Drift around the frozen grounds

I took the green line from my home eastwards.  I wanted to get out and walk around somewhere, but I wasn’t sure where.  Initially I was ambitious enough to think I might be able to go all the way to the end of the line and then meander home.  Then I looked at the Montreal metro map, and I realized the Honore Beaugrand would be a helluva long way.  And it would be a cold, cold walk.  So I got off at Metro Prefontaine.

I said to the guy at the Metro depanneur, “Do you have double A batteries?” He pointed grumpily to some batteries and did not say a word.  They were not the right kind of batteries,  I announced with disappointment.  But I was trying very hard to be polite. And trying to speak French nicely!  But he simply refused to say a word.  I exited, fired off a furtive shot of the metro station itself, then ascended to the rue Hochelaga.  I thought I would have limited camera options given that my low-battery indicator was flashing almost the entire time.  But as it turned out, the camera did not die for about an hour.

I feel like a thief when I walk into other people’s neighbourhood and try to “capture” it.  There seems something predatory and voyeuristic about walking quiet, residential Hochelaga streets and claiming to be making “art” out of it, or whatever this is.  Two men were unloading a van emblazoned with the logo “Les Musclés.”  I wanted to fire off a shot of them carrying boxes into the open door of the apartment.  But I did not. So sadly, Les Musclés resisted capture.

Would they have put up a fight?

At the Parc Baldwin, a resident descended from her stairs and overtly watched what I was doing.  She said nothing.  I said nothing.  I fired off shots of the park as quickly as possible, then pocketed my camera, and pulled my gloves back on.

What am I doing?  Why am I doing it?  I keep asking these questions.  I am not always sure what psychogeography is supposed to mean, at least not the way I do it.  Sometimes it seems like nothing more than trying to get something pretty out of Montreal. 

I am going to call my own meagre efforts “drifts” rather than the grandiose term psychogeography.  When I told a friend what I had been doing that day, I said, “Drifting.”  I am re-branding this supposedly anti-corporate activity.  Will this new brand “sell” the pleasures of our activity to others?

At the Ecole Secondaire Jeanne Mance, I was impressed with the sheer volume of graffiti over the walls.  I thought that surely this building must be abandoned.  But then I looked up and saw flowers — obviously tended — in an office window.  Then I saw that there were lights on.  Then I saw two girls smoking by the doors, looking at me.

I also captured the flight of a plastic bag. 

After an hour of drifting, I needed the salvation from the cold offered by the 24 bus down Sherbrooke.  It is only slightly below zero these days.  No less than minus 5 or 6.  Drifting is going to get a lot harder before it gets easier!

Laurence