Monday July 5

Okay, by now we are settling into the trip. S occasionally mentions her belly. Sometimes, in the evening, she stands in front of the mirror and asks me if she's fat. Usually I just say, "No hon, you're pregnant." Sometimes, just to keep her on her toes I say, "Yes, you are."

On the fifth we're probably going to hit up the Jazz festival.

M: I'm not even sure I like Jazz.
S: It's going to be fun.
M: Is it? What if it turns out that I don't actually like Jazz?
S: You'll live.

It is over breakfast that I'll start trying to talk her into going to the Joseph Arthur concert at 11 P.M. I'll tell her that babies need good music in the womb in order to come out just right. I'll tell her that we can sleep in our next life when we're dead and gone, that the sleep depends on whichever religion that people subscribe to, but I promise her some sleep there.



Writing this far into the future things begin to get a little bit hazy. I don't know what museums we still have to visit, what little corner bagel shop hasn't been graced by our presence. We'll discuss over coffee whether Montreal in fact, as some book claimed, has the most beautiful women in the world. I'll tell her that I can't be sure because I'm married, but that the most beautiful men in the world reside in Italy. "It's all that beautiful hair."

In the Musee de Beaux Arts we'll talk about our favorite pieces. We'll try and use the word chiaroscuro as frequently as possible because it's the one thing I remember from my survey of Western Art. I'll tell her that that's why I love El Greco and Tintoretto so much, all that quality f-ing use of chiaroscuro. I'll say it even though I love sculpture the most. It's the one type of art that reminds me that humanity, and me has the potential for beauty. I could stare at David all day.

The sentences get lazy now because I don't have the texture of the streets or the rhythm of the speech. I don't know yet if the street snake, or if the people all speak English beneath a veneer of French. I don't know anything. I just know that I'll be somewhere far away from here and that this sort of estrangement from land, from place, from self, can be a good thing.