falco

falco's a serious place. the password for the internet is perigrinus and the coffee gets made in one of those elegant, mad scientist glass blown contraptions. There is a lot of heavy wood and dark, voluminous leather seating. The space is all concrete with one big glass wall, and the clientele wear blue button down shirts with sturdy framed black glasses. There are three asian women in the cooking, brewing cleaning area who speak an asian language to each other and have little to do with you as a customer, or as a quebecker, if you are a quebecker. they've been parachuted in as much as falco has, futuristic hospitality tucked into the warehouses on casgrain.

the lightbulbs are fabulous and there are a number of other beautiful things sprinkled at right angles throughout. there are dense, black sewing machines and a hammock chair swinging hippyly.

most of the seating looks like it's from a danish school house, with the standard polished pine and gray metal, except it's actually attractive and not just nostalgic. the light is really crisp in here. there are many potted plants the size of a fledgling elementary school project, mostly pot with a sheepish leaf. i am really happy here.

vegetarianism

i need to find out the environmental footprint of the stuff i eat. r introduced a totally obvious idea that had never crossed my mind before: dogmatic divisions of food into meat and not meat are pretty arbitrary, especially when you're eating animal products. what's more, in the process of eating because, well, you have to fill yourself up, in forgoing the dense nutrition of meat you're forced to eat more eggs, wheat, lentils etc, all of which have their own, distinct bad effect on the world. so really, i've gotta find out what those imprints are, how much more egg, wheat etc i'm eating and how that would compare with denser imprint (both in protein and in pollution) of meat. i hope the former is significantly lower, i expect it will be. it was great and a little funny talking to k about this because she got uncommonly riled up because she kind of hates r and feels so strongly about these things, it's wonderful to watch someone care so ferociously.

it's freezing in montreal and it makes me mad because i've sent almost all my sweaters home and we are all so reluctant to turn on the heat because we've already turned those to zero emotionally. when we learn about all the wildlife and plants that are hilariously fucked up by global warming because they start to emerge or slumber at the wrong time of year because they've been duped, we are getting duped. never have i felt so betrayed, so lied to on such an immense scale. it's like a parent having an affair or a government bugging the telephones of its citizens. who do i appeal to? this kind of weather calls for civil disobedience and hunger strikes. i feel epically wronged.

sunset

there was a truly mindblowing sunset and i can't really remember it anymore. i can fill in the colors where i sort of know they should be the way the paintbucket button fills up the spaces between the lines, and i can remember how jumpy, frantically happy i was, but i can't really get excited about the experience in my minds eye. this sucks. ari and sarah claim that i don't actually feel things as deeply as my earlier behavior would have indicated. i was practically dancing in the middle of the street trying to get a better view, dangerously tempting some oncoming cars, and now i guess it's gone. what a rotten thing.

cafe romolo

i'm in cafe romolo and i'm full of resentment. i'm trying to finish editing this thing about miami and i feel deeply wronged by the music in here. there's a cover of journey's don't stop believing bashing the back of my skull. it's a man and a woman alternating the lyrics, and the woman is very happy that she can hold a tune. she sings a note and holds it, so loudly and fervently and contentedly that i want to scream. once a small part of me has become resentful, i'm fixated on it.

when i came in i started watching this old man with wolfish fascination, hoping he would go on to make a fool of himself. he received another beer just as i sat down and pulled it closer. he's hideous; his nose dips down to his tight, flat mouth and his cheeks are rigid. however, he drinks much too slowly for me to watch him destroy himself, he has been at this tragic business for many years and does it very precisely. his hand is shaky but deliberate, when he does go for his gullet he takes formidable gulps. he is a geological (at a geological pace? what's the word for that?) drunkard. he has called for another beer. this is sad and boring, he is unhappiness congealed.

moving

transporting all your stuff from one place to another is a monumental experience. The first thing you think about is how much stuff you have, and how little of it you really want. ah this is too much to think about right now, can't write this