When I was a child

When I was a child, I lived in Pont-Viau, a small town on Île Jésus, nestled along the banks of the Rivière des Prairies, crossed by the Pont-Viau. There was a brook at the end of my street where we could go fishing. There were also cows and fields just three blocks from Jubinville Street, and a vast convent of the Sisters of Foreign Missions, who claimed to be the representatives of the Immaculate Conception— though on that subject I had a few disappointments— they went door to door selling pictures of little Chinese children they had gathered along the roads of the Holy Childhood, in China. My mother and my grandmother sang to me: “There was a little boy, yay high, who wanted to go to Ottawa, take the airplane to fly up high, up high, way up high, his name was Pierrot the Moon, Pierrot the Moon.” The Moon, I visited it often, more often than my share. I remained in the Moon, with my hero Gumby, all my life. I went to Ottawa by bus to visit the museums of Art, of Civilization and of War. And I only ever took the airplane to go work in Europe, but I hardly liked it. I never really fit in. I was, in the end, much more planetary than inter-lunar. I mostly traveled by train in every direction of the World. But the photo that describes me best, it seems to me, is the one of Pierrot the Moon, pants pulled up to my neck. I think it is the best picture of all the ones ever taken of me. Yes, I’m certain, it is that one. Sitting on a little wooden bench, waiting for life to take me and carry me elsewhere, to the junction land of the Station of the Universe. Calmly, pants at my chin, very, very calmly.