Standing beside me at the corner of Yonge and Bloor was actor Elijah Wood.
Frodo.
As I was standing there staring at him, I had no idea who he was. I thought he looked like somebody, but I wasn’t sure whom, and so I just stared. Maybe that’s what star power is, a physical charisma that compels the audience to pay attention. I mean, I honestly just thought he was some short guy who looked like somebody I was familiar with, but still, I took in all his details. The thoughtful, slightly angry set to his face. His hipster sneakers. The embroidered pattern on the back pockets of his expensive jeans. The way he hunched his shoulders as he smoked his cigarette trying to protect himself from the wind.
Returning home I passed two elderly Sikh men with newspapers bags slung over their shoulders. One man delivered papers to the east side the street, the other the west. Smiling, they made a point of waving at one another after each delivery.
In the small park at the foot of Madison, four homeless men crowded around a bench. You could hear them a block away. One of them is standing up, while the other three sit, watching. In a palsied voice, he shouts out, “I’m going to fuck you like a hurricane!” The other men burst out laughing. One of them, a plump man with a gentle face, says, “Oh, do it again! Do it again! That is so funny, that is so funny!” And so the man pulls up his belt and does the imitation again, adding something a little extra this time, and the plump man, laughing, rolls right off the bench. He has no defenses against this world around him.