Okay, so I'm outside the hotel, attempting to take a photograph of the show banner, but it's far too dark to capture adequately. After a few failed attempts, I give up, and decide to go for a quick walk. It's not too cold and I'm not too tired, and I may not have another chance at this.
I arrive at the corner of Drummond and Saint-Catherine, and I just get this feeling that I should stop and take inventory. I look left, I look ahead, I look right. On the corner of Drummond and Saint-Catherine, above the Payless shoe store, there is an awful-looking Middle Eastern restaurant called Basha. It's up there on the top floor of this faceless building above the Payless shoe store and beside a gentleman's club, with shallow views of pretty much nothing. And I think: What a strange, ugly place. It's so damn weird, except for the fact that it's somehow very familiar.
I walk around front and I see the entrance which immediately leads to an escalator, and I'm suddenly in a timewarp and it's 1999 and I'm with Steven and Jane and we're looking at this escalator, thinking: What a strange, ugly place. Want to try it out?
And so we go up there, and we take up our plastic trays, and we order shawarma platters, and we celebrate Thanksgiving (even though Jane is Australian and Steven is British), and it's really very bad, but it doesn't matter at all because we are together in this mess.
And I cannot believe this, I cannot freaking believe this. Here I am, ten years later, and here it is, and why is this place still here, and who the hell am I? Am I that person? Am I this person? Has time moved at all? Where are Steven and Jane then? I'm wishing Steven and Jane were here right now. We would laugh and we would hug, and we would totally go back up that escalator together.
And I'm feeling very lonely, like I've lost all of my friends. But there is something about this city that seems to love me.
It's time to go back to my room. There will be a lot of work to do from here on out.
