Juggling while Running

            I dreamed on Monday morning that my friend Dutch Jongman was in town. He was in a room with some older friends and I tried to get him to go to a reading but he told me he didn’t want to be a poetry gladiator at the coliseum anymore.

            Unlike the morning before, my back didn’t bother me at all during song practice and on top of that I had a great session.

            I separated another video from my July 23^rd song practice recording and uploaded it to YouTube. This one is my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “L’alcool”. It was another surprisingly fast upload.

            Since I’ve run out of detergent, for the last few weeks I’ve been washing my clothing with Irish Spring hand soap. One good way to clean your fingernails is to hand wash some clothes.

            I took my ride at the usual time. It was quite a bit cooler than it was for the last few days.

A guy ahead of me on the Bloor bike lane was pushing a squeaky front box with his daughter inside, though she looked old enough to be riding her own bicycle. I left the lane to get around him but there was suddenly a little traffic jam so I had to go back onto the lane. A couple of minutes later I went out again and a car stopped to let me go but I didn’t want to stop traffic so I waited for him to go and by then I was so far behind that I went back on the lane again. I finally got around them a little later.

On the Bloor Viaduct a heavyset man with powerful looking legs who kind of waddled while he pedaled and a skinny guy smoking a cigarette passed me. At the Broadview lights the guy with the cigarette advanced his bike up beside the woman that was at the front and he started giving her pointers about her bike. She in turn advised him that he shouldn’t be smoking and riding. He said, “I know! I know! It’s horrible!” I suppose that since nicotine is a stimulant, until the smoking starts screwing up one’s lung capacity it would probably help someone go faster.

I got ahead of them not too long after that but several minutes later, around Woodbine, the smoking cyclist rode up beside me just to tell me, “You need just a bit of air in your front tire and your back tire’s almost flat!” I said thanks and moved ahead but I was sceptical of the accuracy of his observations. Later when I checked, the back tire was hard as a rock and the front was only a little softer.

I went north on Dawes Road and finished exploring what on the map is called “Crescent Town”, I guess because it has crescents. It’s not a town or even a village but rather just a bunch of high-rises. I ended up on Victoria Park and since Victoria Park is technically the border between Toronto and Scarborough I had completed my goal of visiting all the streets from the west to the east end of the city as far north as Eglinton. On the few bike rides that I have left before school starts I might not start working my way from Eglinton and Kipling up to Lawrence and then across to Victoria Park. I’ll probably save that for next spring. I might keep going east just to check out the alleys between Victoria Park and Warden but I won’t bother with travelling around Scarborough.

On the way back, just west of Woodbine I saw a guy running while juggling. Apparently it’s called “joggling”. 

Moon Shot

            On Sunday morning my back was aching during song practice, but the discomfort went away later on.

In the early afternoon, after waking up from a siesta I heard mousy sort of scratching noises behind some of the drawered furniture in my bedroom. When I got up I pushed the piece in the corner that used to be the three drawers of a desk, hard against the wall. After that the noises stopped. Maybe I killed the mouse.

            In the late afternoon, just before taking my bike ride, I checked on line because I’d forgotten how far the Bloorcourt festival extended. I figured I’d take College maybe until Bathurst and then go back up to Bloor so I wouldn’t be delayed by the road blockage. I found out that the festival had been only a one-day affair, so I headed straight up to Bloor.

            West of Dufferin on Bloor a woman across the street from me was trying to jaywalk but there was too much traffic. When she turned around to walk back to the sidewalk her buttocks were hanging out over the top of her purple sweatpants. She was pulling them up as I passed.

            There were no long lines of buses between St George and Broadview so I assumed the subway was running. Despite the lack of delays though I still didn’t get out to Dawes Road and Danforth as fast as on a weekday. I think it’s because the competition from other cyclists makes me ride faster.

            I explored all the streets and alleys from Sibley to Victoria Park and from Danforth to Dentonia. Victoria Park is technically the beginning of Scarborough but the neighbourhood gets boring while it’s still Toronto. It’s interesting that it seems to be a Muslim part of town but the alleys are not particularly fascinating. I might not bother travelling east of Victoria Park, since my goal is to check out all the streets in Toronto but not Scarborough.

            Sometimes I don’t notice everything in my fridge until everything else is gone. I ran out of margarine, which I’d been using to fry my eggs, but didn’t notice that I had a whole pack of Crisco vegetable shortening that’s been in my icebox for a long time.

            The episode of Maverick that I watched was kind of ridiculous. The nicest guy in a small town turned out to have a split personality that was triggered by alcohol. After blacking out he would rob the stage, then he would put the money in a worthless mine that he owned and forget that he’d put it there until the next time that he was drunk. When Maverick unmasked him no one in the town wanted him arrested because they all loved him so much, even though he’d stolen $45,000 in total from them all. 

The Cats Are Gone and the Mice Are Back

On Saturday, as usual on most days, I had lunch in the early afternoon. Even though I didn’t eat any less than usual I still felt hungry afterwards. I wonder if the cooler weather makes me feel like eating more.

I took my bike ride in the early afternoon, but discovered that Bloor was blocked off at Dufferin for the Bloorcourt Festival. I went south and turned left on the north edge of Dufferin Grove Park. I went back up to Bloor on Havelock, hoping that the festival didn’t stretch that far, but it did. I walked a block and then I went south again and followed the alley south of Bloor all the way to Montrose, where the way was clear again. I remembered as I was riding that I went through almost the exact same thing last year.

There were more delays after St. George, since the subway wasn’t running from there to Broadview and so there were lines of buses as long as a subway train that I had to get around.

