Get on the Green Line and get off at Prefontaine. Go up the stairs and up and out onto the street. Remember that it’s July and impossibly humid. Accept that being wet with sweat is the price of this ticket. Stop listening to that garbage podcast where boys opine about the whys and so whats of current events. Hesitate to choose music. Looking for a particular vibe. Too hot to stay standing here scrolling infinitely. Settle on this.
Don’t overthink it. Turn it up a little. A little more. Bite your bottom lip because it sounds good. Get going. Cut across the park grass and head south down the street. Hang a right at the petit prince building. We’re going to Sainte-Marie.
We’ve been going to Sainte-Marie often lately, but we don’t know why we’ve been going to Sainte-Marie at all. Unlike most of the neighborhoods we frequent, there’s no distinct reason for us to be here. We don’t live here, work here, have friends in the area, frequent any of the bars or restaurants or shops or venues in the area, or find the area especially beautiful. We go, it seems, just to go. This, though, can’t be right. It can’t be purely arbitrary because, well, if it were we’d end up elsewhere sometimes. Of late, though, we don’t. We keep going to Sainte-Marie and, at this point, we’re going to Sainte-Maire to find out why we keep going to Sainte-Marie. It’s a circular problem.
It’s almost as if folks knew that once you were in Sainte-Marie you would get mysteriously ensnared by it, so they planned around it. It’s roughly bounded by transit shepherding people or things elsewhere. Papineau marks the official western edge, but De Lorimier and the Jacques Cartier Bridge serve as a solid de facto limit. The freight train tracks leading to and from the port curve around its eastern border. Sherbrooke runs wide in the north and Notre Dame, treated like a highway by too fast cars, in the south. Almost everyone, it seems, steers clear of Sainte-Marie’s odd pull with ease.
The neighborhood feels sequestered, feels like it’s somewhere that - unless you live here - you simply pass by on the way elsewhere. The sense that Sainte-Marie has been forgotten or overlooked or almost erased from the geographical imaginary of the city is supported by the fact that people seem to have no idea what we’re referring to when we talk about Sainte-Marie. They usually ask if we mean Ville Marie. (We never do.) When we tell them the exact location, they tell us that they assumed that it was just a part of the Village or Hochelaga. They share a dim memory of maybe having been there once, but can’t recall what brought them there or why. We don’t blame them. Like we said, we don’t know what brings us here or why either.
Keep walking west on Rouen. Approach the best way into Sainte-Maire, the legal underpass.
It’s rare - for us anyways - to see people painting. Rare, too, that folks are able to paint in public without the threat of arrest, fines, or other awful hassles. Something is gained by the luxury of a legal wall. Folks have time to create more elaborate designs, use a greater number of colors. They can stand back, look at their work in progress. Something too, though, is lost. The efficiency and ingenuity that typically underwrites graffiti is gone. The necessary imperfections that follow from writing quickly in plain view on uninviting walls are replaced by the unavoidable imperfections that follow from trying anything.
Some people find graffiti ugly or incomprehensible no matter what. The look or underlying ethos rubs them somehow the wrong way. We like it. There’s a simplicity to its aim. It is a name sometimes accompanied by a figure. That’s it. It fulfills no function other than itself. It only has some letters and some colors and no overt reason. It’s uncompensated and anonymous and transitory. It’s expressive, but obscurely so. Formally constrained, but seemingly unruly. Folks paint to paint. It’s inspiring. So few activities are undertaken in public just for sake of undertaking them. Sure, people knit to knit - but the success or failure of that scarf isn’t hung out for all to see. Not so here.
The graffiti in the underpass is always new when we pass through. Some pieces are better and nicer than others. (You can find an archive of old work at this Instagram account or this one or here. Seems folks gave up keeping up with the ever-shifting walls.) There always seems to be at least two artists working on something we when walk by. We don’t pause. Don’t want to interrupt or distract.
