Montreal

A few hours after arriving here I thought, what an outrage, they built my dream city and never told me about it.

People here, young and old, walk down the street like they’ve had sex very recently and expect soon to indulge in it again. Let’s have color, someone said, and painted the storefronts lavender, green and yellow. Gardens are lush, overgrown with tropical plants as if to disprove the existence of winter. Coffee comes in generous white bowls.

I bought, as my only souvenir, a nine dollar bar of orange cantaloupe soap. I have become this variety of fool. I never imagined soap could smell so delicious.

I walked out the door of the shop to find the street packed with people marching to protest the destruction of Lebanon. Half an hour later they were still marching past. Lebanon’s green tree between white stripes. The Israeli flag marked with blood and swastikas. Paper-mache prime ministers and the chant “George Bush a-sa-ssin”

These pleasure tours of mine – is this any way to spend time at the end of the world?

Ideally I would be an ascetic, single-mindedly devoted to the preservation of the world. I want to be perfectly disciplined and I want the world to go on being foolish. Window boxes and fancy coffees and fooling with hair. Frivolities remind me of the generosity of the world. The world I hope may yet find some use for its fool.