État d'Urgence, Montréal

aka State of Emergency, a five day festival for the homeless in Montreal, organized by the Action terroriste socialement acceptable, French for Socially Acceptable Terrorist Action. Artists from around the province come together and entertain the homeless people in an urban village setting near my home. During the 5 days, le sans-abri, the homeless, are fed, clothed and entertained; but more importantly the non-homeless people are given an opportunity to mingle with them in a non-zoo, non-phobic setting.


Here's a seemingly well to do girl dancing with a sans-abri; if her expression is misleading, it is the photographer's fault - she really enjoyed every moment of it, just as much as this man did, this man with traces of a good looking youth bygone.

Some photographers, keep their distance, clean shaved, lining the wall next to the stage; but yet others mingle with the people, dance and have a good time while taking pictures. I try to learn from the latter. They are also the people who'll talk to you when they see you have a SLR, and offer tips and critique your pics...

The ambiance was exhilarating and thought provoking. Homelessness, whether in Sri Lanka, US or here is sad. But they are all very different. with the tight social/familial network in SL homelesness is of a lesser degree, but if you are homeless, you are only the recipient of benevolence in a patronizing manner. The number of homeless people here is quite large; that comes with the looser social ties of the western society - but the strong middle class supports them in the form of shelters, food shelves etc. And then Montreal goes a step further with events like this.

Still these countries can do much more. Every winter a few homeless people die in the cold, outside, in parks, under bridges. And every time, the shelters talk about how many beds are vacant in a given day. But in reality when these people go to the shelters several things are checked - are they taking their medicine, are the wasted, are they stoned. So people with sizeable egos, refuse to go there... I totally understand the need for such checks at these shelters. But I also have the question - why save a grown human's life, just to crush their soul and rid their ego?

I can't be like this, Frankie. Not after what I've done. I've seen the world. People chanted my name. I got it all. Don't let 'em keep taking it away from me. Don't let me lie here 'till I can't hear those people chanting no more
- Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby

Soulless

I just learnt that ... means speechless; so dot dot dot.

Just a few comments over the past few weeks -

You can not buy a mac, you used to come in here and harass him for having a mac and now you buy a mac - I lost all respect for you

But I thought about it; I wanted an all in one desktop, but was refusing to buy and Apple just cos it is an Apple - doesn't that make me as crazy as an Apple cult member who buys stuff just because they are an Apple thing? I don't want to be close minded - I want to be open minded...

No Apple yet - I am trying to decide between getting a 27" and not parting with 2000 of my hard earned Canadian dollars. In reality, the 21.5" should be more than enough for me, like one of my Canadian (ahem... sorry, I meant to say Quebecois) friends pointed out... Should I, as a Sri Lankan, be ashamed that I am taking anti-supersize advice from an occidental person? How does someone who watched all of South Park, Colbert Report and dvd's on a 12" li'l laptop, not be satisfied with a 21.5"??? You'd be surprised how... But I am going to be a good girl and live within my means - I think I am settled with the 21.5"

"I do not, and I mean do not, want to turn in to an Apple crazy who stocks their house with iThis and iThat - those iPhones might be cool with their linux capability that allows remote shifts and all sorts of fun stuff, but I ain't getting one"... "Errr... give her a year, she'll come around"

I am going to go with a friend (apparently I need a lot of emotional support when I shell out all that money!!!) and we have been postponing it forever now... it's almost like I shouldn't buy a mac... :)

In the end, I did buy the smaller 21.5" (because of people who said "the 27 is nice, but the 21.5 is nice too", after wavering between the 27" (because of people who said "heck you don't need a 27") and 21.5 (because of people who said "c'mon buy the 27") - I am stubborn like that yes, cutting my nose off to spite my face is not that infrequent with me.... But still thank you everyone for your counsel!

The $500 saved will go towards a new cool camera lens and a donation to the homeless shelter; the very people who are celebrating a 5-day fest today, the very people who, as we were walking home with our expensive toy begged us for a dollar and we said "sorry we don't have any"...

Canadian French

Yesterday the French guy in school became a citizen of Canada in a whole swearing-in ceremony. To commemorate, he put these two flags next to his bureau. I made a whole bunch of Quebec flag printouts (yes, we killed the Amazon rain forest... but it was for a good cause) and put it next to these two flags and had the other two guys, who are Quebecois, put the QC flags next to their bureaus too!! It was sort of in jest, I am very against any sort of nationalism and they all know this very well.






































So they returned the jest, by printing out a Sri Lankan flag and putting it in my bureau...

So I explained the symbolism of the SL flag to these inquisitive Quebecois/Canadians: the orange stripe for the Hindus, the green for the Muslims, the yellow for the Buddhists (and the Christians really don't matter), the Lion because the Sinhalese people come from a lion according to legend (because really, Tamil people don't matter), the sword for authority (because in ancient times everyone was up for a good fight), the 4 bo-leaves for love, compassion, sympathy and equanimity... It has been a while since I thought about my flag... and couldn't help but think of how it is yet another symbol of division; the only part that now appealed to me, the four bo-leaves.

Romantic Mist

As I was going to school today, rather early, at 9:45a (!!!!!! yes, I know... but that's pretty early for me) the whole place was covered with this beautiful mist and I thought it was pretty hauntingly romantic. And then I thought who fed that in to my head - that mist was romantic... So as I was walking with a friend, I said "look at that mist - it's so romantic" and he looked at me puzzled: "what kind of a woman are you?"... ok so at least that is not too generic, at least... kitsch, but not generic...

