Blessings come in two’s (haibun)

A funny thing happened to me on my way home tonight. I dressed warm, ready for my usual bitter cold walk to the metro. I actually look like a burglar dressed up in black, all you can see are my nose and eyes. I still chanced the shortcut out back and there was only about 300 metres with snow drifts to get to the street. No problem. I was quite pleased with myself considering that the street was only half ploughed. The scraper had scraped right to the icy surface. The street looked like a skating rink. No kidding! If more people would have been awake at this time, for sure some might have skated and youngsters would have slid on their boots. I get to the Métro Rosemont and for the first time I see dozens of people inside the small square waiting for their busses. Yep, it is that cold! (Oh did I tell you I froze for an hour Valentine’s evening after my nice café adventure? I waited an hour in the cold for a bus to get home. I was so cold by the time I got home, my body would not get warm enough. I felt feverish and achy all over. Had to call in sick the next day (Sunday) as there was NO way in this century I was braving the cold.)

So back to tonight. I take the métro to Bonaventure and my bus is already there awaiting me (well, it feels good to think so). I get on the bus engrossed in my novel I am reading by Alice Keys, Rose (check her out at Aliceville)…up to Chapter 89 now. Gosh! One thing I do not like about e-readers is you cannot tell if you are close to the end so for the past 20+ chapters I am wondering when that will be. I will let ya’ll know about this book that has captured my attention for the past 2 days now. I am a slow reader and when I want to remember something I highlight it…and read it over. I know, weird but that is me if I read a book that someone I sort of know wrote itJ. I have been too brain dead and tired to write much lately, so I am so glad I have a novel that is keeping me absorbed.

I settle on the bus and open my Kindle again and once I get on le pont Champlain I hear a funny sound. It sounds like a phone but no one is picking up. I feel in my breast pocket of my winter coat and take my new I-phone out and yep, it was for me. I have to change that ringer to match what I had on my Samsung…a little Motown sounds I recognize…not this techno weird stuff.

A colleague tells me I forgot my home keys at the office. OH NO!! NOT AGAIN! My heart drops for a split second and then I realize I am still on the bus, I have not walked the 10 minute walk to my apartment in the cold to discover I did not have my keys and walk back again in the cold to the bus. All I had to do was sit on the warm bus that was going back to Montreal in five minutes. No problem, I tell my colleague but it would be nice if someone is off work to bring the keys to the subway near work so I don’t have to brave the cold walk again to the office. A colleague offers to drive to the Métro with her hubby who was picking her up and she would wait for me there. She has done this already once for me two years ago. Good Lord there are angels on this planet!!

So I stay on the bus, get on the Métro again. Then I see about six Montreal Police officers waiting to check the trains on the line I was taking. Shoot! They have this Miami Vice swagger when they walk, and feathered hair spiked up…nice and messy…in their camo pants and high laced boots…they have been negotiating their pension for the past year and this is one way they are protesting (dressing like this)… …like that’ll get the public respect for law enforcement. I digress…they look in each train and find no one. One police officer takes a snapshot with his phone of a tag from a gang member in my car. I didn’t dare tell him there was another tag next to me near the window…I was in a hurry to get my home keys!! Priorities now people!!

On the ride I read an email on my phone from a person who has been following me on Stigma Hurts Everyone for two years. She wrote a beautiful long letter telling me how my blog impacted on her especially a post I wrote about a homeless person entitled “Do you even see me?” Her words truly touched me how she has changed her attitude towards homelessness now and well, that truly warmed my heart to read this. I had no idea my words could have such an impact!

Then I read another email from my favourite supervisor in Toronto and friend. It is sort of a chain letter regarding an angel and G-d will do two BIG positive things for me in the next few days. As I read this I wanted to answer but didn’t have WiFi. I wanted to reply right away: G-d already did the two amazing things…my colleague who was meeting me at the Métro with my keys and this beautiful letter from a follower of my blog.

I am beaming just about now and my chest is bursting in my mom’s psychedelic housecoat (smiles).

I love days like today…not expecting anything and then being blessed with such kindness it makes me want to cry with joy.

