Fauna of Central Toronto

The "cringe-reflex". A contortion of the face and sudden, involuntary collapse of the upper eyelid. Followed by a convulsive one-eighty jerk of the neck. A feeling of repulsion lingers.

I am walking home past the usual cantankerous old white folk. The sun is on the demise. See the subway sign, and my eyes fall upon the bench just outside the automatic doors.

Moby Dick lies on said bench. Moby, the she-bum; naked belly basking in the last, unfortunate rays of sunlight. She is the matron bum of the Spadina-Bloor intersection. Layers upon layers of fat, coalescing into one planetary formation. This april evening she was trying desperately - well, effortlessly - to drive her gut temperature up to an optimum. She knows it will rain soon.

Please, I do not intend to make light of this situation, but let me go on. Her pillar-like legs are calloused and purple, from annual exposure to the harshest of winters. I cannot begin to fathom her tragic existence, but I see it, see her, Moby; the guy with the big trench coat and boots, with the strange gait; the black bum with the headphones and shopping bags; the younger girl who reads books outside scotia, asking for money in return for "good karma", etc. There is a large and seemingly growing homeless fauna, with new species erupting everyday from the concrete and asphalt expanses of Toronto, pregnant with the seeds of misfortune and injustice. Crumbling and decomposing, these neanderthals seek safety and warmth.

Rummaging through our green bins: Procyon lotor and Homo Sapien. Post-modern competition. Darwin never saw this coming.

Left-field Tapes vs. Persistent Vacuum

Time and Space sprawl before me, like the bird I ran over the other day. A red-breasted robin of unparalleled beauty.

My room, the chamber, where entropy ran supreme, is now reduced to minimalist sterility. An obvious reflection of the empty cassettes I gather. One day they shall complete the metamorphosis into an experimental tape collage. I will capture the pulsating, throbbing night out on Spadina, as it seeps in through the open windows of my alcove. Endless possibilities, dashed by the vast, expansive time that I have ahead of me. My brain yearns for the temporal confines of deadlines and exams.

My proposed self-renewing left-field musical experimentation is experiencing Zimbabwean stagflation. Thoughts have grown independent. I can no longer bare the teratology of my being as it separates like oil from water, rejecting my sincere proposal to supplant this room into the burgeoning cassette recording network. Dim, dim, dim.

I shall resign this dim mind to a dwindling and atrophied existence.

Shrine-building Nation

We took out a war film, cut out the words, and let the sound run on.

The men, their bodies, became extensions of the sound; migrant workers from all reaches of the empire, who neither understood each other, nor spoke the same tongue. The aural detritus of bomb blasts and artillery fire, kept the wheelbarrows rolling and the hammers smashing and clattering in quick succession. Images of mushroom clouds loomed overhead. The ukrainian workers, belted with passion. A high-strung bunch, wishing they had stayed home with their mothers. Any distractions were pulverized once their ears were adequately saturated with war drums. They worked like negroes!

One million hands are ready today. This week they are tasked with chiseling her gilded lips. An artist's rendition is blown up on a large screen in the middle of the gardens. Every meal is served under her panopticon gaze.

No incantations and no mantra, She only demands mute exaltation. Our lips do not part in reverence, our work here is a silent wind-born hymn, rising and swirling with every addition, floating across burnt-out fields and brackish waters, up to the purple mountains.

I kneel before the deity; her eyes and lips have that narcotized tranquility of assured omniscience.

Sanitation

Depression struck me low and hard that night. I was perched on my bed, with a glow in my face and in the center of that source a news emerged that had me floored, desperate for the destitute and other miserable beings on Bloor, I fled.

There is no treatment for psychosis

Flight, endless flight!

Began, down Madison

Past a line of cabs: a funeral procession

They will absolve the empty puppets

Thrown up, from the belly of a maddened beast

A carnivore pouring out vomit onto the sidewalk,

Strike out the dirge

Lament for the years of folly, the lager, and grub

Spent, spent, spent is the cow of enlightenment; her poor tits have gone dry.

A negation of everything living and spontaneous

The human being moved out long ago,

The rigid doll faces, the angry lout are here to stay.

And in all this madness, I turn and look at old Tengye Ling, across the street from the Madison Pub. I ask him for an explanation. How? How does he get up in the morning after the brawls and vanities of the night across the street, to wash his face and begin the Puja? Your face, it is so, placid and attentive. How?

"Quiet is a state of mind", he replies, pensively. No! I cry he is not in deep thought! This man, Tengye, he is clearly doped on Rohypnol! Sedatives! YES YES!

Elms on Lowther

The white van parked outside their newly renovated Victorian house reads, "Hartt & Son - Certified Technician & Chimney Sweep".

She opens the door for him - a pause at the threshold - reaches for his hand and leads him past her lazy-eyed brother, who is engrossed with his Nintendo DS. Up the stairs they go. Last wednesday it was the Pizza Pizza delivery guy, today it's Kevin. Her mother is out enjoying the all-inclusive spa package her husband got her to quell suspicions of an affair with the realtor.

As Kevin unbuttons his coveralls, Judie dreams of the day when the guy on the fifth row of her thursday class, "Introduction to Frederico Fellini", finally turns around to ask her for notes on La Dolca Vita. She would comply graciously with a flutter of her long eyelashes. Then maybe after the ritual coffee date, she could ask him to return a favour, and walk her to 15 Lowther. They would walk through the Huron street playground, where they would stop for fifteen pristine minutes; Judie would take out D.H. Lawrence - in the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark elm tree - and read it to him.

O' but till the day that these dreams come to fruition, she will carry on in anonymity, for she does not know his name, and him hers. She will slip out every thursday before the end of class, during the 10 minute break, and walk over to the Manulife Centre, pay 11 bucks, and watch the images flicker across the great wide screen, in solitude.

She will heave a great sigh as her lungs, like the trees, fill with air.

Vomitus

The shifting tectonics of my thoughts are dangerous tonight.

It all finally snapped the other day, when I stepped out of his truck onto the cold asphalt at the corner of Lippincott and something. She greets my approach with an accusing stare. I have something written down on a napkin that I intend to hand over to her, tonight before I leave for FSJ - the last laugh.

I yell, "you're looking radiant today, love".

She responds angrily, channelling all her banner-wielding female empowerment, "all objects in the universe radiate energy. "

"Is that right, well let's see to it that you're chock-full of the stuff. C'mon I know a place; they serve freshly squeezed OJ and right sizzlin' bacon."

"NO! I'm not going to hear you indulge about the fields and self-apathy. I'm going with the girls to Donna LaFramboise's book signing, over on the eastend."

"There will be plenty more opportunities to trade tips on growing out your armpits... [trail of low-brow humor].."

"You are INSUFFERABLE!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaah, insufferable! That's why I love you."

"That's it, I won't be buttered over by you. I lost you a long time ago. Now I won't render myself useless and sit around moping, because you have decided to up and leave us."

"I'm glad, your fatalism will keep you company, while I'm gone."

She turns around, but before she does, I grab her and we embrace. I feel her tears soak right through my denim lapel. I decide to hold onto the napkin. We separate.

Saturated

My nose and sinuses have had enough! They have been raped and annexed pugnaciously, by the putrid smell of fried burgers, again and again. How can I come home after witnessing my team throw away a lead in the 89th minute, at home, when my house is infested with bastards devoid of culinary skills? Rancid... rancid fucks!