meaning in the moving design

Oh Toronto.

I'm back in the southern True North, basking in the cool summer sun, happily munching on grilled meat and sipping (yes, sipping) Canadian beer.

Back in the warm, cozy cradle of toronto indie music, tdot beats, rep cinemas and art films, street festivals and community dinners, great food, great films, great music, great taste in everything, and great people.

I love this city for all that and more. Yes, it's true, Toronto is busy... but it's busy in a way that is so much healither than the way Asia is busy. Here, people don't pour their energy into their useless 9-5 jobs (unless those jobs are wicked cool and not useless at all), they pour energy into creative, pro-active, community-giving ways of life. People here dare to dream, and it is beautifully inspiring, especially if you're a lazyass half-start like me. This city amazes me.

But I wouldn't be me if I didn't have at least a minor neurotic twitch at the thought of being here again. Coming home is always a little traumatic. If I travel for longer periods of time than most it's because I love the feeling of coming back to this city and having it look slightly unfamiliar... that it can look unfamiliar to me is so exciting. Everything ordinary is given this thin coat of newness and that potential for discovery is so full...

At the moment, Toronto is half living up to this promise of discovery. I'm living in a new hood and getting to know my neighbourhood, I'm discovering new bike roots* and avoiding job hunting by playing in my new garden. On the other hand, I speak the language and most things feel... old. Or rather, everything's the same, and I feel old. Sigh...

Everyone's been asking whether I'm happy to be back, and it's really a hard one to answer. My standard answer is that 'happy' isn't exactly the right word, but I know that it's right to be back. I'm kind of sorting data as I type here, but on a personal note, I feel like I need to "settle down," and by that I refer mostly to internal geography, not external. There are things I need to settle within myself, and Toronto seems the safest and most supportive place to do that. I'm not broken by any means, but I've realized that the challenges of travel and displacement have kinda acted as decoy distractors, they come at the expense of other challenges I'm ignoring, am happy to ignore...

I had a conversation with someone recently, about the idea of wholesale change, of displacing yourself, and why we do it. And we both hit on this one reason- we do it to prove we can do it. There's nothing like diving into a foreign situation, and watching yourself rise to the challenge to give you an incredible- and incredibly addictive- rush of "Yay, Im Awesome!"ness. And then that becomes the easiest way to feel awesome, so suddenly you're doing it all the time and you get all cracked out on this Awesome drug and you can't stop....

So you come down from your Awesome drug and you go home and you find yourself In Transition again, and you're familiar with this place but it's the one place that never stays the same. And so you undergo these familiar/unfamiliar rites of coming home, the settling part, when the universe trembles and pushes and figures out where to fit you into a life that has gone on without you for 2 years. You feel like a triangle shape being manhandled by a fat-fingered kid; you're not sure whether Jolly Bo Gumption here is going to slip you smoothly into the triangle hole or try to jam you stubbornly into the square cutout. There's fear there, you can't help but look back. But there's also this other thing, some sort of inner acceptance that enabled you to go away in the first place. You'll fucking deal. And you'll do it well. Awesome.

And then...

*an honest ta gawd typo, almost but not quite as good as "scene of changery"

I know a lot of madly talented people. Seriously, I'm not talking about no "proud mom" syndrome, where every crappy thing that little Timmy makes in school is an automatic masterpiece, I mean that Im drawn to smart, creative, madly talented people (... as people who do not possess such mad talent are prone to be, I guess- oh dis!)

Which brings me to a certain pair of peeps back home. I met insideamind while putting together a gig for the worldwide short film fest in 2006. I'd seen these guys do scratch magic to a reel of old school kung fu films, and I invited them to do a live score for some films I put together. They killed it. Like they actually outdid any expectations I had, they were that good. I had an amazing line up that night, some really incredible musicians, and of all of them, Cheldon and Eric came the closest to delivering what I had wanted- musicians who would intereact with the images, play with them, confront them, defy them, all of that. These guys have a visual consciousness about the way they make music- not just beats n breaks, but images and moods... and for a filmy music geek like myself, well it just makes me as giddy as a seal in heat.