(Troiku)

crunch crunch on the snow
Icicles on eyelashes
a near starless sky

crunch crunch on the snow
exhaling smoke-like vapours
wobbling on ice

icicles from on lashes
body moves on automat
same old same old

a near starless sky
two angels winked down on me
what a blessed day!

The Troiku was created by Chévrefeuille at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. Please check here to learn more.

Café St-Valentin (Haibun)

I seem to be truly enjoying this new form of sets of haiku created by Chévrefeuille here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai called the Troiku. As I sit here at a Café in the warmth looking out at the snow, I hesitate to leave. It is cold and I have to take a bus to get home and I also like the atmosphere here. It is so pleasant writing in this ambiance, hearing the saxophone blaring in the background with uninterrupted jazz melodies. I am a sucker for saxophones and base…it isn`t live music but the sound system is a good quality to drown the chatter of the patrons so I feel the company of jazz musicians and my thoughts percolating before my fingers dance on my keyboard.

(Troiku)
evening idles
at the coffee shop
sipping un café

evening idles
swimming in my mind’s eye
writing

at the coffee shop
jazzy tunes fill the room
saxophone blares

sipping un café
gazing out the window
a poem trickles

The tulip garden (haibun)

When I was a young child we lived in a flat next door to the Franks family. Mr. and Mrs. Franks would work from May to October tirelessly in their garden. I had never seen such a garden that took their entire backyard. There was a small patio and the rest was all flowers. But not just any kind of flowers…tulips of so many colours. Mr. Franks would smile at me when I would dawdle by the fence. Well, hello, Mr. Franks, I would think to myself, I sure would love to have one of those yellow, white or red soft as silk tulips there. But he never seemed to read my mind and it was rude to ask, so I would walk up and down the dirt driveway very very slowly pretending I was searching for pebbles. The siren would blare at noon and still I would wait. Of course my mother would have to come out to call me in for lunch by now and she would see me by the fence; and as soon as my beautiful mother walked down the steps, Mr. Franks would lift his head and have the nicest smile. Actually I think his face lit up when he saw my mother. She would smile back and do what she did so often with her eyelashes (I tried for years to bat my lashes as quickly as she did but never succeeded!) Mr. Franks would prepare a bunch of tulips and hand them over the fence to my mother. Now it wasn’t Mr. Franks beaming but yours truly with a huge smile on my chubby face.

long slender stems,
chubby face peeks in wonder
red and white tulips

red and white tulips
plead to be shown
in a crystal vase

Carpe Diem Tulips

Tranquility (haibun)

Jonathan sat on the curb and waited for someone to give him enough change to meet his quota so he could finally reach nirvana. The night had been so slow since the snowstorm had started up and “pedestrians were just rushing to get home in their nice dry, cozy homes” he snickered to himself with a bitterness that was not like him.

Nightfall came slowly and the only customers he got were the odd city maintenance men taking a break at MacDonald’s for a hot coffee after plowing the streets of Montreal most of the night. He was shaking and knew he would not be able to tough the night here, so he dragged his shaky twig of a body to an air vent near the Métro Berri…just right to warm up enough and not die of hyperthermia.

Just as the sun was rising over the grey, damp and cold city, he woke up and walked over to rue St-Pierre to stand in line until le Centre du Petit Voyageur, a methadone clinic would open at nine o’clock,

killing a pain
an opiate buzz offers
tranquility

Five Sentence Fiction Open

searching for clarity (haibun)

https://penntonic.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/creative-expressions-9-black-and-white/#comment-1974 — © Pen ‘n Tonice Creative Expressions – School Chums

Géraldine rocked in her oak chair looking at the window. Clouds were hiding mountain peaks of Mont Tremblant. She sighed glancing at the photograph on her lap. Papa was in the other room snoring loudly. She found comfort in this sound. It meant she had peace and quiet for a few hours before he would awaken in his unpredictable rages. It spiralled if he’d taken a few swigs of his homemade Caribou. He seemed to take to it more and more these days. He’d heat it over the woodstove.

