Littoral

I wake up early again today, following a pattern that has become an impromptu tradition. I swing by Tims first for a coffee (a medium French Vanilla this time), largely because nothing else is open. Then I make my way down to the Old Port. Taking a different route today, I walk down Boulevard Saint-Laurent, mounting the levees that once protected the city from river floods, before dropping back down to the banks to sit and write.

I'm always near water these days. Today, it's the pond right near the King Edward entrance—a body of water that passes for natural until you learn it's emptied each autumn and refilled each spring. The benches here sit low enough that the city appears to grow straight out of the water. Maybe that impermanence is why I'm facing it today, my back turned to the river and the tourist industries clinging to the industrial quays like barnacles to the hull of an ocean liner.

In the glare of my laptop screen, I can see the crane behind me that the bungee jumpers use. I've sat here enough times to watch a few of them drop. I still remember one whose head briefly dipped into the Saint Lawrence on the rebound: a baptism of sorts, a momentary connection with the ancestors. Yet, I am drawn back to this not-quite-pond, not-quite-fountain, with its calm waters and the grey limestone of Vieux-Montréal reflecting on the shimmering surface. Like many things in this city, the illusion breaks down the second you stand at the edge and look straight down; the usual sparse detritus of urban life sits at the bottom. But from this bench, with birds calling from all around me and the morning otherwise silent, it's more than enough.