At Jimmy Simpson Park, my dog and I saw a solitary man practicing his footwork on the basketball court. A neighbourhood regular, he’s an unfriendly guy who always wears reflective sunglasses and gangster apparel, carrying himself with an intentional menace, perhaps to offset his short stature. With his hands out as if he was guarding an unseen opponent, he would shuffle to his right and then shuffle to his left. This mystery, this incongruity from the normal ebb and flow of the basketball court, upset Heidi and she began to bark at him. This amused the guy, and he stood there looking perplexed, smiling, the first time in two years that I’d seen any evidence of the man within.
As we came home and I was unlocking the door leading up to our apartment, a tall and elegant British man and his wife stopped. Having seen my dog, he wanted to enter into a conversation, telling me that he had two Miniature Dachshunds, Max and Baz, at home. The man looked like the cover of a Fortune 500 magazine, like he owned helicopters, and there he was with a big, sloppy grin all over his face, showing my pictures of his dogs on his cell phone, his wife looking on at a discreet distance, embarrassed and in love with his boyish enthusiasms.
On the Queen streetcar, the young woman standing beside me had the optimistic appearance of a a student, of somebody brand new to the city. After a moment or two, she asked me, a little bit embarrassed, if we were headed east or west. She was obviously disoriented from having just got off the subway at Yonge, and unsure of what side of the street she had emerged from just got on the first streetcar that came along, hopeful that it was going in the right direction. I was able to reassure her that she was going in the right direction, and she looked so grateful and happy that it almost felt like metaphor.
At the next stop an old man got on and he was full of politics, having just left the Occupy Bay Street protests. He went from young person to young person, trying to recruit them to the social revolution he saw unfolding around him. Everybody on the car, in perfect big city posture, ignored him, concentrating on their cell phones or staring sternly off at an imagined horizon. Just another crazy imposing on the peace granted by the solitude of transit, and I like everybody else, stood there praying he didn’t bring The Word to me, too. After about five minutes, he appeared to give up and settled into a seat at the back, but then he got a second wind and determined not to lose the crowd, started to belt out old folk songs. The student who had earlier asked me for directions was waiting to get off now, and she kept looking over her shoulder at the old man, a big grin illuminating her face– happy to be living her life, in this time and place, and just so excited to see what was going to happen next.