Ahh, the heady days of ecstasy fueled DJ dance parties, ecstasy fueled Friday friendly get togethers, ecstasy fueled Wednesday walk abouts… ecstasy. So much freakin’ ecstasy; I seldom found the chance to be happy. Oh, those indeed were the heady days of living at Clinton and Gore.
I have found myself walking past Clinton and Gore quite often these last few weeks. Not so much in an attempt to wander down memory’s lanes; rather because it’s the shortest way home from the Dip. A reminder, that I am using the word “home” loosely these days; as home has become less a place than a mission these days.
My apartment at Clinton and Gore was a comfy place; two bedrooms, one of which became my Lego room when I was toying with the idea that I would entertain my mind by playing with Lego again. Did I mention, I was doing a lot of ecstasy. The Lego was eventually handed off to my cousin’s son and the apartment at Clinton and Gore was handed off to Carl.
That worked.
The apartment at Clinton and Gore was a small bit of punctuation I guess. It was from the apartment at Clinton and Gore that I ended my company and ended what I guess would be my first time in the city of Toronto. I left the apartment at Clinton and Gore to fly off on a disastrous adventure in Central America. Since then it has often felt as if I am always “Leaving the city of Toronto”.
I’ve actually been leaving the city of Toronto since I arrived here a way back in 1980. Of course back then the concrete was mostly freshly poured and to a set of young and excitable eyes, heavily wanting to be involved in the punk scene that was later found out to be long dead before I ever really got involved; I guess it felt like I was arriving…
Ah, the heady days of caffeine fueled angst ridden donut shop conversations that raged into the wee hours… beer fueled boppings at the Beverly when money was about… evening walks that sent me spinning through every last single one of these streets in the city of Toronto. As was the case with most of my young pals at the time, I had moved from somewhere smaller and was wowed big the bigness of this place.
Funny how small a big place gets with each year that passes. Funny how the walls start closing in after you’ve done every possible thing you could possibly imagine doing in the big place. Funny how you have to eject every last single item you’ve built for and around yourself before you can finally fulfill that pounding desire to leave the big place; funny how time after time after time again upon returning to that big place you can convince yourself that you’re NOT really there; it’s a mirage, a temporary landing zone, a place from which you will bounce onto the next place. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself over and over and over again.
I should note, that I really didn’t leave the city of Toronto for NYC in search of a bigger place. I was quite happy to find little places in that big place that I could call home. OK, it was nice that there were a lot of these little places all piled in and around each other, and it was nice to walk from one place to the other, but it wasn’t the bigness of NYC that attracted me, it was just some place different. And, yes, I do miss the place.
So here I sit, waiting to bounce. I would seem that, considering the velocity at which I hit the city of Toronto this time round, it should be one very big bounce. Unfortunately at this particular moment in time I’m still kind of trapped in one of those ultra slow motion motion pictures showing the awesome compression and deformation of certain objects as they impact upon larger motionless objects; big hard cold objects; objects with no sense or feeling; objects that lack the ability to even recognize the fact that they are indeed being struck by an object traveling at extremely volatile velocities. Awesome compression and deformation indeed.
I have become more and more tired in all this waiting. Of course at lot of this was beyond my control as the pages of the calendar had to slowly turn; as I stared at the clock on the wall and watched every single second click past over the minute into the hour beyond the days and onto the months. Tired of constantly reminding myself that I am NOT here in the city of Toronto, that I am simply bouncing on through. Quite tired of each and every foot fall landing squarely within a chunk of land clearer demarcated as indeed a small, approximately four inch by twelve inch portion of land within’ the boundaries of the city of Toronto…
I’m expecting I’ll be walking on up to the Dip later today. I’m assuming I’ll walk on past the corner of Clinton and Gore. I’ll probably watch where I’m walking while looking at all the things I no longer see. I assume my mind will wander here and there and dig up the odd old memory… Memories of the days of concrete… perhaps. I expect, today I might pause a bit at Clinton and College; perhaps if I do pause, this pause may represent that frame in the film that marks the end of the awesome compression and deformation and the beginning of the awesome expansion and the natural, returning to normal. Perhaps if I just let myself be a bit more here, a bit more happily here, even just for a small moment, a quick pause; perhaps this pause will hasten this next departure. We’ll see what happens later today, and just exactly what is to be found, when I pause at the corner of Clinton and Gore.
