Dear Toronto,

I live in you, but Montréal lives in me. Montréal Mon Amour, comme Hiroshima Mon Amour de Marguerite Duras, who I met in this city years ago. She impressed me then, arriving for the Independant Film Festival, older petite woman, slightly hunched, intellectual French gaze behind glasses, with her much younger waif thin, blond & handsome lover Yann, fluttering about her like an adoring butterfly.

I can only barely remember her film, something to do with Vietnam? A man & a woman meeting at an empty train station? It was my moment of Betty Goodwin discovery, a powerful personal surge of recognition burst a capillary in my growing art head & heart. Her stunning awkward drowning swimmers, twirling around the smallish gallery. Pressing in on me with inspiration & crazy attraction. They didn't speak to me. They whisper yelled at me.

Now here visiting my first born & his Argentinian wife. An unusually sunny & golden beginning of November. The winding staircases are all made of air & the 3rd story apartments they lead to, all made of clouds & cigarette smoke - built on a foundation of lacquered paté et pain integrale.

The streets are damp, filled with the smell of spongey leaves recalling a school day's collection, carefully picked up by the stem then placed into a metal lunchbox on my way home. Opening the metal clip, it sprang back to the metal box; ping. A whole childhood in that box. The leaves joining with remnants of scrunched wax paper smelling of Hungarian salami on rye. I hid my daily sandwich from the other children - ate hunched over - dreaming of white bread & peanut butter, white breadwhitebreadwhitebre...please.

Hope to see you soon,

Love, Montréal

p.s. am bringing truffles