I am writing what I was thinking only moments ago. I was standing behind door N of the Robarts Library stacks. I am writing what I was thinking and since this is writing I can omit anything I please, such as how I slid from the outside (the sidewalk was paved with black ice) to the inside of the building, how I slid vertically on elevators, how I alighted on floor whatever and what I observed as I walked to door N. I am writing about those moments when I stood beholding, not simply observing or encountering or seeing -- beholding rows and rows of shelves arrayed with books. The shelves are stacked vertically, just as the floors of the library are stacked vertically. Still, standing there, I saw rows and rows of shelves enclosing books cover to cover. I was thinking and am writing now, which evoke a longing to contrive a simile (I won't confine my imagining to the GTA.) for the rows and rows and rows. The catacombs....Mobile home parks....Allees of trees at Brinay ....Cornfields....This keyboard (look sideways)....Lanes on the 401....Store aisles....Lines of coke....Seats in a theatre.....Soldiers parading....A box of Valentine chocolates....Orchards....Pinstripes.....Sharks' teeth....A muffin tin......The other rows and rows

In the exurban regions or Toronto, the city recently built itself the capricious Yonge-Sheppard subway line that is grafted onto the main Yonge Street subway arterial. This subway line runs along an under-developed suburban corridor and terminates essentially at an Ikea store and a North York General Hospital. Along the several subway stops, one can find a series of public art projects. One that is particularly thought provoking is Stacey Spiegel's Immersion Land. Using a panoramic camera, Spiegel processed a series of photographs onto millions of tiny porcelain tiles. These tiles present images that are clear from a distance but pixellated and abstract when viewed at close range. The murals are in many ways representative of the city. Spiegel's installation suggests a displaced landscape of nostalgia and one of an imagined farmland that might have existed several metres above the transit platform before succumbing to the inexorable urban sprawl and development of the past fifty years.

1975 Friend’s backyard, Summer: favourite sea shell

1976 Centennial Park, Spring: first kite

1977 Gymnastics club: fear of backflips

As the L.PC.Village becomes further gentrified by places like the Drake, this community of artists is finding it time to move on [again]. Rents and housing prices have made it impossible for artists and cultural producers to move into this neighbourhood.

It is ‘interesting’ to watch the change in the neighbourhood. Now – artists are the discounted wallpaper needed to grease the wheels of cool and hip for the new owner and his desired patrons. We’re now the flavouring for the neighbourhood so that the folks with the expense account lunches can – as we say – come slumming.