Ok, so having said that, I never thought much of insideamind outside the context of performance. I'd listened to bits of Fragmental and thought "yeah cool, but not entirely listenable, unless youre watching them play, or play to something". Well, I've changed my mind. They're new album, Scatterpopia (at least the bits Ive heard) is awesome. If i found Fragmental too bare bones, in Scatterpopia, the boys have put on the pounds the Atkins diet way or some shit. They've filled out, and it sounds complete to me for the first time. They're getting tighter and more melodic and... just better. Which makes me want to say "Chia you!!" (it means "add oil!" in chinese, and kinda has the connotation of "you go girl!") and so forth. Check it.

I'm writing all this as the remnants of Typhoon Fengshen spin across Taiwan, and the sound of the rain outside is drowning out my tunes. I'm feeling reflective (what else is new??) and I have to say, I miss the cool scene. Don't get me wrong- I was NEVER a scenester, and I do not in any way miss having to play nice with people I hate, or the shmoozing, I definitely don't miss the schmoozing... but, in t-dot, I knew a lot of cool bands; was exposed to good music, good films, cool things to do... I knew where to find the good shit- always. Taipei's got good films and some wickedly cool things to keep me busy, but I have yet to find the cool music. So for now, I'm still getting my fix virtually.

I travel a lot. And I've been to some pretty piss-poor countries, so I'm not really a stranger to, say, being chased by a flock of beggars. Having said that, I've never developed a strategy that jives with my conscience. While I was in India, I realized that, comparatively, Toronto's poor are so goddamn polite. They suffer quietly, and for the most part, we don't dig. We're happy to be cradled in our own ignorance; we learn how to look through people. Well... you know how in the first episode of Six Feet Under, how everyone wanted Ruth to stop crying at the funeral because it was embarrassing, and how Nate just stood up and told everyone to just let her be? To let her cry and scream and wail if that's what she felt? Well the neighborhood around the bookstore's kinda like that too. There's no quiet poverty here.

High Time...
Went to the No Frills for a lunch buy today. There was a native woman standing at the doors, screaming "Get Out! Get Out!!" She doesn't seem to be able to say anything else. It's clear that she's not high or drunk, just that she's mentally ill and has been left to fend for herself. There's nothing for anyone to be afraid of, save for the affront of acknowledging how pitiful the situation is. She pauses as people enter and exit, with an outstretched hand and an imploring look. When they look past her and walk around her, she resumes her screaming, "Get Out!! Get Out!!" She is like a lyrebird, or a recorder stuck on play. Repeating the last phrase captured; the last point of interaction she's had with anyone; the last thing anyone has bothered to say to her.
When I leave the supermarket, she's moved away from the doors. She's a little further up the street coming towards me, screaming "Get Out! Get Out!" She pauses on cue in front of me, her hand outstretched, gurgling sounds but not words, intonated in a "please". I hand her the orange in my pocket. She smiles- this wide, surprised, warm, beautiful smile. She says "Thank you" and continues on her way.

Low Time...
It's near close. A woman walks in shivering from the cold, her hands clasped in prostration. She says, "Please, I am poor. I would be really grateful if you could please spare a dollar". Her voice dangles desperately, holding back. She looks like she's afraid of me, she's trying so hard to tread lightly, she's ashamed to be bothering me. I hesitate, and she quickly bows to me, mumbles apologies and turns for the door. "Want an orange?" I blurt out. She reaches out to take it, bows profusely, backs out the door and proceeds to rip the orange apart, skin and all. Between mouthfuls, she yells "Thank you! God Bless You! Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!!"
I try to go back to my book as she stands by my window; as I'm showered with Thank Yous.
I feel terrible.

I recently started working for (yet another) used bookstore, this time in the East end of Toronto, at Gerrard and Parliament. Most people think everything east of the Don is too east, and so the East end remains a bit of a blank spot in the urban psyche. (I have a lot of friends that will contest that, so let me clarify that by "most people", I mean people who did not grow up in Toronto... myself included). Gerrard and Parliament is where Cabbagetown meets Regent Park. It's an interesting neighbourhood, a mishmash of gay yuppies and crackheads; organic fine food boutiques with 5 different types of maple syrup and old school diners where people order beer with their breakfasts. The class disparity has never been so blatant. I started working there this summer, and after my first day, I decided it was the fucking Twilight Zone, and that I loved it. I'll out myself here by saying that it's probably because I had a middle-class and largely priveleged upbringing in the suburbs, and while the burbs has it's share of crazy, it's really quite a different bag of crazy beans altogether.

