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Isolation party, Pawel Franik

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My thoughts exactly.

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Comet.

“I’m glad we dated, I needed to date you. Before you I only dated guys that looked good on paper. You were really, really smart but also selfish, crass, not always in an entertaining way mind you. You hated your job, and your life, and you were completely comfortable being miserable. You���re horrible on paper and I loved you. And being with you made me realize it doesn’t have to look good on paper to feel good.”

This line in the script of the movie Comet haunts me, I wonder if I positively affected any of my past loves in this way. If I left them with at least one good thing.

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Ha ha seriously tho.

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Wonderfully Surreal Photo Collages of Imaginary Houses

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“It’s showtime, folks”

Painted in Photoshop CS6 with a Wacom Intuos Pro :)

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Mesmerizing Animations Created From Simple Shapes and Patterns

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TARGET, NICE SATAN & PLACENTAS

TARGET, NICE SATAN & PLACENTAS.

 My life in Hochelaga, my poor hood in Montreal, has always been riddled with ridiculous days and weird activities. Today was no different in tumultuous events. Cheng, the owner of the convenience store next door, asked me yesterday to help him get a new counter for his store. A 9AM wake-up call from him started our adventure, his friends old, beat up, black, Chevrolet Venture parked in front awaited us. It started with me stubbornly fucking around with the back seats, for about 10 minutes, until finally taking them out, all the while Mr. Li re-measuring the truck at least 5 times. Coffee in hand, my first move is to open the cup holder, as I start pulling on the black plastic piece to reveal them, the front panel of the shitty thing just rips out in my hand and as I fumble to place it back Cheng reassures me

— It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok, old car, old car —

And we embarked, as a 50 some Chinese convenience store owner, and a 25-year-old white kid with tattoos, on a mission to the 15 minutes far Target. The small talk is actually funny, Cheng criticizing Quebec’s driving skills 

— Quebec drivers, not very good — 

We drive further into the East of the city [I’ve always found further East you go the greyer it becomes, there’s this drab feeling exuding from the architecture] finally arriving at destination.

As we walk in, the emptiness of the mall & the failed Target, is reminiscent of the Walking Dead, empty shelves, shit everywhere, human beings that got fired and left with nothing [while their CEO got a 70 million severance pack] are like Walkers, strolling in the empty alleys looking for other people.

It is there, throning in it’s size in the depleted Starbucks, the majestic wood cash counter, there is but one issue as there are still fucking cables everywhere and the thing is wired to the floor. There was this whole thing about an electrician having to be there to do it, and it supposedly being done already. That was Cheng’s concern, but I forgot that when it comes to dealing with people in French and English it is my concern with Cheng.

For example, if a customer calls, or he is talking to Hydro or to a delivery company, if I am in his convenience store he’ll just hand me the phone 

— You, you good English, here, talk —

So this young, pimply, indifferent guy in a red Target polo tells me we’re going to have to come back…blablabla…I don’t let him finish his train of thought and just tell him to go find anyone that knows where their electric box is or I’ll just rip the cables out of the floor, cause we ain’t coming back.

This grumpy dude in a blue janitor jumpsuit then shows up and starts talking shit about how we should be paying him to do this, that it’s not his job, he’s not an electrician, he has other “customers” to take care of [might I remind you this shit hole is empty, the only thing they’re selling is .74 cent bags of ice, and I’m not seeing a fucking line up for ice] that’s when Cheng snaps on him. At this point I’m just ripping cables out of the counter and laughing my ass off as the grumpy janitor and Cheng are going at it hard, one yelling, the other one yelling not to yell. Friend of janitor shows up they talk shit about us, in Arabic, quite disrespectfully in our faces and then both disappear.

