2013/01/18

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  Looking east from a tenth floor, with Sherbrooke St. below – 2013.01.14
  Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes
  

  Blame it on Carlo

  In a comment last December I think, Carlo mentioned that he was happy about my return since that would spell also the return of my long posts. Since then, I didn’t have either the time, nor enough access to the internet, to do so. Not to mention one-finger typing. But since I edit my posts in a separate editor, I started one some time ago, adding bits and pieces now and then, and waiting until its size met Carlo’s expectations before posting it. So it’s all Carlo’s fault in some way that I didn’t post more in recent weeks. (just kidding, Carlo, another instalment of my silly humour )

  

  Appetite

  I look at some of the food pics I’ve posted here in the past and I get hungry.

  

  Frustration

  I look at some of the food pics I’ve posted here in the past and I get hungry and I get frustrated knowing that for many, preparing them with only one hand would be very tedious, at best, if not at all at the worst.

  

  Grasping certain realities

  I don’t think I mentioned this before, but when I was in the coma, they did not know if I would survive. I was on artificial respiration. I remember nothing of this, of course. So it’s hard for me to realize that I came to one hair of dying. It’s like it concerned somebody else.

  

  Shooting oneself in the foot

  I guess this pic that I stumbled upon in the internet could be interpreted in two contradictional ways. Personally I am of those who think that the gun problem in the U.S. could be what will make it crumble as a society one of these days (or generate a civil war, it’s the same thing). I also think this “problem” is maybe one that can’t be fixed because the possession of arms coupled with an obsession about “national security” are both embedded in the core fabric of the country. Stricter gun laws will only act as a flame retardant, me thinks.

  
  Pic © owner unknown

  

  Low life expectancy

  That big Dec 27 snowstorm which I mentioned in my post of that day turned out to be ‘historical’. Montreal had the largest snowfall in a single day ever, 45 cm. Since then, we’ve had many days of rain and mild weather (aka around 8 C) and not only is there virtually no more of that storm’s snow, but not much also of what was already on the ground at that date. Crazy weather. (add-on: it didn’t last)

  

  Radiating

  For the third year in a row, a Canadian (read Québec) film is among the top five nominees for the “Best film in a foreign language” Oscar. Could be worse.

  

  Much of the same

  Much hoopla about gay marriage and gay adoption in France these days. We hear the same old arguments about these measures being a lethal attack against civilization. Like the ideology-blinded Republicans in the U.S., these opponents won’t bother looking around in those other countries, like Canada, or large cities, like New York or Mexico City, where these measures are already in place and who are still very much civilized thank you.

  

  View from a former outsider

  Dany Laferrière is a Haitian-born author (1953) who fled the Duvalier dictatorship when he was in his mid-twenties, with Montreal as his destination. (I’ve mentioned him before). During the thirty some years since his arrival here, he also lived part-time in Miami. I finished his last book recently, “L’art presque perdu de ne rien faire” (The Almost Forgotten Art Of Doing Nothing). They say that there are no better eyes to gauge a society than those of an outsider. This small chapter from that book is so much us.

  A Northerner

  I come from a country of eternal summer. And for over three decades, I have been living in a country of which poet Gilles Vigneault says that «this is not a country, it is winter». So I left summer for winter. But it’s in Montreal that I felt summer for the first time. To know summer one must have crossed winter, I never ceased to repeat. And yet it’s in the heat of Miami that I had the strongest nostalgia of cold. One day when it was warmer than usual, I felt a frantic desire for ice. The call of the cold. The icicle, like a salmon, rose into that dark corner of my memory to remind me that I was also a man of the North. But being a man of the North is not only to be able to withstand very low temperatures, it is especially to be obsessed to the point of never losing sight of winter. Even in summer. When we speak of a good or a bad summer, we don’t do it with regards to that summer itself, we simply ask ourselves if we stored enough heat to face the coming winter. We talk about winter as the French speak of gastronomy or wine, just goes to say. When people ask me, as they do with all those who were not born here, what struck me the most upon arriving in Montreal, I reply that it is not winter but all which surrounds it. What one must know about the cold. Winter sports (skiing, hockey, snowshoeing). Movies whose story takes place in winter (Kamouraska). Weather reports that we hear several times a day without ever feeling any fatigue. The endless discussions, standing in the kitchen with a glass of wine in hand, about the Stanley Cup, Quebec’s independence and the survival of French in North America. The fact that the mood of an entire city depends on a few more degrees. Which suggests that it is easier not to notice an elephant in a corridor than to miss winter. A man of the North, it is the one who is surprised each year of the return of winter. One only has to see how excited the first snowstorm is annually greeted by people (adults as well as children) just as by the media. It makes front page in the dailies. And at least three reports in the evening news. We get excited to the point that a tourist might wonder if it’s the first time that it snows in this country. .

