Saturday, December 19, 2015
Back to Montreal hr558
A trip to California I took in May changed my mindset. When I found
bargain fares online, I quickly decided to go to Montreal for the first
time in seven years by using my emergency savings. I felt it was
ridiculous to keep money in a bank although we are mortal and we don’t
know when our time is up. I once lived in Montreal for about a year in
total. I wanted to stay there, but I had to leave and come back to Japan
as my money ran out. Since then, I have always hoped to live there
again or at least to visit there as a tourist. What I like about
Montreal are its beauty, a relaxing atmosphere and people there who seem
to live to enjoy life rather than achieve success. I’m not sure if it’s
because of their ways of life or the French-spoken region of Canada,
but they are fashionable with excellent taste. For that combination of
the city and the people, just walking down the street is fascinating
enough. I took on a 12-hour flight to Toronto during which I happened to
find ‘Tomorrowland’ among the in-flight movies, saw it twice and cried
yet again. I went through immigration where an immigration officer gave
me lengthy, irrelevant, even harassing questions including about my pin I
was wearing on my jacket. It was a pin from ‘Tomorrowland’ and she
almost made me begin to explain the whole movie story. The airport
system in Toronto was somewhat odd. I was just in transit en route to
Montreal, but I needed to pick up my luggage, carry to the distant
counter and check it in all over again. Although I had already been
through the security checkpoint before I got on board in Japan and had
never left the airport, I had to do it again. I ended up gobbling a
whole bottle of water in front of the security gate, which was exactly
what I did on the last trip to California. After the security
checkpoint, I saw an information screen for departure to make sure the
gate number for my flight to Montreal. The flight was missing. There was
no information about my flight, no cancelled, no delayed, no nothing.
Among the long list of departing flights, my flight itself didn’t exist.
I was close to panic. And I realized we don’t have anybody around for
something like this nowadays. There is no information counter, airport
workers don’t know about flights, and airline personnel at the gates
don’t know other flights’ status. I had no one to ask. The only place I
came up with as where the airline personnel with flight information were
working was an executive lounge. I went up there and asked about my
flight. She glanced at her computer display and said, ‘It’s on time.’ My
flight did exist, but for some weird reason, the airport screen showed
information only for selected flights. I had scurried around the
terminal for this absurd system. I finally arrived at Montreal after a
one-and-a-half-hour flight. A cab ran on the freeway at 75 miles per
hour through the night and downtown Montreal appeared in 20 minutes. It
was the same freeway on which a cab carried me in the dark before dawn
seven years ago when I was leaving for Japan. I remember I wished upon
the moon that I could return here someday, as I had no way to find the
money to come back. The moon satisfied my wish, I supposed. I checked in
a hotel and looked out of the window. Beneath the window was Sherbrooke
Street where many people were still passing by. Above the town lights
of the city, I saw the cross on the Mont-Royal that was lighted up and
floated in the dark sky. It was a view that I felt like I was strayed
into a dreamland. I thought my bold decision to spend money for this
trip was right. It would be a big loss not to come to such a beautiful
place like this when it exists. I literally fell down to bed to sleep
since I was completely exhausted from the 24-hour trip from home to here
and the turmoil at Toronto Airport. Next morning, I woke up early
because of jet lag. The first thing I decided to do in Montreal wasn’t
to get a rest in the hotel room or to take a walk in the city. It was
going to casino to win back all the money I had spent there in the past…
Labels:
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Saturday, December 5, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.557
At the end of my last homecoming day, I got into the cab heading for the
train station, saying goodbye to my mother who was merrily talking
about which condominium she would move in, to my father who was weirdly
cheery, and to the house and its land one last time. When I dropped out
college and left home for Tokyo to be a musician a long time ago, I
thought I would never come back to this house again. I have made
unplanned visits since then, but I assumed it would be the last visit
each time. I was accustomed to a farewell feeling toward the house in a
way and I departed with no particular emotions this time either. The cab
was running through my familiar neighborhood where I spent my entire
childhood. It was still shabby as it used to be. The cab drove through
old houses of my childhood friends where I used to play with them, and
under the overhead train bridge where I ran into perverts so many times.
From the window, I saw the elementary school I went to, and the
sidewalk my first song came to me while I was walking on. The bookstore
where my father bought me my first English dictionary and also where he
spotted his missing cousin. A place where a milk factory used to be that
I waved to its plastic cows beside the gate every time I passed by in
my father’s car. The old temple where my late grandparents used to take
me and let me feed doves. Then something struck me and I suddenly
realized. It wasn’t just the house I was losing. I was losing my
hometown and departing from my childhood. I would never be in this
neighborhood again because it was going to be an unrelated, foreign
place from now on. Although I had always hated my neighborhood, that
thought brought a lump to my throat and soon I found myself crying. I
was stunned at this unexpected feeling. If I hadn’t been inside a cab, I
would have wailed. The cab came near Kyoto Station that was my
destination. My late grandfather often took me to this area around the
station that used to be undeveloped, decayed and in the miserable
condition. But now, after years of intense redevelopment, it has become
an urban area with numerous modern buildings of hotels, fashionable
shops and huge shopping malls. It was a completely new different place
and I found no trace of what I was familiar with the area. The cab
stopped at the signal close to the station and there stood a new movie
complex by the street. I casually wondered if it showed ‘Tomorrowland’.
Then I felt I was actually stepping into it. Things and places I had
been with were all disappearing and a place I had never seen before
appeared in front of me. I saw a change more clearly than ever. I was
leaving everything old behind and going into a new world. The world I’m
walking in is unknown, but therefore there are full of possibilities…
Labels:
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