Entries

Wake up, Todd. It’s time to fetch some water.

Submitted entry: Watching the subway train come in. For sounds of the subway, the people, and the amazing subway musicians, click on the photo.

So I am in my usual entry rut. You know the one - I’ve probably mentioned it a dozen times in the past four years on here. This would be the one where I say that I never feel motivated to write an entry when I am sitting near the computer with time to kill, and am always motivated to when I am doing something that completely precludes it - like sitting in the middle of a swimming pool. And, like missing class in college, the more I wait, the more reluctant I am to get back into it. Particularly since I am several weeks, now, into a major life change and have yet to catch everyone up on every detail. So in the interest of actually getting something up as to how things are in my life, I’m just going to dive in. I might tell about stuff that happened weeks or months ago, I might leave you in the dark - it depends on how it goes.

After three weeks of living in Toronto, I have to say that it has more than lived up to every expectation I ever had. In a surreal way, it almost feels made up, or dream-like. Really, can’t you see the entry - maybe written sometime in 2001 just after returning from Michigan, or perhaps a fevered dream brought on by yet another case of food poisoning at the yurt?

“…So I had the strangest dream…We lived for a while in Albuquerque (I think that must have come from driving through it three times on the way to drop off the yurt in California) and I worked some insane hours but the company paid for everything, car, fabulous apartment, personal chef. But as the dream progressed it became clear why I was given this fabulous life - to make up for the fact that I was always at work - usually 10-12 hours/day, often 6-7 days a week. Meanwhile the country was going to shit and we decided to start looking for a job in Canada. As things looked more likely that we were leaving, Sage and Paul, figuring that they could either not-see me in Albuquerque, or not-see me in Missouri, drove home to Missouri leaving me alone for three months. Sometimes I could get home but mostly work was too busy so I made only two trips home in all that time. Finally, though, the job offer came through and we left for Canada. And here’s where it gets weird.

There we lived in this enormous high-rise. Being a dream, I had to have a way of knowing we were in Toronto, so we had a view of the skyline and CN tower and Lake Ontario from our living room. And of course Toronto is a diverse city, this was illustrated in my dream by just looking around the neighbourhood. Within a short walk from the apartment were an Indian grocery (fresh samosas 3/$1.00 daily), a few Indian restaurants, an Asian grocery and a mall with a food court with foods from around the world. I was told that Toronto had good public transportation so of course in my dream there were buses coming every couple of minutes outside our door.

Work, in this dream was really great - people were for the most part politically liberal, I was not the only vegetarian in the office (there are two others) but while having a strong work ethic, everyone also would go home at a reasonable hour working only a 37.5 hour work week. At lunch just about every day people would bring in food and instead of eating their own food, we would all trade lunches turning lunch into a daily potluck.

Not only that, even though work was in a suburb, public transit could take me there in a matter of 90 minutes or so and so I rode 3 hours/day to read or write email on my palm.

On weekends we’d all have outings to the museums who either honoured our memberships from the States or where we got new ones. Interspersed between museum trips would be trips to Chinatown for groceries or lunch, or visits to public skating parties where scores of people would show up even on a cold night to skate to live music.”

So with all this dreaminess of the experience I seriously am expecting to wake up. Not in a true way, but in a “now reality sets in and you have to go back to the States and live in Philadelphia and commute forever and work all the time.” sort of way. Which makes for a low-level anxiety much of the time. (Of course this could be the coffee!). I think as I live here longer I’ll be able to belive I really am here to stay.

