Sunday morning, the day after party of the Montreal Book Fair. I smoked too much, I argued with the DJ again and I felt a little sick seeing the bags of chips devoured in the wee hours hanging out on the island: spicy dill pickles, Ruffles All Dressed, chocolate pretzels… Ark.
A little tired, but fulfilled by the meetings of the last few days. I like the Montreal Motor Show 2.0. I don’t miss the desolate Place Bonaventure where he stood before, I much prefer the Palais des Congrès, its forest of pink trees, the dazzling stained glass windows when you enter through Saint-Antoine, the sparkling white corridor and blue swimming pool which leads to Square-Victoria station.
This year, there was a great atmosphere and a lot of people at the Show, just enough I would say, we were able to move around the aisles without becoming hello. It seemed to me that people were smiling more than usual. The readers were there. And especially, my readers, new ones but also those that I happily meet again from year to year at the Alto editions stand. Cécile and Mario, who affix a very classy personalized seal to the first pages of their books; Yves, who secretly told me that he had taken up knitting and loved it; Richard, the super-reader; Olivier, the one who looks like a rock star; Serge, who can even read the blanks between my words; Marie-Laurence, the passionate bookseller at the Quartanier stand who introduced me to the 19th century poete century Louise Bertin; Francine, who started writing short stories and has just published her very first in the magazine X Y Z — I’m proud of her. Some of them have read all my books. When I talk with them for a few minutes, I know that they know me intimately and I feel like family.
I also received a visit from my former CEGEP teacher, the writer Jacques Boulerice, a man who passed on his passion for literature to me and whom I happen to talk about in this column. Jacques had a mysterious and scoundrel air; he had brought a letter. I half open the envelope to take a look inside.
– Hey ! It’s my handwriting, I said taken aback.
—It’s a letter you sent me a long time ago. You asked me a question and I think you found the answer now.
Three pages entirely covered with green ink. At the time, I had pretty calligraphy that hadn’t yet been ruined by using the mouse. I had slipped an image cut out of a book: this man with a bird cage in place of his trunk, sitting near a lion wearing a necklace of roses, The therapist by Magritte. The address allows me to understand that I wrote this letter a few months after I started studying journalism at university. I have no idea what I’m talking about and have no memory of it. It’s strange.
From the first lines, at the age of twenty, I announce to Jacques that I have lost the sacred fire. With candor, and a little despair too, I explain to him that I ask myself a lot of questions to which I cannot find the answers, including one in particular. I just listened several times The Society of Dead Poets. I too want to be like the boys in the film and savor the present moment, but I don’t know how. I tell him that I have lost confidence in the future and that if I turn to him, it is because he appears to me as a happy man, one of the few I know. To my poetry teacher, I ask: “How do you capture the moment? If you have the answer, or a sliver of an answer, to this question, answer me. »
I reread my words, twenty-eight years later, with a smile and compassion for the young, angry person on edge that I was then. I haven’t changed that much, I’ve kept the same sensitivity, the same skin. But something calmed down because I found what to do with this weakening force, with what throbs inside me, like the birds in the gentleman’s trunk-cage, and never leaves me alone. I found a canal where I could deposit my own birds.
So, yes, Jacques, I think I have found an answer. But the next time we meet, I’m going to ask you one more question: how did you react when you received this letter? My sweet, it’s intense!