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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I don't know exactly why I was so content on Sunday afternoon when I visited Jarry Park. Now, it's a funny emotion to be surprised at - contentment, which doesn't sound all that dramatic - but it caught me unaware and so I tried to puzzle out its origins, at once grateful and a little worried it wouldn't last.
Part of it was that I'd figured out how to get into Jarry Park. See, I approached it from the metro and train station, where the map promised it was close, but at first I couldn't figure how to get through to it. I had some instinct as to its direction, and so, after pursuing side streets and running into a dead end, I found a roundabout way in.
It's a place I remember from childhood and teenage-hood, mostly picnics with friends and the church people in Park Ex. Was this park my ex? No, it's Beulah land, and "Beulah" means "married," says the resident Hebraist.
Or so I remember. Here, I am alone. I am singly married to this land and I am approaching it on foot, from a different angle than usual.
A dreamy expanse opens. A foot path borders a large oval field and I decide to walk around. I don't remember this part. The sun's rays are warm but not stifling.
People, dogs, soccer balls. Benches, tables, foldable picnic tables. I ignore a table with proselytizers but stop across from a small one set up as if for a picnic. Is it personal? It's facing the path, public. One of the women behind it smiles encouragement. Bake sale. A picture of a family in Gaza they're raising money for. Brief guilt that I haven't spread the word about the Maysaa and Hanin fund more widely...but here I can help with minimal sociability. Cookies $2; I give an extra fifty cents, eat the delicious pistachio and chocolate concoction as I walk.
Here it's peaceful, the sun mellow. And and and. I was planning to go all around the track, but I find an opening into a more tree-ful part with a pavilion. Balloons. Someone's celebration - my past. This is the part I remember.
Yes, the pond is still there. The fountain. The ducks. I sit on a bench, eat my supper, and read bits of Ilona Martonfi's Black_Rain (poems) and Eve Krakow's Voice_Lessons (creative essays, memoir). From the former, I will read a poem called "Border Wall" at Accent_Open_Mic later in the evening, since I don't have anything to read of my own. I'll probably pronounce the writer's name wrong.
My seat isn't that close to the fountain. Closer to two female mallards, who paddle back and forth from the middle of the pond to the shore.
Finally, I have to go, but I pass two content-looking people before I leave the pond area. A shirtless man sits cross-legged next to the pond's stone edge, bathed in golden light. A woman on another bench strikes me as beautiful, beauty earned by years, her long hair a mix of blond and grey, also shaded golden in the early evening sun.
...
The dreaminess persists: I emerge on St. Laurent street, decide to walk to the Plateau, and on my way south find an enchanting path. Sculptures of rust-brown metal, industrial leftovers, are shaped into monuments that look like windchimes. A funny message on a wall. Shade, breeze. And finally I find, via a sign, that the path has brought me to St. Denis, where I was planning to go all along but wasn't sure how to get to. Wait, how do I get to it with the railway in the way...? Ah. Go under. Beside the underpass. And I'm actually at the place on time, and for once that feels effortless.
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