He gets away from staring at spreadsheets - his job involves torturing data to make it confess the sins of capital - at 8 pm, on a Friday evening, and strolls through the slush of dirty snow massed on the sides of roads and sidewalks, and through lights streaking across the snow, from the now empty display cases of upscale jewelers Cartier et al., to this street of neon light, ethnic restaurants, pubs, strip bars, and most importantly bookstores. As someone told him, this is apparently also the longest street in the world, having being laid over an old fur trapping and trading path starting somewhere out in the tundra to the edge of a great lake. Cities, just like lovers, become intimate when one remember facts like these about them.

He had been craving books all day; the slender Dante with its marginalia on the bedside table in his anonymous hotel room was demanding company. So he finds himself on this street, staring into the plate glass windows at people dining - he stares away when his eyes meet someone inside, in front of a hot meal, or if he is caught quick, he smiles knowingly - till he enters the bookstore. He browses. He picks up a novel on four or five suicidal men, and a book of short stories on the loves of women. Crosses the street. Enters another bookstore. Picks up a book of essays, which he will give away, on a sea-side city caught between two continents (only lines of demarcation in the human mind, and none to be found or seen on the real kissable ground), and finally another novel revolving around the lives of teachers and students.

Insulation, he mutters to himself, even if he won't find the time to read them all, they will insulate him against the loneliness that had begun its flanking movement against him in this cold and odd city. "Hell", he thinks, as his toes, which had lost all sensation from walking in the cold, begin to unthaw, "I may just need all this paper to start a Jack London like fire under an tree if I collapse, and can't get back to the hotel room." These - as he sits opposite a wall mural of an impressionistic Buddha in a Thai restaurant, trying to not dwell on all the other people who are dining in there, at those tables meant for two, and pages through the books he had just bought - are the thoughts running through his head.

Toronto, 2007:02:16 22:00