 |
Pony: Secret Rivers
2.9.2005
I have so much work to do, but sometimes it is hard to get on with things until I write a little story to clear my head.
This weekend, Matt, Emily, Kiff, and I went for Dim Sum with Ariel and then to Stew's art show at fressen. On our way back through Trinity Bellwoods, we ran into an old woman walking an overfed miniature doberman she called "fatso". She pointed up to Crawford Street where the road is blocked for safetly reasons.
"That used to bebreeedge. Under that was a river. Feefty years I live here. My kids used to play under breedge. The river went through the park."
Under the streets of my neighbourhood there is a secret network of underground rivers that were diverted or filled in because of flooding. Now, fifty years later, some of the water is coming back.
She is 80 years old and from Poland. When she moved here, the area was all immigrant: "Polish, Ukranian, Jewish, Italian...Now the new people are all English." (and by English I think she means all of us who have merged to white). Some of the houses in this condofied, gentrified, yogafied area are selling for upwards of a million bucks. We tell her she could sell her house and move to California. "Why? You theenk the grass is greener?" Then she laughs a throaty laugh.
This weekend there was a big thaw and most of the old snow melted. Last night, temperature dropped suddenly and this morning there were sheets of ice like mini-rinks through the park. As I walked to work, I stepped on the freshly-frozen puddles to the hissing cracking sound of the ice that did not shatter, but seemed to crumple, forming fissures beneath the ice like mini-rivers.
is it just me, or did every one seem to walk around with a bit of schmutz on their forehead?
