i'll grow

i avoided the city when i was in it. kept my head down and my sunglasses on—wearing new clothes. i scraped the southern end of bank street like knuckles on concrete dividers where i used to walk through city hall every day on my way to work.

keeping away from my last two apartments indirectly lead me to thinking about them. we bought a picture of the trojan horse and hung it above our shelf the week i got my pigeon tattoo. i found out what that life was like.

i don't know if i'd've done the same if it was me. but i'll grow.

making new plans

in rabbi rob's office with all of his books and papers stacked in numbered cardboard boxes, he told me that if i changed my place i could change my luck.

he signed my papers and told me he was off to pennsylvania. i told him i was off to montreal.

where his new state has a sliver of erie, buffalo and cleveland are trying to push his little shul into the lake. still he persists. it's admirable.

i headed out to the suburbs when i heard they might have work for me. turns out all i got is bones to dig up.

i'm booking rideshares and printing resumes—i'm making new plans. i'll be catching it out of uottawa and hoping i don't have to see too much of the city.

moving forward

there's this sense i have about the way things are going—i'm not sure what brought me to it. maybe it was the last minute rideshare out of the city, bumping into a traveler coming back from montréal on the way there. or that tomer was at the second cup on laurier east. it could have been the aaron west soundtrack to it all. 

i mustered up my courage on a train bridge over a little canal. i said shehechianu as i threw my gremlins pin into the st lawrence. i don't care what they do with theirs.

i think it was the concept of progress. the feeling of fingernails scratching a peeling tattoo on st viateur watching chasidim strolling by with their kids. i was too warm for my jacket but they were still wearing shtreimels. the two hour phone call with my brother while i sat at the top of the fire escape at the st. james united church—drunk, moody and sentimental. that's what did it for me.

yeah—i'm moving forward.

letter to my friend, from montreal

dallas, my esteemed friend and brother—warmest greetings and kindest wishes from myself, here in my yellow vans stepping on cigarette butts in plateau alleyways. montréal is cooler than i'd hoped but i still skip the jacket to show off my new aaron west t-shirt.

this city has in one evening accepted me like the last year just never happened. people at shul asked when i moved here. "i just arrived four hours ago, as it were," i tell them; "i haven't moved yet, though"—that's what i said.

boys suck. i'm glad you're marrying a woman. i quite badly wanted to catch my train out to bemidji last week. obviously it would not only be a little early for the ceremony but also there's still loose ends in ottawa. a lesson from this, though, is that there is no issue in physically running from emotions. especially if those emotions are places.

i thank G-d for you whenever you're brought to mind. i used to wish i had been made to be part of a different family. eventually i discovered that G-d did give me a better family—just that these were not my blood. took me long enough to realize.

i hope the midwestern june does right by you. good things are ahead. take care of yourself.