From journal entry dated September 9, 2023. A bit choppy — some travelogue, some reactions to agents while querying my novel, some truly random stuff.
The wind swirls her skirt triumphant. A regular motor of delight. “Where did you get your pizzazz?” passersby wonder but there’s no pizzazz, just a rising sense of mattering which, after not mattering can feel elevating to say the least.
We don’t like your voice.
Oh, fuck off.
If you saw Louise’s so-called studio, you’d deem her crazy. But again, she doesn’t care. Fuck off. How’s that for voice?
You can twirl on toe or on your sole. Wind helps, but is not necessary. The gloom began in southern New Hampshire and stayed. Not apocryphal, but not welcoming either.
Louise clapped her green leather gloves together. Twice. As if to clear her mind of dross.
There was a lot of dross.
From New York came the critique. There should be at least one witch and maybe a dragon. No but seriously, we can’t champion a voice we don’t like.
A scrap party is in order! Louise thought from the road. Invite the local whores of Michael’s, the Salvation Army army, the decoupage Queens. Have at it, she would say imperiously. Ants are more organized.
Finally, Quebec City, a place Louise has not visited since her high school senior French class came and ate shepherd’s pie. In the year 2023, she visits the Museum of Civilization — the atrium lovely, the bathrooms adequate. It offered one interesting exhibit after another, enjoyable and edifying, once you got past the pretense of the name.
She particularly liked the larger-than-life film of wolves, projected up and behind the glass cases housing teeny models of native homes. A giant canine snout above a miniature hide covered hut.
Then the rising moon.
Outside, they approached the Plains of Abraham – not a biblical reference as one might think, rather called after a farmer named Abraham from way back.
There, find three laundry lines with flapping white sheets. They’re a glorious testament to the wind, but more, a somber memorial to the unhoused poor who lingered in tents long after the war ended. They had nowhere to go.
What war, you ask. Does it matter, she answers.
That little Plains of Abraham Museum was as specific and contained as the other was wildly general and expansive. What a room full of uniforms!
So easy to be taken by embellished grosgrain ribbons on cuffs and plackets and lose sight of how two colonial powers were duking it out on this land, seemingly a close call. In fact, had the French subterfuge of sending ships loaded with explosives up the St. Lawrence to a British encampment not misfired and blazed to no purpose in a night of shame, perhaps they and not the British would’ve prevailed.
But back to those uniforms. Some long jackets had hook and eyes on the coattails so the soldiers could open the flaps and move more easily. The 20 buttons on the gators and the 10 on the coats made Louise wonder just how long it took those men to get dressed, especially if their fingers were cold.
And did you know the term “turncoat” comes from a reversible jacket that allowed a soldier to switch sides?
An Amish woman browsing the exhibit was nearly mistaken for a museum employee in costume.
On exiting, they were thrilled to see a grade school class arriving to the accompaniment of a snare drum. Not thrilled that the students arrived, but thrilled they would not be sharing the space with them.
The drum part of the exhibit, by the way, came with headphones. Four rhythms explicated – one for rise in the morning, one for muster, one for charge, and a fourth for retreat.
“I never knew that,” her husband said which was way more surprising than the existence of a percussive code.
