A topic that come up in my line of work is what can one do with one's time when one is not a ronin, i.e., when one indeed has master other than the bottom line and the dollar bill. And in the past few weeks two topics seem to come up as responses repeatedly: "third world" poverty alleviation and environmental advocacy; both admirable things to pursue but to my ear, at a fundamental level, contradictory to the lives that such concerned voices live.

Let's take the case of X. X wants to reduce the environmental impact of the offices we work in, by transitioning them into "green" buildings. Yet, just a few minutes later in the conversation, when X admits to being a shopping fiend, the bell of contradiction begins to toll. How can one be a true environmentalist (using an inaccurate label for its simplicity), without an deep love for a local geography, and the simple and local life of commerce and consumption that would imply? Here I am thinking of the philosophy of that mad farmer, Wendell Berry.

Is it sufficient to advocate for green buildings while one is at the same time plugged into all the other arteries of global commerce, which continuously transfer stuff - stuff which gets made by millions of unseen others over there in the distance, and then gets sold by millions of faceless others over here - into one's, in this case X's, living room decorated with affordable Swedish furniture?

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

So he arrives after a couple of days of hard work, to a place where he can simply be even if the place is not where he would rather be, if he had any choice at the moment. But then he doesn't know where he would rather be either. But to somehow graft himself into this moment occuring in this certain locale, he puts on Sultan Khan's slow and lovely rendition of Raga Bageshree. Outside his high window, the tail end of a blizzard and the sidewalks buried under a couple of feet of snow. He places his face against the window, and his skin on contact slowly becomes cold.

He stands there with that another dichotomy, half a face cold, half a face warm, reflecting on a question that was posed, perhaps in jest, at lunch: "what would you rather be if you had a choice not to be where you currently are?" For questions like this one, these days, he doesn't have the time. And even when they do arise, such as when he reads in a scatter shot fashion before bed, he simply turns off the light, and dives off into the dark of sleep.

He pours himself a drink. He picks up an anthology of poems he has packed on this trip, and opens it random; it opens to John Berryman's "Dream Song 40". He can't help smile at certain quirky turns in Henry's speech

"I'm scared a only one thing, which is me, from othering I don't take nothin, see, for any hound dog's sake. But this is where I livin, where I rake my leaves and cop my promise, this' where we cry oursel's awake.

even as he slowly sips from his glass, whiskey mixed with this certain kind of alienation from "being in, and of the world". Outside the wind, and Valentine's Day blow unabated.