La maudite poele à bois! He still had not purchased an electric stove. What fool still cooks on such appliances? Bien moi, c’est qui! Her sisters ran off as soon as they could to la grande ville de St-Jérome for Estelle and Marie-Claude met a ski instructor and moved to Montréal. They left her alone to care for Papa. They’d each promised on Maman’s deathbed to take care Papa but only Géraldine kept her promise. “C’est ben trop tard pour moi, à c’heure.” She gave up hoping or caring. She volunteered at Auberge Alys Robi, an old folk’s home and knew that was probably her calling. The staff invited her often to come work for them.

She sighed heavily, at least she had a place to go when Papa was no longer here.

Her rocking chair creaked as she searched for those mountain peaks still hidden in their fog.

Who am I?
looking at this image,
I get lost.

248 words

Written for Pen ‘n tonic Creative Expressions

palette of colours (haibun)

Sunset over the Harbour Copyright : Boyan Dimitrov

Carpe Diem Haiku Kai – Sunsest over the Habour

I spend a lot of time in the spring and summer sitting on a rock or leaning on a tree in a small park by the St Lawrence River across from Montreal. I can see glimpses of the Old Port of Montreal; I usually sit near a few fishermen…it is always more peaceful there.

I see the Champlain Bridge to my left (west side) and the Jacques Cartier Bridge to my right (east). Ducks following the current. And then you see it; the sun starts its magnificent performance like an artist with his paint brush. One huge canvas and the artist takes out his palette of colour, dipping in mauves, then pink and gradually the blues share space with the orange and yellows blending in their special shades of ochre.

: © Clr August 14

Art in the sky

multicolours coalesce

ducks paddle downstream

Tranquil moments (haibun)

Sometimes I find myself pensive and somber in thought. It is often after I wake up and have had several mysterious dreams that stir my psyche. I come to the kitchen and start running water to clean my counter and then fill the tub with sudsy hot water. I often take a few dirty items from my dishwasher and wash them by hand. My mind is still churning as I continue to process a thing or two that requires something soothing like the repetitive motions of washing dishes.

washing dishes

clears cobwebs in my mind

tranquility

We often equate tranquil moments with nature. Living across the street from a shopping mall with a huge parking lot, I find solace in hearing the concert of three to four snow plows at night. The roaring actually lulls me to sleep. Who would have thought that gigantic machinery such as these mega snow plows could be my winter lullaby?

twilight rumbles

bulldozing through huge snow drifts

lull me to sleep

CP Tranquility

le blues m’enveloppent (haibun)

Bistro à JoJo - Montréal — Bistro à JoJo – Montréal

The first time I heard the honey toned voices singing along with an acoustic guitar, I was a block away sitting in a small Jazz lounge called Le Jazzons. Very low key place it was where I sat next to Victor Vogel as he jammed with other musicians after hours during the Montreal Jazz Festival. As I walked out the bar I heard the music coming from rue St Denis and saw a crowd at the front of a bar I was about to soon visit and fall prey to its charm.

The closer I got, I could hear why there was a crowd where they were singing along, most swaying and moving their hips to the music inside.

Blues is the type of music that I personally feel has no discrimination. I suppose Jazz is the same but in Montreal, I noticed more people of all walks of life packing into this small Bistro à JoJo on rue St Denis every night of the week. Oh, you can sit in afternoons too to listen to open jamming but after ten in the evening the place is hopping. It holds less than 100 patrons, so it is not rare to see people on the sidewalk listening to the music. This was a place I heard so many French and English people singing and talking together savouring the blues here.

posée au comptoir
sirotant une Maudite
le Blues m’apaisent

https://i0.wp.com/www.fine-digital-art.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/City-Landscape-Impressionism.jpg — Digital Art – Landscape Impressionism

Manhattan reminds me a bit of Montreal (on a much smaller scale) in that it is an island, drivers are aggressive and honk their horns a lot and it is a city of music and food. Well to me anyway. Driving off the island to get on any bridge is similar to Montreal when there are twelve lanes that merge onto three lanes and they do it day in, day out as we do here too. So on a much smaller scale I do see similarities…I think NY has a better nightlife in all areas and that is where we differ here. We have a slower pace lifestyle and unlike our Canadian mega city, Toronto who follows more NY style rush rush rush…we have kept a bit of our ancestor’s mode de vie, vivre et laisser vivre.

