Sometimes I forget the events that led to my being here. Sometimes I forget the days before the voyage, the glimmer of an idea of a thought, a glint of the mind, sent out so far to the east that it seemed more fantasy than possibility.<\/p>\n
The first time I mentioned Montreal<\/a> was in November of 2004. Politically motivated, I was determined to abandon the festering conservative madhouse that I felt the United States had somehow become. At the end of my rant, a brief remark: “Well, I\u2019m off to explore the web, and see if I can find any viable ways to move to Montreal.” By the next day<\/a>, I had found McGill, and my “escape route” was all planned.<\/p>\n Sometimes I forget the tribulations that followed; \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about Montreal. If I end up going, I have to go alone. I need to leave my attachments and start fresh, to seewho I am.\u201d<\/p>\n I remember clearly reading the first letter from McGill, I continued my illicit love affair regardless, Beware of what comes out of Montreal, especially during winter. \/ It is a force corrosive to all human institutions. It will \/ bring everything down. It will defeat itself. It will establish \/ the wilderness in which the Brightness will manifest again. Sometimes I forget this path that led me here.<\/p>\n
\nrelationships ended<\/a> for my imagined lover,
\na city that I’d never met.<\/p>\n
\n“We’re sorry, better luck next time”,
\nand my first conversations with the administration that,
\nthen chimaera, invisible roadblocks in my path,
\nare now just another everyday
\npart of my existence.<\/p>\n
\nmy obsessive stalking;
\nI knew what Montreal was doing<\/a> as I
\npeeked through the windows into its secret mechanisms.
\nI lifted up its skirts and found an impenetrable wilderness<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\n
\n– from \u2018Montreal\u2019, by Leonard Cohen<\/p><\/blockquote>\n