These Winds Speak English and French

Photo by Nathalia Segato on Unsplash

The wind in Montréal is multi-lingual.

A nearby guitarist strums to the tune of ‘cause we’re living in a world of fools, bringing us down when they all should let us be.

Maybe it’s the 10 degree Celsius weather or the Nutella, strawberry, and banana crepe but there is something comforting stirring to remind me that troubles are light, momentary afflictions.

Watching all of these people walking on the cobblestone streets alone, in twos and threes, on holidays and honeymoons. The wind sits and leans to say that they carry heavinesses too but linger on this Quebec street more than in abysmal alleyways of a distant past or yesterday.

We both tilt our necks to the beginning overture of giggles and conversation in an orchestra of middle-schoolers dressed as strips of bacon, bottles of Coca Cola, and cowgirls with glued plastic petals to their hat’s brim.

I see them and think of tenacity. A body raging against itself in growing pains they experience as something else.

The wind says that nothing is still. That the bench we’re sat on is moving slowly and carefully as the rock beneath my feet revolves. The city I’m in isn’t still nor the one I am returning to. And like a doting child to a loving mother and a set of birds to a fairytale protagonist, following behind me are mercies and goodnessess as promised. Those not still or static, dynamically in motion.

Why, the wind asks me, am I intent on stillness in a body, in a city, and on a rock that transits?

A harrowingly-still thought encamps in my mind: that no one close understands making no one around truly close. Only partially true. For here I am realizing that this multi-lingual wind is as close as the next breath.

That man’s guitar now singing, telling my whole life with his words in a timing on this halloween weekend that tastes like a treat.