Rachelle and I just moved from the east end of Toronto to the very same apartment we used to inhabit in the Annex over two years ago. It’s a funny circle, that, but both of us are happy to be back in the place we consider home.
Yesterday, as I walked our dog down the street, I passed students walking to and from classes, excited by all that was opening up to them. November and still mild, a 19 year-old guy, beautiful with his shaggy, immortal hair and careless shirt, practiced tricks on his skateboard with an easy, hypnotic grace.
On Bloor a dignified and serious looking old man wore a slightly rumpled suit that he had accessorized with a bright red felt hat. It looked like the sort of thing that you’d have to wear when you lost a bet, but it was almost the same colour as his tie, and his effort was obviously sincere. He was trying to be stylish, not ironically stylish, and this vulnerability and ambition on a slow, grey day was absolutely touching. At the Noodle Bowl, young Asian men wearing headphones chopsticked their lunches into mouths made unsentimental by hurry, and at the window sat a thin man in shades of black and grey. He looked Mod, like he could have been in a British pop band, and he was reading a slender copy of a book written by Henry James. He seemed so anachronistic somehow, like he had travelled in time and suddenly found himself in the future.
The University of Toronto field behind the Metro grocery store was full of primary aged children playing at lunch. Most of them were excitedly kicking balls, yelling things like, “No Goal!” or “My Turn!” the girls off to one side, the boys the other– precious cargo, one and all.
A Meter Maid I had forgotten about, but now remembered after my two-year absence from the area, was still walking the streets. Either thinner now or her uniform bulkier, she smiled as she always did when she saw our little dog, but perhaps she remembered me, too, surprised and happy at a forgotten memory now returned.
Toward home we passed beautiful homes with pianos visible through the windows. There was a man playing on one of them and I could faintly hear his efforts, and I was given over to the interior beauty of music. The idea of it. I think of Rachelle, my wife, trying to teach herself the violin. Fearful that she would disturb the neighbours she practiced in our large walk-in closet, the doors closed. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star– small and broken, squeaking through the walls. The sound more like scent than music, and could anyone passing on the street outside imagine such a wonder, of the hopeful beauty and genius beating within?