Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): "Parc Lafontaine"
Being stripped of the rituals and routines which sustained
us, in Montreal Mary and I had no recourse but to face
exactly who we were, individually and reciprocally On one sunny
day, we sat in Parc Lafontaine, and for a good twenty minutes
had nothing to say to each other. We were taxed by being alone
together constantly, not by any sense of fighting. But, as we learned,
there can be an infinite amount of space even between two people
whose lives are entwined, and so it was with us. That, until we
realized, with some dismay, that the Parc Lafontaine bathroom
situation was haphazard. Parc Lafontaine, which looked not unlike
an extended, forested version of Logan Circle in Philly, was a place
meant to be finessed by serious Montreal people who knew the ins
and outs of the place. We were foreigners. Mary grew agitated. She
needed to use the bathroom, having had, if I remember correctly,
too much tea with our breakfast. The wall-like silence was broken
by the panic scenario, a not uncommon one, of the foreigners looking
to take care of their physical mechanisms the right way. We rambled,
scrambled, and lunged into a random lunch/dinner place which
had not yet opened. They were gracious enough to let Mary use
their facility. Oddly enough, the incident brought us together again,
left us in a better mode. But the whole expanse of time in Montreal,
wherein we were locked into each other, I experienced as a Dantean
Purgatorio. It needed to be documented, by ourselves, for ourselves,
that we could hack the rigors of foreign travel, and the disjuncture it
entails. Everything raw and jagged about our relationship would
have to come to the surface— wall-like silences, awkward spaces.
Parc Lafontaine became a tragi-comic reminder of travails begetting
triumphs, adversity become strength. Logan Circle with forests.
© Adam Fieled 2026
us, in Montreal Mary and I had no recourse but to face
exactly who we were, individually and reciprocally On one sunny
day, we sat in Parc Lafontaine, and for a good twenty minutes
had nothing to say to each other. We were taxed by being alone
together constantly, not by any sense of fighting. But, as we learned,
there can be an infinite amount of space even between two people
whose lives are entwined, and so it was with us. That, until we
realized, with some dismay, that the Parc Lafontaine bathroom
situation was haphazard. Parc Lafontaine, which looked not unlike
an extended, forested version of Logan Circle in Philly, was a place
meant to be finessed by serious Montreal people who knew the ins
and outs of the place. We were foreigners. Mary grew agitated. She
needed to use the bathroom, having had, if I remember correctly,
too much tea with our breakfast. The wall-like silence was broken
by the panic scenario, a not uncommon one, of the foreigners looking
to take care of their physical mechanisms the right way. We rambled,
scrambled, and lunged into a random lunch/dinner place which
had not yet opened. They were gracious enough to let Mary use
their facility. Oddly enough, the incident brought us together again,
left us in a better mode. But the whole expanse of time in Montreal,
wherein we were locked into each other, I experienced as a Dantean
Purgatorio. It needed to be documented, by ourselves, for ourselves,
that we could hack the rigors of foreign travel, and the disjuncture it
entails. Everything raw and jagged about our relationship would
have to come to the surface— wall-like silences, awkward spaces.
Parc Lafontaine became a tragi-comic reminder of travails begetting
triumphs, adversity become strength. Logan Circle with forests.
© Adam Fieled 2026
<< Home