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petroniaCould blog about what I'm doing these days (dérive around the perpetual street party that's Montreal in the summer, mostly), but the idea is somehow tiresome. Will talk instead about - what? My ficbunny hutch again? It's generally not a good idea. The thing with a fandom like Get Backers (say) is that if I declared I wanted to write a psychogeographical essay on Ban and Ginji and pass it off as fanfic, no one would actually try to stop me. But then I picture myself plundering lj-friend entries for Tokyo esoterica and...
...I passed through Square St. Louis twice in the last three days, you see, threading from Sherbrooke Metro to the Main via the pedestrian stretch of Prince Arthur Street (all its gelaterias and busy restaurant terrasses and handicraft sellers and burbling fountains), and if Ban and Ginji lived in Montreal I think they'd take their baths there. Which actually makes very little sense, because the sensible thing to do is to park the car up Rosemont late at night, hop the fence to the Botanic Garden - I mean, they could do it - and stay there. Or, y'know, Beaver Lake or something. No way anyone ever gets a smidgeon of privacy in Square St. Louis, side-by-side tenements peeping through the foliage on three sides, and drug dealers at night (or so I've been told, repeatedly). But the first two options are muddy and really fairly creepy to the agoraphobic urban-dweller, and the fountain is the first anyone sees of the Square: the ornate topmost basin and the water scintillating whitely downward, through the swaying treetops. It's an incredibly seductive image. And then you wend your way into the heart of the grove, past the flowerbeds and the park benches, and you see the wide clear pale-blue pool and are absolutely lost. No one is supposed to get into city fountains, and typically no one does - rationally speaking the water can't be clean - but everyone gets into the fountain in Square St. Louis. Not all at once, of course, but one or two at a time they take off their shoes and sit on the concrete edge, soaking their feet shamelessly. Goth girls wade out in their torn black fishnets, the ridiculously pretty (tanned and half-tonsured) Hare Krishna boys hitch up their orange robes. Little kids dabble their hands and splash while grannies sit on the benches modestly and contemplate. People jump in with their black labs and golden retrievers, any kind of friendly water-hunting dog, and toss empty Naya bottles for them to fetch. No one minds. And never any dirt or garbage on the surface, mysteriously enough, only tiny mangled white horse-chestnut flowers. You sit there and listen to the splashing of the water, maybe someone strumming a guitar - never more than idly - and think, if it were nighttime. If it were nighttime there'd be silver moonlight not lamplight, that's what the place feels like, and I'd wade out under the sculpted bronze basin and tilt my head up and let the water stream down through my hair.
It's a Ban-and-Ginji sort of crowd, as well. If they lazed about on the grass there they'd blend in seamlessly, far more than they would down on, say, Crescent Street.
Gah. Must get to bed. Will spend some time tomorrow complaining of this Anita Blake novel I'm reading or... something.
...I passed through Square St. Louis twice in the last three days, you see, threading from Sherbrooke Metro to the Main via the pedestrian stretch of Prince Arthur Street (all its gelaterias and busy restaurant terrasses and handicraft sellers and burbling fountains), and if Ban and Ginji lived in Montreal I think they'd take their baths there. Which actually makes very little sense, because the sensible thing to do is to park the car up Rosemont late at night, hop the fence to the Botanic Garden - I mean, they could do it - and stay there. Or, y'know, Beaver Lake or something. No way anyone ever gets a smidgeon of privacy in Square St. Louis, side-by-side tenements peeping through the foliage on three sides, and drug dealers at night (or so I've been told, repeatedly). But the first two options are muddy and really fairly creepy to the agoraphobic urban-dweller, and the fountain is the first anyone sees of the Square: the ornate topmost basin and the water scintillating whitely downward, through the swaying treetops. It's an incredibly seductive image. And then you wend your way into the heart of the grove, past the flowerbeds and the park benches, and you see the wide clear pale-blue pool and are absolutely lost. No one is supposed to get into city fountains, and typically no one does - rationally speaking the water can't be clean - but everyone gets into the fountain in Square St. Louis. Not all at once, of course, but one or two at a time they take off their shoes and sit on the concrete edge, soaking their feet shamelessly. Goth girls wade out in their torn black fishnets, the ridiculously pretty (tanned and half-tonsured) Hare Krishna boys hitch up their orange robes. Little kids dabble their hands and splash while grannies sit on the benches modestly and contemplate. People jump in with their black labs and golden retrievers, any kind of friendly water-hunting dog, and toss empty Naya bottles for them to fetch. No one minds. And never any dirt or garbage on the surface, mysteriously enough, only tiny mangled white horse-chestnut flowers. You sit there and listen to the splashing of the water, maybe someone strumming a guitar - never more than idly - and think, if it were nighttime. If it were nighttime there'd be silver moonlight not lamplight, that's what the place feels like, and I'd wade out under the sculpted bronze basin and tilt my head up and let the water stream down through my hair.
It's a Ban-and-Ginji sort of crowd, as well. If they lazed about on the grass there they'd blend in seamlessly, far more than they would down on, say, Crescent Street.
Gah. Must get to bed. Will spend some time tomorrow complaining of this Anita Blake novel I'm reading or... something.
