9:48 PM: On a Bus Bound for Toronto

I am living up to my "postmodern vagabond" nature: flitting between Toronto and London (Ontario), a few days in each place, living out of suitcases and backpacks. Much to my delight, each time I travel I feel compelled to bring fewer items with me.




Years ago, I could not "travel light." I carried thick binders of creative notes: sketches for paintings... new stanzas of poetry... pages of in-progress theatre scripts... collages and mixed-media journal entries... and sentimental relics from people I'd met during my journeys.




And now: an electronic revolution!

A modest library of music CDs (and a series of French-language lessons) fits onto a player the size of a deck of cards. My photographs (and some raw video footage for a short film I'm brainstorming) fit on a tiny memory card in my camera; most of my other creative projects are on a laptop computer. With the exception of a bulging folder of random text (scrawled on coffee-splotched napkins and the thin white borders of newspapers), most of my creative life is now digital. As a result, the weight of my creativity is a mind-bending eight pounds...

Butterflies and Gnawing Locusts

After six months apart, we met on a park bench.

I sat in the sun, a flowing pink skirt brushing against my calves; he arrived with a guitar case slung over his shoulder.

We embraced.




And then -- what exactly?

It's so difficult to say...




We spent seven hours together.



He played a few songs...

We shared a picnic on the top of a hill in Riverdale Park (fresh multigrain bread, seasoned olives, Canadian brie, and smoked fish) while children tossed baseballs to each other on the fields below...

We trekked through the Don Valley, charting new paths...

We argued -- as we so often did.

But we stayed -- as we also often did -- and found points of connection: the words unsaid, and the real sense of words we'd each spoken.



I am learning to live with less certainty -- and more trust.

Pigeon-feeding, Popular Culture, and Echoes of the Freemasons

I intended to take a ballet class tonight -- but as I was stuffing my workout clothes into my backpack, a friend called to invite me to dinner. With my calves already sore, and already feeling a bit hungry and rushed, I pulled the workout clothes out of my bag and hopped on the subway to meet him for Thai food.

Emerging at Yonge and Bloor, I found a strange woman with a shopping cart piled with buckets of birdseed. As she sprinkled seeds on the sidewalk, she cooed at the pigeons and began speaking to them -- affectionately, it seemed -- in a language I couldn't understand.




Then -- with bellies full of mango chicken and green curry, I walked with my friend to a building on Yonge just North of Bloor: the headquarters of MTV Canada.




It's quite an exceptional space -- a former Masonic Temple that has been converted to various small TV studios. My friend (who runs lights for a few of the MTV shows) gave me a tour, and I snapped a few photos -- with a strange degree of trepidation.





Despite its conversion to a pop culture mecca, the building retains many original details -- which lend the space an incongruous sobriety. I felt like an interloper...

To see abandoned fragments of the masons' rituals, out of their formal context, felt surreal -- and perhaps even disrespectful. What right do I have to photograph the relics of the freemasons -- and to document something I do not understand?



So I've decided to do a bit of reading about the masons... and to go back again in the next few weeks.

I hope that a deeper awareness of their rituals may let me capture something I felt I couldn't really see tonight.

Poetry, Elliptical Orbits, and Heliocentric Lives

This was a truly lovely day.

I saw Ewan, after he'd been away from the city for a few days... and it felt so nice to take his hand and wander around the Annex streets. We stopped to sit and talk beneath trees, on campus benches, and in a small courtyard with a chessboard inlaid into the concrete tabletop...




He's delightful.




I want more of this: more poetry, more kindness... more afternoons with dark chocolate... more moments of connection, of slowly drawing each other back to the sun...

Iran, Afghanistan, and Remembered History

I wasn't looking for conversation; I just stepped into the Persian carpet store to pet the cat that was sleeping on a stack of wool rugs.



But as I hoisted myself up onto the top of the rug stack, I couldn't help but overhear a conversation between the store's owner, Ali, and an articulate woman with a British accent. They were talking about Iran -- and Iraq -- and Afghanistan.



I quickly shifted from a shy eavesdropper to an active participant. I learned that Ali had been born in Iran and spent most of his younger years in Kuwait; the woman (named Joy), had lived in at least three countries before immigrating to Canada. Their sense of history was impeccable, and they guided me through some recent history of the Middle East: the 1979 Iranian Revolution, various invasions of Afghanistan, and some information about oil reserves in Iraq. Joy recommended two books by Jason Elliot: An Unexpected Light and Mirrors of the Unseen -- Journeys in Iran.



In the most chilling part of the conversation, Ali described being pulled off the streets of an Iranian city for interrogation. Over the course of two hours, he was interrogated by 12 officers -- all under the (specious?) premise that he resembled a man who had passed a counterfeit travelers cheque...



As I left Ali's store and continued wandering through the market, I felt a wave of gratitude for my safety. Few can claim that the United States lives up to the democratic ideals of its founding (the US-led School of the Americas, also euphemistically known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, has been a training centre for some of the most brutal Latin American dictators of the past forty years -- and who can hear of the Patriot Act without supressing a wary twitch?), but when I compare my safety in the US to this man's insecurity in Iran, I can't help but feel gratitude for my home.



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All of the photographs in this post are from Kensington Carpets (193 Baldwin Street) in Toronto.

David and Manjit at the Gladstone Hotel

A few shots from David's wedding reception at the Glastone on Friday night...