found on a walking sign, half peeled, half legible. housing crisis? deport muslims. unclear if it’s fascism or mockery. as if that distinction ever mattered. the horror isn’t the message — it’s that it blends in. nothing shocks. just one more trace in a city that trades blame for shelter, displacement for safety, violence for policy.
rigs still hanging. the crowd’s gone. just light, angles, and someone wrapping cables in the distance. no urgency. just the slow undoing of what passed through.
#tiohtiàke #drift #traces #surfaces #fragments #blackness #refusals
they painted it red. no signature. no spectacle. just a fact on a wall most people won’t read. someone bikes past. life goes on. or doesn’t.
a march of mourning. they carry the names in cloth, the weight of what has been done. downtown tries to pretend it’s still normal. but we are past normal. this is not protest. this is a procession for the dead.
l’art existe. tucked between brutalist lines and fluorescent shadows. not a declaration— a reminder. of what survives the structure. of what glows anyway. even in institutions. especially in ruins.
#tiohtiàke #drift #traces #surfaces #refusals #fragments #holdings
they call it wisdom but it reads like distance.
pages upon pages to say: perhaps you are real but not yet certain. perhaps you belong but only if it doesn’t make others uncomfortable.
they write of tension like it’s an external thing. they measure discomfort but not whose it is.
they gather everything but us.
no affected voice in the room, no hand in the margins, no breath in the footnotes.
somewhere, a child tries to speak and finds their name missing from the glossary.
walked here with oriol.
afternoon sun too bright to ignore.
the sign said bonjour like it meant something,
but i was already thinking about leaving.
met with malica this week— potential postdoc supervisor at beniba. submitted the queen’s predoc application too. if it all goes through, this might be my last summer here.
the city looked soft in the light— like it didn’t know i was saying goodbye.
drift doesn’t ask for arrival. just movement. just the soft ache of being somewhere you already know how to leave.
it started slowly, like most good things. paul and i drifted through vieux-montréal, not in a hurry, not quite anchored. work came in waves—open tabs, notes half written, a reply sent too late but still meaningful. the afternoon stretched without agenda. there’s a softness in being accompanied without being watched.
the streets felt unfamiliar in a familiar way. like they’d been repainted since last week but forgot to dry. a man singing to himself passed us near saint-paul. no one looked twice.
by the time we reached frontenac, the air had changed. just enough rain to make you notice. just enough light to feel like something was ending.
we said goodbye without ceremony. no need for it.
i kept walking east, alone. the drizzle softened the sounds of the city. my breath felt louder than usual. there’s something about walking in the rain that makes your thoughts feel more like weather than noise.
the lights on sherbrooke flickered early. someone had chalked a heart onto the sidewalk that was already dissolving.
i didn’t take a photo. it didn’t need to last.
i just kept moving. not away, not toward. just through.
after the rain, the colours feel staged. the village waits to be repopulated. someone forgot their joy on a wet bench.