On the Bloor Viaduct I’d gotten ahead of everybody else but there was this one guy that moved over to the left when I told him I was going to pass him. Meanwhile the guy that I’d just passed came up on my right. I called out a few times for the guy ahead of me to move to his right. Finally he understood, said “sorry” and shifted over.
            It usually takes me about 42 minutes to get out to Dawes Road and Danforth but this time it took an hour. I stopped at a Country Style donut shop to use the washroom. The floor was all wet and someone had written above the toilet: “I need to be cleaned”.

I noticed at the corner of Sibley and Danforth that the Max the Mutt school of animation is there now. I never posed there but I used to work for the owner when she taught at Sheridan College and later I modeled at her private studio. I’ve heard she doesn’t allow students to wear hats in class.

I just explored the alley behind Danforth from Sibley to Victoria Park and then I headed home.

When I was making dinner a mouse came dashing past my feet and under the radiator at the east side of my apartment. It’s been about a year since my cats were all gone and so I haven’t seen mice successfully living in my place since 1997. 

The Challenges of Living with Someone on Welfare

            It’s probably a coincidence but on Saturday upon waking I felt even more thickly covered in the afterbirth of sleep than I had been on the previous Saturday morning. I jumped out of bed when the alarm rang but I felt like I was walk sleeping, wash sleeping, dress sleeping, yoga sleeping and sing sleeping over the next two hours. The time went fast though because I was running on automatic.

            I went to the food bank at the usual time and stepped in line behind the grey shopping cart that had “Robbie” printed on it in magic marker. For the first few minutes there was no one smoking in the line-up and so I didn’t have to move away to avoid it. I was able to finish reading the first story in my dual language book of French short fiction.

The story was Micromegas by Voltaire and it was the 265-year-old tale of a traveller from Sirius that is so much larger than us that when he landed on the earth after jumping off a comet and sliding down the northern lights, he couldn’t detect our tiny presence with his naked eye. It was only after he broke his diamond necklace that, while retrieving the stones, one of them served as a magnifying lens through which he accidentally discovered a little ship filled with microscopic passengers. He figured out a means to communicate with them. Many of the passengers turned out to be philosophers with widely differing opinions about the nature of the universe. The only one that showed any good sense though was a follower of the English philosopher, John Locke. When one cleric made the claim that the entire universe exists to serve humanity of Earth he laughed so hard that the ship and its passengers fell off his fingernail and into the trouser pocket of his travelling companion.

I went downstairs to use the washroom and as I passed through the entryway I saw that quite a few people from the line-up were sitting in there. I guess the management have given up on kicking people out of there.

I started reading the second French story. This one was “La Messe de L’Athée” or “The Atheist’s Mass” by Honoré de Balzac. I only read a page and a half, so I don’t know what it’s really about yet. Voltaire used much simpler vocabulary than Balzac, so he was easier to translate.

Moe came, though not for the food bank. He was just passing by again. He told me that the bicycle in his back yard was going to be cleared away at the end of the month. I said that I’d try to come by before then, though the chance of the bike having compatible parts with mine are pretty slim.

The Ethiopian guy with the dog was further back in line and Moe went to chat with him and to play with the Pom-Chi (further evidence to help shatter the myth that Muslims don’t like dogs). Moe said that he had a present for the dog at his place and so he went home to get it. He came back with a bag of doggie biscuits in the shape of bones.

When Moe left again he reached out his hand to me, I thought for a fist bump, so I presented my fist but instead he took hold of my hand. That was strange because I remembered back in the winter at the previous food bank location someone had reached out to shake Moe’s hand but he’d refused, explaining that he didn’t do that kind of greeting.

Andrea Hatala, with her guitar on her back, walked up to talk with me. She asked if I’d seen her boyfriend, Heinz. Heinz Klein apparently runs a little jam or open stage or songwriters workshop at PARC on Saturdays. She said she was concerned because she hadn’t seen him in the poetry group at PARC the night before. I was a little surprised that she was that unaware of his whereabouts because I’d always assumed that they lived together, since they’ve been a couple for years. When I asked about that she explained that they are both on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and so they would receive less money if they were officially living in a common-law relationship. They would get less money if living together caused the amount of rent they each pay to be less. Also if one of them were to come into some extra money that partner would be required to contribute to the support of the other and so the other’s benefits would be reduced. This system has caused some married or common-law couples that were living together before they went on ODSP to separate just so they could survive.

Andrea added that another reason they don’t live together is because they don’t want to become sick of one another. I nodded in agreement, saying, “One way to ruin a relationship is to move in together!” I told her that in France they have the option of temporary marriage contracts that a couple can renew for three months or three years or whatever they think they can handle. Andrea thought that was interesting. I checked my facts later though and found that what I told her was not exactly true. The Pacs (Parte Civil de Solidarité or Civil Solidarity Pact) is not a marriage contract but rather a civil union contract, which interestingly came into being as something for Gay unions but heterosexual couples liked the idea too and it can now be applied to any couple that live together. From what I’ve read, the paperwork does not even ask for the gender of the applicants. I think that couples need to have lived together for at least two years to apply for this status but there is also a separate, less formal status of cohabitation, which is usually between much younger couples.

Andrea wandered into PARC and a few minutes later I saw Heinz going in with his guitar.

The food bank opened about half an hour late. When I was allowed in, the people ahead of me took the elevator and so though it wasn’t my intention, I got ahead of them by taking the stairs. At the desk I was told, “You’re finally going to get a card!” So I got a laminated card with a six digit client identification number that they claimed would make things go faster, since they wouldn’t have to look up my birthday on the computer anymore. I’m sceptical.

I got number 23.

Angie’s meat and dairy section was back to the half-litre cartons of milk, but she gave me two. There were five eggs instead of four. I chose the frozen ground chicken over the hot dogs. I got a six-pack of small fruit bottom yogourt cups, a pack of soy cheese and a 300 ml bottle of orange juice.

Sylvia’s vegetable section had Swiss chard, one yellow zucchini or squash, one faded green zucchini, two aubergines (skinny eggplants), a green pepper, three carrots, six potatoes, a bag of frozen sweet peas and a small wedge of watermelon.

