In the City

A fine, wet night

I'm in Montreal tonight, on my own.  I came to town with the Infanta but she jettisoned me ASAP in favor of one of her friends here.  Really, I don't mind.  It takes me back, being here on my own as I was so often in college and law school days.

I bought a ticket to The Martian and watched it in one of Montreal's best movie theaters.  I liked the film a lot - for the story, the acting, the production values and also because it was born of a book originally self-published by Andy Weir.  Let us never forget the great lesson taught by Peter Gabriel: "all of the buildings, all of the cars, were once just a dream in somebody's head."

Andy Weir had an idea, realized it, next thing you know Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig are learning their lines and I'm leaning back in a comfy seat half way up.  It's almost as miraculous as the story of The Martian itself.

The film ended just before 10 PM and in the two and a half hours that I was in the theater the temperature had dropped about twenty degrees. The odd-for-November warm wind that buffeted the car on the way into town had changed. It was appropriately cold and the rain had turned to fat snow snow flakes.  I walked home to Whusband's apartment in the McGill Ghetto through the dark McGill campus. I had an umbrella as a shield from the wind and wet snow, which was helpful as I was wrongly dressed. I didn't mind that either, however.  It was just the right amount of wind and cold: bracing without being freezing.  I don't have to go anywhere tonight and as Adam Gopnik once told me, Montreal is most itself in the cold.  The picture above is one that I snapped of St. Catherine Street just after I exited the drugstore across the street from the theater: Montreal looking fine with rain slicked pavements and Christmas decor.

This isn't a real snowstorm, but it has me thinking of the ones I lived through here all those years ago. In student days I could get where ever I had to go on foot.  I didn't have to worry much about snow.  A hush would come over the city on those snowstorm nights - only taxis still out and about in the small hours. I loved to watch the snow pile up on those nights, falling fast passed the yellow streetlights...

I have been, unaccountably, in a bad mood for the last few days.  Thanksgiving was OK but I was irritated, mostly with myself but with others too. This night and this cold wind seem to have blown that feeling away.