Preemptive nostalgia
Jul. 23rd, 2004 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
electriclandHad lunch with Margaret and Eleanor on the terrasse behind Thai Viet. They asked me if there were things I'd miss about Montreal and I said "Oh, YES!" It so happens that I've been compiling a list. Here it is. A work in progress.
I'll miss:
Friends and family: Kelly and Jean, Catherine, Thomas, Barbara and Trevor, Mary, Esther, Andy, Josie, Mary Jane, Karyn, JS, the pool-playing gang, colleagues, ex-colleagues, Yveta, Sian, Karen (when she's in town), the people at my local coffee shop. St Laurent, St Denis, the tam-tam, my stretch of Sherbrooke, the Fringe, the jazz festival, the Cinema du Parc, Ex-Centris, the AMC (now that it's started getting in all the decent movies), the Atwater library, the Atwater market, hearing French spoken all around me, seeing French all around me, my regular lunch stops, the Claremont, Paragraphe, the Word, the Nicholas Hoare on Greene, Au Pain Dore, Cosmo (even though I rarely go), le Swimming, the Old Port (even though it's cheesy, it's fun), Ripples, cheap bus passes, Westmount Park, the greenhouse beside Victoria Hall, Hogg Hardware, the 24 bus, Montreal bagels, steamed hot dogs, the mountain, all the great side streets on the Plateau with triplexes and curving staircases, minimal allergies, all the cool houseware stores around my apartment, Dagwood's. (Hm. A lot of restaurants in there.)
I miss them because they're already gone:
My Great-Aunt Mardie, Nebula, the old Phantasmagoria, the Cinema de Paris, the Fruiterie Westmount (after it closed my cooking went straight to hell), the great comic store in the old building opposite Sam the Record Man, Sam the Record Man, Ichiban (the one near Atwater that had the amazing spicy beef udon soup).
I won't miss:
Potholes, endless road construction, our Swiss-cheese water mains, my nasty landlords, the weird smell in the metro, the Beautiful People on the sidewalk outside Shed, my irritating clients, incompetent drivers who think they're the greatest. Hm. Strangely, that's about it.
But I'm looking forward to:
Being close to my family and my Toronto friends and their various animals. All else is secondary.
Holding my mother to her promise to get a dog if I come home.
The Toronto library system. Where you can find library branches, and one card works for all, and they will get books for you from other libraries!
The Jet Fuel.
Smog dogs and other street food.
Being 5 hours closer to the cottage.
Right turns on red.
Bakka, Sam the Record Man, Eliot's, and more.
I wish these were still there to look forward to:
The old, funky Queen Street West, instead of the Gap-ified version that's there now.
My grandfather.
...is that all? Maybe my nostalgia trip isn't as bad as I feared.
I know you can't go home again, and I'm not looking for this to be Just Like when I was a teenager. (Bizarre to think that I've only really spent 2 years of my adult life in Toronto.) I know I've got a lot of work ahead of me to build a new life. But this time, I'm not going into it on the assumption that I'll be somewhere else in 6 months and there's no point putting down roots, which is where I really went wrong in Montreal. I'm going to dive right in and find things I want to be doing and make the life I want. I'm not falling into the same trap this time.
I'll miss:
Friends and family: Kelly and Jean, Catherine, Thomas, Barbara and Trevor, Mary, Esther, Andy, Josie, Mary Jane, Karyn, JS, the pool-playing gang, colleagues, ex-colleagues, Yveta, Sian, Karen (when she's in town), the people at my local coffee shop. St Laurent, St Denis, the tam-tam, my stretch of Sherbrooke, the Fringe, the jazz festival, the Cinema du Parc, Ex-Centris, the AMC (now that it's started getting in all the decent movies), the Atwater library, the Atwater market, hearing French spoken all around me, seeing French all around me, my regular lunch stops, the Claremont, Paragraphe, the Word, the Nicholas Hoare on Greene, Au Pain Dore, Cosmo (even though I rarely go), le Swimming, the Old Port (even though it's cheesy, it's fun), Ripples, cheap bus passes, Westmount Park, the greenhouse beside Victoria Hall, Hogg Hardware, the 24 bus, Montreal bagels, steamed hot dogs, the mountain, all the great side streets on the Plateau with triplexes and curving staircases, minimal allergies, all the cool houseware stores around my apartment, Dagwood's. (Hm. A lot of restaurants in there.)
I miss them because they're already gone:
My Great-Aunt Mardie, Nebula, the old Phantasmagoria, the Cinema de Paris, the Fruiterie Westmount (after it closed my cooking went straight to hell), the great comic store in the old building opposite Sam the Record Man, Sam the Record Man, Ichiban (the one near Atwater that had the amazing spicy beef udon soup).
I won't miss:
Potholes, endless road construction, our Swiss-cheese water mains, my nasty landlords, the weird smell in the metro, the Beautiful People on the sidewalk outside Shed, my irritating clients, incompetent drivers who think they're the greatest. Hm. Strangely, that's about it.
But I'm looking forward to:
Being close to my family and my Toronto friends and their various animals. All else is secondary.
Holding my mother to her promise to get a dog if I come home.
The Toronto library system. Where you can find library branches, and one card works for all, and they will get books for you from other libraries!
The Jet Fuel.
Smog dogs and other street food.
Being 5 hours closer to the cottage.
Right turns on red.
Bakka, Sam the Record Man, Eliot's, and more.
I wish these were still there to look forward to:
The old, funky Queen Street West, instead of the Gap-ified version that's there now.
My grandfather.
...is that all? Maybe my nostalgia trip isn't as bad as I feared.
I know you can't go home again, and I'm not looking for this to be Just Like when I was a teenager. (Bizarre to think that I've only really spent 2 years of my adult life in Toronto.) I know I've got a lot of work ahead of me to build a new life. But this time, I'm not going into it on the assumption that I'll be somewhere else in 6 months and there's no point putting down roots, which is where I really went wrong in Montreal. I'm going to dive right in and find things I want to be doing and make the life I want. I'm not falling into the same trap this time.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-23 09:44 pm (UTC)I was pleasantly shocked by how nice the "Mountain" was... for a big ole hill its really nice.
Your cottage is one of the nicest places I've ever had the pleasure of hanging out. Hugely relaxing and yeah, good stuff... so 5 hours closer, berry good :)
Looking forward to seeing you perhaps more than once every month or three!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-24 08:21 am (UTC)The good Queen West is just a bit further west now, methinks. Recommend the chicken fajita at the Java House, where you can still get a $1 coffee or a $2.50 vietnamese coffee.
We're all very excited. Especially after finding out you won't actually be in contact with sick children all day long. Icky.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 06:13 pm (UTC)Yeah, Queen West has just shifted off the subway lines a bit. Still very funky. Avoid the Drake Hotel, no matter who tells you it's cool.
And I'm sort of excited, too.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 09:22 am (UTC)Which I have sadly been unable to find anywhere else...
no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 10:43 am (UTC)