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By chris Date: 2005 Mar 29 Comment on this Work [[2005.03.29.22.32.4295]] |
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Working for a big faceless corporation is kind of like having a cool uncle you never see but who pays for you to travel the world. Or something like that. And so it is that I've ended up here in the Great White North - a highly temporary exile - and found myself walking the streets of downtown on this night, listening to mix tapes made back home in the desert and thinking of how hungry I am - and you. Mostly you. The seasons have also rewound themselves. I left at the start of true spring, and now it's somwhere between January and February, whatever month that is. Forget the Texas tourism boards - it's Canada that's a whole other country. American? Who? Me? In a place like this I find it's actually a good thing that New Mexico is commonly thought of as part of Mexico and not the United States. Toronto looks toward Europe; who knows where the hell Washington looks. I stopped trying to figure that one out sometime around the conclusion of the last election. But politics are ultimately bullshit, eh? They're as likely to keep you warm in the frozen Lake Ontario winds as a cheap cigarette lighter. What does warm me is you. I hold the memories of our last days and weeks together like jewels under my thin fleece pullover. Everything I see - every little sushi joint, every shop selling Cuban cigars and girlie mags, every coffee shop filled with the ruddy-faced, scarf-and-beret-wearing people of greater Toronto - I see through the prism of you and I. What would we do here? Where would we go when the sun has gone down and the lights have come on? It occurs to me that nothing but this life, this existence that's been just handed to us, so perfectly weds such harsh pain with such unspeakable beauty. We are lucky motherfuckers, alright. Don't forget it. So it's back to my room eighteen stories up, time again to hang the "s'il vous plait ne pas deranger" sign on the door for the night, and then five or six hours of oblivion. What time is it, anyway? Ah, who cares. You should be here. That's all I know. The subway may not run all night, but there'd always be time to catch that last train. |