On the other side of the underpass, there’s more. Many of the nearby neighboring walls are fixed with ornate pieces. If these walls aren’t legal, they also aren’t policed or buffed. The same would seem to hold true across most of Sainte-Marie which, have walked under the underpass, we’re now officially in.
Decide for no reason to keep walking along Rouen for a bit, but seek shade. Heatstroke isn’t hot. Making decisions without some guiding goal is tough. Why turn here rather than there? Head this way rather than that? Has to be something that draws us somewhere specifically otherwise why return. Why, though, can’t we treat places like we treat music? Like it to like it without searching out phraseable reasons. We know well enough not to ask why someone likes a song, likes a singer, likes singing along to that chorus. Don’t, though, allow ourselves to meander purposelessly. Could chalk it up to a walk. Getting some exercise? Gross. Exploring? We lack the right hat. Ask ourselves why we ask ourselves so many damn questions. Who’re we hoping to answer to? And what’re those answers meant to help with?
Stop by the Buddhist temple not far from the place that serves greasy, delicious fries.
Take a left and pass by the gray Latter Day Saints building. Young people are sitting talking criss cross apple sauce outside. Assume they’re not talking about Jesus, but we wouldn’t be able to hear them even if they were.
Enormous built structures seem more immediately impressive than earthly ones.
Imagine how many people it took to build this bridge? And all the effort? To create something for an express purpose and fix a perceived geographical problem. The unnatural geometry - all those straight lines supporting and meeting gentle curves - is very instense (in a good way). Nice, too, that they built it out of something that oxidizes so pretty. Pretty probably wasn’t they were aiming for, but nice all the same. And the river this bridge crosses? How many people did it take to make the river? None. And effort? Nill. And is it pretty? Maybe? Can’t really see it from here. Unlike the bridge, the river serves no function. Designed by no one to do nothing for no reason. Would take a picture of the useless river, but freight tracks and a busy road block access. No point heading down there, so turn back around.
Across the street from two gas stations, skateboarders skateboard. Another public practice - like graffiti - that seems to serve as an end in itself.
They try out tricks and mostly fuck up. Their boards roll out from under them, turn the wrong way round midflip. A child of maybe nine - not pictured - wears a pink helmet and looks to be getting comfortable transiting across the concrete, pushing themselves not too hard or fast along. Wonder what led them to skateboard and to skateboard here. Watch the more serious boys for a little while. Notice that no one is really talking. Everyone, altogether separately, seems focused on what they’re doing or focused on others focused on what they’re doing. It’s clear why. Or, rather, it’s clear that asking why would be a dead-end.
Double-back again now and take assorted unplanned turns.
Stare at the wall at the end of this street. Lovely that it’s hard to tell whether one or many adults or children trained or untrained painted this planned or unplanned. Lovely, too, that it’s hidden away down side streets there’s no broad cause to wander down. Why this wall interrupts this street is anyone’s guess. Think about searching for info online, but don’t. Stay a little while longer. Turn around because turning around is the only thing left to do here.
There was no rationale behind our wandering around Sainte-Marie, so no rationale behind our being done wandering around Sainte-Marie. We could note all the places you might want to visit - Espace Libre, all the artists working out of the Grover building, exact locations of murals and such - or highlight some local shops or restaurants you can spend your money, but why would you need reasons? What would those reasons supply that the place itself in itself couldn’t? Why make something a means when it can just be an end? Explanations have to stop somewhere, Wittgenstein wrote some place, so why not here?
OOF loved this one. IN AND OF ITSELF -- so damn beautiful as something to live by/with/about
"what’re those answers meant to help with?" AND "Unlike the bridge, the river serves no function. Designed by no one to do nothing for no reason" AND/WITH/BECAUSE "Turn around because turning around is the only thing left to do here"
lots to think about here... does a river have no purpose... can a river have a purpose, I'm thinking Object-Oriented Ontology here or maybe something roughly metaphysical or even spiritual - we humans certainly USE rivers, but pondering the river's purpose - couldn't help but consider it ...
You had me at the "legal" graffiti and the Buddhist Temple...