Hectic Days, Fervid Nights - How Long Has It Been Since...How Long Will It Be Until...?

For the last two weeks I've been GO-training back and forth between Toronto and Hamilton, loving Toronto and hating Hamilton, apartment hunting in Hamilton and couch surfing in Toronto, fondly remembering Toronto and cultivating high hopes for Hamilton, moving from Toronto to Hamilton, being in Hamilton and wishing I was in Toronto, being in Toronto and wanting to go "home" even if it is in Hamilton...

More on my new residence later - first, this is what I've been up to amidst the practicalities of adjusting, familiarizing and reacquainting:

Dana and I went to Buskerfest at Front St W & Church St - there were more promotional tents and kiosks than buskers, but plenty of local artisans with some amazing jewelry and clothing.


The 'Chalkmaster'...



Marie Antoinette checking her phone...


High-flying performances...



It was sweltering that day so we did a quick tour around the St. Lawrence market before leaving, retreating indoors at the height of midday.


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I had to go to Tavistock to pick up some stuff - Eddie was amazingly cool and drove me up there to give me a hand. It was a nice drive. Picturesque.




Corn fields in August always make me think of rural childhood, but not my own - someone else's, or maybe a collective, imaginary, idealized childhood...



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My TTC stop for the five + years I spent in Toronto. Over the course of all that getting on and getting off (how many times?), my entire life changed...


Korea Town (or the Korean Business District) between Christie and Bathurst.


My favourite fruit market, on the north-east corner of Bloor and Manning (my old street).
I went to the house and checked the mailbox. There were two envelopes for me.

The Korean supermarket at the south-west corner of Bloor and Manning, and the Metro Theatre just edged in there on the right - I think it's one of the oldest Theatre's in Toronto, built in the 1940's. All it shows now is porn, maybe the occasional cult film during festivals.


The same men sitting in the same places, as always, (perhaps having the same conversation) at Bloor Sweet Cafe.


A new tea shop in the Annex - I was so excited! They have pumpkin spice tea! The spiced pear is fantastic too, and the honey spice rooibos is soothing.


It's right across from the Tim Horton's, as you can see from the reflection...


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The Counting Crows...always loved them, never saw them live, so what the hell. They played at the Molson Amphitheatre August 19th.

I was chilled out on the lawns watching the sky change colors and darken over Ontario Place as his voice carried over the crowd.

He's very mellow. He says all these groovy things like I hope you feel what I feel and the world is a dream you need to wake up into...

Someone near the front took this video of this very cool acoustic Mr. Jones:



How appropriate that the Exhibition was going on, and our concert tickets included admission.

Circuses and carnivals are kind of a recurring theme in a lot of their music - a sense of transience, of melancholy and quiet conflicts, of facades and the raw humanity underneath...


My camera can't do this view justice. It was actually breathtaking. The CN Tower changes colors in the distance, the noises of the fair get carried away by the breeze. From high up on the ferris wheel, all of it looks so...innocent. But you know it's not, and that's half the fascination.


'The circus is falling down on its knees, the big top is crumbling down...' (Raining in Baltimore)


The street lights are dark, strung with banners or holding ropes and completely neglected for the time being...it feels incongruous; it hints at the temporal, the ephemeral. I love it.



From above you can get the whole picture: the trucks and caravans, the equipment hidden behind temporary steel barriers, the cables and extension cords and ropes...


'Some of us are dancers on the midway, we roam from town to town...' (Goodnight Elizabeth)


On the Spadina street car, on the way home, we pass by the Skydome (I refuse to call it the Rogers Centre unless absolutely necessary for reasons of clarity. I hate that it's been renamed after the corporation that owns it. How arrogant of Rogers to rename a landmark like the fucking Skydome!).
Anyway...it's beautifully lit, that glowing blue, next to the popsicle-coloured tower.


I love this city. I've realized just how much so many times in the last few weeks. And just when I come to love it, I have to leave it for freakin' Hamilton. More on that later.
At least I'm close. Just a GO train ride away.