see!



A canada postal truck, with a beautiful girl on a bike in the foreground.

A depanneur. Beer, wine, and ice cream. Because that's all you need for happiness. Note it doesn't say "a passing organic chemistry grade, a boyfriend named Bob Dylan forty years ago, and a 15-minute 5-k time". Let's stick with the basics here.


A cat, getting all up in my grill. This shot is particularly bad even by my rather abysmal standards, but the cat was soft.


A dog on a roof. I was getting ready to go climb it and save it, but a short guy with a peacoat came up to me and said "Le chien est ok" by which I inferred that all was well in the position of the dog in the world.


A chalk sidewalk proclamation. I wish I still surfed something other than the Internet. I hear the Gauley calling.


Me, sitting on a stoop in the only clothing that was still clean at that point (boxers and an army jacket - it was the day before laundry day, hence what I wore to class, and practice, and dinner) and clutching a tray of cheap plums bought on a whim. I later lost one when trying to capture the cat better. That failed. Never let it be said I don't suffer for my art.

Initially, I typed "from", instead of "for". Freud may have something there.