Gare Central. A muggy morning

July 23, 2003

Gare Central. A muggy morning in Montreal. A city you can really feel. The humidity is only the cover of the book. Here in the train station it is all cool umber marble and large arched spaces. The slightest hint of diesel mixes with patisseries and institutional moulds whilst MacDonalds dominates the smellscape in one big wave. Blind people must go crazy with anger as MacDonalds consumes all indigenous smells with its blanket of trans fat fog. With the franchise light boxes and faux Californian expanses of strip mall stucco come the warm fronts of Taco Bell and KFC. The grease cloud that settles around a KFC has to be the worst. This station feature such a glorious cross section of humanity its a shame that anyone be needlessly deprived of any of their senses. Its late morning and I’m on the backside of a strong coffee and, ironically, the best french toast I’ve ever eaten. One of my lifelong chums lives in the St. Henri district and I spent yesterday walking around and sampling favourite ales and bagels with him. The evening was full of accordion and guitar duets, photographs, musings on the greatness of “No Means No” and the trademark conversation of people who know a lot about each other but will never know everything. It was he who made the brilliant breakfast eaten to the strains of Flaco Jiminez while staring out over the end of the balcony onto rue St. Phillipe. There is nothing wrong with his life.
If you sit still and meditate on the crossing currents and movements of the station a few things come to light. Couples walk in synchronicity. The gay males with button down shirts tucked into matching khaki cargo pants and sporting identically sturdy footwear walk in perfect step. They are unaware that this aspect of their lives is as together as the things they have orchestrated. They are the same height and leg length and are thus able to maintain synchronization for the entire length of the station. The short woman & tall man combinations achieve a different kind of synch. The woman in the sarong walks abreast with her husband but has to operate at a slightly higher steps per minute rate. This means that their strides match each other in regular waves as they cross the floor. They appear to be synchronized for about six steps and then they fall out for about ten seconds and then they match in opposite steps (left when one is right) for six steps and then ten seconds later they are in synch again for six steps. Its like playing 3/4 time against 4/4. Sooner or later it comes around and it all ends in the same place. Children don’t walk in relation to their parents because they don’t share their agendas. They want to pull away and break the flow. They don’t follow the hidden pathways of the station.
The hidden pathways are observed by all with an agenda. 1) Go through the doors from the Metro and cut the angle to the ticket counter on the right or . . . 2) In from the street and a soft ninety degree angle to the MacDonalds. 3) From the ticket counter five paces out, stop look down at ticket, look up and swivel head until platform number is verified, option to move toward food, telephone, washroom, waiting area or gate along four clear paths. The kids run willy nilly to retrieve a discarded bottle cap and check its underside for possible winnings. Their movement requires more complex analysis or, better yet, no analysis.
Here language also follows some unwritten pattern. One must choose between english and french when approaching fresh humans. This should not be an obvious choice. I started to feel it could go either way but have experimented and found people can be led through telegraphed behaviour. Its all in how you perfect your greeting and use your body language. Without a word to the ticket agent or poutine vendor they speak to you in english instead of french. Why? The most obvious reason may be that you are wearing a Canucks cap or carry a camera. If not . . . it comes down to subtle cues. One of my theories focuses on the shape of the mouth. Language shapes your face. A mouth that speaks french for forty years looks subtly different than one that speaks english all that time. Why shouldn’t this be true? I met a couple of trapeze artists the other day and I would bet that the shape of their arms was a dead giveaway. People who have to judge quickly each day as to whether to speak french or english do not have to know whether you are a trapeze artist or a beet farmer. They only have to focus on elements of local or foreign style, confidence and facial cues. I can trick people into a quick exchange in french buy they’ll switch to english after the first parry and thrust . . . once they hear my accent. At least I have relaxed into the culture enough to become invisible if remaining silent. One could be a local simply by wearing a T-shirt with french words on it, sporting a confident swagger and having mastered the phrase, “I can’t hear you” in some Quebecer variant of american sign language. The children in the station will all be spoken to in french. Some don’t speak french but all attendants will assume and start there. Children are yet to lose the flexibility in their joints and in their ability to adapt. Beside me are twins dressed identically. They are women in their late fifties. They have both dyed their gray hair a brilliant red and maintain identical crops. The outfits are floral pantsuits warmed up with red cardigans. Here I can’t imagine why flexibility might be an asset or why variation should be encouraged.This is beautiful and rare. I think about when one of them gets sick and the other one feels it. I worry about the day when one of them loses the other one. I veer off into my own worrying about the day when I will lose the people I share DNA with. What part of me will go with them? I stop worrying as my train is called to the platform. Luckily my immersion in the sideshows of human behaviour functions as fuzzy denial. Denial is the best way to deal with the forebodings of loss that can take over anyone who values the joys of life. The worst thing that can possibly happen is that all this stops one day. To always live in the moment is impossible but something to be aimed at. Sorry Buddhas. Sorry enlightened ones. I endorse the notions but can’t fully achieve results. Speculation about the future and the past are all part of the package. Doctrines and allegories aren’t the way to go either. I just can’t live with the rule books or the massive gaps in logic. There are no pat answers. Its OK because there there are pairs bonds and movement and love and language. There is food and sex and art and music. There are forks of lightning and forks in the toaster. Big and small we experience rituals of tragedy and joy. Some are on the playbill and some are improvised. I meditate on the patterns and shapes. I am hungry again. I have to go pee. This is Grand Central. This is le Gare Central.