So much happened in Toronto that when I open my mouth to recount, memories all rush forward in a multicolored montage, much like how they occurred, that i am left speechless.
On the eight hour drive, we plowed through the armpit of America, the most polluted factory-feeding sprawls: Gary Indiana, Toledo Ohio and Detroit. They can be symbolized by smokestacks. Black striped smokestacks that were on fire from industrial slurry. Wide smokestacks that billowed with smoke like doomsday clouds. A suffocating haze. The smell of rotten eggs. Remnants of factories that mourned between their missing teeth that were the cracked windows.
After all this, we were in a foreign city. A beautiful city of lights, and a certain socialist cleanliness. A city to be an interlude for the intellectually wounded. We were excited about the legal drinking. So we drank with dinner, in a swanky martini bar, in a commercial ale-house, in a clandestine bohemian joint. We dashed between locales in the silver bullet known as Toronto subway system. And we were only twice lost, once separated, and once stranded in the ferry docks. We ate sushi, mexican, greek, chinese, dim-sum, and more chinese. We played poker. We talked. We talked in faux British accents. We talked in rhyme. But only while drunk. We talked to strangers. But again, only while drunk.
I left with a personal bottle of Tanqueray, two cuban cigars, and a nose ring. But most importantly, I left with a certain wisdom about social groups, and myself. SK, Jess, Sam; with these three people, I spent six solid days. Ate with, slept beside, talked with, drank with, rode alongside them. It has been awhile since I've felt so close or so far from a group of people. We are all very different, resulting in a rare dynamic, odd subtleties, a lot of good times, and only one threat to terminating the friendship (declared and retracted by me). By becoming closer to them, I have recognized how much dwells beneath the obvious in social groups, and how much I have ignored. The complexity is beautiful but baleful. The jury is still out on how exactly I feel about this subject.
I am still left uncertain by a lot of what occurred during this little spring break. But I do know that the grass was greener in Hyde Park than when I left. Many rainstorms has poured in the time since. It was odd returning to Chicago. By leaving, I realized that I have settled here. I don't know if it's home in the true sense of the word yet, but I have established my own rhythm, my own syncopated rhythm in a city that reminds me both of Toronto and the factory-feeding sprawl.
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