OMAR AND DAVID

Omar and David have much in common although they don’t know each other. At least they are not aware that they know each other. There is actually only about three degrees of separation between them. they see each other in passing often yet either one would say that he doesn’t know the other, if asked.

SPRING

The little boy stood with one foot partially buried in the crystalized and kinda snowy, kinda icy, hard remains of the winter snow.  He tapped his other foot in the puddle formed by the melting ice and snow. It spashed on his shoes just a little bit. “Watch you shoes, Keenan.” His parent stopped and turned still holding the lead of the family pet, an eight-month old golden labrador.

“The sun has risen and set many, many times and still I must watch my shoes and cannot play without worry of getting wet, cold and scolded.”

“You’re right, Keenan. We must be patient because spring is just around the corner.” Keenan’s parent struggled as the puppy dragged itself onward, showing less concern for the ice, water and mud than did Keenan.

“And how do you know that?” Keenan continued tapping and spraying water onto his shoes ever so slightly. He was now posing with hands on hips and his head cocked to the right in an inquisitve posture.

“We just need to look around us, son.” His parent  held onto the puppy’s lead with one hand and pointed across the ice covered grassy area to a point just beside a huge cedar. Almost like a statue, standing at attention was a beautiful, red-breasted bird.

I saw my first robin today. “How do you tolerate the winter in Toronto?” I am asked this question often by people who live in warmer climates. Simple. It always comes to an end and we start over again. 

Real Men

“Real men NEVER put the seat down.” A toilet, with the seat up, adorned the T-shirt bearing this declarative statement. A beefy young man in need of a haircut was wearing the shirt.

 

I had already passed by Enzo’s barbershop on College Street when the thought occurred to me to drop in and get a brush cut. Easter Monday. The place would be either packed or completely empty. Relieved, I saw that the later was the case.

 

There was only one other customer in the place and I figured he was about half way through his hair cut. I nodded hello to Enzo, hung up my coat and took a seat in a vinyl covered chair with stainless steel arms and wooden arm rests, against the wall. The barber and his sole customer were deeply engaged in a conversation and I tried my best not to interrupt. When I got settled and had the chance to tune in I realized they were discussing sports—soccer— or football as it is often called in Little Italy.

 

Sports are not something I have ever been into. I like to know if a Canadian team is in the playoffs for the Stanley Cup. I loved the energy that swept the streets of Toronto when the Blue Jays took the World Series two years in a row and when Canada won Olympic gold in hockey but—to actually get intimate with sports?  It’s just not me.

 

Consequently, I don’t engage in the conversation going on between these two men but I do listen, observe and analyze the underlying meaning of what I am hearing. Because the topic is not something I am personally interested in, I have a hard time understanding why other people are interested. I mean, if I am not into it, it can’t be that important, right? I wonder if these men wonder why I don’t join in. Maybe they think I am Portuguese and don’t understand what they are saying.

 

I am struck, as I often am in these situations, by men talking about other men. Passionately. Incessantly. Men, who normally cannot tell you how they feel about something as uncomplicated as the time of day, will talk, yell, scream, get on their feet and fight about sports and the men who play them.

 

Women, and I know I am generalizing here, don’t do this. And for those of them who are attracted to men, I find this interesting although—paradoxical. Well, come to think of it, I have seen lots of women in my time screaming blue bloody murder at a hockey game. And soccer moms, there I go again, get very involved in the game. But, do women sit around in hair styling salons, in great numbers, passionately discussing how many points back Italy is over France? Men do and it is usually the ones who are not, ostensibly, attracted to other men.

 

The men who are attracted to other men talk about, whom? Women. Gay men are, I’m doing it again, more interested in Victoria Beckham’s hair than how her husband plays football.

 

Matthew  Kelly, in “The Seven Levels of Intimacy” writes, “. . . sports are a microcosm of the human experience; they are an opportunity to have other human beings challenge us to change, to grow, to improve ourselves and to explore our potential . . . to achieve our essential purpose.” He also says that groups of people watching sports “are yearning for something they have lost—their essential purpose.” Interesting. I think when men, especially, talk to each other about sports, they are connecting, or at least trying to, on a very basic and human level in a way they have learned is acceptable in our society.

 

A friend, who is a bit of an athlete himself, shared with me that he thinks this behaviour is men emulating their heroes, the ones they most want to be like. I get that. I’m just curious why we have difficulty saying, “You know, I wish I had a body like Beckham!”

 

And then I have to wonder who the guy with the toilet on his shirt is emulating. He did most of the sports talking.

HAPPY EASTER

Happy Easter.

 

I have just returned from an out-of-town business trip and am returning my rental car to where it lives in a corner of the vast underground of Toronto. It is really too friggin’ cold to be Easter weekend but, it is. I hand the keys to the Hertz attendant in the dark, undergound  parking lot and head up the ramp and into the sunshine. The freezing cold sunshine lit air.

 

I grew up around Toronto so I, by habit of cultural norms I learned as a child, assumed I would not find much open downtown on this high holiday of the majority inhabitants. In reality there is all kinds of stuff going on.

 

“Closed Easter Sunday,” says the sign on the glass enclosure of that great Canadian institution, the Dominion store. Normally, this particular store is open 24/7.

