The area tilts me on an axis. It's as if I am looking through a magnified diving mask. Only it is not me swimming but the world swimming around me. And it is the only corner I have ever been on that does this. Thirty years ago I thought it my state of mind; now I know it is the corner itself. All the shops have changed except Honest Ed's. And maybe it's that vaudevillan double football field store of everything that is a mere four years older than me and long before Wal-Mart. Selling is a circus. Thousands of feet of coloured seasonal lights never stop blinking. Lights that mean shopping, gifts for oneself or others, new things, cheap things.
Poverty drives this corner. The dispossessed come from everywhere, converging. Last year I tripped on the street car tracks and fell headlong on the traffic-heavy road. I'm not imagining that gravity shifts its axis here.
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Comments: 8
Ludolf, oh my, thanks!
Ed, confluences, that's a great word - another one I like is convergences - and this piece is playing with some of those experiences, you are so right.
Danny, no, it hasn't changed. It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't some stock that's been there since inception in 1948! I go in there now because it's a cultural icon. It'll probably all disappear when Ed Mirvish passes away so there is a sense of old Toronto there, an era.
Dan, if the earth has telluric lines of energy and there are certain 'sacred spots,' perhaps there are also 'Twilight Zone' spots? :) That corner feels like that, like the world shifts somehow, tilts. Not to be grave about a gravity, mind you!
Layla, I am drawn in there, as much for the miles of goods as the bygone-era feel. And where else can you get a 100% cotton button-up sweater in a blueberry blue that fits snugly for $2.99? I especially like buying tools there - staplers, matt knives, screwdrivers, I get such a sense of years & years of these shelves, this stock, movement in and out... oh, oh, and the same cashier's tills!!! No scanning!! Dollar amounts entered, the % sign, the + sign, totals that are given easily to human error... just like in the olden days!
Carol, many thanks, dear.
Julie, yes it was scary to fall like that across 2 lanes and I am lucky. At the time it seemed as if the tilt of the earth I feel there just tilted more, the pavement coming up to my eyes!
Many thanks everyone!