My guide through the shelves was an elderly woman with an eastern European accent who wore make-up. I had never seen this person before but she was one of those rare volunteers that insist that clients must not pick items themselves. I still don’t see the logic of that policy and it seems a bit insulting as well.

I took a box of multigrain Cheerios, the only bottle of Molisana pasta sauce with pomodoro and basilico, a carton of chicken broth, a bag of Mackie’s potato chips, a small bag of plantain chips which she stopped me from picking for myself. She gave me four lemon Larabars, three chocolate pastry bars, four and eight restaurant size servings of pancake syrup and honey. With the bread she insisted on using the tongs herself to give me two raisin buns, six bagels and one bran muffin, the top of which fell off in my bag.

 The shelves were once again pretty bare, with no canned beans, peanut butter, canned vegetables, soup or tuna. But the dairy situation wasn’t bad this time and there were more vegetables than usual. Except for onions I had all the ingredients for ratatouille.  

Road Rage Opera

            On Friday I started isolating another song video from my July 23^rd song practice. This one was another of my translations called “Alcohol”. The audio and video seemed to go out of sync though after I’d cut what I’d thought were equal parts from both of their timelines. I might have to start this one again from the master because that would probably be easier than re-synchronizing everything.

            Since it was a sunny day I took my bike ride at the usual time. There wasn’t much competition on Bloor or the Danforth all the way out to Dawes Road. I explored all the streets and alleys between Dawes and Sibley from Danforth up to Dentonia.

            When I stopped at the first Starbucks and was locking my bike a guy in an electric scooter rode along the sidewalk and he was smoking his cigarette filter.

            At Logan a big man in a red shirt and with a red face was blasting Josh Groban or some singer like that while shouting at the driver turning ahead of him, “Fucking idiot!” then punctuating it with a couple of blasts of his horn before shouting it again. The gentle, semi-classical music that he was playing so loud made an interesting backdrop for his anger.

            There were a few fast bikes on the way home. On College a young woman got ahead of me and stayed ahead for quite a while before I finally passed her near Dovercourt.

            After dinner I re-copied the Movie Maker project of “Alcohol” and replaced the old one. I guess I was more careful with this one since the audio and video stayed in sync when I trimmed the beginning.

Insisting on Angels

            Maybe I was feeling strong on Thursday morning because my doctor had told me I was in excellent health after my check-up the previous day. For whatever reason it seemed to me that I was really belting it out during song practice. When Du Juan came up Dunne he smiled widely on the opposite side of Queen from my window. When he crossed over he called up to tell me that he could hear me from across the street.

            One of the first Serge Gainsbourg songs that I learned how to sing in French and to play on guitar was “Les Sucettes” back in 2009. At the time though I never came up with a singable English translation and then I decided to go through all of his songs chronologically, starting with 1958. Now that I’ve translated all of his songs into 1966 I’ve returned to “Les Sucettes” and come up with an English version. It didn’t take long to re-memorize on Thursday, since most of it was still in my head.

            For breakfast I opened a can of diced tomatoes, added a few drops of Scotch bonnet sauce and ate some of it as salsa with Scottish potato chips.

            At midday I started cooking some navy beans.

            I usually have lunch between 13:30 and 14:00 and decided to use up the rest of the vegetables that were in my fridge. I had two onions and an eggplant so I sautéed the onions in gargarine, then added the eggplant, the rest of the diced tomatoes, a bay leaf, some marjoram, salt, balsamic vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. It made a pretty good ratatouille. At the same time that I was making lunch I made my dinner by adding tomato paste and chilli powder to the beans.

            I edited and uploaded a video of me singing my song, “Insisting on Angels”. The weird thing though was that the upload to YouTube took about five minutes whereas any other song of the same size that I’ve uploaded took a few hours. While I watched the percentage of completion racing along I was almost sure that something was wrong and that the video would be incomplete in some way, but it was fine.

            Before Yonge Street I almost wiped out. I was trying to get ahead of another cyclist without cutting her off and so I came a little too close to the corner of a car’s back bumper. Swerving to avoid it I temporarily lost control and it could have been pretty ugly at that speed if I hadn’t quickly gained my balance.

            That afternoon I took my bike ride. There was a woman singing opera at Yonge and Bloor. I raced with a couple of guys and we went back and forth taking the lead until there was only one guy. He finally got ahead a few blocks before he turned north. I guess he figured that it was his last chance to beat me.

            I finished exploring all the streets west of Dawes Road. I’d covered most of them already but missed a few the day before.

            Passing the conga drummer in front of the liquor store near Pape I used his rhythm as my soundtrack as I pedaled west.

            On the way back I could definitely feel that the weather was shifting as the steadily hot part of the summer was over. I could feel a cooler breeze on my bare arms as I rode west across the Bloor Viaduct. 

            The opera singer was still warbling in multiple octaves when I got back to Yonge and Bloor.

Annual Check-Up

            On Wednesday I had an early morning appointment for my annual check-up. I felt anxious about it all through yoga, with tension in my chest. I was worried that my blood pressure was going to be over the top. During and after song practice the tension subsided a bit. It’s weird how I felt physically relaxed but also felt anxiety at the same time. After spending half an hour on a song translation I got ready to go. I went out on the deck to check the weather and it really was “fraîche” outside like they’d said on Radio Canada, meaning “a little cool”. For the first time this summer I put on my long sleeved shirt, though unbuttoned. It was just cool enough that the shirt made my ride more comfortable but I could tell by the sun that the shirt would be in my backpack on the way home.

            I was about twenty minutes early for my 9:15 appointment. I had time to work on some French grammar exercises while I was waiting. The patient with the earlier booking was a little girl of about three. Her father took her over to the tropical fish tank and she showed the fish her green dinosaur doll as she held it to the glass saying, “See? See? See?”