 

“It’s a kind of mixed up sorta day,” says a guy who appears to be the spokesperson for a group of folks looking for lunch. I’m in the middle of the food court and a lot of people are standing in place sort of looking around for something that is open.

 

Suddenly, a burst of crowd noise and a crowd of people are moving toward me. The subway. It’s operating today.

 

Street youth and a young woman talking to  herself, out loud, in Russian (I think) keep the place interesting. Of course they could be suburban kids still on their way home from a night on the town. Hard to tell the difference these days. And the woman? She could be talking via blue-tooth technology. Hard to tell about that these days, too.

 

The pharmacy is quiet but open. I love shopping on days like these and I go in a browse and buy some stuff to make me feel better.

 

The dollar store and the taco shop have signs of activity and may be getting ready to open. This place probably has a tourism exemption to the Holiday Shopping laws. We break the law for tourists but not for the people who live and work here everyday. I wonder how much sense our law makes to workers who don’t recognize holidays that seem to violate the separation of church and state. But, then this is Canada and nobody ever said we are supposed to separate religion and politics.

 

I heard singing when I left my house last night and turned to see a contingent of church goers on the steps of the Christian church five doors from mine. Based on my catholic-ish upbringing, I guessed they were celebrating Holy Saturday. It got me thinking— along with Nuit Blanche— when we go about the city looking for art, someone should organize a thing where we go around and see what various religions do on High Holidays.

 

Anyway, here I am, back in College Park food court where more people are filing in as I sit here and write.  “Here’s another food court mom. But nothing’s open today.” A sandwich generation woman heads for the subway entrance with her white-haired mom.

 

“Oh well, it’s Easter dear.”

 

I am glad I live in a place where so many are doing so much all the time. Both the believers and the observers.

Old Friends

Old friends are the ones that know, almost, everything about you and love you anyway. They reflect your past while reminding you of the passage of time as you watch them grow older and, often, wiser. I have had the privilege of re-connecting with some old, dear friends this year. The most amazing thing about this process is seeing that the lives of others continues even when I’m not around! What do you know, I am not the centre of the universe.

It is also amazing to sit down with an old friend and have a conversation as if we were continuing it from yesterday. Especially when we haven’t spoken in years! It’s amazing to me that we can pick up, almost where we left off, despite the differences that may have divided us over the years. It restores my faith in humanity when someone, who has not seen or heard from me in nearly twenty years, invites me into her home, her life and her confidence as if I had been right there all along. It comforts me to take a long road trip with a friend just like we had done so many times years ago. And it is like no time has passed at all.

It brings a tear to my eye to look into your eyes and see my past playing like a movie and knowing that you can see the same movie. I am in yours and you are in mine.

Here’s to old friends and new futures.

Bicycle Repairs and the Big Picture

I am the proud owner of two bicycles; they are my primary mode of transport. Well, I was, at least, until this week. I now own two bicycles and only one usable rear wheel and the one that is usable is only barely usable. Long story, the gist of which is I need at least a new rear wheel or maybe (oh, goodie) a whole new bike!

So who the hell cares about my transportation dilemma? Well, today I went out looking for a wheel and in the process had a very enlightening experience and learned some very interesting things about bicycling in Toronto.

The Community Bicycle Network is a bike workshop located on Queen Street W., right at the bottom of Palmerston. It’s in the old church that is now a sort of community centre where folks sell handmade crafts and jewellery and stuff on the street.

I went in today to see what, if anything, they could do to help me with my bike wheel problem. (In the bike biz they’re called “rims.”) They don’t sell parts or used bikes the gentlemen told me. “Not now , but we are looking at selling in the future. We need a staff person for that.” The guys working in here today, he told me, are volunteers.

The bike network has taken over this space from the defunct “BikeShare” program. Sadly, this program, that provided bicycles all over the city for a low yearly fee, has lost its funding and is no more.

This workshop allows you to come in and get free advice and you can use there tools to fix your bike. They charge $5/hour. The “rim” I saw in the for-profit bike shop down the street is $79 plus $25 labour to install it.

The nice guys volunteering here directed me to a similar place, “The Bike Pirates” on Bathurst just south of College. Across from the beer store. This place is a self-fixit shop too and they sell used bikes, parts and accessories. They are open Thursdays and Saturdays.

What a busy place the “Bike Pirates” is! I saw several people fixing their bikes using the tools and equipment provided. I heard a woman say as she washed the grease from her hands, “I’ll come and build another bike next week. It’s my contribution to the community.” She was putting together bikes that were then being sold at ridiculously low prices to the public.

Helping people help themselves. I love it. And I learned it won’t kill me to walk around my neighbourhood for a few days until I decide what to do about the bike.

The Name of the Gates

     What the hell is in a friggin’ name? Well, if you were a gate and were named after royalty, a lot.

     The Princess Gates, The Prince’s Gates, The Princes’Gates. If you talk fast enough all the names sound the same. It’s only  when you slow down or actually write about these venerable stone stuctures– they mark the portal of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)– that the double meaning becomes obvious.

     I have gone around using all three names. My curiosity motivated me this summer, to pedal over  there and find out what the builders of the Gates called them.

Wow . . . The Princes’ Gates! Erected in 1927 in honour of the 60th anniversary of the CNE, the Gates are named  after two princes. Not one prince’s gates but two princes’ gates. HRHs Edward and George. The heir and the spare. The Prince of Wales and his brother.