It felt like an end of summer kind of day. Like summer was already over. Like that Rochdale afternoon.
Back in 68 or 69, when I had this experience, the early evening was burnt orange and it was warm.
A copy of Guerilla magazine fluttered on the ground.
A man playing with his kid on the concrete or asphalt patch in front of the building.
It felt a bit like the desert.
That Rochdale Afternoon keeps coming up.
It’s more about the light and the solitary feeling in the city than anything else.
That “last week of August” beginning of September feeling.
The light, the change (psychologically) from summer to the unknown new territory of school in the city.
The City becomes an entity. Not a person.
Toronto has never been personified for me.
It has just been Toronto, an entity unique from people or nature or even ideas.
It existed as some sort of other dimension with its own rules.
How it affects me and makes me feel young.
This is the time of the year that triggers memories of moving to Toronto and the Yonge St Mall and that first night, being the first to move into our “12 Man Unit” at Neil Wycik. The sister college of Rochdale.
Damon Webster and drinking beer on the Yonge St Mall and trips to Moishe’s Tel Aviv on Spadina for the best hummus and tahini, falafel and mango shakes.
Toronto Island and the Beach.
Kensington Market when Chinatown was over by the bus station. Dundas and Elizabeth.
Yorkville had already changed for the worse.
These are beige/brown afternoons with a breeze – a soft warm breeze with a bit of the malting smell in it. For a long time that was a signature smell in the city – especially when driving in from the west.
On these summer days, there would be a kind of light at 3:20 pm and it’s play on corners of buildings, patches of grass, small novas of gold on the high buildings. And there was no capturing it. You saw it, looked around for more, looked back and it was gone. But then the next kind of light had a whole new enchantment.
It was one of those 3:20 pm light days like I wrote about last August, I think. The kind of day when summer is just past its prime.
When I remember hanging out by myself outside of Rochdale and saw a hippie dad – not really a hippie, more like a guy who looked more Biblical, maybe a kibbutznik – playing with his little boy with a soccer ball.
Some still-dark green of the tiny trees and scrub on the perimeter of the paved front of the building.
The warmth, just right.
A copy of Harbinger magazine on the ground and that I picked up and read while I waited for someone or something.
That kind of light in 1968 or 69.
There’s a light, a certain light.
It’s not any particular colour. Maybe it’s a synasthesia kind of thing where the colour overlaps other senses, other memories too.
References of what I think/thought was in the world rather than what was really in the world.
As if anything is really in the world.
I get it mostly these days when sitting on the deck and looking out. The railing is important. I have to have the railing on the left to frame the whole thing.
The colour of the wood is important. What goes on beyond the deck is not important.
Today’s Listening:
1. Pinball – Brian Protheroe
2. Summer’s Almost Gone – The Doors
3. Just Jammin’ – Gramatik