weekend gig
island of many lights
stringing the blues
serenade on the Hudson
under midnight blue skies

CP Time Machine

* La Maudite is one of many beers brewed in Chambly, Québec by UniBroue. Chambly is the town where my children were raised. La Maudite is a stronger beer at 8% alcohol and Unibroue has other beers up to 10% however my favourite is La Blanche de Chambly at 5%; it is a wheaty beer tasting more like a Belgian beer.

disenchanted virgin (haibun)

Oh dear, she thought. Mother had to arrange this outing, now didn’t she? She looked at her second cousin, Emile Candiac in the photo with her blushing and pretending to be shy. If only they knew she was turning red from rage.

I wish she would devote more of her time making Father happy, instead she finds it is her duty to make me miserable. Well, I’ll hand to her, she has succeeded.

Can you imagine, how embarrassing this will be for me if word gets out at the sanatorium that I was escorted by Emile Candiac! All of my colleagues had refused courtships by him. He’s the laughing stock of our neighbourhood, let alone le Sanatorium Alphone Genest. Now I will be the joke of the town! Me! a second year resident nurse! They will all think I am so pathetic that my mother runs my social life as well as my personal life! Jesus, Mary, Joseph, what next? Will she order me to go to the New Year`s Eve ball with him as well? I must feign illness. I must!!

Mother thinks that at the age of twenty, I will be an old spinster if I am not wed. I don’t want to be tied down like she was so young. Is it my fault she was without a grain of intelligence or logic marrying Father at fifteen years old, a man thirty years her senior! Emile Candia is twenty years older than me and I am not interested in being courted or even considered for marriage with such dunce! An old disgusting one at that!

I’ve been saving from my meagre wages, to travel. Maybe I could go with some of the girls to the States. We could take the train and head out to Newport, Vermont for a weekend. That would be nice. I hear their fabric, especially cotton is of higher quality than in Canada and at reasonable costs.

Now how can I get the image of that disgusting photograph out of my mind?

meddling mothers

desperate bachelors

crestfallen maidens

MLMM Tale Weaver Prompt

heaven’s communiqué (haibun)

At Carpe Diem the month of February is month of impressions and today, the Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh who is another impressionist.

Our host presents Starry Night over the Rhone (another painting by Van Gogh) with a lovely story:

“One of the first paintings of the view was Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy, now in Copenhagen, which Van Gogh identified in a letter to his sister Wil from 16 June 1889 as hanging in his studio to dry. Two days later, he wrote to his brother that he had painted “a starry sky.” The Starry Night is the only nocturne painting in the series of views from his bedroom window. In early June Vincent wrote to Theo, “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.” Two scholars working independently of each other have determined that Venus was indeed visible in Provence in the spring of 1889. So the brightest “star” in the painting, just to the viewer’s right of the cypress tree, is actually Venus.

The moon is stylized, as astronomical records indicate that the moon was waning gibbous at the time Van Gogh painted the picture. Even if the phase of the moon had been a waning crescent at the time, Van Gogh’s moon is not astronomically correct. The one pictorial element that was definitely not visible from Van Gogh’s cell is the village, which is based on a sketch made from a hillside above the village of Saint-Rémy.”

Our host has written this haiku with this image and story in mind:

from the asylum
he observed the starry night –
seeking for the light
(c) Chèvrefeuille

**********************************************

I love visiting my friends in the country. Their home faces five mountains and one is very close, Mont Bromont. They live dans un rang (a dirt road) lined with farms and vast meadows. Any season has its charm but in winter the only light we see at night are on the mountain where skiers ski at night. Streams of lights squirming in shapes and curves. I like to walk near the barn facing the cornfield now covered in white, looking up I try to locate the Big Dipper. It isn`t long before I am off in my starry world of fantasy and wonder.

Category: Haibun