This summer marks the 8th anniversary of my move to Montreal after living in San Francisco for… 8 years. How freaky. It feels like I was in California forever while Montreal is still a new thing, a place I’m not so sure I belong to, I’m not so sure I love. Leaving California was hard but most of the time I don’t regret it. Most of the time… until everything in the universe seems to conspire to make me nostalgic about the Bay Area and makes me long for those rolling hills.<\/p>\n
On Monday, two of my dearest san franciscan friends, P. and A., were in Montreal for a short vacation and paid me a visit at home. They surprised me with a big announcement : they are leaving California and moving to Quebec City in a year. Wow. I was happy for them – it’s a decision they’ve considered for a long time since all of P’s family lives in Quebec – but I just couldn’t imagine San Francisco without them. They were some of the first people I met there and P. was the heart of the qu\u00c3\u00af\u00c2\u00bf\u00c2\u00bdb\u00c3\u00af\u00c2\u00bf\u00c2\u00bdcois community in the Bay Area, organizing social activities and keeping us all in touch. Visiting San Francisco without paying them a visit will not be the same anymore. I know it’s silly – I’ll see them more often when they live in Quebec City – but I was in a nostalgic mood, having just spent an hour preparing an e-mail full of info on my favorite San Francisco neighborhoods for my brother-in-law who is going over there for a business trip.<\/p>\n
Last night Blork and I decided to finally watch the DVD of The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill<\/a> which we had received through our Zip membership<\/a>. It’s a beautiful documentary about a man typical of San Francisco (bohemian, gentle, generous and silly) who dedicated a big part of his life to the care of wild parrots hanging out on a city hill. With his help, you get to learn the personality of every single bird in the flock, each of them with a fascinating story. It’s funny, touching and SO san franciscan in style and spirit that it made my heart ache. <\/p>\n During a scene where the man is feeding the parrots, a few onlookers quietly walked by and stopped to watch him and the birds. My eyes widened. For a second, I thought I had recognized my friend P. Then the camera panned on the man next to the woman and I yelled: « It’s A.! It’s P. and A.! » There they were, my two old San Francisco friends, unknowingly part of this documentary, probably out and about on a long stroll in the city that is such a part of their identity.<\/p>\n I couldn’t believe it and took it very personal. It felt like a wink from fate, like a little hand wave, mocking me and gently reminding me that change is okay and that things don’t really change anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This summer marks the 8th anniversary of my move to Montreal after living in San Francisco for… 8 years. How freaky. It feels like I was in California forever while Montreal is still a new thing, a place I’m not so sure I belong to, I’m not so sure I love. Leaving California was hard… Continue reading I left my heart<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}