22 Parc Arthur-Therrien 24 Avenue Troie 25 Centre
island’s midriff reminds that our island does not float in the void; that it is a fold of the subsoil, and that humanity evolves on the surface of a submerged landscape. We live our lives in the zone of revelations. When the new snow silently comes to drape its immaculate shroud over everything, softly espousing the land’s folds and bends, detailing the signal’s amplitude, its thickness, will you at last recognise what sculpts the void’s glorious mass? Ideas of eternity last only so long: as long as we hang on to them. When I receive the signal, I leave my window and venture out to measure the vague contours of the island. Incapable of flight, I intimately know the network of the island’s streets, its suture of rails, its canals’ ravines, all that scars and digs into it. I’ve learned how to weave through its labyrinth, move far from the babble of its pretend core, slip beyond its decor of industry, and find viewpoints from where I snatch glimpses of our forgotten shore. I shouldn’t deceive myself about the work that awaits. My steps crunch through the snow, remind me that I am here, floating, furrowing through the core of things. The world might speak in a foreign tongue; it cannot be written without us. Look at the clouds. At the foot of the sky, I form sentences whose true meaning escapes me. Look at the water, the ice flows. A flat world is only an image. A sound saves me. Answers with its unknown name, which is also my name. I advance in the ephemeral temporal zone; retrace its frontiers; fold and connect its edges. The shore is only an idea of itself. Step by step, I measure the fleeting perimeter, the uncertain coast of the island. Surface. Signal. Seam. The operation is endless, yet it imprints a direction. c
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meredith carruthers
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