I do breakfast

I have a terrible story on my mind and I would like to get it out before my memory slumbers forever or suddenly fails me. It’s about a person whose name I never knew. A dishevelled man, dressed in rags and foul smelling, begged on the streets of Montreal 9 or 10 months a year. I would see him every day around 5:50 p.m. when I would walk across the park to my apartment. I stared at him, scrutinized him and inhaled his scent of sour milk. I soon learned from my next-door neighbour that the beggar’s name was Arthur, and such was his kindness, he would always share with those poorer than him if he could. According to my neighbour, the first snowstorms sent him on his way each year hitchhiking westward. In Vancouver’s warmer weather, Arthur spent a few months each year collecting used syringes and debris left behind by drug addicts living on notorious Hastings Street. He fed the afflicted, consoled the desperate and encouraged young addicts to get help. Arthur also begged from time to time, gathering quarters to help feed homeless persons in greater need. He lived off soda pop and fried-noodle leftovers from local Asian eateries. I crossed paths with him often in Montreal. Arthur always had a strange way of moving as if he had been stung in the behind. He hobbled, swayed, dragged his leg and yelled at the flies to leave him alone. In my last year of college, my father had rented a room for me downtown so I could avoid the long commute from our house in the suburbs. That’s how I came to cross paths with homeless Arthur each weekday. I had many questions after learning his story from my neighbour. Who was this mysterious man? How long had he been begging for money on the streets? Instead of leaving my small room during the Easter holiday weekend, I decided to stay in town and secretly observe Arthur. I was going to sit in the park with the morning paper and a notebook and pretend to work on a mystery novel. I arrive very early at the deserted park on Good Friday. The wet grass moistens my boots. I wave to a young policeman on a bike. At the back of the park, under a huge oak tree, a few drunks are sleeping off a night of drinking. Cheerfully trampling the slumbering bodies, dozens of squirrels search for acorns for their breakfast. Sitting on the bench shivering, I pretend to write. I have just read about police captain Jacques Cinq-Mars’ latest exploits in the newspaper and I try to imitate his brilliant skills. The famous officer, nicknamed Montreal’s Eliot Ness, suddenly consumes my thoughts. Where has the unkempt, big-hearted drifter gone? My eyes search the horizon. Nothing. Four elderly women are walking towards me. They make a sharp right and head straight for a picnic table where they sit and speak in hushed voices, as if they have something to hide. The early morning is long gone and its dew is evaporating. My mystery novel is going nowhere. I’m guessing Arthur is still asleep since I still haven’t caught sight of him. Is he waiting for the cicadas to wake him from his slumber; for the warm spring wind to brush his cheek; or for the first raspberries of the season to ripen? It’s high noon and my eyes search everywhere. They knit together clouds of worry. Where on earth is Arthur? He is nowhere to be found. One by one, the drunks under the big oak tree wake up crumpled like doormats. Would they have seen Arthur? Did they steal from him, rough him up and then hide him? It’s a different police officer on the bike now. I’m hungry and thirsty, and my legs are numb and hurting. I get up and walk a little. The four elderly women are still whispering. As I move closer to their table, I realize that their tone has changed. The oldest one speaks louder and faster, as if charging towards something terrible, threatening and scary. What a strange sensation! In the distance, a siren cuts the air. The four women jump up from their table and run towards an ambulance. A crowd of onlookers circles the park. I try to question a few of the homeless, but no one answers me. They all know what’s going on, but they keep quiet. Several regulars pack up their few belongings and leave. They must be frequent visitors to the park – neighbours, tired passersby, well-dressed elderly folks, artists waiting for inspiration, people out for a stroll and maybe even those out of work. The next morning, I return to my park bench and start writing in my notebook as planned. I spend a few hours there. Several tears dilute my fear. Arthur had died. I eventually heard that his big heart had stopped beating around 3 p.m. on Good Friday, April 12, 1968. His body, stripped and fatally beaten, was found in an adjacent alley. Later I learn in Journal de Montreal that Captain Jacques Cinq-Mars was handling the investigation. I also find out a few weeks later that Mr. Arthur V. was once a wealthy and well-known man who had suffered terrible hardships. His wife and four children had perished abroad in a fire at one of their vacation homes. Arthur wanted to give all his possessions away, so he spent the rest of his life helping the needy. To this day I regret my furtive surveilling of homeless Arthur. Appearances are often misleading. Cora ❤

