The Case of the Missing Toothbrush

For Sun Chee

Roommates. Most of us have lived with them at some point in our lives. They are strangers with whom we must coexist, whose bizarre habits and foibles we must cope with and who must cope with ours in return. I am currently living with three such creatures. My roommates are an unemployed dancer who unintentionally ate hash brownies from our freezer, a busking musician who likes to rant about politics with me, and (my personal favourite) an out-of-work actress who has taken over the apartment since she moved in a month ago.

We’ve had the usual roommate issues: dirty dishes left everywhere, garbage that doesn’t get taken out, bills not paid, doors left unlocked and shoes being worn in the house. But my ultimate favourite so far has been the case of my missing toothbrush.

I came home late one night and it was just gone.

My initial reaction was to mutter “stupid f***ing roommates” under my breath – an increasingly common curse these days. All I kept thinking was WHY would anyone take a used toothbrush?! I told myself that there had to be a rational explanation. I searched the trashcans, thinking it might have fallen in the toilet or been used to clean shoes, and then discarded. Nothing.

Then my imagination started to wander. Maybe the two annoying cats had learned acrobatics while we were out and taught themselves how to open the perilously high medicine cabinet. I laughed at the mental picture of the two cats standing one on top of the other, stealing my toothbrush as revenge for all the times I sprayed them with water to get them out of my room.

When I was a kid and my mum had lost something, she used to say, “Things don’t just sprout legs and walk off.” But if my roommates were telling the truth, they didn’t touch my toothbrush.

Maybe my Indian-made toothbrush was homesick and just couldn’t take it anymore.

Imagining Peace and Public Engagement

I recently went to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibit about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, entitled “Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko”. Mixing the couple’s music and artwork, the exhibit gave a detailed chronology of John and Yoko’s relationship while encouraging the public to interact with the ideas and values they embodied. There was the nail painting in which members of the public were encouraged to hammer a nail and tie a piece of their hair around it, an all-white chess set, and a room with maps of the world on which people could stamp the words “Imagine Peace”. My favourite was the last room where we wrote our hopes for peace on cards and hung them from one of the dozen trees fluttering with well wishes of thousands of people.

Great exhibits such as this one always reignite my interest in museum curation. “Imagine” was also inspiring in its content. Despite having grown up listening to the Beatles, I was surprised how little I knew about John and Yoko, other than the couple’s famous bed-in at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel and the claim that Yoko broke up the Beatles. I was impressed by the couple’s commitment to issues of social justice and the creative ideas they came up with, from their acorn campaign and the “War is Over! (if you want it)” billboard Christmas present, to the announcement of the country Nutopia and the album “Some Time in New York City”. However, John and Yoko’s impassioned campaigns made me realize that in today’s music and art world, we don’t have the same principled actions. Artists write political lyrics and promote different causes, but I can’t think of a single one who is doing anything nearly as creative or engaging as John and Yoko did.

Standing in a room surrounded by “War is Over!” posters and video footage of protests all over the world, I was saddened by the seeming lack of political awareness or engagement today in comparison to the 60’s and 70’s when John and Yoko were at the height of their activism. I guess it didn’t help that my excitement about activism in the 60’s and 70’s was being fed by “My Revolutions”, a novel by Hari Kunzru that I was reading at the time.

And yet in the last room, thousands of people had taken the time to write messages of hope for peace and tie them onto the branches of trees. I read a lot of the messages. People obviously care about peace and making the world a better place; I think they just need to be inspired to take action. Yoko Ono and this exhibit inspired people to take this small symbolic action.

But we need more.

Ma nuit blanche à Montréal

“La nuit blanche” (the all-nighter) is an annual festival designed to encourage Montrealers to come out of their hibernation at the end of a long winter. Museums, art galleries and venues all over the city stay open over-night and the metro and buses run to get everyone home safely.

I met up with a childhood friend and her sweet French boyfriend to check out the festivities. They had met while traveling around Europe and like me, returned to Montreal with a lingering desire to be out in the world. After a photo exhibit of flea markets, we fittingly found ourselves at Bain St. André, an old empty swimming pool that is now used as a venue for photo exhibits, music and dance performances. The exhibit that night was a travelogue of a road trip from Canada down to South America. The artists had a slide show playing on the wall with music that could have been the soundtrack of their trip. The photos, hung from the old piping in the building, reminded the three of us what it’s like to be in a completely different environment to what we are used to, with all of its sights, smells and noises. The descriptions accompanying the photos captured the thoughts that go through conscious travellers’ minds as they try to understand the new environment in which they find themselves. The exhibit culminated in a call to do whatever makes you happy, now – striving to bring the emotions, experiences, and sense of adventure of the open road into your everyday life. It was uplifting to know that there are other people in this city who have the same mindset as me, my friend and her boyfriend, and who have been as deeply touched by their travels as we have been.

Stop number three of the night was a party intersected by dance performances that would organically start in the middle of the dance floor, near the bar, or against a wall of the club. Without fail, the audience gathered around the performers who would dissolve back into the crowd at the end of the performance. My friend, who is a dancer herself, filled me in on all the gossip in the modern dance crowd – who was sleeping with who, who wanted to sleep with who, and who was on what drugs. I was completely swept away by how comfortable dancers seem in their bodies, compared to the rest of us.

Our fourth stop was a free concert by an amazing Quebecois DJ, Ghislain Poirier. In the middle of a huge crowd of people dancing like crazy, I wondered why I had never heard his music before. It was an impressive mix of hip-hop, house, and dancehall with an amazing drummer and MC alongside.

A night out in Montreal wouldn’t be complete without a drunken poutine stop – my first in probably 3 years. For non-Montrealers, poutine is a French Canadian “delicacy” of French fries with cheese curds and gravy on top. It has the ability to sober you up and make you feel guilty for not exercising, both at the same time.

And because it was “la nuit blanche”, I got to take the metro home at 5am to my new room in Mile End. This was exactly the night I needed to reconcile me with this city that I used to love… and may grow to love again.

A day at the call center…

“Today I sat down at a computer and I picked my nose. I could see the reflection of my finger reaching deep into my nostril in the monitor. A co-worker tapped me on the shoulder to inform me of the new gossip of the day. Before he finished another co-worker yelled out to him. He turned around and in a sweeping motion, like the Karate Kid waxing on and waxing off, I wiped it on his right shoulder. I laughed to myself all day as I saw this co-worker socializing and discussing with other co-workers with the same piece of booger on his right shoulder. As he works, I see him focus on his job as I see the piece of booger hanging and shimmering in the fluorescent lighting of the call center. Does anyone notice? Will anyone find out? Will this affect his life forever? Will he get stares on his way home in the metro? Will that booger survive until tomorrow? Will it become one with its owner?”

As recounted to me by Marc Joyette

See?! This is why I need to get away!!!