Monday, September 04, 2023

When a hometown is no longer home

Feeling reflective
Montreal, QC
September 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram


I grew up here, in Montreal, but no longer feel like this is home.

So I wander the downtown streets not far from where I studied and worked and pounded the pavement in search of stories to tell. I try to remember what it felt like when I was just starting out, barely able to tell my own stories let alone those of others.

It’ll take more than a fast photo walk through my old stomping grounds to recapture the foundational moments that allowed me to build everything that’s come along since.

It’ll take more than a blink-and-you-miss-it visit to feel what teenaged Carmi must have felt when he stood on a downtown sidewalk and looked up for the first time.

So I try to take a photo of what I might have seen then, a simple composition of glass, light, sky, and clouds.

It doesn’t bring me back. Nothing ever can.

But for a brief moment in time, it feels like these streets - and the steep and glass and sky above them - feel, if not like home, then at least slightly more familiar than they were when we first arrived.

Maybe we can’t go home again. But still we try.

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