On Madison I saw the same awkward older man who has been jogging down the street for years. He wore his long, beak-like cap and his body was awry, angled in a way that suggested something traumatic happened and prompted him to start running, an instinct now he’s never since ceased.
At the little park by the Madison Pub a small collection of homeless men, some shirtless, sat in the excited sun of their day. As Heidi, our dog, and I passed, one man let out a loud and long whistle. I stopped and turned toward him and he began to sing “Git Along Little Doggie.” This lifted him out of the present to some other destination, and losing himself to that time and place, he kept singing, louder and stranger, and as I walked away and his voice grew fainter it was as if the man himself were dissolving out of this waking world around me and into another.
On Bloor there was a pretty, young woman walking with her friend, who had her baby in a stroller. Seeing Heidi the mother tried to get the baby interested, but the child was not. But the other woman stumbled with wonder, now walking backwards, her eyes filled with happy amazement, she talked softly to the dog and bent down to her. It was so gentle and lovely, and then they turned into Fresh and that moment, too, was gone.
In front of Shoppers the violinist played and I made a point of standing and listening. A couple of street people, attracted by the dog, came over to talk to us. The woman had small, black marks dotting her face and in another incarnation she could have been just like the woman who had earlier cooed over our dog. The man with her had a toque pulled tight over his head, as if a concealment, and was unshaven and straw-haired. Gaunt and gentle, he had been wounded so many times in his life he stayed back on the periphery while the girl, who could not mediate what was inside of her, came too quick, hard and jagged toward the dog who grew tense and defensive. But this woman, in the momentary sunlight of her day, did not notice the quietly retreating world.
At the street corner a man in a wheelchair was raving. Excited, he was practically Speaking In Tongues. Worlds flowed out of him, and it could almost have been song, but one not quite of this world. I looked over at him and our eyes caught, “I’m not right in the head,” he said quietly, and then he crossed the street as if now caught within a cloud of shame.