Mr. Hubert “After fourteen years of silence, I spat on an old woman in the metro. Only her toes touched the ground. Her melted, liver-spotted hands held her beige handbag defensively on her lap. She had a scarf and a hat of matching sky blue. Her face was unremarkable. As kind as any grandmother-type although she did not have the power of my grandmother, a silently powerful woman who ruled through grace, subterfuge and coercion. No, this woman had the repugnance of anyone over 65. Grey, wrinkles, saggy, smelly. When I spat on her, most of it landed on her right cheek just to the left of her cheek bone. Some spread up the side of her nose – dribbling just a little. More landed on her drooping eyelid and on that terribly soft patch in the corner of the eye just on the bone. There might even have been some on her bottom lip. Just one or two drops. Very small. I’m not sure. Some guy pushed me out of the metro car. After fourteen years of silence I had spoken. My first word. My second word was ‘The’, audibly capitalized and then I paused. I had more in mind but was too shocked to say more. The sound of my own voice surprised me. I repeated ‘The’ and added ‘man.’ Now you must understand that for fourteen years I had chosen not to speak. I moved from the city to the country twice. I slept, worked, paid bills. I just didn’t talk. You might ask why but I can’t give you a good reason. None that would satisfy such abhorrent behavior anyway. A strange thing happened when I gave up speaking. People stopped speaking to me. When my speechlessness was new, the few intimates I had asked me but I never satisfied them. Nothing I wrote down in explanation was good enough. I tried. Well maybe not, but I thought I did. I wanted them to just say okay but they kept pushing. I had nothing else to say. So they stopped asking. Soon it just became an accepted fact. I didn’t talk. Needless to say that after fourteen years there weren’t many people left in my life. No one you would call close. And I know there are thousands of mute and deaf people who are fully functioning members of our society, have jobs ----- I woke up from an afternoon nap with the first line of this story in my head. I don't remember what I was dreaming about. Stationaery published it and it was later chosen for Good Reports' 2005 Anthology. The complete story is available in pdf here.

and homes and lives. But I really—it wasn’t the act of speaking that I rejected, it was conversation. It was the banter, the back and forth, the endless pattern of expression, misunderstanding and trying to explain yourself to another who couldn’t possibly understand. How could they, they weren’t me? In the beginning I wrote a lot. I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of lined, spiraled note books. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I don’t know, I guess I was working stuff out. Figuring this out. Trying to shuffle everything, all the pieces into one picture. To link the dots. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I was 27 when I gave up talking so I had a lot to say or not say... to work out. Whatever. I don’t know. In the end I gave up. I realized that I never had any intention of sharing these writing with anyone so what was the point. I mean, what’s the point of writing anything down if no one’s ever going to read it? Everyone writes to be heard. Everyone wants to be a star, don’t they? On the other hand maybe I was just finished. Maybe. With no more input maybe I had finished. Maybe the drawing was finished. Maybe all the lines had been drawn, all the connections made. All the dots were connected and now all I was doing was drawing more and more of them, filling in the space with infinite number of black lines. I hope not. I had it the other way. I mean, I really thought I stopped writing in rebellion. In revulsion. Hmm. Anyway. When I gave up writing my journals, an even stranger thing than the disappearance of people happened. I stopped having reactions to things. Without the writing there were no more witnesses, not even myself. So oddly enough the story stopped. Don’t get me wrong. As I said, I lived. I aged. I changed clothes when it was necessary. My emotions stopped. The causative links between the events of my life and my emotional reactions stopped. So the chronological accumulation of these links that were how I understood myself and my place, stopped. Time didn’t stop. I stopped. It was as if when I stopped writing I stopped telling myself my own story. When I did that, I gave up the last reader. The story stopped.

In 1995, I moved to the country. I edited books for a publishing house. Not a huge one but big enough. I read, edited and submitted the corrected texts without ever saying a word. I had a few freelance projects but they didn’t go well. People hiring freelancers weren’t satisfied with my blunt written judgments of their work. It was impossible to indulge in the literary debacle that most of those people enjoy. My company had signed an author to write a series of five short, adolescent novels over three years and I was her editor. She would send me chunks of her work. Sometimes ten pages, sometimes fifty and I would make sure she was adhering to the word count and lexical limitations of her contract. I set myself up in a two bedroom bungalow in St-Xavier de la Montagne. It’s a little village down in the Townships. Nothing special. Nothing going on. Just country people doing country stuff. You know. Hanging out at the bar.  Going to weddings and funerals. The high school play. Smoking joints in parked cars.  Not really that much different form the city, I guess. Just darker out there. I’m not really a good judge though. I didn’t really try to get involved. I’m sure they were good people. Just far from the epicenter, you know. The locals thought I was mute and just adapted accordingly. People simply waved or nodded greetings. That awful, meaningless question: ‘How are you?’ I had a teacher once who said that ‘how are you?’ is just a way people have to say ‘I see you.’ No one actually wants to know the answer. Maybe. Even the cashiers at the grocery store came to know me and stopped being offended when I didn’t answer and chat. Some of the peppier ones still asked and usually engaged in a funny one-way conversation. All I needed to do was nod or smile. That was all the answer they needed to discuss weather or politics or her mother in a really clever stream of

On Poetry In the middle of the white lies a strange thing; Rhyme and Reason and Metre and Form attempting meaning through spaces. ----- Published in "A Golden Morning," Poetry Institute of Canada, British Columbia, 2005

untitled and after I kiss you, where will you be? soft lips to lips? and after I kiss you, where will you be? savage intercourse? and after I kiss you? will you be having breakfast? or are you already in the after-after?