            The nurse called me into one of Dr Shechtman’s offices and I took off my boots to step on the scale. I weighed 89.4 kilos. I asked her to check what my weight was on last year’s physical and found out that I’ve lost 2.7 kilos since last year and now my weight is considered healthy for my height. I assume the stricter diet I’ve been on since Easter has helped but this summer I also went on two more long bike rides a week than the year before.

            Then she took my blood pressure and it was not only normal but it was lower than last year as well. She said that losing weight helps to keep the blood pressure down.

            She told me to strip to my underwear and left the room. Dr Shechtman came in right away. He gave me the usual once a year once over with the stethoscope and the listening to the cool music my body makes. Since he was my daughter’s physician too, he always asks how she is, which is nice. Then came the dreaded prostate check but it was nice to find out that the little gland is still little. Grant informed me that I am due for another colonoscopy in 2019, declared that I was in excellent health and told me to keep up the good work. I immediately went to the washroom and stole a small roll of toilet paper and another of paper towel.

            I went down the street to the labs at 800 Bathurst to get my blood work done. I thought the receptionist at the doctor’s office had told that it was room 603 but there were only five floors, so I went to the fifth where I found the imaging office and was told to go to the third floor. There I went into the x-ray ray office and found out that I was looking for room 306. The technician asked if I’d been fasting and I answered that it had been more than twelve hours since I’d eaten but I did drink some coffee 11 and a half hours before. That seemed to be all right. He gave me back my health card but was concerned when I slipped it between the pages of my book instead of back in my wallet. He told me that there have been lots of times that he’s handed people their health cards back and they misplaced them right away, then they came back and claimed their card hadn’t been returned.

            He took two containers of blood, and then asked if I wanted to see the results on line. That’s new. I said I would but also wondered if I’d understand the results. He gave me a pamphlet with the information and stuck my lab visit number on the back. He informed me that I could see my results in three days. He gave me a container for the urine sample but when I took it to the washroom I could only fill a third of it because I’d already peed at the doctor’s office. They probably only need a teaspoon to test anyway.

            When I got home I had a late breakfast, but not long afterwards I felt sleepy so I took an early siesta at 12:15. I wonder if losing blood had anything to do with it. When I woke up I had a late lunch, I did some writing and some goofing off and then decided to take a bike ride. Sometimes on a day when I’ve already ridden downtown and back I don’t go out again but since Dr Shechtman had told me to keep up the good work it seemed appropriate to go. There were only about two weeks until school started again and then I would be too busy for recreational riding.

            On my way out, my upstairs neighbour, David was coming in with a woman that kind of looked like both a drug addict and a hooker. I guess I could have been wrong; maybe she was a nuclear physicist. David bumped fists with me as usual and she said, “Hello sir!”

            A jazz band was busking in front of ManuLife again. After Yonge Street a big cyclist who looked like he was once solid muscle but was now a bit flabby around the edges, charged past me like a mad elephant. I caught up and got ahead of him several times. He would find the energy for short bursts and passed me a few more times but he seemed run out of steam at around Coxwell.

            I rode to Dawes and went north in order to explore the streets and alleys between Dawes and Barrington. There were a lot of new buildings in that area, especially one ugly co-op complex. The garages in the alley behind Danforth only had student murals mostly depicting various exotic animals. They weren’t very interesting, except for some that I saw reflected in a large mud puddle.

            There was a strong wind blowing from the west and slowing my progress as I rode back across the Bloor Viaduct. It also felt like it was going to get cool again like it was in the morning. I decided that I would keep carrying my long sleeved shirt around just in case.

            I got home at around 19:10.

            That night I watched an episode of Maverick that had a funny opening scene. Adam West played a tough gunfighter that was about to outdraw a cocky young kid. Suddenly though someone approached West and told him that Bret Maverick was in town looking for him. He immediately abandoned the gunfight, got on his horse and said he had to leave down on business. When the kid later met Maverick he declared that he must be a very quick draw if that other gunslinger was so frightened of him. Maverick said that wasn’t the case. West was just scared that Maverick would ask him for the money he owed him.

The Ticket Puncher at Lilas Station

            On Tuesday I published the video of “The Ticket Puncher at Lilas Station”, which is my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1958 song, “Le Poinçonneur des Lilas”. I was fairly happy with how the recording of my angry folk version of the song turned out. Stylistically it’s very different from any adaptations of the original song that I’ve heard. There’s some power in my delivery and it also makes me feel like I’m not such a bad singer after all. Also there was no distortion in the sound of my vocal like there was in the song that I uploaded a couple of months ago.
            In the early afternoon I started uploading the song to YouTube. Not a bad use of a rainy day. I took a siesta when it was at 31% and when I got up an hour and a half later it was at 59%. It was finished in a little over three hours. The sound on the YouTube video was fine but my face seemed a bit out of focus compared to the video I’d made.

            I didn’t take a bike ride that afternoon because there was supposed to be a strong chance of rain. It did rain a bit around here around the time that I would have been across town, but not much. It might have poured somewhere along my route though.

            I started editing another video, my own song, “Insisting on Angels”. It’s part of the same recording session so I didn’t have to synchronize it.  I just started by cutting out the parts before it and also the false takes. 

Shed Skins its Snake

            Monday was a hot day for a while. I think I’ve only turned my fan on about six times this summer and this was one of those days.

            For lunch I made a soup out of the frozen ground chicken, the carrots, the zucchini, half of the potatoes and some chicken broth that I’d gotten from the food bank.

             In the afternoon I had planned on finally synchronizing the sound and video of a song I’d recorded, but when I got up from a siesta I saw that Windows had taken over my computer to do updates. Instead I worked on some French grammar exercises and then read one of the Simpsons comics that I’d found the week before. After half an hour I got my computer back but then it was time to get ready for my bike ride.

