내 세상...

These are the landscapes I see everyday in nice weather when I walk to my workplace. I don't think I envy others for what they have, at least on this point. You see, my hometown has 45K inhabitants, so it is not such a small town, but we have a big lake right in the middle. Originally, Rouyn and Noranda were two different 'town', the high town, with all immigrant workers all getting high salaries from the copper mining industry (Noranda) the whole place was pretty much owned by te mining company; and you had the low town (Rouyn), where people just built their houses as they pleases, all over the place, people with no direct link to the mining company. This explains why the streets are so clean-cut in Noranda and quite randomly built in Rouyn. Both towns were separated by the Osisko Lake (meaning muskrat in Algonquin language). Later on, the two towns were united and Rouyn-Noranda was born, still physically separated by the lake. I grew up in the Rouyn part of the town, and the restaurant I work at is in Noranda, so I walk by the promenade beside the lake everyday to go work. It is quite peaceful to have a lake right in the middle of a town.

 The 5 tower fountain, also beside the lake on my way to work, was built for the first Canadian Olympics by the town, at night it lits with color-changing lights, since Rouyn-Noranda's 75th anniversary, so day or night, it is a nice place to hang out at. 

Rouyn-Noranda's hospital is also by the lake, and they have a big parc for long term patients and family to go chill at. I think the location was well thought.

Saucier, Nothomb

I finished two books in the last weeks. Neither of them were long to read, I just picked them up and read them both in a couple of hours, sitting in my backyard, in the last of the warm summer days we had. It feels surreal how cold it is right now, when I think of the heat of the last weeks. This is Abitibi for you: you can never plan temperature in advance and changes of temperature, made in super short lenght of time, happen randomly and drastically.

So I give you "Il pleuvait des oiseaux" (lit. it was raining birds) by Jacqueline Saucier.

The story follows the lives of elderly people who decided to start their lives anew in the forest, with the fewest of modern facilities, and living up their old age considering Death a creepy friend of theirs. Comes along an elderly angel of a lady, whom they called Marie-Desneige, that changes their little daily routine. Marie-Desneige was brought to them about at the same time as a photographer came into their lives to take pictures of the survivors of the Great Fires that had had killed the people of many villages in Canada more than a couple decades ago. 

Mrs. Saucier's writing is slow paced, making it easy to slide in the story and you come to the end of it fairly quickly. After reading it, I stayed in a strange feeling of awe a trace of melancholy fading slowly away...

It is one of those books that makes you both at peace of mind and lost in thoughts at the same time. It brought me tears to the eyes, but not so much tears of sadness as tears of relief. You follow all those people "shedding layers of their own skin, their lives, until only what really matters remains" as would say my sister. Not so much a sad story, but the story of making peace with everything that was, and is no more.

"Tuer le père"(lit. Kill the father) by Amélie Nothomb is a completely different kind of read. The story is the story of three people: a couple and a boy, who evolve in the wicked environment of Burning Man in the states with the odd art that magic is. Two magicians, a master, a pupil. Two different background and two different perspectives on what things really are, the book has this quality to it that makes everything flow and seem peaceful, while the story, if one actually think much into it, is intense and almost creepy. Mrs. Nothomb has this talent, as I saw in Stupeur et Tremblement for example, of telling really twisted stories and making them seem light and happy. The end was a surprise, and I found myself dumbfounded: do I like the story, or not?

What I like about her writing, is that it is clever enough not to be boring, but simple and clear enough, so you can stop reading for a long time, then start again and know exactly where you left, and remember everything that matters to keep reading. 

秋に王子

日本語アップ！

久しぶりに日本語のポストを書きます。

段々冷えていく曇っている空を見たらあーー秋はもう直ぐ来るんだよね。

今年の夏はあたしにとって大変だった。

一年の終わりは１２月です。

でもね、あたしにとっては、一年の終わりは秋の頃です。

そのときはいつも、次の年に改めて咲くため、

花も、木の葉っぱも死んじゃうからだ（おかしかったかな、今の文？）。

だから秋の頃にいつもブルーな気分になっちゃう。

あたしだけのかな？

秋になると、あたしは、今年一体何を達成したのだろう、と自分に尋ねるの。

これから、何をすればいい、と考える頃でもあります。

ってか、秋とは関係ないかもしれないけれど、最近ちょっとあたしひとりぼっちって感じがするの。嫌な感じだな。

白い馬に乗って会いにきてくれる王子様はいないのかな...笑。

Juicy Fruit

As a kid, I was always chewing gum. There was a time I would pierce a tiny hole into a raw (?) coffee bean and take hours of my time making coffee bean necklaces to sell them $10 at a coffee shop near my place, and all the money I made went into buying chewing gum. There was a time, when Spice Girls were really popular, where they had stickers inside a bright pink bubble gum, and I bought so many of them that I think I must have had the whole 50 sticker collections in triple at least. 

