Do you know that feeling when you are sure and assertive even though the ideas may not be totally sound, and then you grow older and wiser and get the shaky hand
?
Every time I come back to Toronto I suffer a peculiar straightlace comedown, and it usually lasts at least a month before I fully adjust, I'm getting closer. Because of my best friend Ksenia living here again, we go on dates every weekend and I’ve recently been in the company of many other ex-pat Montrealers (there has been a steady stream migrating to Toronto in recent years looking for work past Portlandia…) We get drunk, shout and complain together; such social gatherings are almost more like meetings to express our feelings in Toronto’s otherwise polite social environment. This is my city for introverted reflection and calmer waters, but instinctively I try to carry on energy like an eager puppy, or more romantically speaking, like Bas Jan Ader, falling off paths and getting up again til death stops repetitive action. Nice to hold hands with Ksenia’s this time around.
If you may remember from a past article, I was emblazoned with a fabulous strength from my schizophrenic guardian angel just before leaving Brooklyn, and I forgot to mention that when I returned in October, that I was lucky enough to pick up another! At some stale old lady opening in Chelsea (Tom Phillips at Flowers Gallery), a Mrs. Eccentric something or other appeared out of the blue and imparted me with some serious strength to add to my stash. I caught her eye as the elevator door opened and she came emerged as a genie would, in pigtails and a red north face jacket. She immediately sat next down to me (possibly emitting heroin vibes) but anyway, lovingly linked my arm and asked me what a bee-u-tifal gal like I was doing, unhitched, hanging around all these crackers… she told me I was going be of the new generation to represent ‘us Orientals’. Er. When I laughed and corrected her to use the word ‘Asian’ instead, yknow, Edward Said and all that… she rejoiced, ‘See! What did I tell ya, the new generation.’ Then something to the extent that the world is shit and racist but now young people are gonna make it happen. She continued in a manner of poetic rants that really told the MAN from the perspective of American otherness, in an eloquent, insightful and impassioned way, things like her hatred for neo-liberal shenanigans and how it trickled down to the patriarchal structure of one’s home, for instance. It sounded by inference that she had lost many things in her life. On a very personal, ex-husbands, filial piety note, I think fondly of her best quote - ‘Hey. Family isn’t some asshole you meet’. She looked at me long and hard before moving on to bitch about another subject of love and loss.
