Blue Metropolis has loomed large for me, if also just outside my comfort zone. The words "literary festival" roll around in my head, different intonations and speeds, savouring the musicality and the concept. It's a gathering of the heavy hitters, and people I have yet to learn about.

The Mile End has bagels, thrift stores and hipsters, Vieux Montreal has outstanding architecture, history and every tourist over the age of 42. Not many people who visit Montreal would think to head to NDG, which is exactly one of the reasons that Walter Lyng calls it his home.

A list of poetic actions:

1. Double knotting your shoes, joining the fellowship of people who double knot their shoes like you do, and for a moment becoming one in the doing.

When I first heard the Einstein quote "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle", I thought of course. Doesn't everyone think about how improbable it is that we exist? And that we can realize we exist? Or that cats always grow whiskers in the right spots...Or how the shape of flower petals is repeated perfectly every time?

I grew up in a small Catholic town in rural Quebec. Being non-binary and neurodivergent, I tried to make myself invisible against the background of farmers and amongst my peers. But, no matter how hard I tried, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

I was a fan of comedy before I became a comic, and that perspective primed me for a nostalgia I hadn’t anticipated. If you’re into comedy, you have probably listened to many podcasts with seasoned comics waxing poetic about the scenes in LA or NYC.

Social media is a breeding ground for fads. Think about how prominent the "white or blue dress" meme was in actual, factual, real, live conversations -- ever so briefly. Or how everything was cake (my Insta algo still catches me off guard with this one). I have neither the interest, nor the bandwidth to keep up with Tik Tok fads, the turnover of which appears to be hourly, or less.

Oh god, someone I know is approaching me. A former classmate had me trapped at an intersection, the kind of acquaintance you're friendly with but never know what you should say. This would normally be tolerable, but I'd been high since my celebratory wake-n-bake at 4:20 AM, and the brownies I took at 4:20 PM were just starting to kick in. Come on, focus. My bloodshot gaze started burning a hole in their forehead.

An archive of memories and artifacts, a beautiful assemblage of a difficult history. Every object, sound, and written word was representative of intergenerational storytelling. With the opening show being sold out, I was lucky to have gotten there an hour early. I had just enough time to look through the glass enclosures filled with passports, letters, pictures, and a well loved doll before the room was too crowded. Seeing all of these things left me with a mixture of tender nostalgia and hurt.

“Fringe is a verb, and fringing is the action. I Fringe because I believe in the idea, but I also believe in the values of what we're trying to do, which is promote diversity, community [and] artistic freedom."