Rolling Down the Tracks

Back from my mini vacay and reflecting on the week that was I feel the creative juices flowing a bit the past few days. Ideas are presenting themselves more readily, thankfully I'm not out hunting for them. I wouldn't know where to hunt and I'm not really a hunter kind of guy, cammo isn't my thing, so I'm glad the ideas still come. It leads to nonsense such as this...

When I was in my teen angst years I would, from time to time, take an afternoon and ride the subway back in the big smoke...people watch just because I could. The rocking and swaying of the subway car racing along from Kipling Station to whatever was the eastern end of the line provided the 'music' for the ride. You can and will have all kinds of people pass through your field of view in those few hours. Families out to the market or making a day in the city, workers going to work or coming home for the day, teens heading to the strip known as Young street to drop quarters in video games or buy records and everything in between. It is an enclosed steel sausage tube microcosm of the city above. Diversity abounds and it's something I kind of miss. Maybe Toronto's greatest plus is its multicultural kaleidoscope...take a stroll through Kensington Market and breathe in the aromas, that delicious smell is diversity. While we may always have conflict because of it I for one think it's a good thing, something to embrace.

The other day while on a train of another kind I started to see a few other things that maybe I'm not always equipped to see. As my daughter and I rode the GO train into Toronto for an appointment I couldn't help but be struck by the differences the subway and the commuter train present. The GO train was comfortable, less crowded and completely antiseptic. The upper level of the car is designated a quiet zone and it pretty much prevails all over the train. Endless staring at phones or lap tops open trying to get the jump on that report. Sleeping soldiers on their way to the front and eyes cast down. Not an environment for a knuckle head like me...I was shushed once on a train for daring to talk to my daughter in a quiet zone. How they escaped without a backhand to the head is still a mystery. While I enjoyed the comfort of the ride I didn't care for the lack of anything resembling a pulse. Sure, I didn't have a guy yelling and cursing into his back pack to worry about but come on man....smile a bit will ya.

As we whizzed by industrial complexes, new gleaming condos butted up against 1970's era concrete creations, backyard gardens and garbage dumps gave way to trees and bushes and back again. I was thinking about the stories out there....literally millions of them. A city of immigrants is going to have some amazing stories, ones that would shock us and inspire us. All we need to do is look and listen. I might move back just for that...and the food of course. They call it the triumph of the human condition but most people will tell you they are just getting by...doing what they can for a better life. That grit, that perseverance can be awe inspiring if we let it.

Funny dating story here. A few years back I had arranged to meet a woman at a bar for a drink as a first date. While greeting each other I realized that she was from the old country....her accent gave her away as Serbian or Bosnian or Croatian. It turned out she was Bosnian and came to the country as a refugee from the Balkans war. As she waxed poetic about her ex husband and how she wasn't crazy at all, I could only think of the fact that there must be story upon story of everything she would have went through to get to here, and all she wanted to do was try and convince me she wasn't still in love with her ex. OK. Can I have my hour back please. Those human connections we make are what I crave, and before beauty I want an engaged mind. And that's what I want from the world around me.

Here comes that word again, tapestry. Be it the personal tapestry of our own lives or those of the city around us, I think we are better when we have the diversity, the colour, the flavour of many woven into our lives. Speeding down those tracks, zooming by those tattered threads I have to say I was feeling the pull of the big city in the same way I feel the pull of Europe. It's there, in the back ground, reminding of what lies at my feet if I care to pick it up. Dare to pick it up.

Ciao my friends
Happy Canada Day
D