i miss the seagulls terribly
it takes a march day, a blank day, somewhat cold, a bit windy. maybe it's recently rained, but a pale sun is playing hide-and-seek. there is nothing going on, a half-view of the sky through a window. that's a perfect day to hear seagull cries in the air.
in vancouver i didn't have a window. when i lay in my bed, consumed with the usual worries (budgeting again; what am i going to do with my life etc.) i just heard them very close, from E7th and quebec st, they were right there, by the oceanside, belonging to somewhere i was lucky to have even been visiting.
that was how i thought of it: seagulls and the ocean. (although the one seagull i remember observing close up was in seattle, when i went with my cousin to the marketplace and the big bird was after our fries.) i know when i made a list of things i would miss in vancouver, this was one of them: the seagulls. their taken-for-grantedness by which i probably meant the ocean, by which i probably meant being far away.
a friend from BC who had lived in montreal returned to vancouver after one year and said although it was good, she couldn't imagine living there forever, she missed the proximity to the ocean too much. i didn't worry much about that when i moved to montreal - being used to living among hills, an 11 hour train trip away from the seaside.
i did fantasize about montreal being the missing link between vancouver and 'home'.
and i remember that, my first march in montreal: sitting by the window in an empty sublet room, nothing to do, no one to see. not spring yet, but winter barely there. the emptiness was not bad, it was clarity, blank slate. and hearing the seagulls at that point made me think i hadn't lost that much. that i could still bridge distances somehow, that things were retrievable if only in memories and parallels.
last week (when it hadn't snowed yet -sigh) i thought i heard seagulls here. the time and weather and frame of mind were somewhat matching, but it couldn't be, i thought.what would seagulls be doing in cluj (our river is barely a river)?? so i decided i had imagined it just because of the other stuff that matched.
then my friend says no, there are indeed seagulls. she said she'd been watching them for over a year now. there's a group of them that hangs out around the theater, she said.
first i felt vindicated: i'm not crazy, i did hear what i heard.
then i felt confused, because if it's not the seagulls i'm missing, do i really want to think about what it is in fact that i'm missing?
for almost a year now i've been a parasite in this place. it gave me all it could, even seagulls. it's not the fault of the place.
in vancouver i didn't have a window. when i lay in my bed, consumed with the usual worries (budgeting again; what am i going to do with my life etc.) i just heard them very close, from E7th and quebec st, they were right there, by the oceanside, belonging to somewhere i was lucky to have even been visiting.
that was how i thought of it: seagulls and the ocean. (although the one seagull i remember observing close up was in seattle, when i went with my cousin to the marketplace and the big bird was after our fries.) i know when i made a list of things i would miss in vancouver, this was one of them: the seagulls. their taken-for-grantedness by which i probably meant the ocean, by which i probably meant being far away.
a friend from BC who had lived in montreal returned to vancouver after one year and said although it was good, she couldn't imagine living there forever, she missed the proximity to the ocean too much. i didn't worry much about that when i moved to montreal - being used to living among hills, an 11 hour train trip away from the seaside.
i did fantasize about montreal being the missing link between vancouver and 'home'.
and i remember that, my first march in montreal: sitting by the window in an empty sublet room, nothing to do, no one to see. not spring yet, but winter barely there. the emptiness was not bad, it was clarity, blank slate. and hearing the seagulls at that point made me think i hadn't lost that much. that i could still bridge distances somehow, that things were retrievable if only in memories and parallels.
last week (when it hadn't snowed yet -sigh) i thought i heard seagulls here. the time and weather and frame of mind were somewhat matching, but it couldn't be, i thought.what would seagulls be doing in cluj (our river is barely a river)?? so i decided i had imagined it just because of the other stuff that matched.
then my friend says no, there are indeed seagulls. she said she'd been watching them for over a year now. there's a group of them that hangs out around the theater, she said.
first i felt vindicated: i'm not crazy, i did hear what i heard.
then i felt confused, because if it's not the seagulls i'm missing, do i really want to think about what it is in fact that i'm missing?
for almost a year now i've been a parasite in this place. it gave me all it could, even seagulls. it's not the fault of the place.
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