Cheng and I are just standing there looking at this huge counter when finally our savior comes by. Now, when you think of a guy that knows what he’s doing, it’s this guy. Doesn’t check to see if the wire is hot, doesn’t wear gloves, looks at me points at the electric cable box and just starts taking it apart and rewiring it while explaining what he’s doing and why leaving the cables in the square metal box is legal, pointing at cables coming out of the wall, laying on the floor across the room and mentioning their illegality. All and all while the other grumpy dick did nothing and complained for 15 minutes, this guy in an equally unappealing grey jumpsuit got it done in less than a minute.

Back to our original 2-person team we then proceed to trying to lift the thing. Key word is trying. That shit was HEAVY, now we’re faced with the problem of having to carry this 700-pound counter across the mall to the truck. It was time for me to turn the charm on, I go look for some other people in the store, the kid at the door is too skinny and frail, the jumpsuit guy’s have disappeared, I finally find two random employees still wearing their shirts like they didn’t get the memo the store was shutdown. They help me get a rolling bed and everything goes as smooth as Leo Dicaprio’s moves from there, get the counter in the minivan, get all the pieces, we’re out of there. A 15 minutes small talk less ride back and we’re at Depanneur Rolland.

In ghetto Hochelaga, Cheng who I realized was quite the hoarder, proceeds to clean up his counter turning to me with promo crap from beer companies every 2 seconds 

— You want? No? Garbage — 

All the while I’m chain-smoking cigarettes outside. Get the old counter outside easily enough, half glass window, half plastic with metal legs, it resembles early 70’s pharmacy counters like my Grandfather had. We start taking in pieces and Cheng slips on the ice and almost falls’; I start laughing my ass of again. Then we’re left in the middle of the street like 2 idiots, trying to get the counter out of the minivan, when suddenly from the 3rd floor across the street 

— HEY! YOU NEED HELP? — 

I turn around to see this redheaded Viking chested on his balcony smoking a makeshift cigarette the smoke blaring in front of his tattooed face.

— Hi, My name’s Matthieu, what’s yours?

— Hi, I’m D’Automne [Fall [the season] in French]

I had to ask him three times, before getting he wasn’t fucking with me. I shake his hand and he immediately remarks my hand tattoos and proceeds to pitch me his creepy Satanist tattoo of people from all religions being hung and the devil watching upon the bloody scene. And as pretty much everyone that lives in Hochelaga asks me if I smoke weed, and tells me that he can tattoo and sell me drugs for not a lot of money, I brush it off feigning interest.

Now our 3-man team finally has the manpower to bring the massive hunk of wood up the sidewalk and the 3 steps of the convenience store, all the way in. The fall Viking keeps telling me creepy historical Satanist stories while Cheng gives him a free beer for his help. He bums a cigarette off of me and goes home, across the street. It’s time for my unwanted reward, I was raised to just be a nice human being and help people, Cheng hands me 40$ telling me 

— This for me, no problem, you, no work, need it —

Having collected a freebie corporate beer glass he also gives me a dark beer [he keeps pushing it on me since we drank one together and I told him I vaguely like it] I thank him and reiterate my availability if he needs more help.

As I light a cigarette, I head towards the building to the left and start walking up the stairs to my apartment I hear the Viking yelling from across the street

— YOU WANNA COME BURN ONE? —

Not one to refuse freebies, I make my way to his “apartment” that looks more like a crack house to me. As I walk in his bed (a mattress on a wood frame topped with cardboard) is in the far left corner against the window, there is no couch, a guitar amp on top of a single speaker act as sound system. He’s playing Czech gore rap that recounts stabbing people in the pussy and ripping guts from assholes, charming stuff really. His quivering hands, sign of a recovering addict, fidget to roll a joint. As we toke and get high he tells me a thousand and one confuse stories, of him living in the street in Toronto with a bunch of punks and skinheads beating up people and jumping over fences with his pit bull, of chilling with gore rap bands in Quebec City, of having a joual poem written about him hitchhiking to a town in Estrie, of being a recovering heroin user that uses an alternative to methadone. It’s all drug induced disorder in thoughts, he keeps jumping from story to story, he’s in his head, in his bubble, I can discern a burning passion for all the Satanist shit he keeps talking about, he genuinely reads up on it and knows the history, but other than that I can’t see anything in his eyes. An empty wandering soul tired from years of walking the streets. 