Yesterday Paul and I spent much of the day together by ourselves. After a long sleep-in (until 8:00!), coffee, and samosas and coriander chutney for breakfast (move over bagels!), I went across the street to get a haircut. When I got home, Sage was ready to go on her outing (a trip to a few stores, then off to take photos wherever she wound up). Paul and I played with clay some for a bit before I got the idea to go investigate the park behind our highrise. He loved the idea and after a bit of effort trying to find the park entrance we finally wandered down the closed road (not maintained in winter so covered in over a foot of snow) to the park. Paul saw a set of footprints heading off into the trees and as he was so happy to find trees I could hardly deny him the opportunity to wander in the woods we headed in despite the deep and somewhat drifted (in places) snow. We walked for easily an hour or more along this track, occasionally falling in the snow, frequently pulling balls of snow out of my not-very-winter-appropriate doc martens or putting Paul’s gloves back on. As we walked on, it became evident that these tracks went on for quite some distance and that while turning back would be an arduous task, going on might not lead us much further. So after wandering through a grove of snow-covered spruce trees, we came to a decision point. Turn back and walk for at least an hour through the cold to get to the way out, try to cross the fairly wide stream to get to the other side where there wasn’t so much snow and a more direct route out (decided against that as it looked too cold and deep), or climb the big hill up underneath the bridge back to the road. We chose this last one despite the fact that it was hugely steep, and appeared to have a chain-link fence separating us from the road. There seemed to be a small gap in the fence that Paul could squeeze through and I figured I could climb over if need be.

Because it was so overgrown and so steep (it felt like smooth wet plastic underneath the snow) it took about 20 minutes and lots of “I can’t do it’s” from Paul, we finally made it to the top. And there we found that Paul wasn’t small enough to fit through the gap. And that we’d have to climb over the five foot high chain link fence. So I lifted Paul up so his feet were in the middle and his hands were on the top and I climbed up and over, getting my coat caught and putting a hole in my pants on the way over. Then came my biggest challenge - getting Paul over. His boots were too big to fit in the chain links so he couldn’t climb over, and so I reached up over my head and tried to lift him over succeeding only in getting him to the point where his waist was at the top of the fence. He couldn’t climb over as his clothes were getting caught, and I couldn’t move him up any further because I wasn’t strong enough. In fact, my arms were at that point I last experienced almost 15 years ago when in a fitness program with a personal trainer. I was bench pressing an embarrassingly-small amount, brought it down then pushed up. I could get it only so far and hold it there. It literally felt like a wall preventing me from moving further.

So we were left in a quandary - I on one side of the fence, Paul back down resting his feet on the middle, and no idea how to get him back on my side of the fence. Fortunately, though, I remembered something I read in a book my dad, who was in the Army, brought home when I was a teenager that mentioned about how to get over barbed wire (among other things). And so, I adapted the instructions to my needs, throwing my coat over the top of the chain link fence (not barbed wire but a bit pokey) and helped Paul over it.

When we got to the sidewalk we were very pleased with ourselves. Paul did a dance and I would have except that my feet were feeling disturbingly numb and as if my heels were about three times as fat as normal. We got to the door of the building and I started telling Paul about our plans. “So then we’re going to get upstairs and take off all of our wet clothes, our pants, our shoes, our socks,…” when Paul interrupted to say “I’m not wearing socks.” And at that moment I imagined all manner of horrors for his feet having walked through the snow just as I had, having fallen many times more than I, and never being one to complain of pain. But fortunately he was wearing a decent pair of boots and so his feet, while a bit wet were far warmer than mine. And mine were fine within minutes of getting my boots off.

So we spent the rest of the afternoon lazing about, playing with clay, browsing the web, and so forth. Paul and I were planning on going to the library that afternoon but were both glad to be inside and warm so we cancelled that trip. Sage got home and started the laundry and at that point I somehow found out about fireworks downtown at about 7:00. So Paul got dressed in record time, we hopped on the bus and while we got there a bit late, we did get there in time to see a good fifteen minutes of the drumming/pyrotechnics (which we could hear from a block away) before it was over at which point we went to watch the everyone skate and listen to music for a while before heading home.

So how is it going overall? In a sentence - fairly well - I’m still getting used to the new routine which has me cooking again every night and spending 3-4 hours/day on transit. My schedule is as full as it ever was - but there is much more balance. I’m only working 7.5 hours/day, travelling (and reading) three hours/day, and cooking and spending time with my family the rest of it. And while I sometimes miss the convenience of driving everywhere it makes more sense not to. Gas, insurance and parking would cost too much and traffic is a major headache especially in the snow. And really I’d only gain an extra hour at home which (selfishly speaking) would translate into an hour less (more likely) for reading.