Saturday, January 16, 2016
It Is Laval hr560
On the sixth day of my trip to Montreal, I moved to a different hotel in
a Montreal suburb Laval from downtown. The hotel rates there were a
little cheaper, and I also wanted to visit Laval that I had never been
to even when I lived in Montreal a long time ago. I looked out the
window at the lounge in the hotel. A vast 10-lane highway ran straight
through a wide stretch of plane land covered with greenery as far as the
eye can see, which reminded me of Orlando, Florida. Across the highway
from the hotel was a new building of the space camp attraction beside
which a tall replica of a rocket stood. Right next to them, there was a
movie complex which building had a futuristic, UFO-like shape. Looking
at all of them against the background of twilight, I felt as if I had
traveled through time to the future or I had actually arrived at
Tomorrowland. I thought I should have known and come to Laval sooner. It
was kind of an exquisite mix of openness in Anaheim, California and
chic in Montreal, which added up to an ideal place for me. I wished I
could live here someday. Just before leaving Japan for this trip, I saw
the biggest, clearest rainbow I’d ever seen from my apartment window.
Since I watched a movie ‘The Muppets’, I’ve always felt like there is a
dreamer’s place on the other side of a rainbow as the song in the film
says whenever I come across one. And one morning in Laval, a rainbow
appeared. I was in the bathroom when my partner shouted, “Here’s a huge,
beautiful rainbow!” Although I quickly came out, it had vanished
already, and only my partner’s ecstatic face was there. He had taken a
photo of it and proudly showed it to me, as if he was the chosen one to
have seen it. For some reason, I extremely resented and kept wondering
why I was in the bathroom at that moment. I was grumpy all day long,
thinking that meant I wasn’t good enough to live in Laval, Laval
rejected me, I was disqualified, all of which was merely because of one
missed rainbow. I returned to the hotel room exhausted and still sullen
early in that evening. I casually stood by the window, and saw what was
in front of me. It was a gigantic perfect arch of a rainbow against an
orange sky. I felt awed and relieved at the same time. As the way and
the look of the rainbow that appeared for the second time in one day
were quite mystical, I even thought the rainbow was trying to tell me
something. I may have passed through the big rainbow that I had seen in
Japan and have reached to the opposite side of it. This place could be
that one on the other side of the rainbow. Or, more possibly, three
biggest rainbows ever in a few days simply occurred by sheer chance…
Labels:
Anaheim,
California,
future,
highway,
hotel,
Japan,
Laval,
Montreal,
movie,
movie complex,
Muppets,
Orlando,
rainbow,
rocket,
space camp,
Tomorrowland,
travel,
trip,
twilight,
UFO