[CAT] Shakespeare, cradled and in a cone (alternate take)

One year ago, and still so missed.

[NON BLOG] Hello from me, 21 times

I would like to say hello. I have been gone from here a long time, I think, the longest break I have ever taken from blogging.

What have I been doing all this time? In the main, I have been trying to live my strange new life this 2020 as best as I can. This includes thinking seriously about what I want to do with this space, and its neighbours. 2020 is many things, but one thing that it can be is a vital space to look back and reflect. (At least it can be those as fortunate as I to be able to use it so; I acknowledge my privilege.) This is going to be a year of transition.

In the meantime, I would like to share with you twenty-one selfies, taken by me in the course of my day-to-day life, at work and at play, all but one within the borders of the city of Toronto. (Oh, borders are things we have come to know too well.)

My last selfie is an unmasked one. Resolution aside, I quite like the photo that my Echo Show 5 took of me.

[PHOTO] Upwards selfie, Wellesley station

[PHOTO] Maximum beard

[PHOTO] No rules

At least I can wear sandals all the time.

[PHOTO] Me at 22 (#meat20)

Low-resolution as it is, I think that this photo’s flaws does a great job, if inadvertently, of exposing who I was at that time (September 2002) and in the years before. (I took this photo from my archived personal website, here.

I had only come out to myself in February of that year. That only came out at the end of a long process of very careful development that I did not recognize at the time. Me at 20 was 60 pounds heavier than me as of this picture (30 pounds heavier than I am now). I was hiding, from myself, from others within my carapace of flesh, to an extent that I was literally not capable of understanding.

There are certainly things that I wish I had done better; hindsight exists. Still: That me at 20 did as good a job as he could of surviving, and deserves credit for that. Me at 40 would not have existed without his efforts. I’m grateful for how I survived me at 20; I’m grateful to have been able to become me at 40.

[PHOTO] Timely selfie

[PHOTO] Blurry selfie, with portrait of Shakespeare

Shakespeare died a month ago. (Well, a month ago yesterday.)

I am fine. It is just–well, what a month this has been.

This has been a very weird experience.

[PHOTO] This brings me joy. #startrek #startrekpicard #jeriryan #sevenofnine #screenshot

My original comment was here, at Michael Chabon’s Instagram account.

[URBAN NOTE] On the current #covid19 crisis (#coronavirustoronto)

One of the many things that has been bothering me about the COVID-19 crisis is the way that the city of Toronto around me has been shutting down. Work and those strictures have gone, of course, but so have almost all of the other events of life. Stores are shut down; neighbourhoods are almost always barren of people; the sorts of events that I normally partake in have been sensibly cancelled. (Jane’s Walk and TCAF are among the events that have been closed down, and I may never get a chance to see the Diane Arbus show at the AGO or the Winnie the Pooh exhibit at the ROM. I live in hope for the second category, and look forward to next year for the first.)

The great machineries of life of Toronto, human and mechanical, are grinding down. When will they start up again? What will be the background against which this revival will happen? What loss and suffering will there be in the background of this? More importantly, from my particular perspective, what loss and suffering will there be among the people I know, here in Toronto and around the world? I have some fears for myself, but more fears for others both known and unknown. (I am not fond of living in a situation where fatalities from a pandemic really can amount to low single-digit percentages of the global, and local, population.)

I cannot help but feel a sort of anticipatory grief at seeing my dear cosmopolis of Toronto shutting down. It is a cause of grief in itself, and it is a symbol of worse yet to come. I can also extrapolate easily enough from the specific case of Toronto to all the other great machines out there in the world, places I’ve lived in and places I’ve only visited and places I have yet to visit and the many many places I will never see. The pictures I saw earlier this week from Venice, that great first prototype of the cosmopolis, felt so wrong. One March, you have a living city; one March, you have a city clamped down on account of mass death. There are things Toronto can pick up from Venice, but I would prefer this not be one. But this isn’t really under anyone’s control, is it?

I am–I believe–keeping things in perspective. There will still be a world after this crisis is done, whenever it is done, one that will be recognizable. I just find it distressing that a proper perspective is not all that comforting. How, exactly, will things be skewed? This uncertainty is something that I do not like. Ending my 12-month Metropass, on account of the certainty that I will not be travelling much at all in April, at least, feels significant. How much more will my lived world shrink?

These past few days, I have been thinking of the classic song “Sous le ciel de Paris”, a hymn of love to that metropolis written and performed just a few years after Paris risked destruction in the Second World War. Has a similar song been written for Toronto?