  

  

  Free at last

  It’s a little presumptuous of mine to use this famous Martin Luther King quote, but it’s to signal that as of yesterday morning (Jan. 17) I have been released from that readaptation hospital where I was imprisoned (sort of ) since December 7, where I was transferred from a much bigger prison, Hôpital St-Luc, not far away, and where my three-month stay was anything from resort-like.

  My ward (10th floor) at the readaptation hospital was some kind of international cuckoo’s nest, with many of its around 25 patients not Canadian-born, and most older than me. Those who have been following this blog for some while may be tempted to comment that as per cuckoos are concerned, who am I to talk! This floor cared for patients having neurological problems. I was there because of my arm, but most others were people who had suffered a stroke (ACV in French). Many had speech problems and/or were confused or suffered from short memory loss and other cognitive problems. Many were also incontinent (I spare you the details). Some didn’t speak French or barely English, so when they talked to nurses or attendants, god knows who understood what. At first, the woman who was sharing my room was a nice person who didn’t talk much, which was fine with me since she was aphasic (because of a stroke) so when she talked it was very relevant about a certain reality, except that this reality was in her head only. She also had other heart problems and a pacemaker. One day she was sent to a real hospital for an operation to her heart and did not come back. She was replaced by a 92-year old Ukrainian who couldn’t talk except for grumbles that only his wife understood, didn’t speak French, couldn’t eat or drink anything, water included, because of a temporary (well if a couple of months is temporary) kind of dysphagia (stuff would go direct into his lungs) so he was fed through a tube connected to his belly and his stomach, whose regular maintenance made me so happy in the middle of the nights. He also had a bunch of numbers tatooed on one arm which I learned were a souvenir from three and a half years passed in Hitler’s resorts, namely Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mittelbau-Dora and another one whose name I forget. On top of that, he was partly incontinent. Four or five days before I left, he was all smiles since he was finally permitted to start eating and drinking again through his mouth, slowly at first, but still the same… Then, the second day before I left, he started peeing blood. In the evening, he was whisked by ambulance to my old home for three months, Hôpital St-Luc, where he had a heart attack soon after arrival, probably due to heavy blood loss, I was told by his wife the next day. She also told me that prospects were not good and that for some time now, he was on the wharf waiting for the train going up there to frickin stop and pick him up. Life is great. Then again… In economics, they talk about the cost of living. Maybe it could be applied to one’s health also.

  I kind of found it strange that my hospital ordeal ended as it had started, with perfumes of death lingering around. My first roommate, before all hell broke loose, was a fiftyish man who was originally from France and who, him, had no speech problems, and spoke very well thank you. He was lectured and we had very interesting conversations, at least when they were not changing his bedsheats and everything associated, since he had frequent bouts of baby-like yellow, liquid and very smelly diarrhea, and was bed-stranded. I learned quickly that I had to forget about being fussy. It helped later when it was my turn to have my ass wiped. Anyhow, we appreciated each other’s company. But the thing is, this man had pancreas cancer which had metastized all across his body. One day, ambulance workers came to pick him up to bring him home. When he passed in front of me on the stretcher, I took his hand and told him how I would really miss him, to which he replied that it was the same for him. I know I also shed a tear, and of what I remember, his ex-wife who was there and who came every day, did the same when I told her goodbye. Life is great. Then again…

  Some days later, I was hanging between life and death in an intensive care unit, connected to a brand new and sophisticated respiratory machine of which Friend and my family members present were told I was the first one ever to be connected to. The French man had probably some kind of equipment in his home to help him go through his last days. He’s most likely dead today. I’m [still] alive. Life is great. Then again…

  Coming back to the readaptation hospital, as per the medical personel went, nurses, auxiliary nurses and attendants, it was a cross between a branch of Haïti, a smaller branch of Central and especially South America, a nice lad from Mexico City, two hidjab-wearing Muslim women, and a varied but not very large selection of “pure wool” Quebecers. Some kind of Babel Tower. Pretty much Montreal, in fact. The one I like, anyways.

  

  • 21:37
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