To celebrate the start of winter, or not – this is very subjective – I have a new story published by the great people at Joyland, called Cold.
I’m lucky to live in a place that still has winter (I kind of like it) though it doesn’t have winter enough. We used to get a lot more snow, and it used to be colder. I don’t miss the cold, but I miss the snow. Now, we get a lot of slush – the slush falls from the sky! – and it’s never cold enough that the city’s outdoor rinks can stay frozen for long. Last year, I think I played hockey about three times. And while the city workers try their darndest to maintain the rinks, if the weather doesn’t cooperate, there’s nothing to maintain. So Montreal is kind of in limboland, a half-winter kind of place, the kind of weather where you just want the climate to shit or get off the pot. I imagine that soon our winters will be as annoyingly gray and stupid as Toronto’s – a city that does not have a real winter anymore. Montreal under fresh snow is kind of magic. The ruffled sound of the city during a snowstorm is one of my favorite sounds, one that we hear less and less as our climate marches inexorably toward some new normal, flaccid winters, long springs, longer falls, hotter summers.
All of this, of course, has nothing to do with the story. I hope you enjoy it.