            Near Brunswick and Bloor there was a young, butch looking woman standing on the bike path blocking my way and having a conversation with someone on the sidewalk. I called out to her, “Excuse me!” She spoke in a very formal and politically correct manner as she stepped out of my way, “Oh, I should not be standing on your bike lane! My apologies!” A simple “whoops” would have sufficed.

            On this trip nobody passed me, whereas on the day before three bicycles were faster than mine. I rode to Danforth and Chisholm and then I went north, exploring the side streets that went east to Main Street and the alley in between. I came back down on Barrington, east of Main and did the same with the streets that ran west. I would have been on my way home after that but I went back to the two alleys on either side of Main to take pictures of garages and graffiti.
            When I was going down Yonge Street I also stopped at Gloucester to take a few photos of an old house on the edge of a deep construction site.

            I had some more of the soup for dinner and found that it goes a lot better with the cranberry wine than eggs, especially when you add a little scotch bonnet sauce to the soup.

            After dinner I had some time to work on synchronizing the audio and video for that recording. When the audio was only a little bit behind it made for an interesting echo effect that might work well with a different song but not this one. I finally got it synchronized, which means that I have the audio and video for that whole July 23^rd song practice lined up just in case there are other songs that I didn’t screw up very much.

Cranberry Wine

            I spent a lot of Sunday working on my journal entry about Saturday.

            I took a bike ride in the late afternoon. It was much sunnier and hotter than the day before and though there were some nice clouds they weren’t as spectacular as the grey day before. I guess the Open Streets Toronto event that closed off a large section of Bloor Street to cars while allowing cyclists and pedestrians finished before I got there. That happened last time as well, since I don’t like to go riding during the time of day when the sun is harsh.

            Like on Saturday I had the bridge and the Danforth pretty much to myself. Just before Woodbine I stopped at the Firkin to use the washroom and I took some brown paper towels and a little toilet paper as well. It would have been nice if I could find a whole roll somewhere. Maybe there would be one in the washroom of my doctor’s office later that week when I went for my check-up.

            I rode up Chisholm and explored all the streets on its left side. Once again, there were a lot of them as with the next street to the west. The pattern seemed to be that close to the Danforth the side streets were two-way but then there would be a one way in one direction, then the opposite, then the opposite again and another two-way. I think that it’s okay to drive the wrong way on a one-way street as long as at the end of the street one turns around and then erases the wrong action by going the right way right away. I went south on Main without turning on any side streets.

            I started noticing on this ride that my crankset is starting to feel slightly off again. When I was climbing a hill or going fast I didn’t notice it but there is a minute jerk in the movement of pedaling that wasn’t there before. It wasn’t extreme at that point but I suspected that it would get worse. If this was happening with every crankset whether cottered or not, it suggested that there was something wrong with the bottom bracket. I still had the original bottom bracket that came with the frame before I replaced it with the Peugeot. I didn’t know if it would help to change it back though.

            Shortly after I got home, David knocked on my door and gave me a bottle of Muskoka cranberry wine. I put it in the freezer to chill it before dinner. I drank a third of the bottle. Though there was a lot of sediment at the bottom of the glass it was tangy and tasty but it doesn’t go very well with eggs. 

White Sideburns

This was the first Saturday in two weeks when I didn’t have to go and do bike repairs after the food bank. I was able to relax at home, though I was a little too relaxed to sit down and work on updating my journal as I’d intended.

In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was not a sunny day, though there were patches of blue and some quite dramatic cloud formations in contrasting shades of grey. On Bloor Street just past Spadina I heard a familiar voice speaking a familiar request over and over: “COULD you spare a nickleorapennyoradimeoradollar?” It was the blind guy that has been panhandling in the area for decades. I remember chatting with him back in the 80s and I learned that like most legally blind people he can see a bit and cherishes the things he can see. He loved to watch TV and told me that he had a thick magnifying screen in front of his television so he could watch shows, movies and videos. As I passed I noticed that the only thing that has drastically changed about him is that now he has two long, thick, bushy shocks of white sideburns.

I was pretty much on my own as I rode across the Bloor Viaduct and along the Danforth. I rode past Woodbine and rode north on Oakpark and explored all of the streets that run west from it. North of Cosburn I shot down the hill of Haldon until it ended near the Taylor Creek Trail and then I got my heart rate up by climbing back again to Cosburn and then east to where it turns into Westlake, which I rode down, making right turns on each side street. There were a lot of them because the blocks are very tight in that area. It was a bit too time consuming for one ride.

Back on the Danforth I stopped at the first Starbucks where I unravelled some toilet paper from their roll and shoved it into my backpack because I had none at home.

At Bloor and Sherbourne I have lately seen a young man and woman trying to revive the squeegee industry. This time it seemed it was just the guy cleaning car windows for tips. As I crossed the street I imagined how I would describe how broke I was if one of them as a joke offered to squeegee my bike.  Just then I rode over a loonie that was lying on the street. I stopped and went back for it. Now I had $1.65.

What Does Vegemite Taste Like?

            The morning alarm cut through my sleep like a wooden spoon through frozen butter. I felt groggy all through yoga and most of song practice. Interestingly, it seems it was because my brain was still stewing in pillow dope that I made less mistakes while playing guitar. I was running on automatic.

            It was sunny and dry as I rode to the food bank and it looked like it was going to be a nice day. It clouded over almost right away as I got in line behind the large, pretty Black woman in the mauve top.

