on the way to a house practice.
air heavy with smoke, with memory, with movement.
we laughed anyway. pointed. posed.
played around with a new category—something shifted. not just in the body. in the breath. family feels like that sometimes: silly and sacred at once.
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.
they cross just as the light turns green. the street doesn't pause, but something in the air does.
we stood still when the sun disappeared. a crowd without urgency. no one tried to name it.
the air changed first— cold, metallic, like something was watching. then the sky, folding into dusk as if the day had given up early.
i didn’t feel awe. not exactly. more like a shared breath held too long.
some people clapped when the light came back.
but most just stood there. under bare trees. on stolen land. watching a hole in the sky remind us how small we are.
the categories below are not containers. they are orientations. they offer no fixed meaning—only a way to move through this space alongside me.
traces are what remain after the moment has passed. a warm cigarette on the curb. a hesitation in someone’s voice. a memory that returns without explanation.
these entries follow what refuses to be resolved. what echoes. what lingers. traces often live below the surface. they are residue, imprint, or presence without narrative.
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these are mapped and unmapped passages of the dérive. where the body moves without destination, but not without intention.
a street, a staircase, an alleyway. a turn you didn’t plan to take.
each walk is a record of encounter—geographic, emotional, speculative. some walks are literal. others are historical or imagined.
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fragments are the form that survival often takes. a quote. a photo. a sentence held on a page like breath held in the chest.
these are not broken thoughts. they are complete in their incompleteness. they do not seek to become whole.
here, fragment is both form and method. it resists the archive and honours the partial.
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refusals are not always rejections. they are acts of care. they are limits. they are protection. to refuse is to say no, but also to say not this and not now.
posts marked by refusal hold space for the things i turn away from. institutions. platforms. recognition. capture.
refusal is not a lack. it is a condition for imagining something else.
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surfaces are what the body registers first. the weight of air. the sound of shoes on wet pavement. the shine on a plastic bench.
these are not shallow observations. they are signals. they are textures. they carry meaning before we name it.
to attend to surfaces is to attend to how we live through touch and proximity.
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holdings are what we carry with us. grief. joy. memory. pressure. intimacy.
these are posts about weight and care. what stays. what returns. what we carry for ourselves and for each other.
holding is not only about burden. it is also about love.
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blackness here is not identity in the narrow sense. it is geography. it is condition. it is tension and excess. it is refusal, beauty, memory, and disruption.
posts in this category move through black space, black time, and black feeling. they are not explanatory. they are not proof. they are presence.
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queerness is movement that resists capture. it loops. it drifts. it changes shape.
these are posts about queer time, queer kinship, and the ways queer life survives and flourishes in the margins. they are not about labels. they are about gestures, affinities, and the shimmer that moves between us.
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drift is the movement itself. it is the rhythm that runs through everything.
these posts reflect on the dérive—the process of moving without destination, and what emerges along the way.
drift is not aimless. it is how we find what was not meant to be found.
these categories aren’t exhaustive. some posts may move through many. others may resist classification entirely.
that is the point.
this is not a taxonomy. it is a choreography. a way to move through this space with intention, and with me.