Saying YES to life is to agree to what happens, to whatever comes our way. I never rebelled against the various trials of my life. I would take the blows and write in secret. It was my way of resisting the hostility I had to face for many long years. Writing, even when the tears fell onto the ink and turned it into small watercolours, allowed me to mark my passage through time and to leave points of reference like lighthouses along this horrible odyssey. My notepad didn’t register dates, just the facts. The daily calamities, the explosions of sadness, the unfairness of fate, the bitterness stuck to my skin, the threatening despair and the endless resentments I reluctantly harboured. According to author Hélène Dorion in her wonderful book RECOMMENCEMENTS (“New Beginnings”), “our way of loving has its source in childhood, through the satisfaction or not of our basic needs, and through the defining emotional experiences that we have then. Paradise or agony, this is where our wounds are deepened or our first vision of love and connections are built.” I definitely missed the boat when it came to affection, tenderness, learning the way of life and love, this unfathomable treasure that insures the perpetuation of species. Married without a warning, I already bore in my abdomen tiny toes, a visible reproductive organ, an embryo that would soon leave its sanctuary. When the time came, the child refused to face the outside world. He had to be ripped out of my womb with a horrible, tong-shaped metallic instrument. His frail frame was marked permanently on his right forehead as a result. All these shreds of history drift along in my head; like a wandering mosaic of corrosive details. Every makeshift apartment during my wedded years. The cheaper shabby third floors with their endless and dangerous stairs. The cockroaches who invaded the kitchen at night. The make-do clotheslines strung across the rooms. Not a single painting, plant, chesterfield or rug. Everything was secondhand, old and threadbare. I keep on writing because the words overflow in my mouth. I write, I strike out, I compose. Always, the ink wriggles about. Some paragraphs are only tiny vestibules; killer sentences that will never make it into the house; horrible thoughts that agitate and torment my mind. These places from childhood, these gestures and words will they ever flee my memory? Sitting on the blue couch, my feet barely touching the ground, I may be 4 or 5. I’m sad like slowly falling rain. Dad is listening to Mario Lanza. A few large tears roll off his cheeks and disappear into the abyss. I want to touch them, to take his big fingers in my small hand and cry alongside him. Chop, chop, chop. In the kitchen, Mom’s mincing an onion for the stew she’s making for dinner. She’s put on her white gloves; they soak up the juice the onion lets out with each slice. Chop, chop, chop. Diced carrots jump into the white tin bowl. My sentences are sprinkled with bits of dreams and reality, immaterial existences often more talkative than young eagles. These days, I am discovering the work of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. I bless his incredible writing ability, his clever blend of allegories and faithful descriptions of the natural and cosmic universe. I really like this poet who, in a series of interior experiences, relentlessly explored the great mysteries of life. Inspired by this master, I would love to compose illuminating sentences, snowstorms without cold, love stories without irritations. “LOVE YOUR FATE” is my motto today. Say YES to life and to everything that happens to me. I have divine assurance that an angel is tracing my way forward and, and with infinite patience, he’s polishing my best sentences. Cora ❤

Nature amazes me, with the brightness of the sun, the sweet feeling of a warm breeze, the songs of birds and the aroma of raspberries. My mind drifts back in time and I find myself near the stream on Grandpa Frédéric’s land. I can see his wrinkled fingers teaching me how to put a worm on a hook; the pink flesh of the small trout in the pan; the capelins flopping on the beach by the thousands in the spring; the big cod, caught by the belly and so incredibly delicious. I remember it like it was just yesterday. The fish was boiled with bacon bits, cooked to a crisp in the pan, transformed into fritters with potatoes or salt-dried and eaten with the fingers. We lived off the sea. To this day, four or five of my weekly dinners consist of its delicacies. I used to follow Grandpa in the winter too. I would make my way behind him in the snow, my small boots trying to step into his big footprints. My eyes swept the path ahead and saw the white hare before he did. I laughed and cried in front of the small trapped animal. Grandfather quickly put it in his bag. I knew it was going to end up in late grandmother’s famous recipe. At the table, I told him it was good as a few tears slipped down my cheeks and into the sauce. What a delight it was to finally turn six! I loved school. I was learning how to read and write words, and my heart felt lighter. I composed short poems and I quickly learned to express myself through writing, a habit that persists today. Putting one word after the other, I climbed the ladder of time, always on the lookout for sparks of happiness. One afternoon spent hunting four-leaf clovers, another lavishing my proud lupines with attention. I found myself embellishing my flowerbeds and my heart at the same time. The irresistible scent of ripe fruit swept over me. I picked wild strawberries in the wooded area on my lot. I destemmed them one by one before placing them in my basket like Mom taught me. My native Gaspésie is always in the back of my mind like an old classic movie; a chronological repertoire of the best moments. Everything is there in my memory, moving like the undulations of the river. I remember how brave we were when we used to climb onto the enormous ice blocks floating on the river in Sainte-Flavie. Mother forbade it, of course, and yet my brother still insisted we do it. He wanted to plant his flag, but the hard ice never yielded. Let’s think about it. Let’s look for shortcuts to these micromoments of happiness. Let’s grab the tiny stars fluttering above our heads. Happiness is celestial food that prolongs our life span, I am sure of it. I’m a youthful 20-year-old when I talk to a century-old tree; when I slowly devour a poem, line by line; when an old friend tells me about his most recent flirtation or when my granddaughter invites me to the restaurant for dinner. Let’s learn about life’s magic – all these moments that appear unreal but are just as true as good news that arrives unannounced. I often get the feeling that the older I get and appreciate things, the more easily I marvel at what surrounds me. Every microsensation of happiness thrills me: breathing in the fresh morning air, napping on the couch in the middle of the afternoon, washing my hair with rainwater, soothing an itch with the help of five metal fingers on the end of a stick, drinking my coffee piping hot, succeeding in eating more fruit than bread, taking selfies for my Sunday letters, writing even when I’m asleep. I’m not kidding! It happens that a stroke of genius wakes me in the middle of the night and I grab my notepad. I enjoy being at writing’s service, being its researcher, prospector, storyteller and the one who strings its words together using a keyboard. For the longest time I thought I would TAKE CARE OF MYSELF LATER. But you know what? My LATER arrived A LONG TIME AGO! Come to think of it, deciding to take care of ourselves later is presumptuous. How do we know what will be in our control a day, a week or a year from now? The power we feel is an illusion. On the other hand, our power to live in the present is very real; just like our right to choose happiness. Don’t put off these micromoments of happiness until tomorrow, these sparks of joy that surround us and are within our grasp. Think about it. Life is so short and rarely do we allow ourselves to feel the wonder in front of us. Cora ❤