            A lot of the usual clients were there, but a new addition was a very loud and social woman in her 50s with a cane, long reddish brown hair and lycra tights with a print made from photos of cat faces. She often waved her cane in the air when she was talking about something or to someone that bothered her. She was socializing near the front of the line, and that area near the door, perhaps because it is slightly set in from the street, attracts some PARC regulars waiting for the free breakfast and looking for a cozy cove in which to smoke. A woman in an electric wheelchair who is often there was there this time and so was a very tall, dark haired young man with doll-like eyes whom I often see walking slowly through Parkdale, looking heavily medicated on some kind of prescribed psychiatric drug. At one point I suddenly heard the woman shouting at him and gesturing with her cane, “You leave her alone!” I didn’t see what he had done but I suspect that he had been persistently bugging the woman in the wheelchair for a cigarette. His response to the confrontation was to quietly and slowly move away.

            The wind was blowing from the west and so spent a lot of time on the west side of the line-up so that the second hand smoke would be carried away from me. The only problem was that as the line got longer I had to keep moving further west in order to read my book.

            I was almost finished reading the 250-year-old science fiction story, “Micromegas” by Voltaire. I found a couple of good quotes this time. The giant traveller from the Sirius star system asks a philosopher on earth why he quotes Aristotle in Greek. The answer is that one must speak about things one does not understand at all in the language that one understands the least. After that Micromegas asks another thinker of Earth how he understands the soul. The man answers that the soul is a pure spirit that has received in the womb all metaphysical ideas, but after being born has to relearn what it knew before and will never know again.

            While I was reading just upwind of the big man that was sitting and smoking on his rollator at the end of the line, a young man stepped in behind him and asked him for a light. He lit a brown cigarette that smelled something like pot but I think it was actually a beedi. Beedis contain tobacco but they smell less unpleasant than western cigarettes. They are apparently even worse for one’s health though. Every time he took a drag he had a coughing fit.

            The woman with the cane was chatting with two women and a girl of about twelve that had come there together. The thin woman looked something like Nelly Furtado, so I assumed she was Portuguese. Not that all Portuguese women look like Furtado but every woman I’ve met that looks something like her turns out to be Portuguese. The other woman was heavier set, with lighter, curlier hair and she was using a walker. The woman with the cane was surprised to hear that the girl was the daughter of the thinner woman and she commented that she would have thought her to be the daughter of the other, who turned out to be the dark haired woman’s sister. The girl was very physically affectionate with her mother and when she didn’t have her arms around her she was almost always had her hands on her in some other way. The mother had her hair done up high in a simple but elegant way and the girl was gently and admiringly touching her mom’s coiffe as they waited in line.

            The food bank opened late as usual but later than usual. As I was advancing to being one of the front five people, Moe came walking by. He stopped to ask if I’d gotten my bike fixed. I affirmed that I had and that I’d changed to a cotterless crankset, which so far was working better than the old system. I asked him what had happened with his phone. I’d called him on the previous Wednesday and someone had answered to say that he had given him his phone and that he didn’t have a new number yet. Moe assured me that he’d only forgotten his phone at his friend’s place and that his friend must have been drunk when I’d called. Moe said as he was leaving that I could come by after the food bank but I told him Saturday is a busy day so I’d maybe call him later in the week.

            The worst time for the person behind me to light a cigarette is when I’m at the very front of the line, because I can’t really step away far enough to escape the smoke. The woman with the cane was flirting with the guy directly behind me and telling him she liked his “swag”. From the many meanings of the word, I guess she meant she liked how he carried himself. They lit up cigarettes together while he complained that his woman doesn’t like his swag so much. I don’t think the woman with the cane knew either him or his woman but she took his side immediately and seemed like she was ready take his woman’s place right away if he were to ask.

            Two young women walked by, one of them wearing a short red dress. The woman with the cane observed that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. She expressed the view that it was wrong for a “little girl like that” to be not wearing underwear because “that’s what men like”. She continued, “There are a lot of diddlers in Parkdale!” The girl that was there with her mother and aunt spoke up, “A teacher at my school …” And at that point I was the next person in the door.

            I got number 18, which was surprising for the middle of the month.

            Angie was back in the dairy and meat section. The first choice she offered me was between a litre bag of real milk and a jug of almond milk that looked like it contained perhaps 1.5 litres or more. I told her I’d take the cow’s milk if it wasn’t sour, then I gently informed her that the milk had been sour the week before. She said, “I know! I heard all about it! Here, let me make it up to you!” then she left the room for the back and returned a minute later a 2.5 litre jug of Tropicana orange juice, which she was carrying low so it couldn’t be seen over the counter. She looked around and told me to open up my bag, and then she slipped it in.

            I got the usual bag of four eggs, but they were large this time. The tubes of frozen ground chicken were back after a meatless two weeks and the alternative to that was a bag of pizza slices. I took the chicken because it’s more versatile and it would last longer. She gave me a pack of the soy cheese slices. They taste like horse sweat but they’re quick protein when there’s nothing else. For the last couple of weeks the single servings of yogourt given out had been just two per person, but Angie had packs of six fruit bottom yogourts. She stuffed an extra six in my backpack.

            From Sylvia’s vegetable section I got three more packages of frozen sweet peas, a bag of baby potatoes, three carrots, two onions, an apple, a banana, two zucchini that I would need to operate on to remove the ripe parts and an eggplant. I turned down her offer of beets.

            Samantha was my guide through the shelves, at least three of which were totally empty.

            From the cereal I chose the All Bran multigrain crunch with a hint of maple. First of all, if it’s “all bran” how can it be multigrain? It actually tastes nothing like All Bran, which has always been one of my favourite cereals, or any kind of bran flakes, especially with raisins.

            There was pasta and rice as usual but no sauce, so I just took a can of diced tomatoes. Other than the tomatoes there were no cans of tuna, beans, fruit, soup, vegetables or anything else. There were no cartons of chicken broth.

            Samantha grabbed for me six chewy dark chocolate cherry trail mix bars. I picked a bag of Scottish potato chips.