 From what I manage to gather he just came back to Montreal, has a 6 year old daughter that lives with his ex in Quebec, he’s a smiths man and also listens to Satanist dark metal (not just Satanist rap). It’s all pretty ghetto usual for me until there. When for an unknown reason, after a chat about him managing to make a woman he was seeing doing hula hoop while on Mescaline, he starts talking about his daughters birth. And how the doctor was yelling at him because he wanted to force his wife to eat her placenta. And that’s when he goes on a delirium about wolves eating their mate’s placenta and the benefits of it. I’m not one to judge other people or be creeped out by much, but as of 11 AM that was too early for me to talk about placenta blood, wolf rituals and stabbing pussies. So I made my way home, weirded out and high as fuck.

So that was my morning, very nice, I now have relationships in my neighborhood with a guy that hid cop killer bullets for the Hells Angels, a guy that got shot 4 times in the chest, the weed seller for the hells, the weed pusher for the hells, a ex-alcoholic that has an FLQ [Terrorist organization in the 70’s in Quebec] flag and my very nice Convenience store buddy. #Hochelaga

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Sometimes I write. And I don’t finish my line of thought.

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Sunshine & California.

The sun is shinning on Montreal, the feel of summer is seeping back into our conscious minds. But all my mind strives for is you. The sound of Marcus Mumford bolting his lungs out, stating he doesn’t know if he believes, is drowning my apartment. 

I knew I believed, I believed that summer watching you. We were one, we completed each other. This image haunts my head of us in that baby blue car, on the highway, you’d say it was Perf, I’d answer you were. The sun shined down on your dark skin, making it glow, I firmly believed you were the one glowing. I would stare in disbelief at your tiny smile, watching the reflection of mine in your sunglasses. I could see your beautiful brown eyes, filled with the stars of passion of life, behind them. I envied you, I envied myself for having someone like you. I envied the world for having us.

I let you go, because I couldn’t find the sunshine in myself, and with summer at the door and a long cold solitary winter leaving, I realize you were my sun all along. And I miss you.

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I wish my words could scream.

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Songs Of Seasons And Emotions.

Music and seasons associations have always been omnipresent in my life. See I have kind of obsessive personality and when I like an album or a song on repeat until I get so tired of it I never want to hear it again. It’s as if I need to feel the emotion of that piece of music as a whole as intensely as I can before discarding it and removing myself from it.

In that obsession I often end up associating the music to a season or to a feeling. You know how My Dark Twisted Fantasy from Kanye is a winter album because it came out at the end of November and feels heavy like the snow and has a roller coaster of emotions akin to the lack of sun. But how Bad Blood of Bastille is a summer album even though released in September in the US, because of its light bouncy beats and soft flying voice.

This afternoon I was sitting at my desk applying for jobs, and I live in Quebec so it is freezing here and I was cold as shit in my apartment, but then I put on an album released in April, The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit, and it was as if I had lit a fire. The warmth, the comfort, the security that enveloped me like a blanket. It’s a very lyrically sad album, with upbeat songs and a panoply of instruments that to a limit sound summary, but that isn’t the scenery I felt.

The harsh winter winds, the blistering cold and the white cushion of snow contrasted by the inside of a house and a burning fire, sitting on a cowhide in front of a fireplace, I could feel the orange glow in my face, the heat of standing there watching the flames entangled in a fight of dance. I’ve always found sitting in front of a fire feels like going to the tanning salon, a far-fetched but similar feeling of total relaxation, of sitting there with nothing to feel just the heat pouring through your body, enveloping you, taking you by the hand to the land of summer and beaches.

And as the last notes of the album played, and my apartment became cold again, I thought to the period of my life when I would listen to this album obsessively and the fight out the feelings that were involved. I came to the conclusion that even thought I tried to spit those feelings out by living those songs out, they will always organically be part of me…and of a season.