At the corner of Yonge and Fairlawn

(aka a reckless abuse of context)

At the corner of Yonge and Fairlawn potato farmers are crying about their khakis, and the Globe is the best paper to read at the coffeeshop. Heheheh, and my recycled napkins are so damn water-absorbent, they can mop the floor with this pathetic afternoon drizzle; this is the land of banana men, pineapple ladies and the checkered technicolour umbrella; it’s the movement of vans up around the block, splashing, exacerbating telephone-booth dampness in a thundershower, the tepid puddles of rainwater that nourish baby crows, and most importantly my lady: she’s tall and Semitic and she plucks at bangs and wears dark glasses—and this is Thursday at its most pointless. And female waist-hems are creeping ever downward, toward crotch-and-ass-crack territory, so we’re better off discussing the hubcap thief who ruined my Toyota Tercel—I’d like to meet him on adjacent barstools, I’d arm-wrestle him for my honour and smash my remaining wheels over his face. The yellow hydrant takes the piss out of passing dogs; it’s parked within 15 metres of the the corner, breaking the by-laws as it puts out fires, and this unnecessary juxtaposition isn’t my fault: I didn’t design a city where telephone poles lean so haphazard, where newspaper boxes are a gang of teenagers gathering at the sidewalk and wrought-iron patio railings are the first to start rusting, and the chubby lady making me peppermint tea has a braid like a loaf of challah bread, but she’s a babealicious bouncy blonde with a French nose and there are flowers in the plastic pots dangling above the street beneath the lamp-posts and they're still smiling colours—flowers getting water free from rainclouds—but who’s gonna take them down when they shrivel up in winter? The taxpayers will take it in the ass again I bet, but Green-P parking is just around the corner, which is nice, something to look forward to below a Second-Empire mixed-use commercial-residential block that could use a decent scrub, to restore a tired century of beauty. The metal garbage-eaters are wheezing onto Fairlawn Ave and crunching up the unnecessary debris we leave on lawns; I make a mental note to hide what you’re writing from that big orange bastard because the pavement’s so slick and the Sony TV shop is a radio-service lab, so if you need experiments done then take your radio there, which proves my point that shop-sign sellers should take courses in How Not To Be Stupid, because stupid signs—everywhere signs—are cluttering me making me stupid and the problem’s making sense in straight lines when the universe is really multiversal but you’ll notice this only if restless and overeducated but—whatever—this is still a poignantly useless theory of everything and right beside the Subway is the Scholars’ Education Centre and I wonder, how many university professors walk by thinking, “Why not—I could use a little brush-up myself,” but too-few credentializing mofos stoop to admit deficiency, I mean, why would they when Caz’s Restaurant has Great Fish—come in, we’re open—and I put the perfect Finishing Touches on this little ditty beside The Coop’s casual clothing store for men, but everything falls apart and what happens to the centre then? It does not hold; do not hold onto me, please let me go, I’m an important man. We tie everything up with neat strings in our entropy-battling mental-bulimia-bored?-let’s-go-for-a-walk-binges. And yesterday I was breaking out in a sweaty run; my shin-splints were killing me as I stopped smelling roses, soaking up windfalls from the whimsy of the rain, and that’s precisely why random acts of kindness make me cry: the automobiles get bigger and bolder but the streetscape shrinks steadily from view, there’s a big fat tractor riding atop a truck-bed and suddenly—finally—I’m thinking of you.

(And the rain clears up, and it’s a quarter past two.)