Walk 2 (in Toronto)

Yesterday I was cold. I forgot to wear my hat. In Toronto, I walked from the St. Patrick’s subway along Dundas to McCaul and then I stood in line, in a huge line of at least 1000 people to get into OCAD for their National Portfolio Day. I was an official stander-in-liner, not there to show my portfolio but to stand in line, to hold a place in line. At first, once the line started to move and they let us into the building, we strategized -- choosing the stairs over the elevator figuring that we’d get to the fifth floor line up faster if we climbed than if we waited for the elevator. But the architecture thwarted us: we climbed logically to the fourth floor but then the stairs seemed to continue forever without landing after landing without a landing. Was there really a fifth floor? Was there really any stairway access to the fifth floor?

Later, outside, looking at the building we figured out that we’d been in the gap between the old building and the new black & white addition. It was kind of scary to contemplate it. Suspended way up there.

We had though made it to the fifth floor eventually by another route. We stood in line and achieved the objective. It took (in total) about 2 ½ hours to see two people but we met a lot of other people in the line up and chatted and I read D&G with a red pen in hand and learned a few things about content and expression, strata and deterritorialization. I learned that I go with the flow.

Despite my being cold for the whole day, we walked from Dundas and McCaul to Kensington Market and browsed for a while along Kensington in the new and used clothing shops that seem to have an inordinate obsession with video security. Is shoplifting so rampant? Do the crowds warrant it?

Then we retraced the steps. I always find this part interesting. We didn’t do it exactly. We tried the other side of the street for a while. Both times (there and back) I found it hard to cross at the intersection of Dundas and Spadina because people walk so slowly and serpentinely (?). I don’t really get it. It seems to me that it’s such a wide street with so much traffic and the streetcar that it matters that you get to the other side fairly quickly but there’s a leisureliness to the intersection that makes it feel like its own little world, like nothing might happen there ever…and yet I’m sure that if I stopped, someone would honk their horn or yell at me or maybe even run me down…