On Queen East a blind man slowly walks the street.
I see him everyday.
Like a specter, he slowly ticks his way back and forth, his white can sweeping the sidewalk in search of danger. He’s probably about 70 and there’s a consumptive elegance to him. Thin– like William S. Burroughs– he wears a suit and tie beneath a London Fog coat. On his pilgrimages he projects the joyless dignity of somebody trying to maintain a past never again to be resurrected, and I’ve always been curious about him.
When I’m out walking the dog I try to speak with him. I know that he can sense our presence– our scuffling and breathing, our eyes upon him– but his posture never relaxes into receptivity, and the few times I’ve shouted out “Hello!” he’s ignored me, continuing his slow, indifferent procession.
I asked the man who runs the corner store beneath our apartment about him and found out a series of disconnected fragments:
He was an accountant who had lost his sight to some unknown tragedy 20 years ago.
Always keeps to the north side of the street.
Goes to Starbucks each day.
Still carries with him a briefcase, out of habit rather than necessity.
He used to work on Bay Street.
He will speak of jazz, but only if he hears it, and only to tell you what musicians are playing on the various tracks.
He is alone.
This man refuses assistance from pedestrians and lives in a kind of silence as well as darkness, as if having found a sanctuary in the blindness that’s liberated him from social exchanges.
The Avro, a bar on Queen East, has many of the components of a hipster dive. Made from reclaimed materials, it feels a bit like a basement rec room from another era. Physically, it’s imperfect, almost accidental, and you can feel the rough edges of the chair with your hands and hear the slight warp in the vinyl playing behind the bar. It could be any year, if you close your eyes.
One day I passed by the place and against all intuition saw the blind man sitting alone–the only patron in the establishment– at the bar drinking a beer, quietly and in darkness, his fingers keeping time to the Miles Davis music traveling through time.