Toronto winter is all about confinement, guerrison mentality, mass hibernation. It's also the only 4 months out of the year that I am particularly intimate with the TTC. And though I miss my sunshine, hate spending the money and become almost savagely misanthropic, there is something about mass transit that is so quintessentially Toronto, and I kind of love it in a weird way.
Goodbye Toronto! Here is a mishmash of some TTC memories:
On the streetcar. There are several conversations happening, in seven different languages, none of them english. this is normal. this is toronto. outside the station, a hindi lady is haggling with a girl guide for discount cookies. inside the collector's booth, the TTC attendant looks bitterly claustophobic. the chimes sounds and someone always gets indecently stuck between the doors. There is a cluster of Japanese ESL students, speaking English shyly, quietly, but not once reverting back to the shared mother tongue. amidst the slumped bodies, the blank looks, the awake-but-not-awake glaze, in the deafening silence of everyone's cumulative 8-hour work day, there is always a kid, sometimes adding to the melancholic chord of the day with screams and wails; sometimes breaking out into songs sung out of tune, substituting real words for words she thinks are real.
across the Gateway stand on the Bloor northbound platform, up against the wall with the giant tinted window through which you can see (through which you're probably not supposed to see) a room full of monitors televising supposed delinquent, indeed possibly terroristic activities; next to the photo booth, a group of deaf-mutes gather everyday. Even in the clutter of rush hour, they are loud and boisterous, the slap of their hands sounds out their emphatic conversations.
On the opposite corner, girls wearing t-shirts no one bothers to read hand out ribbons to absent-minded passerbyers, with the surprisingly effective pitch "want a ribbon?" Imagine their surprise when they go home and realize they have complicitly lent their support to the "rights for rabid children" campaign.
out the subway doors (push agains the strange wind vacuum/temporary porthole to the netherworld). Past the condo construction, beneath the scaffolding, past the old folks home, past the old folks in their wheelchairs taking themelves for a walk, tentative steps of autonomy. let's do the length of the building before going back through the doors and relenting to the smothering of nurses. sometimes there is a baseball game on in the park. the hill is littered with lawnchairs and rowdy parents. say hi to the old chinese lady at the corner store, who tries to sell me a stale chocolate bar, (or perhaps an umbrella?) who can only get away with chasing me down the street because she knows I speak her language so in some abstract way, we are family.
Through the front door. If it's dark, I take 3 tentative paces and kick for the first step. If it's a full moon, the stairwell is lit by the skylight up top, and I crank my head to stare up at the ol guy, and sing a song I made up a long time ago: Hello moon, we're down here. Home.
Goodbye Toronto! Here is a mishmash of some TTC memories:
On the streetcar. There are several conversations happening, in seven different languages, none of them english. this is normal. this is toronto. outside the station, a hindi lady is haggling with a girl guide for discount cookies. inside the collector's booth, the TTC attendant looks bitterly claustophobic. the chimes sounds and someone always gets indecently stuck between the doors. There is a cluster of Japanese ESL students, speaking English shyly, quietly, but not once reverting back to the shared mother tongue. amidst the slumped bodies, the blank looks, the awake-but-not-awake glaze, in the deafening silence of everyone's cumulative 8-hour work day, there is always a kid, sometimes adding to the melancholic chord of the day with screams and wails; sometimes breaking out into songs sung out of tune, substituting real words for words she thinks are real.
across the Gateway stand on the Bloor northbound platform, up against the wall with the giant tinted window through which you can see (through which you're probably not supposed to see) a room full of monitors televising supposed delinquent, indeed possibly terroristic activities; next to the photo booth, a group of deaf-mutes gather everyday. Even in the clutter of rush hour, they are loud and boisterous, the slap of their hands sounds out their emphatic conversations.
On the opposite corner, girls wearing t-shirts no one bothers to read hand out ribbons to absent-minded passerbyers, with the surprisingly effective pitch "want a ribbon?" Imagine their surprise when they go home and realize they have complicitly lent their support to the "rights for rabid children" campaign.
out the subway doors (push agains the strange wind vacuum/temporary porthole to the netherworld). Past the condo construction, beneath the scaffolding, past the old folks home, past the old folks in their wheelchairs taking themelves for a walk, tentative steps of autonomy. let's do the length of the building before going back through the doors and relenting to the smothering of nurses. sometimes there is a baseball game on in the park. the hill is littered with lawnchairs and rowdy parents. say hi to the old chinese lady at the corner store, who tries to sell me a stale chocolate bar, (or perhaps an umbrella?) who can only get away with chasing me down the street because she knows I speak her language so in some abstract way, we are family.
Through the front door. If it's dark, I take 3 tentative paces and kick for the first step. If it's a full moon, the stairwell is lit by the skylight up top, and I crank my head to stare up at the ol guy, and sing a song I made up a long time ago: Hello moon, we're down here. Home.
April 28, 2008 at 7:50 a.m.
i totally enjoy your writing
susan showed me ur blog, keep on!!!!!!!!!!!
david melville
and i'm on facebook omg
May 6, 2008 at 8:01 p.m.
thanks david!
and... what the hell are you doing on facebook??