I was also prone to insanely intense headaches that could last for days, making me unable to do anything at all, needing to lie down for days at a time and miss everything that was going on. I thought of myself really weak and lame, seeing that noone actually had the same problem as me. Well nobody chewed as much chewing gum as I did, and I later learnt that the two we in fact, linked. Chewing gum puts an enormous pressure on your maxillary muscles and thus increase the probability of having a headache. My intense chewing had an impact on this a great deal. 

Without knowing that chewing gum was the reason of my headaches, I stopped chewing nonetheless, around the time I finished high school: I got sick of having always that sweet taste in my mouth and even now, I get sick of gum when I have it for more than 15 minutes. Anyways, since that time, my headaches are next to absent from my daily life, save when I lack water or caffeine...

Tonight at my job, at the end of the first half, I started smelling a scent that was very nostalgic to me: Juicy Fruit. I was pretty sure of the smell, but as I did not see why people would be chewing on that, I figured I might just be really tired and smelling random imaginary smells. Afterall, while Juicy Fruit had in fact been really popular in my youth, we mostly don't se it - smell it anyways - anywhere anymore. Turns out I was right. They were chewing Juicy Fruit, probably to take the bad breath away from smoking outside. I chitchatted with them and told them about the fact that this very smell was nostalgic to me and all. Ant they left me the rest of the pack (there were 4 gums left in it) on the table with my tips. This made my day. 

Sometimes, very simple things can bring you happiness. 

I love those days.

Flowery Red

I just realized that Summer is already coming to its end... the summer really went by quite fast, I don't even feel like I had a summer at all. Isn't it crazy? The other day I went to see my baby strawberry plants and was super happy that some flowers were blooming, even so late in the summer, but I got a bit worried. I asked my mom: Do you think there is something wrong with my plant? The leaves are turning a bit red. She obviously went on, laughing on the corner of her mouth, Well, we are in September afterall, what is weird about red leaves?

So here I find myself, stupidly wonderning where my summer went.

Were are a couple of flowers from our backyard, that still bloom beautifully even so late in the season. How I love the magic of flowery gardens.

Beads Beads Beads...

Since the beginning of the summer I haven't really taken time for myself, time to actually do things. I always loved making things, decorating them, cleaning things around me to make them prettier, added new things to decorate my room/bedroom and the like. 

Since the beginning of the summer I basically went to Montreal to see people I had missed for so long since I left it, and got to know better some people around me in my hometown. Among those, 4 nice girls that I met through Fura of which two came to work at my restaurant - see how I write 'my' restaurant... wow, so full of myself, pardon me, 'where I work' might be a bit better? Anyways, while I think meeting people is awesome, I also love to have time to myself, and have the feeling I actually accomplish something. This is probably why I always sucked at learning piano and other instruments: while getting better is amazing and you get to play awesome songs, there is no physical concrete proof of it. Making things, you end up accumulating and piling them (then another part of the fun is to put them in order so that it's not too messy all around, but let's not go there) so you see what you did. You have a tangible proof of the time you spent. In the same way, reading a book also does that, because you end up accumulating new books and put them nicely in shelves all around the place (on the same lead, re-reading a book then, is again 'unproductive', but I love to reread books I like, I know I will not be disappointed).

Anyways, I decided to get myself back to making things... in the last 2 days I finished a book, cleaned up stuff and finally pushed myself to try to make a bead purse charm accessory of which I bought the material last March, when I was in Japan. Thing is that I actually have been fascinated for quite a long time by people who can make animals, accessories and cute flowers and the like using only beard and fishing thread. You can see those mainly in Asia, or if you go to any China/Koreatown. So there. I just bought a very cute rabbit beads phone charm and remembered I had my little set to make my very own. I figured that if I get good enough I might actually try to do other stuff, but those things, if you don't push yourself, you never start, because there is always a "I'll do it later". 

So here is my very first bead accessory, made with all my heart. Well. It is a thing to see that your ability doing something is improving; another to see the improvement on the very thing you are making... Like the very first pair of mitten you make, when you compare the first to the second hand...

So here, I sort of screw up the right part, there is a thing that is not well attached, and I just realized it when I was almost done. I gave up redoing the whole thing. That was a bit too much, even for the sake of careful art accessory making, and my OCD need for perfection. I am looking into getting another of those beads sets right now, will upload the website if I ever find something worth it. 

몬트리올에 간다. 다시 한번...

이번엔 몬트리올에 가게되는 이유는 좋은일 때문이 아니다.

내 잴 지난 친구의 아버지가 돌아가셨기 때문이다.

그래서 오늘은 가만 구두를 샀다... 이분을 마지막으로 보게될 날을 위해.

올핸 돌아가신 사람이 너무 많아.

내년은 그리 않았음 좋겠다...