Lost in the City

Hello, Canada! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? For the last two weeks or so, we’ve been settling in, buying beds, getting used to the rhythms of daily life, exploring the city. We have our own internet service now, so I can get a stable connection in my bedroom. We have almost everything I’m used to having around me. More and more, I feel like Toulouse is my home. I can’t describe how much I love the place. I just wish everyone could be here to see it with me.

We’ve had a few guests over – friends of my dad’s, mostly. His old thesis supervisor, his wife, and their son are here on a half-year sabbatical, too, and they’re just around the corner, about a hundred metres from our house. We’ll be seeing a lot of them for the next five months, I’m sure.

Almost every day, someone goes out to buy bread. We eat bakery-fresh loaves with most of our dinners, and always have some left over for breakfast if we want it. There are about seven bakeries in the two or three blocks around our house. There are also loads of little groceries all over the place; sometimes mom sends me out with a few euros to pick up one or two ingredients for supper when she realizes we’re missing something. And there’s the big fruit and vegetable market, the Marché du Cristal, only a ten minute’s walk from here. The best part about that market is that the prices drop exponentially right around the time that everyone is packing up to go. Funny story…

Mom, dad, and Tristan went out a week or so ago to get some fruit. They were browsing as everything was closing, and a man was calling to them that they could buy one cardboard flat of twenty peaches for two euros. They debated, then he said they could get two for three euros. That, they decided, was too much, so they offered two euros for one flat – and were told, on no uncertain terms, that two euros would get them both flats, and to get them off his hands. They complied. We ate a lot of peaches for the next few days.

Peach smoothies are delicious, and I love peaches.

As well as that market, there’s also the Marché du Capitole, every Wednesday, where they sell clothes and used books and movies and jewellery and statues and sunglasses and shoes and makeup and anything else you could think of. I’ve bought some nail polish and eyeshadow, a few rings, and an awesome new watch. There’s also the Marché de Carmes, which is in the square a block or two from our house, and which is apparently something of a flea market. That one is on Sundays, and I haven’t checked it out yet.

The whole city seems constantly bustling with life. Even in the wee hours of the morning, I hear cars driving past on the main road just down the street, people walking, even the fountain in the square. Today two firetrucks stopped in front of my apartment and the firemen started bustling around on a building across the road; people leaned out of their windows to look, and gathered on the street a few dozen metres down. There are people everywhere, and everyone is going somewhere; everyone is laughing and talking and living. There are hundreds of restaurants just spilling onto the streets, and thousands of pedestrians anywhere.

Yesterday Tristan and I went for a walk. We ambled through one of the big gardens for a while, and were then shooed out by park staff, who said it was closing. We went wandering off towards the west, took a street that angled south, and got ourselves totally lost before finding our way back home. Those who know me well know there’s nothing I love more about going for walks than getting myself lost.

Maybe that’s why I love the city so much. Thousands of streets to explore, discover, and get lost on, surrounded by things that interest me. I am an outsider, learning about the city as only an outsider can. Lost, but not lonely.

Bonjour, Toulouse!

We’re into our apartment and finally getting settled, and really, at the moment, nothing could make me happier. I love it here. I love that my street is one lane only, but with massive sidewalks; I love that I can say hello to my neighbours across the way through our open third-story windows; I love that I can lean out my sill and look down on the street below; I love that at night I can hear the fountain in the square at the end of the street, and the people talking and laughing in the bar just a few doors over.

I love that we are slowly filling up the house with things that make it ours; I love how all the shops I like are within a ten minute walk. I love how everywhere you turn, you can buy ice cream. I love how there are hundreds of amazing restaurants, and all you have to do is pick a direction to start walking. I love how everyone gets around on the metro, and it really doesn’t make sense to try driving in downtown Toulouse; I love how Toulouse is a pedestrian’s dream city, and I am a perpetual pedestrian. I love how quiet the streets are on Sundays, when nothing is open; I love how, every few blocks, there are squares and parks and green spaces. I love how beautiful everything is here.

I love my apartment. I love how my room has an armchair and a Soviet propaganda poster from WWII and a bookshelf that is thoroughly unnecessary because I also have a shelf built into my wall. I love how all my clothes fit neatly into a wardrobe and everything is tucked out of the way. I love how open and bright it is. I love how I can leave my giant windows open at night; I love how, even in the city, there are a few sparrows around to chirp a welcome to the morning sun. Bonjour, Toulouse!

I love how there is an open wireless connection in the neighbourhood that we can borrow so that I can tell you how much I love all of this.

Cité de Carcassonne

The Basilique Saint-Nazaire, as seen from the ramparts

Today we went to visit the Cité de Carcassonne, a walled medieval citadel town in the middle of the Carcassonne city proper. There’s just no easy way to describe what it was like. Yes, as the “best preserved medieval citadel in Europe,” it’s very obviously geared towards tourists, but there’s something more to it. It’s like you can almost feel the old stones surrounding you – not pressing, not even supporting, but comforting, stable and eternal, as if they know they’re never going to change.

It’s beautiful.

I could never live in a place like this, overrun by tourists every day, and with the prices so high in every shop… but there’s something so achingly touching about it. It makes me wish I could have seen it in at the height of its time, or when the stones were first being laid, or when construction on the Basilique – easily the most beautiful church I have ever been in – was finally finished.

This whole country makes me restless. Inspiration makes me restless.

Sweet Night Air

I have discovered a wonderful place to think: the windowsill of my borrowed bedroom. There is no screen, since there are very few biting bugs, and the window itself and the roof outside are constructed in such a way that I can easily lift myself up to sit curled up on it, looking out over the front yard; the view is quite nice and it’s so peaceful out here, especially after dark has fallen. And I have come to realize that I want to have more experiences like this.

I want to sit on rooftops and look at the stars. I want to run until I can’t run anymore and collapse in a field. I want to let songs rip their way out of my throat and fill the empty air, loud and beautiful. I want to wander naked at night. I want to smell the wind at night and let it carry me away. I want to talk with a stranger in the park for hours. I want to do a lot of things – experience life so vividly, to release this restlessness that always seems to be hovering beneath my skin. Sometimes the only thing I can do for it is run until I can’t go any farther and scream into the sky. I realize, I like feeling restless, sometimes; it’s like a sweet, beautiful ache that never quite goes away. And I realize why I feel the need to write.

Writing is another cure for the restlessness. It’s an endless urge that never really fades. I feel the need to validate my existence, to share my experiences, my feelings. Somehow, nothing is quite real until it has been put into words. I feel, sometimes, that in trying to slake my restlessness, that I have inadvertently stumbled across some nameless deeper meaning to life, and I am helpless to do anything until I have tried to let others grasp it as well. I do not write, as I have always supposed, out of a desire not to be forgotten – but out of a desire not to be alone.

Goodbye

These last days have just been one big blur… home to Kingston, cleaning, packing, a visit from the Shulists, Canada Day at Grass Creek park, Meaghan and Nami… They stayed over, we kept cleaning, time downtown on Thursday, home, more cleaning, more packing, then gone again, the night at Nami’s, home, the last part of packing, then goodbye. There’s a stranger living in my house and I’m in Ottawa, and I can’t be around my family or I start to cry. I cry anyway.

The moments with Nami stand out the most… lying on the bed and talking… watching a movie on the armchair… watching the fireworks… our last night together. Saying goodbye felt like I was cutting away my roots. If she’d asked me to stay, I wouldn’t have been able to say no. Lucky for me, she’s not selfish – although it’s hard to see the good side of it now. I miss her.

As of 4:30 this afternoon, I’m officially homeless, in transit, and leaving behind everything I know.