Reflections in Passing I

It is regular appreciation night at the Northampton Brewery.  I've been a regular here for the last decade and a half, since I lived with their neon pint glass shining in my window across the parking lot at Maple Avenue.  I inaugurated an e-mail address over there  - paces50 - I lived 200 paces from the brewery, but for technical reasons I couldn't fit that definition in so it became just fifty paces.  So much in my life has been defined by my connection to drinking.  I go on my vacations in November to Montréal, in part, to enjoy the micro-breweries on Rue St. Denis, two blocks from where I like to stay on St. Hubert.  From there, Montréal reverberates in my brain - it was, in part, the reason why I wrote a whole chapter on it in my (undefended, unpublished) dissertation.  Just the same, when I want to feel myself slip away from reality, I imagine the view from the Bibliothèque nationale du quebec, overlooking parc emilie gamelin, or maybe many other sceneries in Montréal, maybe because the city has become my geographic alter-ego for Northampton!  In any case, this post bears no other rationale than to say that life deserves to be enjoyed on a regular basis, and that I cannot wait to find myself back at the Irish Embasy, Grumpy's (both on Rue Bishop), les Trois Brasseurs, or l'aimer a boire (both on St. Denis) in the very near future.