it's cold and it's winter now
It’s 8:30 Saturday morning. It’s turned cold, and the world outside looks isolated and sterile. Light snow is falling to the ground. Small and light snow flakes. The sun has risen but hides behind grey clouds. Everything is beautifully quiet.
I’ve been doing a language exchange with a lovely Mexican stage actress who is in Montreal for the year with her husband. We meet once a week and chitchat, at times in English and at times in Spanish. I find we get along quite well, which is a good coincidence. Yesterday being the first true winter day, we spoke for a while about the weather. I love watching someone discover this place. She asked me what I loved about the winter. I told her of the whiteness but forgot to mention the quiet and sense of peace. I told her of snowstorms, a concept she hasn’t yet encountered. I also told her my idea of the effects of climate on temperament. I have a hypothesis that Quebecers, and maybe to an extent Canadians, are generally temperate in their views (political & social) as a direct result of the climate we live in. It being so extreme, with hot and humid summers and freezing winters, and so uncomfortable, we don’t look for extremes in other parts of our life. We seek a certain level of comfort because we know physically, and maybe without consciously knowing it, how difficult it is to live at one end of the spectrum or the other.
At this, Carmen brought up the fact that here, for the first time, her husband and her look at the weather report before venturing outside. And she questioned weather this constant need to relate one’s physic with the exterior climate changes one’s way of relating to nature, and to what’s exterior to the self. I had never thought of that. For me, watching the weather channel is a given, which I take for granted. She also remarked that she found that the warmer weather in her country might have a negative effect on some, rendering them lazy. “That age old Latin stereotype,” I said, but she believes it to be true for a certain amount of the Mexicans. She says that if one doesn’t need to work hard to eat, just needs to stretch out one’s hand to reach for food, than they don’t take to working hard for that food. This I wouldn’t know, but as she was speaking I was imagining the generations of Québécois mothers in their kitchen working day-in and day-out on preserves to last the winter.
I’ve been doing a language exchange with a lovely Mexican stage actress who is in Montreal for the year with her husband. We meet once a week and chitchat, at times in English and at times in Spanish. I find we get along quite well, which is a good coincidence. Yesterday being the first true winter day, we spoke for a while about the weather. I love watching someone discover this place. She asked me what I loved about the winter. I told her of the whiteness but forgot to mention the quiet and sense of peace. I told her of snowstorms, a concept she hasn’t yet encountered. I also told her my idea of the effects of climate on temperament. I have a hypothesis that Quebecers, and maybe to an extent Canadians, are generally temperate in their views (political & social) as a direct result of the climate we live in. It being so extreme, with hot and humid summers and freezing winters, and so uncomfortable, we don’t look for extremes in other parts of our life. We seek a certain level of comfort because we know physically, and maybe without consciously knowing it, how difficult it is to live at one end of the spectrum or the other.
At this, Carmen brought up the fact that here, for the first time, her husband and her look at the weather report before venturing outside. And she questioned weather this constant need to relate one’s physic with the exterior climate changes one’s way of relating to nature, and to what’s exterior to the self. I had never thought of that. For me, watching the weather channel is a given, which I take for granted. She also remarked that she found that the warmer weather in her country might have a negative effect on some, rendering them lazy. “That age old Latin stereotype,” I said, but she believes it to be true for a certain amount of the Mexicans. She says that if one doesn’t need to work hard to eat, just needs to stretch out one’s hand to reach for food, than they don’t take to working hard for that food. This I wouldn’t know, but as she was speaking I was imagining the generations of Québécois mothers in their kitchen working day-in and day-out on preserves to last the winter.
posted by julie at
8:20 a.m.
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