I'm leaving the store soon, and am feeling a little nostalgic, so I thought I'd recount some stories. So here's how my first day went:

Morning
I have about 5 minutes before I have to open up the store, so I pop into a convenience store to grab a drink. There's a man hunched over the Lotto stand right at the entrance, and I squeeze in behind him to get through. I feel his back tense as I pass, and I become very aware that this man likes his space, needs his space and does not welcome my blatent invasion of his space. A few minutes later, as I'm opening the store, I hear "FUCK SHIT BITCH CUNT FUCK BITCH SHIT". I poke my head out to see space-needy guy standing at the corner, screaming his head off. He looks like a cross between George the Animal Steel and Sloth from The Goonies- bald with a somewhat misshapen head and maybe it's just my imagination, but he seemed to have pupils that dangled cartoonishly around his eyes, like loose springs.
"Good morning," I say to myself, and pray that he doesn't feel like shopping.

Afternoon
A man walks in, a little fidgety. Youngish, tall, blonde. He's got a mark on his face that I associate with drug use, but I try not to judge... or rather I judge, and then chastize myself for judging. He thumbs through the music section and pulls out a Johnny Cash biography.
"How much for this one?" he asks.
I show him the price. "10 bucks," I say.
He brightens. In fact he gets downright giddy. "10 bucks! That's exactly what I have!" he says. "I was gonna spend it on a hooker, but a book's much better, right?"
He hands me the crumpled bill, then looks at me earnestly. "How about a date?" he says.
I smile No and he walks out. Like hell I'm giving you a 2-for-1.

Evening
"Hi"
There's a girl standing in the doorway. She fingers the knob but makes no move to come in. She's got downs syndrome. It's hard to tell, but she looks young.
"Hello," I say.
"What's your name?"
I tell her.
"Where's Ron?"
"He's not here. He'll be in tomorrow"
"Where's the boy?" She holds up her hand to indicate someone at chin height. Andrew- the friend who I had taken over for at the store.
"He's gone. He left Toronto. He was my friend"
"Oh." She stares at me for a bit. Then says "My mom died"
... maybe I heard that one wrong.
"What?" I say.
"My mom. She's dead." Then she walks out.

Closing Time
Here's a snapshot of the store's layout: I am on display. In the window, directly below the OPEN sign, perched on a stool, fitted for public consumption. All that's really missing is a flashing red light about my head, and a price tag.
So, I've sat through a "colourful" 8-hour day, and I'm combing through the last pages of a book. [I should add that it's a hot summer day, so I'm dressed unusually girly- tank top and short skirt. I should also say, that because I'm sandwiched in the narrow space between the counter the book shelves behind me, because it's a little awkward and cramped, because I have bad circulation, I am also not exactly sitting in the most lady-like fashion]. From my stool perch, I can see the outdoor sidewalk traffic in my periphery. I see a bike roll by very slowly. I look out in time to catch a woman's eye as she rides past. She looks me straight in the eye, then turns, and looking straight ahead, she says, "Put some fucking clothes on".

Epilogue
Bald-headed springy-eyed man came in a few weeks later. He stood at the doorway with a huge guffah grin, waving frantically as he asked me how my day was. Not a fuck, bitch or shit outta him. That's right- never judge.
The girl with downs has come back too. She tried to steal one of the records from the dollar bin, but saw me watching, then duely informed me that her mother was dead before walking out.

What Regent Park lacks in amenities (there are few, besides streetcar access), it makes up for in character. Along Queen Street, antique shops and design studios sidle up to the Brother Joseph Dooley supportive housing complex, while down the street from Nelson Mandela Park Public School, there might be a sex worker plying her trade in a faux fur ensemble. Still, there needn’t be a Starbucks on every corner for a neighbourhood to be desirable.

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.