The roommate He’s a nightcrawler.

untitled Unveiled under a heavy sky of yellow heat, the languid woman dripped sweat from her armpits.

Le 24 Hey! Salut! Fredrique, ça va?    Ai! John. Oui, ça va. Toi? Sa fait combien de temps qu’on s’est vu? Deux ans? Au moins. La dernière fois, c’était quoi? à la fête de Niki? Niki! Elle, elle était folle. I know. Drank like a fish. C’était un super bon party. Oui. Tu dansais comme un fou. Et tu voulais que ce gars rentre chez toi. John rit. - Tim. J’étais saoul. Mais comme saoul. Saoul. John pensa pendant un moment. You were about to go to Chile. T’es-tu allé? Oui. C’était superbe. Plein d’histoire, de culture. Les gens son vraiments sympathiques. Qu’est-ce que t’as fait là? Je voyageais. J’ai y passé deux mois. J’ai commencé à Santiago, la capital, et j’ai descendu le long de la côte. Pour le retour, je suis passé par les montagnes. Nice! L’océan pacifique est sublime. J’imagine. On s’avait promis de s’appeler. On l’a pas fait. Comme toujours. Tu te souviens tu de “the old man and the sea”? Le livre. ----- For the CBC Lit Competition, a francophone friend wrote an English story and I tried to write a French one. The complete story is available in pdf here.

Non. On avait ce cours ensemble. Tu t’ souviens? Littérature américaine. Oui, c’est ça. Le prof. “The old man and the sea” What was his name? Son nom? Gibian. Right. C’est ça. Gibian. Le vieux et la mer. J’me souviens qu’on entrait en r’tard chaque cours avec un café en main. “Les mardis latté” au Second Cup. Deux dollars de rabais. Ils ne les font plus, les mardis, savais-tu? L’autobus s’arrêta au coin de l’avenue Peel. Le grincement des freins. La tendre mais irrésistible inertie des corps. S’cusez, dit la madame assis à coté de la fenêtre. Ah! Je vous en pris, réponda Fredrique assis à la deuxième des deux places du banc. Il se tourna pour laisser passer la madame. Elle était lourde et insécure dans ses mouvements. Peut-être qu’elle ne prennait pas d’autobus dans son pays d’origine : le Portugal? Quand elle passa, Fredrique perçu l’arôme du polyester de sa jupe et jacket bleu marine avec perles et chemise florale. Move over Fredrique se tassa vers la fenêtre et John s’assit. Fredrique prit cette opportunité pour remettre son livre dans son sac-à-dos.

I want to know where they get outfits like that. Les deux rièrent. Des souvenirs des heures passées sur les marches de l’édifice des Arts de McGill à regarder le monde. Les marches de l’édifice des Arts. Le plus fameux des édifices, celui qui apparaît sur les publicités et en couverture des documents universitaires. Les marches où les étudiants croient participer, peut-être seulement par leur présence, à la mythologie de McGill. À la carte postale du campus avec les couleurs d’automne. À manifester l’héritage : visible et sociale. La lumière rouge tourna au vert. L’autobus continua son parcours pénible et haltant le long de Sherbrooke. Des lumières et des arrêts chaque dix mètres et plein de trafic à toutes les heures de la journée. Le pire parcours de tout le réseau. Pas vraiment mais ça semblait pour John être le cas les quelques fois qu’il l’eût prit. Aujourd’hui il pleuvait. Mais pourquoi ce parlent-t-ils c’est deux jeunes bien vêtus du chic montréalais? Metrosexual urban casual. Eh bien, ils se sont rencontrés par hasard dans l’autobus. Fredrique faisait le parcours de retour à son appartement à Hochelaga Maisonneuve après sept heures de travail à la Banque Nationale proche de la Place Alexis Néon à l’ouest du centre-ville montréalais. Il lisait Les Rêves de Tchekov, un livre qu’un ami venait d’écrire. C’était mauvais. C’était la troisième version du livre. Les deux premières étaient aussi mauvaises que l’actuelle mais Fredrique avait promit à Jean-Louis de lui en faire une critique. La pluie l’avait lui aussi forcé à prendre l’autobus frustrant au lieu du métro et vingt minutes à pieds. Mais pourquoi ce parlent-t-ils?

-----     My friend and I wanted to write a sitcom something like the craziness of our lives with a     touch of Tales of the City. The complete Pilot in pdf is here.