Finally I was surprised to come upon a few jars of Vegemite. Samantha was very curious about it and wondered what it was. I told her that it’s like peanut butter for Australians and she said she remembered that song lyric about the “Vegemite sandwich” but she got the name of the band wrong. She thought that it was “Men Without Hats” that did the song “Down Under” with the lines, “Buying bread from a man in Brussels / Six foot four and full of muscle / I said to you speaka my language? / He just smiled and he gave me a Vegemite sandwich …” but it was “Men at Work”. Men Without Hats was the Canadian band that did “The Safety Dance”.

She asked what Vegemite tastes like. That is such a great question because the flavour is hard to describe. Maybe it tastes like fermented koala poop. Maybe it tastes like someone boiled the ocean down to the contents of one jar. Many say that it tastes like the embodiment of sadness. I told her that it tastes something like beer. She declared, “Well, I like beer!” I repeated that it tastes only something like beer. It tastes a lot more like brewers yeast, which I used quite a bit to flavour soups back when I was a vegetarian because it gives things a cheesy flavour. But Vegemite doesn’t taste like cheese either, though it has a cheesy aftertaste, sort of like if one were to blend a strong cheese with soy sauce. I took the Vegemite not so much for the taste but for sentimental reasons.

            

MDA

            Friday morning was slightly foggy and quite muggy. Time at first seemed to really drag in my brain as I started doing my yoga, but I ended up finishing sooner than usual.

            About halfway through guitar practice Du Juan crossed the street and called up to my window, “You’re a superstar! I watched your video!” He said the part where I was lying on my back reminded him of when he used to take “E” back in the 90s and would just lie in the park tripping for 24 hours. I told him that we used to call it MDA. He lamented that nowadays it’s not the same because it’s all fentanyl. When I looked it up later I saw that it’s not exactly he same drug as MDMA (ecstasy). The drug I took is much more powerfully psychedelic and euphoric than ecstasy. I have very fond memories of taking MDA and liked it better than LSD.

            I worked for a while on synchronizing the audio and video of one of my song practice recordings. It seems easier to grasp time as a concept from a visual perspective than from that of sound. I had forgotten in the audio that there had been three false starts on the song I’d recorded, though I had perceived and eliminated those mistakes almost right away on the video. I stopped editing this time just at the end of the last bad take.

            It had been cloudy all day but the chance of rain had passed by the time I went for a bike ride. On Bloor near Parliament when I passed an elderly woman she rang her bell twice. I assume it was to communicate to me that I should have rung a bell just before going by. I gave her more than a meter and would have called out to her if there’d been less room than that or if there had been some reason that I thought she might suddenly lurch to the left, such as a there being something to go around just ahead of her. Cars aren’t even required to give cyclists more than a meter.

            I went past Woodbine, north on King Edward and then back down Gledhill.
            The clouds had broken apart into some beautiful formations by the time I’d started heading back.

            That night I watched an episode of Maverick in which Bart was robbed of his poker winnings by a young woman with a gun. Instead of looking for the thief the sheriff kicks him out of town for being a card shark. On the stage to the nearest town he meets a lady who leads a women’s group. He lies to her that he is an ex-gambler and she invites him to speak before her group’s next meeting. He agrees because he is broke and hungry. At the meeting he notices the ring on one young lady’s finger is the same as that on the finger of the hand that reached around to take his wallet from behind the night before. He later confronts her and finds that she needed the money to pay off her father’s gambling debt. He gets her to lend him her ring so he can pawn it for $100 and then he uses the money as a poker stake in the game in which her father lost his money. Maverick wins $2000 but the boss and his thugs try to rip him off. Maverick escapes with the money but the crooks are on his tail so he asks the sheriff to arrest him. The sheriff is a by the book lawman and refuses unless Maverick breaks the law, so Maverick breaks a mirror in the bar and gets ten days. After the first day Maverick is very unhappy with the food and the bed in his cell but the ladies all come to his rescue and bring not only sumptuous meals but also a soft bed, an easy chair and fine cigars. Maverick is seen reading Lorna Doone, which would have been published about ten years before the time in which this story is set.

            Bart refers at one point to his brother Bret being the second slowest gun in the west.

            I went back to my video editing after dinner and was able to get the audio and video closer together. Friday night is not a good night for synchronizing files because of the sounds of roaring engines and shouting drunken teenagers coming in through my window. I should be able to finish it on my next free and quiet day.

Synchronization

            On Thursday I started a project in Movie Maker and imported to it the video and audio files from my song practice on July 23^rd. I didn’t try to synchronize the two files at first, but I did chop the first five minutes and twenty seconds from the video. I came back to it a few hours later and figured out how to trim the audio. I zoomed in to the maximum so that I could cut it by microseconds and each time slide the audio timeline to the left so it joined the beginning. It felt like I was getting the two files nearer to synchronization but as I got closer at the beginning of the song, it seemed off a bit later. But then I found out that I was synchronizing the first take of the song in audio that I’d already deleted from the video. I had been trying to synchronize two different takes. I figured I’d save and quit at that point, since I understood that the audio part that I needed to match up with the video was further along and at least that I was making progress towards it.

            It rained in the early afternoon so I didn’t take a bike ride. I worked on various projects instead.

            That night I watched a quirky episode of Maverick. It begins with Bret standing on the river dock in Sacramento when he sees a woman about to jump. He stops her and since they are both homeless, he takes her for coffee. She says that she’s just been robbed of money with which she’d planned on buying 200 cats at $2 each to take them to the mining town of Paradise which is overrun with rats and so each person will buy a cat for $50. Bret decides to go into business with her but after they buy the cats and arrange for the shipping she drugs maverick and arranges for him to be shanghaied. He escapes and follows her to Paradise where she is being treated like a heroine for having brought the cats. She is engaged to be married to the crooked, murderous and extremely superstitious sheriff, played by Buddy Ebsen but she hires a gunman to kill the lawman. However, the sheriff cheats at shootouts and kills the killer. Maverick defeats the sheriff by playing on his superstitions. He paints thirteen cats black and shines his boots with polish mixed with smoked fish and catnip so they follow him when he walks between the sheriff and the mayor during a showdown. The sheriff is so flustered that he is easily outdrawn. 

