We have watched this fence for years. The wood has a pattern of tightly aligned drilled holes from its previous incarnation, but reassembled as a fence it looks like a computer punch card. The wood goes in all directions and is all sizes. It has numbers and other character markings, also from its’ previous life, and layers of graffiti from its present one. This year it got a new piece at the bottom. (lane off Sullivan Street).

Sometimes it takes a crisis to bring a city together. The fast pace of our metropolis hinders people from even meeting their neighbors. We build our own psychological walls to screen our privacy and control our space. Striving to meet our regimented schedules, we rely on services that are predictable like clockwork.

This changed the night Toronto experienced it’s full-scale power blackout. Our paranoid preparations for Y2K should have prepared us for this chaos.

It’s a good thing that it occurred on a pleasant summer day and not in the dead of winter. The life of the streets was transformed with a flick of a switch. Our shields were dropped. Shops closed. The workday was put on hold.
A great pause. Freed from work, people wandered aimlessly and leisurely as if in an enormous park. Cafes and restaurants served up beer while it was still chilled. Food was generously handed out before it would perish. Butchers and grocery stores were giving handouts.

I’m working again tonight, but thinking about an evening like this not long ago when I had sat outside. Even more so than tonight, the air was dense with moisture, and looking up, the sky glowed white. It was mottled and shifting. I was struck by its vastness and by its volatility. The sky is my city’s greatest natural resource.

you blocked too?
I sat for 15 minutes
hop off hop on
this car is no longer going to Broadview station
this car will be turning at church
Spadina