Armies of Students on the Escalator

Armies of students on a fine warm November morning, going up the escalator at the UdeM metro. This escalator takes people up the mountain to where most of the classes are; the days that it is broken is almost a nightmare for most people... Everyone at least sighs when they see it is broken, before embarking on the ~150 step journey... at least once I saw someone turn away and go...

How to Hold a Fork

This is actually how he holds his fork... It must be hard to be my friend, because I whip out my camera and snap everything...

I am not anal about these things, but I do notice how people hold their forks and pencils. I come from a place where these things were important social reflections, so I was this short of beaten to hold everything "properly". For my poor, teacher parents, it was important that their kids learn proper manners, they could not afford to have us grow up in to marginalized adults - at that time they didn't know their daughter will grow up to be a heathen physicist - so my parents are excused. But really people have no idea how teaching "manners" to kids makes li'l robots out of them, that grow into big robots, who then go and buy SUV's just because everyone else is, because they can not think by themselves... Ok... the SUV thing was a metaphor, but you get the idea...

I am not saying all the kids who learnt to hold the fork "properly" think inside the box or all the kids who hold the fork "improperly" think outside the box. But what really defines "proper" ways of life?

How each of us decides
I've never been sure
The part we play
The way we are
How each of us denies any other way in the world
- The Cure, in This is a Lie

Today, this guy who holds his fork like this, and I who hold my fork like that, are equally good people - but I had to work that much more to let my creativity grow, than this guy who never was suppressed... Sort of reminded me of my first days in grad school, when I looked around me and saw all my Chinese and former Soviet Union friends, who were brought up with no religion, just as good as I am; I who was brought up in a very Catholic environment... It must have helped that my parents were rebellious Catholics, at least rebellious against the church.

I've changed and the grippe

Someone's rant on Obama being Hitler like (or Charlie Chaplin like...) juxtaposed with one of the many signs of H1N1 phobia, another unjustified, baseless, over-reaction of Western society.

in the Beri Metro...

L'esco

L'escogriffe, bar spectacle, for schooner with tam, ashtray heart and david & the woods. The DJ brought his chien, a li'l italian greyhound/doberman pinscher (please don't ask how that happened... it could just be a baby doberman, given that he was trying to discipline-train him and all also...) to the bar - I tried to take a picture, just then my battery died... you will have to take my word for it...

Grand Bibliotheque

Looking out of the Grand Bibliotheque...

From a conversation that seems from so long ago:

today I am so excited because I am a new and proud ;-) member of La Grande Bibliothèque. I took more comics books home than I was able to carry around and a movie and a series and everything is free.
If i loose my job I will just sit there and spent all my days with reading until I have to leave Quebec again

I love bibliotheques in general... Yeah me too - if I lose my job... and you know what? There's a park close by where a lot of homeless people stay... and then every evening near the metro Berri there's a van giving out food to the homeless... so there, both lodging and food needs are taken care of... We'll have to find a place to shower... worst comes to worst, there's the (somewhat dirty) St Lawrance!!!

Stephen Colbert

These two girls in the metro, it seemed too young to get the sarcasm of the mostly American political commentary, too hippie to care, too French to be able to get it, were reading I am America and So Can You by Stephen Colbert... In my stereotype hyped head I was thinking, these girls have been speaking French with not one word of English, how can they possibly understand this book? But I think they did understand, maybe not all, but more than my stereotypes would allow...

"do not jiggle jello?"

one girl read out loud...

Hurley's

Hurley's Irish Pub, must be my single most frequented pub in Montreal. More than a year ago, October 16th, 2008 to be precise, I came here for the first time; there's a blog entry, but not a word about how pissed I was at this one guy, and how very mean I was to him; we really did not talk to each other almost at all the next day onward... many months of just un-tellable irritability followed... culminating in him breaking my detector... ok 2 days later I bumped into him in the grocery store and acted like sensible grown-ups and I even gave him a ride home - he apologized for breaking my detector, but I am not sure if this was before or after I offered him a ride... and we still kept our distance afterward... and quite a few of my friends, near and far, know about him, let's just say...

but that was then...

Today, I went to Hurley's with him and someone else, after ditching our checkout-Apple-store plans for free-sushi and then more sushi at a restaurant and now since the Apple store was closed we headed to Hurley's... Sitting besides him that night, I could not help but think of him as my most trusted work place confidante now, almost on par with my own brother, my best friend... Life and its ironies... I don't know if I have changed or if he has changed - I suspect it is a mixing of both, with a mixing angle of 45 degrees... I coined the term him-2008 and me-2008 for this... He has since exhibited extreme tolerance and open-mindedness - either he cultivated these over the last year or just never showed me this side of him back then.

And then exactly a week from now, I will be at Hurley's again, not only not uncomfortable, but also actually enjoying his presence... We've tested each other through so many social, political headlocks (yes he is a separatist...), I have felt very comfortable telling him about my heathen way of life, that I have the feeling that we will remain friends for life - I really hope we will.

And then I got teased by the Dave Gossage group that was playing, to the amusement of the whole bar... I seldom blush, but this day I did feel my ears warm with the gush of blood...

Hurley's, hardly my favorite bar in Montreal, hardly my fav beer, hardly my fav music, hardly my fav ambiance; but surely my favorite kaleidoscope bar. Ironically Dave, of the band, was a "witness" to the making of this kaleidoscope all 3 occasions...

That gets me thinking - I make best friends at work, just because if I hate them, I am still forced to stay with them and then with time if and when I like them, I will like them that much more, our relationship is that much more complete... A lesson to be learned... something about giving it a chance... giving myself a chance...

everything passes, everything changes
just do what you think you should do
and someday maybe
who knows baby
I'll come and be crying to you
- Bob Dylan in Ramona