Auteur : Martine

Un petit pas pour l’homme

Aujourd’hui j’ai fait du rangement dans mon appartement. J’ai class� quelques factures et j’ai r�pondu � plusieurs courriels. J’ai d�plac� le stylo sur le coin de mon bureau de quelques centim�tres. J’ai rang� mon appartement � nouveau. Puis finalement, quand je n’ai plus eu d’excuses, j’ai cr�� un nouveau dossier sur mon PC:

/roman

�nergis�e, nerveuse (et �tonn�e de l’�tre autant), j’ai tout de suite ajout� un fichier:

/roman/premiere_partie.doc

Ce fichier contient maintenant 22 kilo-octets.

Depuis que j’ai appris � �crire � l’�ge de 6 ans, je n’ai plus rien voulu faire d’autre.
30 ans entre ce d�sir � l’�tat pur et ces quelques 22 kilo-octets de r�alit�

An hour here or there

« We throw our parties; […] we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our fights and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep – it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.
Heaven only knows why we love it so. »

From The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. I’m still full of that just-finished-reading-a-great-book feeling, and I am copying some of the text here not only to make the feeling last but because I believe in the redeeming value of « these hours ».

I am impressed by this take on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and I haven’t even seen the movie yet. More on this complex adaptation process later…

Sal� and Pelletier? Not!

When I lived in San Francisco, I regularly hung out with people from l’Association des qu�b�cois en Californie. One of our annual gatherings was on Super Bowl day when we would drive south to Silicon Valley and rent out one of the rare outdoors ice skating rink in the area. Even though the rest of the California population was glued to the television on that day, we couldn’t care less about football (being true French canadians) and a lot of us would show up for a little winter nostalgia. The people who rented out the rink kept telling us that we were the only party they had ever seen in which everybody could actually skate!

Since I miss my San Francisco friends, I thought I would honor the Super Bowl day tradition so B. and I went ice skating today at Parc Lafontaine. It was a perfect winter day and the place was crowded but the skating space is so big that it didn’t really matter. My Nova-Scotian beau did not grow up with skates on his feet as I did so he was a bit nervous. But after a few minutes, he grew more confident and started to get fancy on me, twirling and spinning and even smiling. My god! Next time we go, he’ll probably want to do one of these!