Errant avec leurs proches à Montréal,,,

Day two at Montreal Jazz Fest was stunning: the weather was crisp and sunny, the people were ready for a party and in time the NY chapter of the family arrived in Canada. What is there to complain about, yes? So, as is our preferred style of mobility, we wandered: we wandered through our neighborhood (Little Italy), we wandered through Marche Jean Talon, we wandered about the festival grounds watching people (mostly children playing in the fountains) and we even wandered through some conversations.
  
William Wordsworth once put it like this:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

That is, I suspect, another favorite about these types of vacations: there is NO destination or goal, just time to see what strikes our fancy and then follow that impulse until it is over. These two street performers working the Place-des-Arts METRO station capture the soul of wandering as they improvise on U2's "With or Without You."

We wandered about later searching for a park where we might host an impromptu Middle Eastern picnic - when what should present our wandering eyes but Parc Dante with a lovely bust of the poet himself. So we parked ourselves - and a sleeping baby - and shared white wine and schwarma, falafel, hummus and those great pickled turnips the Lebanese do so well. And as evening fell, the kids wandered some more and we returned to the scene of the jazz crime for a late night digestif of jazz funk

Today will be much the same as yesterday - and it will all be sacred. In easing into this morning I came upon this poem by Mia Anderson, winner of this year's Montreal Poetry Award

The antenna is a growth not always
functional in all people.

Some can hoist their antenna with
remarkable ease—like greased lightning.

In some it is broken, stuck there in its old winged
fin socket way down under the shiny surface

never to issue forth.
Others make do with a little mobility,

a little reception, a sudden spurt of music

and joy, an aberrant hope.

And some—the crazies,
the fools of God—drive around

or sit or even sleep
with this great thin-as-a-thread

home-cobbled monkey-wrenched filament
teetering above their heads

and picking up the great I AM like
some hacker getting Patmos on his toaster.

And some, with WD40 or Jig-a-loo
or repeated attempts to pry the thing up

or chisel at the socket
do not give up on this antenna

because they have heard of how it works
sometimes, how when the nights are clear

and the stars just so and the new moon has all but set,

the distant music of the spheres is transformative

and they believe in the transformation.

It is the antenna they have difficulty believing in.

See more at: http://montrealprize.com/2013-winner/#sthash.CjDKM0P4.dpuf

credits:  all pictures by dianne de mott