Temporary Eternity

            On Wednesday at around noon I started uploading to YouTube the video that Nick Cushing shot of my June 3^rd performance at the Smiling Buddha. Nick had given me a copy in the original size but also a smaller file. I chose the larger one to upload because it looked crisper to me and so took several hours. While the video was making its very slow climb to the internet I worked on my book cover, did some translations, edited a story, took a siesta and then went for a bike ride. The upload was at 63% when I left.

            On Bloor Street at around Ossington a woman who looked like Harpo Marx was dancing like Ralph Cramden in a crumpled fedora. She was off the sidewalk but she seemed to have enough sense not to be doing her dance in the middle of the road.

            I finished exploring all the streets between Woodbine and Cedarvale north of Lumsden. It looks like there won’t be any alleys behind Danforth until I make my way past Main Street, and that will be a few bike rides away.

            When I got home my upload to YouTube was at 98%. Good timing. 

Woodbine Heights

            On Tuesday I freed up some space on my computer by moving all my 2016 photos and some videos to my external hard drive. For some strange reason a Leonard Cohen concert video of 2.5 gigabytes took half an hour to copy whereas a folder of more than 5 gigs took just a few minutes.

            In the late afternoon I rode out to the Danforth. There were a couple of guys with fast bikes that got ahead of me. I passed them a few times but eventually they won the front and then we were separated by a red light.

            I explored the area just north and east of Woodbine and Danforth as far north as Mortimer and as far east as Cedarvale. I guess this part of town is called Woodbine Heights. Quite a few houses in that neighbourhood and sometimes several in a row have gambrel roofs, that is with two slopes on each side so that they look like little ugly barns.

            I only found one alley on this trip and that was a north-south lane. At one point along the way it had some sloppy but fun graffiti.

            It was nice to be riding closer to the Danforth, not only because it’s visually more interesting but also because I got home half an hour earlier, since I didn’t have to ride way up to the lower east end of North York anymore.

            I watched an episode of Maverick in which Bret is blackmailed into becoming the sheriff of a small but very unruly town. He takes an unconventional approach to law enforcement. For example, to stop a barroom fight between two men he gets everyone else to bet on it. When the combatants see that profit is being made from their dispute they both take offence and leave together. 

Executive Parking

            On Monday morning I called up the number of the worker from Social Services that had called me on July 24^th to tell me that it wasn’t too late for me to apply for the Toronto Transitional Housing Allowance even though it was four months past the deadline. When I informed her that I’d received a letter on Friday saying that I was ineligible for the allowance because I was past the deadline, she said she was “in shock”. She told me that she would talk with her supervisor and get back to me.

            Meanwhile I called up the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to talk with someone about my rejected application. I was only on hold a few minutes. The guy I spoke to said he would arrange for someone to call me back within 24 hours.

            An hour or so later the Toronto social worker called to ask how big my place is and if I pay for utilities in addition to the rent. I told her that I have a small one-bedroom apartment and I do not pay for utilities. She suggested that perhaps that was why they’d rejected my application. I pointed out that those questions were not even on the application and that they very specifically gave only one reason why I was disqualified from the program. I read her the precise wording in the letter: “ You are not eligible for the program due to the following reasons … your application was received after the application deadline date of 21-Mar-2017.” She let me know that she would refer back to her supervisor.

            In the early afternoon I took a siesta. I woke up when there was fifteen minutes left of my hour and a half in bed. I got up to pee and then lay back down to enjoy a few more minutes in bed. A few minutes later the phone rang and it was a woman named Cheryl from the Ministry of Housing. I explained the situation and though she didn’t make any promises she advised me to write a letter containing my explanation to the TTHAP, care of her and then to fax it to them.

            I didn’t have any money to send a fax so I called up the worker at Social Services. I was thinking that maybe she could send the fax for me. I didn’t ask her to do it but she said something about not being allowed to. She suggested that I go to any community centre and I could send a fax for free, but if for some reason I couldn’t, to come to the Dundas office to use their machine. I asked her how things were progressing at their end. She related that her supervisor had sent an email to the ministry but there had not yet been a response.

            I wrote the letter but then it was time for my bike ride, so I put figuring out how to fax it on hold. I finished exploring the area between O’Connor and Victoria Park, south of Eglinton and north of Taylor and Massey Creeks. My rides for the rest of the summer will be closer to the Danforth between Woodbine and Victoria Park. Hopefully I’ll find so interesting alleys to photograph.

            There were a lot of beautiful cloud patterns in the sky as I rode home. On Brock Avenue just north of Queen the old location of the liquor store, which still actually belongs to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, is now all covered with graffiti and the parking lot is fenced in. As I was riding by I noticed there was a high backed executive style office chair all by itself in the parking lot and I thought it made for an interesting image. I went around to where there was an opening in the fence and started taking pictures of the chair in relation to the graffiti and the sky.

            When I got home I printed the letter that I’d written and took it to the computer and fax place down the street on the next block. I was surprised to find that the place was closed and it looked like it was out of business after more than two decades in Parkdale. The Guyanese or Trinidadian owner’s stuff was still in there but it was all in disarray. I walked west to Mobil Computers, but that was closed too. I went to the library on the chance that they had a fax service but they didn’t.

            I resigned myself to sending the fax the next morning and went home. It occurred to me though that there must be services online that there must be services online that convert digital documents to send to fax machines. It didn’t take long to find MyFax, which lets customers send two faxes for free a month, but for any more they would have to pay. It was easy and the company sent me an email to let me know that the fax went through successfully. That’s a good service to know about.