Hi Charley 🙌🏽
👋🏽 Glad you found this note
Hope this bits and bytes find you, Jaro, and (banana? peach?) alright.
Full disclosure before you read anything from this point on: it’s ok if you choose not to read these notes at all. What some people hold as cherished memories, others prefer to forget altogether. To make things worse, I find that with time my brain tends to blur the bad things, ignore important details, and so I get a hazy but warm picture of many events. My goal with this letter is not to ruin your day, to put you in a foul mood or to make your heart ache. I am just writing because I have caught myself too often thinking about you.
I was going to send you this as a physical letter so that you didn’t feel the pressure of replying because of some ✅ seen checkmark. But your mom told me you don’t really have a reliable place to pick up the mail. So instead I decided to write this as a semi-open letter. If you find this, awesome. If someone else finds this, don’t forget to like n subscribe. k bye.
It’s been 10 years since we left PGL. Sucks that the pandemic hit right for the reunion, but I think it would’ve been attended by very few people in any case. I think Julie Bilodeau had been appointed as the one to organize it all. So I don’t think we missed up on much.
The two people I’ve crossed in the street the most from those days are small Chris (the one who danced) and Sarah Nicole. Chris hasn’t changed a bit, other than a more serious face and less colourful clothing. He seems just like he did back in school. Sarah Nicole works at some production company, I’m bad with cinema slang but from what I can tell it’s an independent firm.
You know I still have the Urukundo diploma we got as proof of our volunteering? I used to keep it with the delusional assumption that it would come in handy during job interviews. Now its more of a memento along with a Rwandan peace basket. Apparently my dad is still in their email list.
Satya finished her masters in Indigenous health, she’s doing oncology research in the Glenn center. It’s a whole different world from Software Engineering. I go home with problems such as “I couldn’t connect to the database”, she has to deal with “chemo isn’t working for this patient so they are going to palliative care”. I don’t think nursing should be a lifelong career. It takes an irremediable toll on the care-giver. They should retire by age 40.
I saw your website, it’s hella cute ✨ then there’s mine looking like a 2000’s one pre CSS and Javascript. You’ve improved so much from those days where I cracked the Adobe suite for your computer. Are you still using that version? or maybe some open source alternative?
I wanted to ask you what was the school that we went one summer night up north. All I remember is that it was to visit your ex boyfriend or ex crush. I’ve tried a couple of times to figure out where that was, but I can’t pinpoint it. All I remember is a large building, some football fields, a paved entry with a row of tall trees on each side.
I have been thinking for a while now, how at a point in time I stopped feeling music. It stopped having physical and emotional effects on me as it did during my teenage years. I can’t pinpoint when it was. I have memories of running cross the Simon Bolivar park to get to my home in the Pablo VI neighbourhood in pouring rain with earphones. Memories of Valerie and you cooking pancakes with Bon Iver in the background in your Outremont house. The old timer country music at the Wheel Club in NDG Monday nights. But recently, a couple of months ago to be precise, I heard a song that made my eyes tear immediately. The video, the sound, I don’t know what it was. It made me shiver like back then. Omega - Gyöngyhajú lány ♫
As years pass I notice friendships wither and blood becomes thicker than water. I haven’t been the best at nurturing friendships, although I have developed a good hand for farming and keeping plants happy. Friendships lately feel a bit shallow. What weighs more: a flaky childhood friendship or a recent drinking acquaintance? For a man who fears solitude I have not known how to make those decisions. It’s most likely because I ask the wrong question altogether.
Sofia is on her last primary school year, the last streaks of childhood quickly dimming out. I don’t think she remembers you. She does remember Valerie as she babysat her twice many years ago. We have a nice relationship, playing tons of board and video games, doing roadtrips and such. She says she wants to go live in Korea for the food and that a friend of hers wants to go there too, but for the boys. She’s also into graphic design, I’m trying to foster that passion in her. If she’s anything like me, she’ll be a complicated teen 🙄 I can’t hide my fears, but from experience I know that no matter how much parents warn us, it’s up to children to choose when to burn themselves and when to listen. Hopefully none of her blisters will last a lifetime.
Last Summer I took Sofia across the maritimes. Halfway through Gaspé the camera roll run out. I went to change it but the film got stuck and I ended up opening the case with the complete roll exposed. It’s a particular kind of pain. I don’t know if you’ve experienced it, bust most likely givent you used to develop your own pictures at Concordia. Memories are as strong as the mementos that power them. And I had just butchered ~1 year worth of memories. But shit happens, so I put in the new camera roll and hopefully by the time it runs out I’ll remember what direction to spin the bloody tiny crank.
For a while now I’ve been accumulating books 📚 I read a bit of everything. But I tend to gravitate towards cheesy stories and political literature. I hope to accumulate enough books to open a book store (I couldn’t get more cliché than that). I just don’t see myself doing engineering all my life. It’s a very ageist domain, where humans, just like software, become obsolete quite fast. It scares me to think of dying and only having done 1 metier in my life. I can’t imagine working until 65 either. I think I rather lower my economical status at 50, live frugally but doing something like I did in Copies Concordia. Over the counter, human contact, and great perks like free tshirt prints. Whenever I pass by a used bookstore I enter to ask the owner tips and tricks. By far the best one I have gotten was from an old man named Abraham in Jerusalem. He told me that instead of buying books, one should: become friends with widows, live nearby universities, make contacts with funerary homes.
I have gotten quite good at baking if I can say so myself 😤 I can do mochi cakes, turkish apple tarts, and pinneapple bao buns. But I wouldn’t be a good baker. I eat half of my produce before it has even cooled down. We were lied to. Nor sex nor drugs are the best feeling in the world. It’s fresh out of the oven bread 🍞
The real state market over here is absurd 😵 I imagine its like that in many other places too. It’s like a game of monopoly where they blind auction the houses. I did the mistake of starting to look for houses right when the pandemic hit, and to add insult to injury I decided to not cut my hair until I got a house. One and a half years later here I am without a home and looking like a budget Bee Gees singer with a bald spot in the head and hair that reached my shoulders.
Karaoke is one of the things I’ve missed the most during these covid years. I recently attended a bachelor party that had rented its own karaoke equipement for the house that held the party. And I felt whole again. Everyone hates on Bon Jovi until it comes up in Karaoke. Everyone says “its Britney bitch” even if they don’t like her. It’s that magical.
If you ever want to grab a coffee or cook together online you know where to find me.
I send you the best of the vibes Charles, I’d love it if we could see each other sometime in the future.